They never call here

"Hands Down Research", says a nervous-looking woman on the doorstep. Because she's looking nervous and the alternative to taking her survey is to resume carrying furniture upstairs, I say:
"Oh, go on then."
She brightens up a little.
"I have to tell you, it will take maybe 15 minutes."
"Oh yeah?"
"That's me," she says, pointing to a picture of herself, looking nervous, on an identity card.
"Correct," I answer helpfully. "Have we started yet?"
"Do you have a mobile phone?" she asks, squinting at a list of questions on an electronic notepad barely visible in the glaring sunlight.
"Madam, you haven't even offered me dinner and drinks yet."
"Have you heard of Vodafone?"
"Yes."
"Meteor?"
"Yes."
"O2?"
"Yes."
"Tesco Mobile?"
"Yes."
"This other one whose name you'll not remember when blogging about this later?"
"No."
"If I was to hand you this piece of paper with ludicrous statements on it, which would you use to describe your current mobile phone service provider?"
I read through the list. Finally, I say:
"I would choose 'Elephantine liquorice sticks hold up my house of minuscule beans' to describe my current mobile provider. That's number six on the list."
She ticks a box on the screen.
"If I gave you this pen, would you hold it?"
"Yes."
"If I struggle using one hand to turn the piece of paper over to display a number of commercial logos, will you wait while I do so, in the meantime, trying hard not to look down my blouse?"
"Yes."
"Do you recognise these commercial logos?"
"Yes."
"How many of these commercial logos have you seen on television or on bus shelters or in other places in the past fortnight?"
"This one, that one, and those ones hiding in the corner."
"Who sponsors the Meteor awards?"
"I don't know."
"Who sponsors the venue formerly known as The Point Depot, now known as the O2?"
"I don't know."
"Have you read any newspapers or magazines in the past fortnight?"
"No."
"Have you done any of the things on the next page of the list in the past fortnight?"
I read out:
"Got out of bed... Emailed... read blog... used social networking site... used the searching thing named Google... returned to bed."
"Do you own a spoon?"
"Yes."
"Do you know your own name?"
"I do."
"What is your telephone number?"
"I don't know."
"Finally, where am I?"
"You are here."
She stabbed a little electronic box with her stylus and handed me a printout informing me I had just taken a survey and that someone might call me about the answers.
I returned to lifting furniture.

Unhappily, they're still rearing (more of) them...

Friend of a friend who sells stuff at a stall in town is approached one afternoon by a junkie.
"Excuuuuuse, me Bud," says yer man. "What time izit?"
"Two o'clock."
Yer man looks wide eyed:
"In de daaaay...?"

Unhappily, they're still rearing them...

Pal Darren tells me a tale told to him by another pal which is too funny to be untrue.

Chap is looking warily at an obvious junkie on the double-decker bus, especially when he gets up to follow him off the bus at the chap's stop.

They both alight and Junkie stops on the pavement as the bus pulls away behind him, Junkie slowly patting his pockets fruitlessly.

"Awwwwwwwwwwwww....!" he says in that fine slow-motion voice. "I've left me bleeeeeee-din' phone on de buuuuus!"

A single deck bus pulls in and opens the doors. Junkie climbs on and stops suddenly in confusion.

"Where's the bleeeeee-din' stairs gone...?"

Another commuting adventure

In the manner in which all roads lead to Rome, all strangenesses are led to travel on Dublin bus...

To nosy people like myself, it is a tragedy when the bus thunders into the car park of The Square at breakneck speed, its return journey information already up, its passengers all-but flung to the pavement in the driver's haste to get starting again. It's a tragedy when in the middle of all this a little white-haired old lady walks up to the driver from her "Give up this Seat" seat, remonstrates with him and is angrily rebuffed. Tragedy indeed because I couldn't hear one word of the exchange over the revving engine noise and had no idea of the cause of the argument. The mystery only deepened when the little old lady returned to her seat, obviously intent on being brought back the way she'd come.

I have seen bus drivers on very rare occasions who have turned the bus into a mobile creche. Once a sulking boy of about 10 years and a happy little girl of around seven did not alight at the last stop, the first stop for we waiting at the terminus, but instead rode back into town with Daddy Driver. The little girl couldn't keep the evident secret and spent half the journey waving and smiling into the driver's rear view mirror. The boy stared irately at the passing road surface through the grimy windows.

