Author: freeirishpoems

freeirishpoems

Day 34

Social Distancing

The cat is out of the bag, Not that cat, Rhona; I don’t keep her in a bag (she prefers a box) and, if I did, it would not be a closed bag for kitten-killing purposes anyway, but one with the traditional facility for egress at one end, and so her getting out of it would hardly be headline news, would it? But, yes, this will be a cat episode after the virtual torrent of requests for same and the actual demands from the Marketing Department for me to pay some attention to the readership.

A cat episode then, but after what can only be described as a ‘lock’ of politics. By the way [oh no! – Ed.], the American correspondent of this site first came across the use of the word ‘lock’ (meaning an indeterminate quantity of some substance – OK, Shirleen?) during his meandering of the country with the Poly GAC. If I am not wrong, and the last time I was wrong was 23 April, 2013, twas the legendary Snowy, the doughty corner forward/back on that team, who used to ask the bus driver the odd time to stop when going past his house so that he could run in to collect ‘a lock of dinner’, ‘a lock of crisps’ and, in one memorable linguistic usage, ‘a lock of shoes’. Snowy is also the purveyor into national usage of the mysterious phrase, ‘There’ll be mass suicides and leppin at the bridge at Rody Tierney’s tonight!’ No one is completely sure what that phrase means, or what its exact provenance is, but we are all indebted to Snowy for bringing it to our attention. It seems appropriate for the times that are in it. Snowy’s contribution to Irish folklore will probably be only fully recognised after his death, but that’s the way these things go. He also used to describe thusly fellow players who had not been following the weights programme properly: ‘Shoulders on him like a fish supper!’ Is it any wonder that Poly GAA team won the Sigerson once with genius like that in it?

Yeah, politics. Certain sections of the British press have at last caught on that their government has made, and continues to make, a complete Horlicks of this whole Covid-19 schemozzle. Now I could have told them that yonks ago (a ‘yonk’ is longer than a ‘beagle’s gowl’ when a beagle’s gowl is being used to measure time, not distance, but not as long as a month of Sundays, which is interminable). The British Government’s default position on anything is: a) Britain knows best, and ignore any advice from Johnny Foreigner; b) British (fill in any plural noun or sphere of activity) are the best in the World, despite evidence to the contrary from Johnny Foreigner; c) agree to anything in a formal treaty or negotiation and then just don’t do it; d) at all times when your mouth is open, ensure that only lies are coming out of it; e) if all else fails, appeal to the non-existent spirit that won two world wars (for history buffs, Britain had undeniably lost both world wars until the USA intervened to win them).

Now our dilemma in The Annex (the artist previously known as Norn Iron) is to get the half of our politicians who use the term ‘mainland’ when not referring to continental Europe to wake up and smell the coffee. Before the Fools on the Hill (the Stormont Executive, Shirleen) decided, belatedly, to shut the schools because half of them had found out that their masters in England were going to shut theirs, the parents of children who do not use the term ‘mainland’ as described above had already shut the schools, ie refused to send their kids back to them after this year’s non-St Patrick’s Day (we are still owed one, Leo; stick it in your 2021 diary now). I note (obviously in the only way I know how, that is in overtaking parallel to said topic in the outside lane) that Ireland Leader Elect has already marked their cards for them a bit with this piece in The Irish Times. That’s right, lads, this place is an island, and an all-island, coordinated set of measures for the Kerfuffle is required, no matter what the Brits are doing. And this is not a back door into a Re-Untied Ireland [re-united surely? – Ed] (nah, it was a typo, but leave it as ‘untied’; I like it – me); that will come in its own time. This is a matter of life and death which, by all accounts, makes it important to most people. For myself, I take a more sanguine view of these things, informed by one of my Da’s favourite phrases to be doled out to grieving relatives at funerals: ‘It’s part of life, (fill in first name, if known, of interlocutor).’ He also always brought spare, proper hankies to funerals, and doled them out, as required, to (mostly) female members of the extended family, another of his traits that I have adopted as my own. Because life and death are not, as commonly held, opposites. They are aspects of each other, as shadow is an aspect of light. You cannot have one without the other, as the song goes.

