I am on the bus home and I am tired, though not as tired as I had been. Four weeks on from a fortnight of doing fuck all in the French Alps and I am still feeling somewhat restored. There were three months of waking up feeling bleached and sedated prior to that. I don't know why.
I'm on the 46A back to our new house in Stoneybatter, where Rosie and Biscuit purr at the spaciousness of it all. After two years in our Portobello basement flat I'm still blinking like a mole in the light. I like to potter up the spiral staircase to the converted attic. I have notions of properly learning to play guitar there, high and obscure where no-one else would have to suffer my noodlings. Mostly, though, I just go up there and stick my head out of the skylight and across the city. I can see the Spire and the Pigeon Houses at Poolbeg. And churches.* Didn't you have to feel impressed by Enda Kenny for once? Every dog has his day.
We are one year married on Friday. I've tried not to be smug for the last year, but even the constant question of "when are you having a baby?" hasn't stopped me. I've been asked it on this bus. Everyone is so very concerned with filling up this world of killing rampages and phone hacking. I swear all there is for them is X Factor and procreation. We'll keep at it (so to speak) but if there is to be no baby for Rosie and I that will be alright too. Partly because it will have to be, but mostly because it will.
Give me your hands cos you're wonderful.
*CONTRIVED SEGUE ALERT
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
13
On Divorce Settlements
Not me and Rosie, mind. No, we had what could be considered our first ever row on Sunday after a few afternoon pints later led to a temporary mutual lack of perspective on housework, but I reckon we'll be able to avoid calling Lionel Hutz in just yet. I refer to the parting of ways between us and Eircom Broadband. €216 it'll cost us to be shot of them.
I remember when they were good old Telecom Éireann and the only ways they could fuck you up were by swallowing your coins in their banjaxed phoneboxes, or charging you extra if calls on your home phone lasted longer than three minutes. Then they got all supercorporate on us, dropped that pesky fada and floated themselves on the stock exchange, meanwhile convincing a shitload of fools to buy shares in them at a heavily infalted price. My family were amongst those fools, though we didn't get burned half as badly as some people did. But yeah, speculate on the stock market and there's every chance things might just go tits up.
What's not so hot is charging people around fifty quid a month for a service they simply don't get. Whinging about your broadband speed sounds an awful lot like what supercilious fuckers would call a First World Problem (blogging about it most certainly is), but getting vexed over consistently not getting what you're paying for strikes me as pretty justified. I lack the patience to detail the shoddiness of their service and their customer care, but take a look at their reviews. A lot of people are left spitting feathers, in what mostly stand out as unusually articulate expressions of internet rage. And why not? They've thrown thousands of euro and thousands of hours of customer hold-time at the incompetent cunts between them. I feel like we have too. Pay peanuts and you get monkeys. Pay €48 a month and you get the dimmest bunch of morons you're likely to find this side of a Kid Rock concert.
David, my favourite of the many technical support staff we dealt with, told me that we'd have to sign a new twelve month contract if we wanted a replacement for the modem that their technicians (incorrectly, as it turned out) told us was the reason why we hadn't had continuous connection for more than twenty minutes for the past month. I could sign that contract, or I could pay Eircom €47 for a new one or, y'know, "just buy your own in Currys". When I pressed David on why exactly I might have to do that he said (and I quote verbatim here, seriously) "Uuuuuuhhh......deregulation ummmmmmmmmmm increased competition and stuff............................................................................................uhhhhh, yeah..." He then left me on hold with squalling feedback in my ear for ten minutes before realising that oh, I was still under contract, as I had said. Fair balls, David, I'd turn up to work stoned off my fucking face too if I could get away with it.
If Eircom were a spouse they'd be attentive at first, before becoming distant, philandering, and then downright abusive. You might just be able to prove in a court of law that this was the case, but it'd take more time and emotional energy than you really have, so you just pay them some money to fuck off and stop annoying you.
I remember when they were good old Telecom Éireann and the only ways they could fuck you up were by swallowing your coins in their banjaxed phoneboxes, or charging you extra if calls on your home phone lasted longer than three minutes. Then they got all supercorporate on us, dropped that pesky fada and floated themselves on the stock exchange, meanwhile convincing a shitload of fools to buy shares in them at a heavily infalted price. My family were amongst those fools, though we didn't get burned half as badly as some people did. But yeah, speculate on the stock market and there's every chance things might just go tits up.