I wondered if today this driver had borrowed his granny for some outing. Maybe she had especially waited in the nursing home to be collected by a favourite grandson, only to find herself condemned to perpetual motion in the special seat of the swaying double-decker. She sat, a tiny figure in the big green seat, occasionally peering over the top of her glasses, craning up to see where the bus now was.

An Asian lady with a girl about three years old, stepped on wheeling a buggy. She shifted about to make room when the bus started filling up. The youngster started an impressively accurate rendition of "Molly Malone" as the crowds pressed in.

"She wheeled her wheel... BARROW...!"

The little old lady bounced up and down wordlessly in the seat behind her.

"Through streets broad and... NARROW!"

"That's a GREAT song," another woman sitting nearby said to the child. "You're a GREAT girl!"

Not be put off, she sang:

"Crying COCKLES and MUSSELS...
Alive, alive-O!"

There was all but a cheer from the captive audience, until she started the whole thing off again from the beginning. Getting off at Old Bawn, she gave the driver a big wave and a "Thank You!" before being pushed off home.

One time I recall the commotion of a drunk clambering on somewhere around Tallaght Village, slapping some random coins into the machine, ignoring the driver's shouts of protest, then collapsing, unconscious, into a seat near the back of the bus. A large, jolly-looking Italian man, looked over at him, then started to laugh out loud with big "Har! Har! Har!"s. The reason for his mirth soon began wafting its way about the back of the bus.

"Jesus!"
"Feck's sake!"
"Was that you?"
"NO! It was yer man!"
"Ah, Jaysus...! He hasn't has he?"
"He has!"

A young teen in charge of her younger sister reached into her bag and started spraying the oblivious one with Impulse. This caused huge bellows from the Italian.

"Har! Har! HAAAAR!"

He started turning purple, waving his hands in the air.

When I got off, there was a bubblelike barrier of scent around the sleeper, clawed by desperate hands from every handbag and knapsack. The echoes of the Italian in the seat opposite rang loudly down the Firhouse Road as the bus sped off.

Today, there was no satisfactory explanation for the mystery of the white-haired lady. She stayed ladylike, upright, quietly demure in the middle of her seat. Sometimes she popped up in the air as we went over speed bumps. Otherwise she was still.

I left the bus as usual and rambled home, wondering.

Okay, I'm up... I'm up!

Mornings on the bus again. The other day must have been exam time in the Tech, cos the upper deck was packed out with satchel carrying scarecrows of the type I used to be before I mysteriously found a briefcase in my hand.

"Audrey doesn't like me."

"Yeah, man... Two goals in two minutes. I have Spurs in the Fantasy Football...."

"DintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDints!"

"Ya bollocks."

Only DintsDintsDints can't hear Ya bollocks, because DintsDintsDints has one of those mobile phones cum music players plugged into his two side orifices, going DintsDintsDints all along the bus route.

Ya bollocks is a non-descript looking chap whose outbursts come at random moments and to no-one in particular.

Downstairs, a man in his twenties who I take to be on his way to some kind of training workshop, is hanging into the driver's compartment.

"Do you... do you... do you.... do you... do you... follow soccer?"

Audrey doesn't like me waffles on in the Champion Shallow Stakes.

I resist the urge to lick the condensation on the window pane and die.

"Ya bollocks."

"DintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDintsDints!"

"Ya bollocks."

Ya bollocks.

In the Square, I meet the training workshop chappie walking backwards by the cinemas. He's almost in rapture at the sight of a photo in the sports pages of a tabloid he's just bought. He grabs a random stranger and pushes the paper and its picture into his face:

"Isn't he just a big cry BABY...?"

I pass on by and go to work.

Ya bollocks.

Me Ma would be proud.

Hello, HSD.

They changed my bus route to work so they could avoid as many passengers as possible, I think. But it now goes over a couple of the steepest speed ramps in Ireland.

The commuters on the upper deck throw their hands up into the air and shout: "Wha-hey!" every time it goes over one. Anyone caught unawares has to suddenly grab the handhold on the seat in front and try to keep their breakfast down.

The bus also now goes parallel to the road on which Herself's Second Daughter and family have their house.

"Hello, HSD!" I shouted on the first day, head stuck through the letterbox size window, as the 49 rolled on by.
"What are you up to?" the chap in the seat behind me asked.
"Over that wall," I explained, "Is where Herself's Second Daughter and family live."
He peered over the wall, examining all the gardens that usually rested in quiet privacy, unmolested by passing double-decker busses of morning commuters.
"I think we could do better than that!" he said. "Check with me in the morning."