Sorry, Marketing Manager, I’ll do the cat tomorrow. Not like that! Wash your filthy mind!

freeirishpoems

Day 33

Social Distancing

Last evening – and what a lovely evening it was – I took two of the resident teenagers for a walk. I am pretty sure it was the two male ones, but what with hairgate and all, it was not possible to be certain. One of them, the youngest one, had not been off the grounds of the estate since the complete failure that was St Patrick’s Day, 2020. (Note to government: we are due an extra St Patrick’s Day in 2021, at a date of our own choosing, as you cancelled this year’s one – we’ll let you know what date we choose in due time, but the Milky Bars are on you.) On the way into Toome, I pointed out the previously exercise-adverse culchies to him, scattered randomly on either side of the road (they vacate the middle of the road when they hear a car coming), and he was most amused at their antics: some of them have obviously not read the full manual on How To Walk yet and were swinging their arms in an exaggerated manner, or moving far more quickly than was sustainable over a long period of time, a lifetime, say. I may have to organise another evening class for the locals. Walking:101 to go alongside Parking:101 and Talking in an Intelligible Manner:101 in the suite of continuing learning opportunities I provide from what can only be described as the infinite depths of my munificence as landlord.

The ostensible purpose of our non-essential trip was to dispose of (some of) the evidence of the part-time wife’s new plan to empty my bank account, to wit, drinking more bottles of wine than an Andytown Five-a-Side Team on warm weather training in an all-inclusive in Magaluff. There is, indeed, a glass recycling ‘centre’ in Toome (the town is called Toome, by the way, not Toomebridge, despite that aberration appearing on some official road signs; as a hint, there was a habitation in this place BEFORE bridges had been invented – engage the communal brain cell and sort it out, civil servants!) although it has changed in the past four years or so from different receptacles for different colours of glass to a one-size fits all approach; the concept of distinguishing between the colours of their empty bottles of Buckfast was obviously beyond the cognitive powers of the locals. Dumbing-down again. I mean, in many ways, one gets hoi-polloi one deserves, doesn’t one? [Is there a definitive article missing there? – Ed.] (No there isn’t, hoi is a Greek definite article, you chube!  – me)

But, rather than try to squeeze the part-time wife’s admirable output of empty wine bottles into any of the already overflowing bins (another hint to civil servants: it is not sufficient to provide such community facilities for recycling; it is also imperative to schedule in emptying of same), our preferred method is to drive – quickly – through either of the housing estates infested with working-class culchie scum (the worst type of working-class scum, by the way) with the teenagers throwing empty bottles out of the windows of the car. There is a complicated scoring system in place for this game: ten points if your bottle reaches an outside wall of a house and smashes against it with a satisfying noise; fifteen points if it manages to hit and break a window of a house (thus creating even more glass to be recycled – a bonus for the environment); and a full fifty points if you can manage to break it over the head of a resident while driving past him. In yet another bonus to the whole Covid-19 rigmarole, residents are even less likely now to run out of their doors at the sound of breaking glass as they are not sure whether it is an essential journey. They are sure, however, that their neighbours will dob them into the police if they exit their house again at that time of the evening as the neighbours will have ticked in their log books that two expeditions have already been conducted from that house that day. This means that I can drive in a more relaxed manner through the dirty streets of the housing estates (there is a lot of broken glass about, for some reason), giving the teenagers more time to aim properly, and score more points. Points are exchangeable for sugar back at the ranch.