What's not so hot is charging people around fifty quid a month for a service they simply don't get. Whinging about your broadband speed sounds an awful lot like what supercilious fuckers would call a First World Problem (blogging about it most certainly is), but getting vexed over consistently not getting what you're paying for strikes me as pretty justified. I lack the patience to detail the shoddiness of their service and their customer care, but take a look at their reviews. A lot of people are left spitting feathers, in what mostly stand out as unusually articulate expressions of internet rage. And why not? They've thrown thousands of euro and thousands of hours of customer hold-time at the incompetent cunts between them. I feel like we have too. Pay peanuts and you get monkeys. Pay €48 a month and you get the dimmest bunch of morons you're likely to find this side of a Kid Rock concert.
David, my favourite of the many technical support staff we dealt with, told me that we'd have to sign a new twelve month contract if we wanted a replacement for the modem that their technicians (incorrectly, as it turned out) told us was the reason why we hadn't had continuous connection for more than twenty minutes for the past month. I could sign that contract, or I could pay Eircom €47 for a new one or, y'know, "just buy your own in Currys". When I pressed David on why exactly I might have to do that he said (and I quote verbatim here, seriously) "Uuuuuuhhh......deregulation ummmmmmmmmmm increased competition and stuff............................................................................................uhhhhh, yeah..." He then left me on hold with squalling feedback in my ear for ten minutes before realising that oh, I was still under contract, as I had said. Fair balls, David, I'd turn up to work stoned off my fucking face too if I could get away with it.
If Eircom were a spouse they'd be attentive at first, before becoming distant, philandering, and then downright abusive. You might just be able to prove in a court of law that this was the case, but it'd take more time and emotional energy than you really have, so you just pay them some money to fuck off and stop annoying you.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
2
"My friend had a hip operation and..." / Meeting People is Cheesy
A change of working scenery, if not of employer, has reintroduced me to the devilry that is small-talk. New EFL teachers, nervous before their first ever paid class, are the worst for it; simpering and clucking and cracking awful jokes before they wait to get started. They don't know each other and they think they don't know what's in store for them.
I've lost all tolerance for it as I've gotten older - preferring to say nothing than to talk utter fluff. It's not the fluff that's the problem, mind, it's the scutter that comes out of your mouth for want of something better to say. 90 percent of conversations are nought but fluff, but they do at least tend to be couched in your own terms. On starting a new secondary teaching job a few years back I was small-talking with another new teacher, who told me he was from Newbridge. "You'll be worth your weight in silver to this place, then", was my side-splitting response . Oh yes it was. (Context for non-Irish readers here, should you wish). I still shrivel and die a little inside when I think of that, but that guy's been kind enough never to remind me of that, and he now knows I'm not quite that much of a fucking sack.
It can happen even with people you've known for a good while. A good mate of mine came back from a year's travelling and told irritating, shit-awful jokes for a couple of weeks before he got back to normal. I'm still not sure if he was just feeling a bit nervous and out of place being back home, or if he thought this material had played well among all the back-packers he had encountered - too polite around new people to do anything but chuckle politely. Wedding Table Syndrome, to so very many of us.
But yeah, my stock of patience for it is running perilously thin, given that lifetimes are just packed full of awkward making nice with strangers. "I do this, and I live there and yeah, I've heard there are loads of nice pubs in Clonmel and no, I suppose Simon Cowell probably isn't really like that in person, yeah I've heard the family name but I don't think I've met him - Wicklow's a bigger place than you realise, you know."
Fuck all that, I think I'd rather people just thought I was aloof.
Though there is always the nuclear option of going up to my new colleagues and launching straight into a bawdy anecdote involving casual sex or soft drugs, giving them some unanticipated physical contact and perhaps even dropping in a track or two from the '30 Greatest Paedo Jokes' album that's generally on heavy rotation in my head. It's what they'd end up getting somewhere down the line anyway.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
8
I dunno, Leona Lewis or some shit?