Next day he had a rolled up banner on two short poles. As the 49 lurched through the lights at the top of the road he unfurled it, telling me to grab one of the poles. It read:

"49 says HI to HSDAF!"

We stretched it out across the glass until the bus turned for The Square.

The following day he had a friend with him and a pantomime horse.

"Are you sure you can take the weight?" I asked, climbing up on the front seat and throwing my leg over.

"No problem" the muffled reply came from the back end. "I carry sacks of cement for a living."

"Yee-ha!" I shouted, as the bus passed HSDAF's house. We trotted up and down the bus, ignored by people reading freebie Metro newspapers.

"It's a bit stuffy, though," they said, when they unzipped the horse's belly and got out. "Maybe we should try something less enclosed next time."

On Wednesday, seven people brought fezes and sombreros and one had a pair of maracas. We made a conga line and "Hey-ed!" up and down until we were out of sight.

Thursday, fifteen members of a marching band and 25 baton twirlers crammed into the top deck, playing and twirling to a spirited rendition of T-Rex's, "Metal Guru."

Yesterday, I texted HSD and asked her if she'd been amused by us, sailing by on a double-decker 49 bus at a quarter to nine of a weekday morning.

"IN WORK @ 8 ALL WEEK. SRY. DIDNT C U."

Ah, crap.

A Saulte to you Googlers

Saint Patrick's Day, a mild, sunny one. My hit counter is as imperfect as they come, but it does give a general idea of what is drawing traffic to the blog, WIDFIPOTP.

On sunny days, people want to put up gazebos.

On St Patrick's Day, people appear to wish to know what time the beer can be sold in the Offo, and what time in the pub.

So, let's raise a glass in the gazebo today for a 323% increase in visitor traffic, searching for "gazebo instructions" or "opening hours Saint Patrick's Day."

I write about other things too. No, really. I do.

Hope you had as fine a day as I had.

Liam and the family

Another typical afternoon on the bus ride home. Two girls, each about 15 years old, punching each other affectionately in the back seat. A mobile phone rings between them.
"Liam, you're drunk!"
Her friend in the pink pajamas and trainers shouts:
"Ha! Ha!"
into the phone.
"Mary Gillick texted me and said 'Ure kid is plain in the road'."
Liam says something...
"I don't care. Why are you drinking?"
There a reply of some kind...
"Oh *you* get depressed, do you? Well *I* get depressed too, but I don't spend all my money on drink in the middle of the day!"
He says something more...
"We're walking around The Square. We'll be home in an hour."
They're on a bus leaving The Square, but Liam isn't to know.
"What were you doing phoning my mother for money last week and telling her the baby needed rusks? I *know* that's a lie, because I bought her rusks. And me Ma knew it was a lie, cos I told her I bought rusks."
The conversation waltzes about in wide-spinning circles with her ear-bashing him about his drinking, his friends, his money, his dole. Occasionally, the friend shrieks something meaningful in the direction of the phone.
I drift away into my own thoughts for a while.
Almost home and a bunch of other 14 and 15 year olds get on the bus.
"Jesus! Look at you!"
"I know. Jesus! Three months is ages!"
Bringing up the rear is a black kid in a baseball cap. He is to gangle what blizzard is to snowflake.
"No, I'm in court on Thursday. I'll call you after....", he says. "I just have something to do in court. Yeah. Bye."
The three-monther turns to the friend:
"What do you have on?"
"Pajamas."
"Are you serious? What do you have under them?"
"Skin, mostly."
They start chatting to the black kid and I trudge downstairs, wondering what's in the cupboard for dinner.

Sign of the Times

Today, I am standing in a frill-free, foreign-owned supermarket, peering at the Schnitzeblibil herself has found at a bargain price.

"What is a Schnitzeblibl?" I ask, innocently. It's been a long week.

Herself looks down her nose at the foreign label on the plastic bottle.

"It's either a shampoo... or a salad dressing. I'm not sure."

"Ah."

I lift up a green net bag.

"And the Defergaumin?"

"Six for the price of four," she says.

"Do you think," I ask. "Do you think the Defergaumin could be served with the Schnitzeblibl?"

"Don't be silly," she says. "Look, give me that trolley and go and look at the Man stuff."

I examine the rotary motor mower; poke briefly at the energy-saving L.E.D. work lamp; try on then put back the protective chainsaw boots. I meet Herself in the next aisle, where she is wrestling another woman to the ground, growling menacingly.

"MY....! I said MY Liebenhaffabudenschtiffel!"