After the recycling, I dragged the two teenagers on a walk along my canal path, and quite an eventful walked it turned out to be. To my amazement, the teenagers seem to have regained the power of speech during the Kerfuffle as they chatted away like fluent English speakers both during the dander up to the mock castle at the edge of Lough Neagh and the amble back to the car at the historical remains of the first bridge over the Bann at Toome. I should qualify that: they chatted away to each other, intercourse with parents apparently still being illegal in Teenageville, Arizona (and if you are thinking of a different joke there, that is you own filthy mind doing it and I take no responsibility whatsoever for it; in fact, I wash my hands of the whole affair). But it is a start. Who knows, when this is all over (ie when they are twenty), maybe they will emerge as fully-functioning adults able to converse with cat and queen in an intelligible manner? Stranger things have happened. The British Government’s response to the Kerfuffle, for example.

The cat did not want to come on the walk. I asked her – in cat, a language I have been forced, by cats, to learn – but she prefers to do her own thing in terms of compulsory exercise and social isolation. And she completely rejects the ‘compuslory’ bit. She also objects to the colour of the lead I purchased for her at considerable expense as it clashes with her shimmering, grey, pedigree fur. In a quiet, chin-scratching moment one evening she explained to me as well, ‘Leads are really a dog thing, Phil, you know? Are you sure you’re all there?’

What with talking teenagers and walking culchies, I am not sure where I am these days.

Now do your exam from yesterday and send me the answers. If you have already done it, send it to all your mate(s) to do.

freeirishpoems

Day 32

Examination Day

OK, here you go, folks. There are strict times and a duration on the cover of the examination paper, but feel free to ignore them. If the examiners find positive proof that you have not cheated in completing this examination, you may be penalised. Other, less enlightened courses see cheating as a negative trait; in these (fill in current clichéd adjective here yourself) times, the directors of this course see it as a vital skill, and prefer to call it teamwork.

pc_lateral thinking test

It will not take you all the allotted time to complete this examination. Please use whatever time you have left wisely. (This is general life advice, not specific examination advice.)

freeirishpoems

Day 31

Clarification Day

When this is all over, where should we hold this World Party everyone is on about? Fair enough, no one else has actually mentioned it yet, but I feel it is incumbent on this blog to get the ball rolling. As far as I understand the arrangements so far, the G8 is picking up the bill, so location is not really an issue cost-wise. I would offer the use of one of my off-shore islands, but there is a lack of hotel accommodation in East Town on Tory, and, while the opening hours of the pub on Rathlin are eminently appropriate for a global blow-out, there is no MacDonald’s on the island, neither in the classier Upper End (from which half of my ancestors hail) nor in the more commercial Lower End.

But Query Boy has been in contact, again, about my use of personal adjectives this time, as in my off-shore islands. He needn’t have bothered his wee head with the matter as I have impeccable sources and authorisation for such use. Quite apart from the definitive explanation in this scene from Braveheart, the actual Irish Proclamation read out by Pádraig Pearse last Monday (not on the steps of the GPO, cliché-grabbers; the GPO had no steps in 1916) contains this line: “We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible.” Got that? The people of Ireland own Ireland, I am a person of Ireland and therefore I part-own it in a ‘sovereign and indefeasible’ manner and have, it follows grammatically and semantically, full rights to use the personal adjective ‘my’ when referring to Ireland and to all its bits and pieces.

You may have noticed if you have been paying attention (and if you haven’t, good luck in the test tomorrow) that Query Boy now has competition, particularly down there in the comments section on Day 29. Thanks a heap for that facility, Editor – as if I haven’t enough other jobs to be at now I have to deal with comments from the great unwashed below the line! (It is his day off so I can say whatever I like about him.) While I admire Question Girl’s use of ‘Sir’ when addressing me, some of her actual requests for clarification take me to the public entertainment provided by itinerant workers. (The fair, Question Girl: was that one too high for your cranium too?) In no particular order, she wishes to know the intricacies of the Andytown Shower, the whereabouts of the cat, the absence of my dog, the identity of SquareBracketsHead and what I am wearing. I will answer alphabetically by height.