A man passed me on the bus this morning looking much like Twenty Major would if we were about fifteen years down the line and Twenty Major had taken up shrinking and Buckfast for breakfast. (Yes, I am that deeply embedded in the Irish blogosphere that I know what Twenty Major looks like.) Tenuous blogger lookalikes aside, it was the man's folded newspaper that caught my eye. 'SPLITS WITH FIANCÉ' is all I could read of the front page. Or perhaps 'FIANCÉE' - I pay little heed to gendered French vowels first thing.
And do you know what I thought? I thought to myself "I might just have enough time before work starts to pop into Dunne's and scan the tabloids to see who has split with whom."
I didn't have time, really, and am still none the wiser. It was one of those mornings where a Korean student hands me a banana at the eleven o'clock break and says "Take care of yourself, Andrew." Feel free not to enlighten me. I feel a profound fucking distaste for myself most mornings, I must say.
And do you know what I thought? I thought to myself "I might just have enough time before work starts to pop into Dunne's and scan the tabloids to see who has split with whom."
I didn't have time, really, and am still none the wiser. It was one of those mornings where a Korean student hands me a banana at the eleven o'clock break and says "Take care of yourself, Andrew." Feel free not to enlighten me. I feel a profound fucking distaste for myself most mornings, I must say.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
8
Living briefly in Birmingham and then in Tanzania made my sense of nationality all the more entrenched. No-one sported more green than me on St. Patrick's Day, no-one thrilled to the exploits of the Irish team in Italia '90 more than me. I learned of them weeks after the fact, through cuttings from the Irish Times my grandfather posted us. Weeks later. That may seem antiquated beyond belief, but there it is, that's how it was.
Katrina, an older Australian girl, once took a handful of rough, small stones and scrubbed furiously at my neck with them as punishment for claiming that photographic evidence from our homelands proved that the Irish rugby players of the 1991 World Cup squad were clearly better-looking than the Aussie Rules players of the same vintage. An admittedly bold statement, born out of a blend of national pride and awkward nine year-old flirting, I guess.
Flash-forward, if you will, twenty years, and I am slinking away from my workplace on Dame Street, my efforts to teach having been hampered all morning by soundchecks for the Jedward/Obama extravaganza due to take place later on. Every other person is going in the opposite direction. An admirable man is going to take to the stage, and everyone will describe him as "inspirational", even if he merely makes farty noises with his armpits for five minutes. He is an intelligent man, vastly preferable to the idiotfuck who preceded him, but our desire to be loved by him means there does not appear to be so much as one voice of dissent at the visit of a man who presides over the most capitalist country in the world, a country of relentless cultural imperialism, a country still embroiled in two unnecessary wars whose only tangible upshots of any kind have been the violent deaths of two tyrants.
I forget about it for a while (and you should too, for this post is not about anti-Americanism or anti-Obamism) and listen to music and read back at home, before curiosity gets the better of me and I tune in for the last few minutes of his speech. I can't have been the only one cringing at the squalls of approval every time Barack Obama says the words 'Ireland' or 'Irish', can I? And the squeals of delight when he utters a few words in 'Gaelic', before rapidly translating them into English, because Barack Obama and his scriptwriters are savvy enough to know most of us, me included, are proud that we have a national language but not proud enough to learn to speak it? Our Taoiseach (who apparently now considers a tribute act to be an appropriate warm-up) will be making moves to lessen its usage, as soon as he thinks he can get away with it.
"Inspirational!" roared whatever chimp TV3* had anchoring their coverage. I was left feeling cold by his words, though impressed by his subsequent 15 minutes of handshakes and baby-cuddling. Perhaps missing the start of his speech meant I hadn't had the chance to get swept up in the whole thing, but what he said certainly reads an awful lot like candyfloss, designed to elicit cheers from an expectant crowds and play very, very well amongst Irish-American voters - a fairly key demographic in a country where around 20 percent of the population recently claimed they believe Obama to be a Muslim.
I'd love to feel all superior to a country with that level of fear and misinformation, but around the same percentage in Ireland are happy to proclaim in a survey that they would deny citizenship to members of the Travelling Community.