In the car park, a man is tentatively cutting off a shopping trolley wheel with a brand new plasma rig.

"Only nine-ninty nine in the third aisle," he says, grinning.

I pack the groceries into the car and we drive away.

Revolution Now!

A third-level student gentleman on the bus this morning was overheard to say that he thought the bus must be leaving town earlier because it reached his stop earlier this morning.

I wondered if he'd noticed the lower-level schools were on a mid-term break, which meant less traffic, which meant he had to run for his bus. Nope. Don't think it registered.

His third-level lady companion said she thought there was a strike on next week. He said he thought there was one on Saturday. And one next Thursday. And there could be more after that (wait for it):

"...depending on whatever the hell they're striking about."

Take an F grade in Cause and Effect, young man.

I think I'll stop my Union sub now.

Snug as a bug II

Attic insulation is possible medicine for our disease of upper house coldness. So, when the mighty B&Q (all bow) announced a 50% off sale, Herself and I trundled up to them this morning with plans for laying itch-free high-tech, half-price lagging in the attic.

Too late.

A mound of rolls of insulation that met us in an aisle -- the very type we were willing to spend money on -- turned out to be already on wheels. Some baldy conscience speaking on a mobile phone was heading off with it towards the checkout, bemoaning to whoever was on the line that the good stuff was gone and the other stuff too dear.

At least he had stuff.

We looked at the blank space once occupied by the rolls of recycled plastic bottles.

"Jumpers and coats again, then?"

"Oh, yes."

"You sound just like Churchill the bulldog in the TV advertisement."

"Feck off."

So we did.

Other lives

A few pensioners returning from a coffee in The Square, a woman about 40 with a ponytail, and I were travelling on the 77A. No-one was particularly paying attention to the old lady alone in the front seat. The sun was shining, the traffic at least moving. Next thing she picks a mobile phone out of her bag and makes a call:

"I'm ringing," she says, in the posh voice that old ladies acquire when they are taking the high ground. "I'm ringing to tell you I am very sick and I'm on my way to the doctor. So there will be NO drinks, you'll be happy to hear, AND the phone will be OFF tonight!"

The little conversations about the bus buzzed low as everybody tried to listen in without being too obvious. The impact of the lady's pronouncement was hindered somewhat by the recipient being a little deaf.

"I said, I'm very sick and I'm on my way to the doctor."

"Yes, the doctor. I'm on the bus now."

"I'm nearly there. Goodbye."

She hung up and gazed out the window, everybody looking sidelong at her. She didn't look too unhealthy. In her early 70s, maybe. Large mop of hair with bold, blonde highlights. A spare woman, head held high, eyes peering out from behind her black rimmed glasses.

She stood up, clutching the smooth, chrome hand-holds with a fist full of heavy gold rings. Gathering her coat around her she marched imperiously to the exit.

When she'd gone, the conversations murmured on again, gradually buzzing louder about weather and gardens and the price of things.

The Daily Grind

So, as you know, this little old geezer accosted me back in February '08 with an announcement that I was looking at him and that he didn't like people looking at him.

I hadn't been looking at him on the bus that morning, but I sure as eggs look at him every morning ever since! He uses the same bus stop as me in the morning and I always know at what point and at what distance he is from me.

Some research has provided a few details into who this fellah is. It seems he once sold charity gaming cards door to door in the area and was plagued by the attentions of children who (being children) used to get a rise out of him for the sake of being chased. I think he isn't the full shilling to begin with, but the story of the kids pestering him explains some of the more peculiar behaviour I've observed in him recently.

One morning as I hauled myself up the road on the way to another blessed day of being told by the telephoning public how useless I am, I spied yer man shuffling across the green area to my left. He dresses in a kind of shabby brown canvas jacket and is continually blowing his nose into a great white handkerchief, peering over it suspiciously through his black rimmed spectacles at anyone who might be about. He increased his pace on seeing me and walked ahead, shoulders in their customary hunch, his face down. Instead of turning left at the top of the road for the bus stop, he went right disappearing into the next line of semi-dees. He turned up about five minutes later at the stop. I figured he must have been calling into someone's house on the other road.

Then a few days after, I was a little later in leaving the house and saw him ahead of me, hunching along with his hands in his coat pockets. He stopped suddenly and stared straight ahead where a car on a school run had reversed out of a driveway a couple of houses up. He took two steps to the right and hid for a moment behind a hedge. The car paused halfway across the road as seatbelts and schoolbags and the usual morning chaos were sorted. He stepped out and seeing it was still there, stepped quickly back in again. When it pulled away he resumed his shuffle up the road, head lowered, handkerchief dabbing at his nose.