A wet shower is your bog standard standing under flowing water full-body wash. An Andytown shower does not take place in the actual shower; it entails standing at the wash-hand basin, wetting a facecloth and quickly wiping your pits and bits with it, followed by a liberal dosing of antiperspirant to combat any potential body odour not dealt with by the perfunctory wipe with the facecloth. A full Andytown shower, counter-intuitively and illogically, consists of less than the aforesaid. In a full Andytown shower, the participant dispenses with the facecloth nonsense and heads straight for the antiperspirant. And stops there, that being the full procedure, hence the name.

I am currently in negotiations with the cat’s agent who has demanded payment, in chin scratches, for any future appearances in print. She can read four languages, the cat, and was sitting on my shoulder one morning when I was typing this off the top of my head, and the trouble started there. I’ll let you know how the negotiations go, but they are driving a hard bargain. I might need a Finance Director before putting my name to anything definitive.

As for my clothes, I have them hung in the walk-in wardrobe in alphabetical order by colour, and just put on the next one in line, if I am actually going to get dressed that day. It is a good system and ensures that all clothes are used in a rotation policy that Premier League managers used to copy when there used to be a Premier League (well done on not winning the League again, Liverpool). It can, admittedly, result in the odd colour clash; for instance, if the pink chinos are next in line in the trouser rack and the mustard shirt is heading the queue in the ‘tops’ section, but sure it provides entertainment for the residents and nobody else is seeing me these days anyway. Apart from the troop of Hitlers in Tesco, and they don’t count as people. Front-line my arse!

Unless she is being sarcastic, which wouldn’t be like her at all, Question Girl appears to be under the impression that I am treating the PhD students enclosed in the cellar well. (There is no well in the cellar for those of you confused by that sentence structure.) I think Darzán might have a few words to say about that (if he had speaking rights in the Drumraymond Dáil, which he doesn’t) and I can only recommend that Question Girl read (subjunctive OK, Bee?) between the lines more carefully. In general, that is where the best stuff is.

While I accept that emojis can be fun, until someone provides me with a comprehensive Emoji-English dictionary, they are generally a complete mystery to me and leave me utterly confused (scratching head emoji) as to the message the sender is trying to convey to me (shrugs shoulders emoji).

Question Girl also wishes to know who Ed. is. Well, he is this guy called Edward that I know since primary school and … ach no, that’s not fair; I will let him speak for himself when he is back in the boardroom on Monday.

The reason I do not have a dog is that dogs are stupid. Have you ever heard of Pavlov’s cats?

She also requested a sort of dumbing-down of the content. Dream on, sister! Unlike the BBC, my corporate aims are shrouded in mystery, but one of them is definitely ‘to educate the great unwashed’. So, in answer to that request, I advise you, and others, to dumb-up. Like, did you see Kilkenny lowering their standards so that some of the other teams could have a go at winning the All-Ireland? No, you didn’t, and it is the same deal here; this is senior hurling you have signed up for, and a certain amount of personal training (open a dictionary) and research (open a google) is compulsory.

If you’re really stuck, send a request to the Human Resources Department, which does not exist.

freeirishpoems

Day 30

Social Distancing

I bunked the queue in Tesco this morning. By mistake. One of the queues, I should say, as getting in the door of the place is only the beginning of the restrictions on one’s freedom to wander in a semi-lost fashion among the shelves, admiring the freshly-polished array of non-essential goods and picking up purchases you had no intention of buying when you left the house that morning, ie to use a supermarket in the precise manner in which they were carefully designed to part us with our moolah. Apart from the crazy one-way system (are there any sane one-way systems?), when you get to the end of the maze – the south-west corner of the shop, let’s say, to confuse the geographically-challenged among us – and attempt to access one of the tills available there, the resident Hitler holding the Big Pole with the arrow on it to indicate which of the checkout engineers is available for service informs you that you must make your way back through the maze to the north-east corner of the shop as that is where the queue for the tills begins. So off I went back through the one-way system to outside the closed phone shop to find no customers waiting there. I looked down the aisle, spied another employee directing traffic at the end of it, checked that the arrows on the floor were in my favour and walked straight up to him. He addressed me in some near relative of the English language. On the third go, due to my linguistic skills rather than to any improvement in his diction, I managed to pick up the information that he wanted me to spiral my way through the three aisles to our left before coming back to him to seek permission to help secure his job and improve the profitability of his employer by actually buying something. In the second of the three aisles, I eventually came upon the fabled checkout queue, shuffling its way through the birthday cards and CD section, round the corner into the stationery aisle and eventually presenting itself for inspection to language-impaired boy in the now forlorn hope that he would spot Hitler I with her Big Pole [that’s too complicated a WWW II reference; consider a re-write – Ed.] and release us, one by one, for the walk back to the south-west corner to pay for the contents of our shopping baskets.

