Chemical warfare and the art of Tippexing houses

"Mould," I say.
"What about it?"
"Don't you think the back bathroom wall is looking a little.... Well.... furry?"
It's true, our houses on this road are woefully inadequately ventilated. If a budgerigar breathes heavily the vapour condenses on a wall or a ceiling and mould starts to prosper there.
I was at a party in a neighbour's house some years back and as I stood in the bathroom in a slightly sozzled but increasingly relieved state, I mildly thought how funky it was for them to paint the bathroom ceiling black. Then I realised it wasn't paint, but the inevitable consequence of bad ventilation, poor landlord interest and two devil-may care tenants who loved taking showers with the windows and doors closed. The ceiling was a mould Amazon. I'll never forget it.
Today, therefore, I stood in an aisle of Dunnes Stores looking for a cleaning product that was unashamedly toxic to all living organisms and which would probably come in a pink or yellow bottle with "Pow!", "Boom!", or "Splat!" printed on it. I chose one that had the words "Mould" and "Kill" in equally-sized letters. The shop assistant put it through the scanner using a pair of tongs. It seemed just what I needed.
At home the instructions mentioned protective gear. I had skin for that. They also said to spray on the surface from a distance of no less than 20 centimetres and to leave on for no more than 2-3 minutes. I took the safety off and rattled off a burst at the enemy.
A small colony of black mould began to turn pale right before my eyes. I dabbed at the spot with a cloth and it swished off into oblivion. Great stuff!
Now feeling less unsure, I doused the back wall good-o with two or three bursts in quick succession. Colourless liquid ran down the wall, leaving barreness behind it. I started to whistle a happy little tune.
I was down at the skirting board, poking at a stubborn strip of black, when I realised how much lighter the room was. The evening autumnal rays were filtering in through the two windows in a very pleasant manner. I rinsed the last of the lower wall then stopped to count the windows. We only had one this morning. Where had the other one come from?
Yes, the mould is gone, though I suppose it might come back. We now also have a new roughly circular window behind the jacks that wasn't there before. It will let out the steam tomorrow, but it will be the devil to get a window-frame for, whatever about glass. I suppose I either rubbed too hard or strayed closer than the recommended 20 cm limit. Or was it the 3 minute limit? Ah well. Accidents happen. Right?

None can compare with the cliffs of.... Tallaght?

Tallaght Town Centre and two large gulls appear to have made a home recently on top of one of the pitched rooftops. I can see one of them from my office window, on the north face of the clock tower of County Hall, one sitting in the niche of a louvred ventilator. When its mate appears, the two greet each other with many "Shree! Shree! Shree!" calls that remind one of being at the seaside.

Someone speculates that perhaps the sitter is one of this year's young, still being fed by a dutiful parent.

I don't know enough about them to judge, but it looks to me like they're considering nesting on the rooftop. It is sheltered from the prevailing wind. It overlooks a courtyard that isn't accessible to the public. There are several fast-food restaurants in the area from which an enterprising gull might, conceivably, glean enough discarded food to raise a chick.

The nesting theory gained a little ground yesterday when the sitting gull maintained its position even during the worst of a number of thunderstorms that swept the area.

We are quite a way from the sea, though, and I wonder if nesting is a viable option. I shall bring my binoculars tomorrow. If nothing else, it should worry my colleagues in the opposite side of the building as I peer out the window and focus in one something unseen over their heads.

[Pic by User:Dschwen at Wikipedia Commons. Republished under terms of GNU Free Documentation Licence]

On the matter of Full & Plenty

I hate moving office, but so far, my colleagues tell me, I've hardly had to move at all. They were afflicted with continual migrations from halls to offices back to halls again when the building was being added to a few years back and before I joined it. I had to move maybe twice, or maybe three times altogether in the past two-and-a-half years, and today was the latest departure. This time it was only the matter of moving my computer and paper files 12 feet to another desk, but it wasn't long before I was pumping out perspiration and crawling about on the floor looking for cables and plug-sockets.

In the middle of this, I heard the ominous creak of a seam in my trousers giving way...

When one is in a unisex office one can hardly check the nature of one's tailoring on the spot by feel without causing some unwanted rumours to begin circulating. I also gave some seconds of thought to having a peek at the damage in the mirror over the wash-hand basins in the Gents toilets, but the thought of a colleague walking in to view me gazing at my out-thrust pelvis in the mirror might also have caused some problems. I only thought of going into a cublicle and dropping the whole lot to half mast when I started writing this evening. It was that kind of a day.

As chill winds didn't appear to be blowing, I left things as they were and carried on regardless. When I got home and changed out of the work duds, it transpired that the crotch seam had given up. Not a problem repairing it, and better than the arse part every time.

It reminded me of the story my father used to tell of one of our miserly bachelor landlords, the Doyles. These three brothers (I only remember two, as one died when I was very little) lived in squalor in Scholarstown, despite having at least two farms of land and livestock. I remember Pete Doyle coming to inspect the land we tenanted every week or so, and the way in which his ragged trousers were held up with baler twine. There was no Steptoe exagerration you could make about these characters that wasn't actually true.

Tom Doyle used to hover around the farm house mowing thistles with a scythe until my mother would inevitably invite him in to share a meal with our family. Tom would literally lick the plate clean and ask for seconds. We got the impression that was how the Doyle borthers did their washing up.

One evening, he was offered stew and when he'd eaten as much as he could in multiple helpings, each time wiping the merest leftover up with a crust of loaf bread cut by my mother, he eyed the new jar of strawberry jam that was sitting on the table.

"I only have one tooth," he grinned. "But it's a sweet one!"

My sister, Eva, watched in horror as he ate several rounds of bread, and each time he licked the big tablespoon clean before driving it back into the jam in the jar...

When he left, Eva grabbed up the jar, spoon and all and threw the whole lot out the back door into the ditch.

One day a bullock got out through a gap in the hedge and into the hilly pitch and putt golf course that my uncle maintained next to Doyle's Farm. In the event, the beast fell backwards down the steep bank into the river and broke its hip. The only way it could be contrived to get the crippled creature out of the river and up to the knacker's trailer was to load it onto a large sheet of corrugated iron and to have several men haul the makeshift sled up the hill to the road.

Tom Doyle oversaw the operation.

"Hup!" he shouted, as the men strained on the ropes.

Walking backwards up the hill, he "Hupped" and "Hupped" until, unbeknownst to himself, he came to a small raised hillock near the top.

"Hup!" he shouted as he stepped backwards, caught his noisome wellington boot on the hillock and went head over heels backwards onto the grass.

The men rolled about the grass, roaring with laughter.

"Oh, laugh at a man when he's down!" cried Tom, as he struggled to his feet. What he didn't know was that far from laughing at the simple slip, the men pushing and pulling the bullock up the slope got a prize view through the large rip in the seat of Tom's trousers of his unused marriage tackle.

My Uncle Joe, never one to miss an opportunity for a quip, chimed in when the first of the laughter had died down:

"They look like they haven't been washed since his mother last did it!"

The men rolled halfway down the slope again in convulsions.

The Doyles. My father always said that as misers they died "in the middle of full and plenty".

I must go and fetch the needle and thread before my own predicament shows through.