I saw him from afar another morning walking by the shop units in the local centre, heading for the bus. A schoolboy about twelve or thirteen years of age was coming in the opposite direction, not heeding him at all. Our fellow did a quick turn to the left to face into a shop front until the youngster passed by.

When the bus pulled in, he did his usual morning barge past everyone in the loose queue, flashed a pass at the driver and went up the bus slamming windows closed, keeping the outside world at bay.

Counting Blessings through the interference

The bus was one of those double deckers from a few years ago, the ones I think of as new, even though they're not new. But they're one of the best on our shoddily-provided bus route. They are shiny with pale plastic and lots and lots of chrome handholds, but they have a major flaw: when the engine idles in traffic, noise resonates through the rear of the bus and echoes from the back seats off the shiny plastic walls and off the metallic handholds and gets into your ears as if swirling water was pouring from a jug or basin over your head. There is a rumble from the engine and the air vibrates and then you hear "Shrrshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" and every second or third syllable in any conversation is masked by a strange, white-noise-like, Doppler effect.

"I was in The Square and we_ oo_ eh_curt_es_an_as_eh_dy_..."

It only happens when the bus has stopped in traffic. Once the revs increase, the sound returns to normal.

I often think it can't be good for you.

How is it a health inspector has never condemned these buses as a hazard?

Half-way up the bus I was sitting feeling sorry for myself and feeling depressed over what a lousy job I had to work at. In the back seat a mobile phone rang and a young, well-spoken man answered it and chatted unabashed. I gazed out at the buildings going by, half listening, tuning out when the bus halted and the shrilling, swishing noise buzzed about the cabin.

"...There's no problem at all. I just decided that living in the house with the lads would put me back into a place I didn't want to be again. So I'm on the bus now and I'm on the way over to...."

"...and I'll sleep in the car."

"....was taking 40 mils of Methadone and gone off it. I'm doing okay. There was one day I was sick but it's okay now.."

"...one day just blow yourself away with a needle, so I thought it would be better if I got out of there..."

"...you're right, you're right. Your man asked me to mind something for him and to have some for myself if I wanted. So, of course, I fucked myself up and my mother saw me and said she'd seen your man's car and if she saw it again on the road she'd call the police.

"So I told him and he said he didn't want any trouble with police and I told him I couldn't look after his goods any more..."

"....course is a year. A whole year. They retrain you. I have the literature there. But she said I knew as well as she did I'd never do the day course. She said, the best thing you can do is hang on for the house and get away from everyone. You do better on your own. She told me a lot about myself, more than any other counsellor ever did..."

The bus moved by the playing fields in Old Bawn, half-a-dozen gangly youths clad in T-shirts and shorts kicking a football back and forth on a football field. The sun shone brightly through the right hand panes of the window glass, making those passengers in the offside seats squint and sweat.

"The best thing you ever did was tell me to get out."

"...I'll have to knock on the door, though, and ask for a blanket..."

"No, no. There's nothing you can do...."

"I had three pillows on the bed. Can you get them for me...?"

"Oh, no bother. No bother...."

I stepped down from the bus and shuffled home. The young man was still speaking away on the mobile phone as the bus pulled out from the kerb going off down the road to who knows where.

Laugh? Nearly cried.

Thursday was a day in which the more I heard the less I understood.

"Will you be sick?" I asked the cat. She sat there impassively, the breakfast of cows hooves and sheep guts labelled "Whiskas" gurgling inside her.

"You'd better not be sick! I'm fed up changing the covers on that bed!"

The cat looked disdainfully at me a moment through half lidded eyes. Then she noticed a sunbeam and danced across the bed and over the chest of drawers, her tail disappearing behind the net curtain.

There was a ding dong at the doorbell and:


"Ve haf come to fit doors..."

Two serious Eastern European gentlemen stood on the step, one proffering a bundle of invoices that indeed included me as a customer expecting a delivery and installation of internal doors on this very date. They looked at me silently, the sides of their mouths turned down. I inspected the papers with the methological precision of a border guard.

"Do you have any vegetables, fruits or livestock?" I asked.

They shook their heads.

"No contraband or anything to declare?"

"Ve haf nothing to declare."

"You'd better come in then."

They set to with a will, unloading a van full of shiny new timber and absolutely beautiful three-quarter glazed doors. I'd picked them from a catalogue, sight unseen. They were far better than I expected.