Never mind the 'death of Anglophobia' that the visit of Queen Elizabeth is purported to have brought about, we live in a country practising something akin to apartheid, and we don't talk about it. I'll say more on this another time, should cogent words come to me. We, all human beings, are born on bits of land from people most likely from some other bits of land and we put names on them, and ascribe to them characteristics and personalities that can't really exist on a geographical basis and tell ourselves that certain bits of land are better than others and draw lines in the sand and makes flags and laws and borders and piss all over each other in our haste to mark our territory. May there be no more flag-waving for me.
*I know. I hadn't realised what channel I was on for a few minutes. I suppose someone has to make them feel better about themselves.
mar ná beidh ár leithéidí arís ann
“Nationality is respectable only when it is on the defence, when it is waging wars of liberation it is sacred; when those of domination it is accursed.”
-Rabindranath Tagore
Growing up in Cork, as I did, tribal loyalties and nationality were as straightforward as it comes. I was from Cork and from Ireland and I loved Cork and Ireland and knew that they were the best places in the world, ever. This despite being of stock with roots in Dublin, Belfast, deepest rural Roscommon, and yeah, England.
Living briefly in Birmingham and then in Tanzania made my sense of nationality all the more entrenched. No-one sported more green than me on St. Patrick's Day, no-one thrilled to the exploits of the Irish team in Italia '90 more than me. I learned of them weeks after the fact, through cuttings from the Irish Times my grandfather posted us. Weeks later. That may seem antiquated beyond belief, but there it is, that's how it was.
Katrina, an older Australian girl, once took a handful of rough, small stones and scrubbed furiously at my neck with them as punishment for claiming that photographic evidence from our homelands proved that the Irish rugby players of the 1991 World Cup squad were clearly better-looking than the Aussie Rules players of the same vintage. An admittedly bold statement, born out of a blend of national pride and awkward nine year-old flirting, I guess.
Flash-forward, if you will, twenty years, and I am slinking away from my workplace on Dame Street, my efforts to teach having been hampered all morning by soundchecks for the Jedward/Obama extravaganza due to take place later on. Every other person is going in the opposite direction. An admirable man is going to take to the stage, and everyone will describe him as "inspirational", even if he merely makes farty noises with his armpits for five minutes. He is an intelligent man, vastly preferable to the idiotfuck who preceded him, but our desire to be loved by him means there does not appear to be so much as one voice of dissent at the visit of a man who presides over the most capitalist country in the world, a country of relentless cultural imperialism, a country still embroiled in two unnecessary wars whose only tangible upshots of any kind have been the violent deaths of two tyrants.
I forget about it for a while (and you should too, for this post is not about anti-Americanism or anti-Obamism) and listen to music and read back at home, before curiosity gets the better of me and I tune in for the last few minutes of his speech. I can't have been the only one cringing at the squalls of approval every time Barack Obama says the words 'Ireland' or 'Irish', can I? And the squeals of delight when he utters a few words in 'Gaelic', before rapidly translating them into English, because Barack Obama and his scriptwriters are savvy enough to know most of us, me included, are proud that we have a national language but not proud enough to learn to speak it? Our Taoiseach (who apparently now considers a tribute act to be an appropriate warm-up) will be making moves to lessen its usage, as soon as he thinks he can get away with it.
"Inspirational!" roared whatever chimp TV3* had anchoring their coverage. I was left feeling cold by his words, though impressed by his subsequent 15 minutes of handshakes and baby-cuddling. Perhaps missing the start of his speech meant I hadn't had the chance to get swept up in the whole thing, but what he said certainly reads an awful lot like candyfloss, designed to elicit cheers from an expectant crowds and play very, very well amongst Irish-American voters - a fairly key demographic in a country where around 20 percent of the population recently claimed they believe Obama to be a Muslim.
I'd love to feel all superior to a country with that level of fear and misinformation, but around the same percentage in Ireland are happy to proclaim in a survey that they would deny citizenship to members of the Travelling Community.
Never mind the 'death of Anglophobia' that the visit of Queen Elizabeth is purported to have brought about, we live in a country practising something akin to apartheid, and we don't talk about it. I'll say more on this another time, should cogent words come to me. We, all human beings, are born on bits of land from people most likely from some other bits of land and we put names on them, and ascribe to them characteristics and personalities that can't really exist on a geographical basis and tell ourselves that certain bits of land are better than others and draw lines in the sand and makes flags and laws and borders and piss all over each other in our haste to mark our territory. May there be no more flag-waving for me.