It is illogical planning like this that brought down an Empire. There was only a total of about eight potential customers in the supermarket at the time, and we could have all easily found a till when we wanted to leave without the whole round-the-world-for-a-shortcut rigmarole. Then, when bored checkout girl had finished her riveting conversation with the victim in front of me (I was standing patiently in the box marked X during this time), she actually interrogated me before she deigned to call me forward. At least she spoke a comprehensible dialect of English.

‘Did you come from the checkout queue or just walk up from the bottom of the aisle?’ she probed, an evil glint in her one good eye.

‘Had you been paying proper attention to your general duties instead of gabbling nonsense to that woman you have just released from commercial captivity, you would know the answer to that yourself,’ I nearly replied.

As I was already behind in my morning schedule because of the go-back-to-the-start-do-not-pass-Go-do-not-collect-£200 regulations, and as life is indubitably already too long, I decided against my preferred answer and merely gave her a dirty look and said, ‘Yes.’ As if bunking a queue would be the last thing I would do. In reality, it is generally the first thing I do.

Speaking of a re-united Ireland [non sequitur of the year award coming up there – Ed.], one of the first actions to be taken to dismantle the Partitionist mindset must obviously be to consign the English disease of queuing into the dustbin of history where it belongs. (The French, God love them, have another habit in mind when they use the phrase ‘the English disease’, but that’s the French for you, a nation that really hates the English with something approaching passion.) It is a completely useless social habit, serves no purpose whatsoever and, more importantly, flouting its conventions really annoys English people, and local Brits as well. Having lived in Spain for a month one memorable Summer, I observed the natives’ behaviour in this regard and have adopted it as my own. At first I found it hard to even identify bus-stops in that country, as there would be no group of homo sapiens lined up strictly parallel to the road behind what might have been a bus-stop sign. There would be a few Spaniards, singly or in pairs, scattered about the general area of the bus-stop, looking to all intents and purposes like they had not the slightest inclination to get on a bus. Then, when the bus arrived, whoever felt like it would approach the open door after – and the after is very important – those already on the bus who wanted to get off at that stop had got off. Then some other Spaniard would decide that maybe he would get on the bus after all and similarly make his way to the foot of the steps of the bus. But there was no strictly defined order for this to happen in: people moved to get on the bus when they felt like it, not according to their time of arrival at the bus-stop. And do you know what? Everyone always got on the bus, so there was no rush and no need to create a stupid system for defining who had first dibs on the bus. And, because Spaniards have some manners and cop-on, they realise the importance of letting people off the bus before attempting to get on it themselves. Compare and contrast with the British system the next time you are at a bus-stop.

‘What did you do during the War, Daddy, to bring down the last vestiges of the British Empire and to re-unite the country?’

‘Well, son, with little thought for my own personal safety, whenever it was possible, I refused to queue. And I implemented down South speed limits in my personal driving at a time when it was neither popular nor profitable. Nor legal.’

‘My hero!’