I watched as the doorframes were pulled out. Pulled out very carefully, I saw. And any cables or wires knocking around were saved to be hidden again in the new doorframes like expertly installed listening devices.

Each of the men had a tiny pencil, little more than a lead stub that emerged from some orifice from time to time and made arcane runes on the bare wood. When one made a mark, he disappeared outdoors and a sawing or plaing machine would start briefly, shriek through some unnameable torture, then whizz to a halt. The other would then take a measurement, cluck to himself, then disappear into the garden, passed on the way by the first, carrying the newly cut timber and slotting it magically into place. I was rapt.

I sat there, slowly turning to grey under a film of plaster dust as the men removed timbers and replaced timbers and slid their hands over the smooth grain and checked and double-checked that everything was running well. At 12.00 noon precisely, they withdrew two Tupperware containers of pasta and stew from the van's glove compartment, slid them into our microwave and made lunch.

"Kettle?" I asked.

"Tea. Please."

I filled some mugs and looked about. They had both retreated to the van and were smoking cigarettes. The took the tray from me in the garden. Ten minutes later, the saws and planes were going again.

There was another ding-dong. I struggled out of the mound of volcanic ash that seemed to cover everything and found my African neighbour on the doorstep. He looked a little agitated and my ear, tuned to Eastern Europe all day, couldn't quite make out what he was saying. It sounded like:

"Balumba umba umba....this wurk, 'ere."

"Eh?"

I tuned my earlobe a little and made out:

"...und I wawshed my car..."

I looked at his car. Nice car. Kept very well, usually. Wonder where all the dust came from that's covering it...?

"Aw, crap..." I thought. I should have considered earlier asking him to move the car out onto the road and upwind of the work. The two chippies were working furiously on a door's edge and a piece of architrave, respectively, in the drive the one with the better English looking daggers from time to time.

I offered to pay for a car wash. My neighbour looked at me as if I called him a son of a crocodile.

"Or," I said, "I could clean it myself...? I'll do that. When the men are finished working, I'll get a bucket and cloth and give it a wash, okay?"

He drew himself up.

"We ah gud neighbaws. We ah close!" he said, cocking his nose. "We do not fawl owt abawt such things. If you say sorry, I will be happy."

I said I was indeed sorry and that I was upset that he was upset. I should have been more thoughtful and spoken with him earlier. I would still arrange to clean the car if he wished...

He made a dismissive chopping motion with his hand.

"It is fo'gawtten."

And he was gone.

"Dust? Dust? Pah!" the lead carpenter said back inside the house. "I say iz impossible not find dust anywhere! He could park car anywhere and get dust! He crazy man. Crazy man!"

"No," I said. "He was right. We could have done more to save his car from getting so dusty."

I was a little deflated with it all. The doors were still lovely, but after the unexpected complaint a bit of the good had been taken from them. I now felt the coldness of the unheated house with the door permanently open as the chippies came and went. I saw the wood chippings in the carpet and the white dust on the stacked furniture. There seemed no end to the chaos.

Next door, my neighbour took his car out. About an hour later it was back in the driveway with a clean look about it. Back in the driveway. In the same place as before. With my two chippies working away with their saws and drills and planers right beside it...

"Ah, for feck's sake!"

I walked up his driveway and rang the bell.

"Er, you know these men will be working for maybe an hour... or more... yet?"

"I thawt they were nearly finished."

"Could you oblige me... please.... and move the car out onto the road...? Pretty please?"

When he moved the car, I noticed half his driveway was covered in wood chips. I groaned. No wonder he was making a fuss! I grabbed a brush and started sweeping.

There was a mountain of sawdust and chippings in my own drive. I laboured away for half an hour until everything was bagged and tied and tidy.

It was eight o'clock before the men were satisfied that everything that could be done had been done. It was a fabulous job and I was overwhelmed with the quality of the work and of the doors.

"Everytink is gut?"

"Brilliant!"

"If you get doors for upstairs, you call me. I get cheaper."

"Nice one," I said, taking down his telephone number, signing his docket, handing them a tip which went into the same place as the butty pencils, which is to say somewhere unknown.

I looked at the chaos of the house and sighed. It would take a day off work to put everything to right again.

After a while, I thought of the neighbour's car out on the road. Mybe someone would run into it. Or scrape it. Or steal it.

"I bet I'll be blamed if it does!"

I nipped upstairs to the bedroom, tugged back the net curtain and leaned on the windowsill to look out to see if the car was okay. My hand squelched in a pool of cat vomit...

