Post Christmas Colours not all Blue

There are few things as colourful, post Christmas, than the local cemetery. That's where Herself and I ended up this afternoon to lay some Carnations in the vicinity of the Mammy's memorial and also to drop a few sneaky sweeties (no doubt she has a packet down the side of her celestial armchair).

There are rows of bright ribbons, green garlanded wreaths, bows, Santa Clauses, windmills, wind chimes, toys and flowers all over Newlands cemetery today as visitors remember their loved ones this Christmas season.

My mother's cremated remains are in a compartment in an eight-foot high wall part way into the cemetery. The lettering has weathered and I spoke with my father this evening about having it renewed, maybe with gold paint. I'll phone the cemetery people next week to ask how it can be arranged.

It brought a lump to the throat, visiting her again. I miss her, especially at this time of the year, which she enjoyed.

We then went on the hunt for some tiles for the new porch. I fancy something rust coloured or reddish, but the prevailing fashion appears to be for non-threatening biscuit. I can see the point.

We came across some dark brown tiles which might have done the trick. But the assistant (I wouldn't call him a "Salesman") pointed under the display to perhaps twenty individual tiles lying on a wooden pallet:

"Those are all there are of that pattern."

"And you have no more in stock?"

"No."

To be fair, he did show us some other tiles on display, none of which were to our tastes. As we left and went back to the car I said to Herself:

"A real Salesman would have persuaded me to buy the display and recycle the tiles on it..."

I suppose there wouldn't have been enough to finish the job anyway. I must look up some other tile outlets this evening before our next sortie into the retail world tomorrow.

Funnily enough, B&Q had no black masonry paint in stock. There were lots of bizarre colours: the types that youngsters in first-time mortgage apartments might paint their walls. There were a couple in their 20s going about the paint aisles arguing over whether or not they were going to repaint at all this season. He was saying that he'd pay for it himself. She was not impressed with the offer, so I guess whatever it was that needed painting she had chosen the original colour.

We looked at CCTV options. There are ones which look like ordinary spyholes in the front door but which are really cameras. Ditto ones which look like ornamental outdoor lamps. The spyhole options start from around €20, which seems cheap and possibly unreliable. But in true B&Q style, it seems that the cheap bit is followed by the also cheap bit cable, connected with the slightly-more-expensive black box bit, connected with the slightly more expensive other black box, and so on and so on until the debit card is slightly melted.

Off to Woodies tomorrow to buy black masonry paint. And an extendable pole to hang Christmas lights which I am going to adapt to window cleaning.

So I dropped me choccie bar... Big deal.

Thought I'd post something humorous about how God hates me cos I bit a chocolate bar this evening and hurt an already broken tooth (emphasis on how eating sweets is well known not to have an effect on tooth decay, of course). Then to add insult to dental injury, I dropped the rest of the chocolate bar on the floor.

In search of a suitable judgemental God image I could find nothing. Then I thought about a weeping image and found this website.

How peculiar.

Link: Weeping Gallery Dot Net

The eighth plague of Egypt

"I'm tired looking at the box of chocolates. Bring it into work."

So I dutifully obeyed. A two-pound box of Cadbury milk chocolates. General, ordinary sweets are something no-one eats among my workmates, until one actually goes looking for one. Then there are none left. Obviously they evaporate into the air or something, quite spontaneously.

"I'll be given out to by the Weight Watchers woman," was one complaint I heard. Nonetheless, the hand went into the box and made a selection.

"Who brought them in?" was the accusatory tone of another. It was accompanied by the sound of rummaging.

Yesterday I looked at the discarded box and wrapping. One whole day they had lasted, which is something of a record.

The chocolate holiday being over, I shall now count my teeth

What a confusing Easter it has been this year. Not only did my mind go blank when buying Easter eggs at three-for-nine-Euro rates in Dunnes Stores such that I sat into a taxi with the words:

"Thirty Euro for chocolate! Did you ever think you'd see the day?"

But I also ended up with more chocolate eggs than I know people, with the result that the house is standing-room only and the floors occupied with neatly knotted 15c plastic bags containing homeless confectionary. One cannot have a breakfast without accidentally kicking a chocolate egg lurking beneath the table. I am surrounded on three sides in the sitting room by presentations of Easter delights. It has got to the stage where the subliminal message of the overcrowding has made me reactivate the building of kitchen cupboards that had been placed on the longest, E.T.-like finger.

This evening, as I read the "Warning: This should only be assembled by a competent person" message inside the packaging of my flat-packed wall unit, I pondered my recent luck with sweet things. My boss, in his kindness, offered me a chewy sweet last week which pulled out another lump from my back teeth. I sat there, feeling the empty space with my tongue and looking at the piece of tooth in the palm of my hand. There could be no doubt but it was after five o'clock, for no good deed goes unpunished in my workplace and if the bosses couldn't think of anything else to do to me for staying on after quitting time in an attempt to keep abreast of all the paperwork, why not resort to tooth-pulling?

I tossed the half-chewed sweet and the tooth fragment into the bin where they probably caused the cleaner to faint when she looked in later that evening. As I said, no good deed unpunished.

This afternoon between rain showers I managed to paint three-quarters of our garden gate, that piece of tissue paper between the car thieves and our only means of transport to and from work. When it rained, I withdrew to the house and sampled another piece of chocolate eggshell. I've not turned blue or lost the power in my shins yet, but I'm sure it will set in by morning. What has happened on this windy, cold April day is that the black Hammerite paint turned aerial and rained down droplets onto the driveway, my boots, my hands, my jeans. I shall return to work on Wednesday like someone covered in candle smuts.

The filling in that half tooth is standing upright like a sea stack in a saliva sea. I shall have to avoid speaking words with the letter "L" in them for a while or cut myself speaking. Many would say it's about time.