*I know. I hadn't realised what channel I was on for a few minutes. I suppose someone has to make them feel better about themselves.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
13
show you what all the howling's for
I had a slight need to take a leak before I left work this evening but I decided not to go at work, knowing that after the 20 minute walk home the piss I would take would be ultramega satisfying. You get your kicks where you can, don't you?
In other, less urine-related, news, this blog is three years old today. I really don't know how that happened. Like most things, I think I hopped on the bandwagon just as the whole thing had reached saturation point and was becoming terminally uncool. Once I finally succumb to Twitter you can be fairly sure that that's over, too. Twitter was just getting going back then, and quickly started to gobble commenters who had stuff to say and then the kind of bloggers who only did this as a means of chatting to folks they didn't know and saying 'check this motherfucking dog video out!' Which is good for everyone, I guess, though it's certainly changed the landscape a bit. Nevertheless, blogs are still usually the best place to read articulate and uncensored writing by people without a political or commercial agenda.
I didn't do this expecting to be read by anyone much, so the readers I have picked up are an unexpected bonus. Especially as blogging by its very nature is a reverse narrative, so it must often be unclear as to what the fuck I'm banging on about. And I must surely have exhausted the goodwill of just about every longer-term reader out there by repeatedly going on about how I met my wife through blogging and how much I love her.
Anyway, I wish I had more to say right now. But I don't, so I'll just peter out in much the same way way as my wedding speech by saying "Umm...thanks" with a crack in my voice, and sitting down.
In other, less urine-related, news, this blog is three years old today. I really don't know how that happened. Like most things, I think I hopped on the bandwagon just as the whole thing had reached saturation point and was becoming terminally uncool. Once I finally succumb to Twitter you can be fairly sure that that's over, too. Twitter was just getting going back then, and quickly started to gobble commenters who had stuff to say and then the kind of bloggers who only did this as a means of chatting to folks they didn't know and saying 'check this motherfucking dog video out!' Which is good for everyone, I guess, though it's certainly changed the landscape a bit. Nevertheless, blogs are still usually the best place to read articulate and uncensored writing by people without a political or commercial agenda.
I didn't do this expecting to be read by anyone much, so the readers I have picked up are an unexpected bonus. Especially as blogging by its very nature is a reverse narrative, so it must often be unclear as to what the fuck I'm banging on about. And I must surely have exhausted the goodwill of just about every longer-term reader out there by repeatedly going on about how I met my wife through blogging and how much I love her.
Anyway, I wish I had more to say right now. But I don't, so I'll just peter out in much the same way way as my wedding speech by saying "Umm...thanks" with a crack in my voice, and sitting down.
Monday, May 2, 2011
6
days of enjoyment to which everyone cheers
Friday
I get my first taste of the royal wedding at around 2 o'clock in the chipper in Georges' Street Arcade. The rolling loops on Sky News are muted, but the man behind the counter offers his own commentary.
"I'd have hor and hor sister, an' I'd take a little flower girl, too. I'd just have hor watchin'."
Saturday
An unspeakable lack of whiskey.
Later, fly to Pakistan.
Sunday
Arsenal beat United. Too little, too late.
I kill Osama bin Laden. It was surprisingly easy: I burst in on him watching Cash in the Attic, offered him a Werther's Original and then kicked him in the hip.
Monday
Dinner with the parents.
I get my first taste of the royal wedding at around 2 o'clock in the chipper in Georges' Street Arcade. The rolling loops on Sky News are muted, but the man behind the counter offers his own commentary.
"I'd have hor and hor sister, an' I'd take a little flower girl, too. I'd just have hor watchin'."
Saturday
An unspeakable lack of whiskey.
Later, fly to Pakistan.
Sunday
Arsenal beat United. Too little, too late.
I kill Osama bin Laden. It was surprisingly easy: I burst in on him watching Cash in the Attic, offered him a Werther's Original and then kicked him in the hip.
Monday
Dinner with the parents.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