"Bad cat!" I said.

The cat opened one eye briefly, brupped pleasantly and went back to sleep.

Crocks

"Arrrgh!" I say.
"What wrong with you? " Herself asks.
"My feckin' sciatica is playing up."
I clutch at the right cheek of my arse and hobble about. The pain shoots down to my ankle and back up again.
"I think my uterus is pressing into my sciatic nerve. I read that on Wikipedia."
Herself would normally laugh at this, but her knee is giving her trouble today.
"Are we still on for lunch at Captain America's?" I say.
"Oh yes. It's our anniversary, after all."
Sixteen years. We've been together sixteen years for about the past five years, because we lost count and have to keep asking Herself's daughter what year she moved out so we can count it up again. This year in 2008 we're absolutely certain we're together sixteen years, although that leaves the age of the cat a little doubtful. She's been sixteen for about the past five years as well, we think.
We get in the car with many moans and groans and head up to The Square, park up and then head across the new civic plaza (still under construction) to Captain America's.
Herself limps along with her wonky knee. I stick my beer belly out and try to lean backwards without having to grab a piece of my buttock.
"You know something?" I say.
"What?"
"People will think we're real mountainy people walking like this. Each with one leg shorter than the other for walking across hills."
Captain A's was good, but the tables were smaller than I remember. We ate and limped back to the car with our various bits draggling along behind us.

Who'll crack first?

The door slams and the office is left silent but for an occasional customer deluded into thinking someone will answer the phone after hours. When even that dies down there is only the muted sound of scattered sighs.

"Sigh."
"Sigh."
"Sigh."

The dreaded overtime has begun.

We're on our annual quest to count receipts and balance books and as usual we're about two months late in starting, so everybody's under pressure.

"Put the kettle on."

Tea is made and the silence is broken by the rustling of papers as sandwiches and little cakes are produced and offered around.

"Sigh."

I am checking amounts in the central accounting program against amounts in the database I maintain. The first look shows a difference of about €300 in €80,000, so I am not unhappy. The second look shows a difference of about €9,000 in €80,000. I shall have to start ticking off amounts.

"Sigh."

At the end of the office, a muttered mantra begins as someone starts their own checking process:
"One, three, six, one, point three, three?"
"Yep."
"On, two, eight, six, point one, three?"
"Yep."

After a while, I feel like shouting back: "Amen!", but I keep my nose out.

Figures are running back and forth across the page. I sip at tea and eat a Club Milk bar. The hours wear on. The numbers become a forest of little arrows and check marks. Progress, though infinitely slow, is being made.

Somewhere a imaginary clock begins to tick...

Breaking the Circle

If all those over-paid Astologers are to be believed, you're supposed to have an improvement in luck as your birthday gets nearer. Mine is turning turtle at the moment and it's my birthday in two days' time.

I was in the canteen last week and queuing with a tray in hand. There are two checkouts parallel to each other. If one side of the queue gets busy, or one of the staff has to go get more change, or replenish mugs, or answer a call (of nature or otherwise), the lady on the other side will double-up temporarily. Likewise, if food has to be weighed before purchase. Our canteen caterers sell stuff like salads or breakfast cereals by weight.

So two girls in the queue in front of me were yapping happily away and taking their time putting change into purses and such. Christine, on the checkout nearest me sat impassively waiting for the next customer, me.

Across from her, the girl on the other checkout craned her neck to see what I'd chosen, punched it into the register, twisted the readout my way so I could see that €5 was the price, took my tenner and gave me back a €5 note in change.

Christine, meanwhile, punched a couple of buttons. I supposed she was taking for the meal of the person behind me. I picked up the tray and went and sat down.

"They're saying you didn't pay, Willie," said a colleague, passing by, grinning.

"I paid the other girl!" I said to the universe at large. I got up and went to tell Christine of the mistake. On the way, I bumped into the assistant canteen manager.

"Are you stealing food?" she asked. I presume she was trying to be funny. I ignored her, but I could feel the niggle starting.

I plucked Christine's elbow.

"I paid the other girl," I said, pointing.

A few minutes later, Christine appeared beside me, red-faced. She must have checked with the other girl.

"I'm very sorry," she said. "I didn't see you paying. I really must apologise."

"If I'd been stealing food," I said, trying unsuccessfully to be non-chalant and humourous "You wouldn't have seen me do it!"

We both chuckled a little self-consciously.

Christine apologised again. I said:

"I hope that manager one knows I paid." I pointed over my shoulder at her.

"Oh, don't mind her," said Christine, and scuttled off back to her register.

I did mind. The more I thought about it.... ("Are you stealing food? Ha Ha Ha!")... the more annoyed I felt. Most of the dinner went uneaten.

At quitting time, I walked over towards my bus stop. Here was the canteen assistant manager coming the other way on foot.

"Hello!" I said. I stopped.

I said: "Tell us. Are we all square about that thing earlier?"

She smiled and laughed and went on walking. I stood looking after her, now fuming! Why the fuck wouldn't she put my mind at ease and just say everything was fine? I went home in very bad humour.

There's now a definite atmosphere in our canteen up at the checkouts when I queue there. No-one asks me any more how my day is going, or how my colleagues are that aren't with me today, or if I have any holidays planned. They just take the money in silence. Not quite a stony silence, but silence nonetheless.

If I could afford it, I'd take my business elsewhere. But the job subsidises the food prices in the canteen, making up for how little they pay us otherwise. I'm stuck.

This morning, kick in the pants Number Two.

I got on my usual bus and travelled up to The Square on my way to work. I usually get off the bus a bit before The Square, but this morning I wanted to get some cash from the ATM to see me through the week. The bus pulled in and the driver switched off the engine. I thanked him and stepped off. There was a smallish man of about 50 in front of me, moving along the footpath. He stopped and turned towards me.

"Excuse me," he said.

I thought maybe he was going to ask for directions. I stopped and said:

"Yes, sir?"

He said: "I was sitting at the back of the bus." He pointed. "You got on and looked at me. I don't like people looking at me..."

I blinked.

"What?"

"I was on the bus. You looked at me..."

"I did not! This is the first time I've seen you today...!" I laughed.

He stood looking at me. I realised he was serious and now that I looked at him he did seem a little familiar. But I had clambered onto the bus this morning without a thought for anything other than my usual twin goals of not falling over as the bus pulled away from the bus stop and finding a seat upstairs.

"Where you sitting behind me or what...? I asked, puzzled. I was trying to get my head around what he was saying. It wasn't sinking in at all.

"I don't like people looking at me."

I thought: "Little wonder, you ugly little fucker."

I said: "I absolutely swear, I did not look at you in any way whatsoever!"

He walked off, mumbling.

Jesus Christ! I went into The Square, mindful that he was walking in front of me by a few yards. All I need now, I figured, is for him to tell a security man I'm following him or something. That would really put the tin hat on the whole business!

Around five o'clock I remembered how he looked familiar. The little bollix lives in Firhouse and.... wait for it.... is often at the bus stop I use every single morning! On his way to see a psychiatrist, I have no doubt, but fuck it! He'll probably be standing at the bus stop tomorrow morning.

"I'm getting a car," I said to myself on the five o'clock bus. I had found myself looking around at the other passengers suspiciously. Who was going to pop out of a bag or a box and twist my noodle this time? Would the other little bollix turn up again? What would I do if he said something?

At home, the third piece of what I hope is the end of this circle of the most bizarre luck there's been around here in ages happened. Herself came home without her much-loved, mobile phone. Surely that broke the charm?

I was so sympathetic on hearing the phone had been left in work. Among unknown cleaners. With keys to the office.

"Oh, that's terrible," I purred. "There, there. I'm sure it will be just sitting there when you go into work in the morning."

So tomorrow, the day before my birthday, I'll have an angry Firhouse gnome gunning for me on the bus to work. My tea will be served by people afraid to smile or joke in any manner. And I shall probably not receive any texts to brighten my day.

Roll on next year.

Happy Birthday to me.... Happy Birthday to me....

Descent into Christmas

Herself and I walked into the local B&Q store last Sunday, December 16th, 2007, to find that Christmas had been devoured by locusts.

Or so it seemed to us, who has been there only a week before and had wandered through a sizeable portion of the store under flashing lights, garden ornaments and various Santa Claus figures in differing embarrassing poses.

This week, there was nothing but a large, empty space awaiting the January sale stock. A few latecomers, like ourselves, wandered about the other aisles of plumbing fittings and kitchen cabinets in a half-hearted manner.

"Christmas is gone!" Herself said to a passerby, who nodded, gloomily in agreement.

It's now the 19th and I have yet to buy a Christmas present. I have warned people not to expect much this year, but on the evidence of our last visit J-Cloths and packets of free-flowing salt are going to feature prominently in my Christmas theme in 2007.

Grandaddy's boots...