I bunked that first queue up there by mistake rather than by design, though. Because, while I did notice a few people hanging around near the cash machine outside Tesco, they were so spaced-out [at that hour of the morning? drugs are a terrible blight on society – Ed.] and so far away from the front door that I was walking directly towards that I did not recognise them as a queue until after I had taken the next spot behind the wee man who was waiting on the hotspot to be beckoned forward by yet another of the Hitlers Tesco is currently employing for crowd control. And it was too late then. But I would have tried to bunk it had I known it was a queue. Up the Republic!

freeirishpoems

Day 29

Anti-Social Distancing

Mutiny on the Bounty! Strangers in the Belfry! The PhDeasants are revolting!

I was passing through the mutility room, brown waste food caddy in hand, on my way to the rear entrance of the hacienda to access the recycling centre, when I heard a faint, tapping on the stone floor. ‘What do they want at this time of the morning?’ I said (out loud) to myself (because nobody was listening, and, you may have noticed, I am fond of the sound of my own voice). The tapping on the floor is the negotiated and agreed signal that the herd of PhD students encased in the cellar require my attention. Even though they use a steel rod I threw down there expressly for the purpose, it is sometimes quite hard to hear the resulting, faint, pathetic tapping over all the hubbub of the upstairs staff going about their business, but, as I said [a long time ago – Ed.] it was early in the morning – 6.03am, since you ask – and they managed to attract my attention.

I released the concealed catch to open the hinged, sandstone tile that provides access to the granite steps down to the cellar, and, as I had the waste food caddy in my hand anyway, started, without looking, pouring its contents down into the darkness as I reckoned it was probably more food they were after.

‘No, it’s not food we want,’ spluttered Darzán, the apparent spokesman of the tribe and whose face was almost filling the hole in the floor when I did look down (he has a big face). He wiped a few lumps of caviar and truffle stew from his face and then proceeded, in full view of me, to insert one of his liquid-coated fingers into his mouth and lick it. Honestly, the manners of some people! What are they teaching them at finishing school (ie university) these days?

‘Nice stew, by the way,’ he continued, licking a few more digits as an obvious stalling tactic before revealing what he did actually want. But I’m wise to that game: whoever speaks first loses, eh Seán? So I waited, mentally rehearsing the paucity of Darzán and the Headscratchers’ actual output of facts for use in this blog as ammunition for whatever unreasonable request he was preparing to make.

‘It’s ah … it’s mmm …,’ he spluttered, displaying the traditional PhD student skill of not being able to put a sentence together, ‘it’s about these new government regulations about the lockout.’

‘Firstly, it’s not a lockout, it’s a bollocks, and by all accounts, about two weeks late in starting,’ I replied from a position of authority – anyone standing on a floor through which his interlocutor is staring is in a position of authority, for future reference. ‘And secondly, how do you even know about the regulations? Have youse sneaked a TV down there, or something? Using up my electricity to watch repeats of University Challenge, is that your game?’

‘No, mmm … no TV. But we do have our phones, you see …?’

This threw me a bit as those reading this who know me (which according to the statistical analysis from the Marketing Manager at the breakfast video conference we had the other day amounts to nearly 78.23% of the total readership of the blog) also know that I have an internet-free, completely non-smart mobile phone that cannot receive emojis (thank God emoji) leaving my real friends to either type out emojis in brackets as I have just done or to, I dunno, use actual words to convey emotion. I do not even want to have that stupid phone, and I plan to break it soon. Again, I waited for Darzán to speak as I did not want to be the loser in this early-morning, unequal battle of wits.

‘So, mmm … the regulations, you see, about social distancing and all in the workplace, you know? Some of the team were wondering if they were being applied rigorously enough in our case, don’t you see?’

Well, I ask you, where to start? I started by taking the steel pole off him and tapping him, firmly but lightly, on the head to emphasise each of my points.

‘Darzo, dear,’ I opened to put him off his guard. ‘First of all, youse are PhD students and, as such, have no need to practise social distancing. Youse are already experts in it as no one with a titter of wit would come within a beagle’s gowl of youse unless they wanted to be bored rigid by your latest ‘revelations’ into how many Old Irish glosses begin with the letter P, or which medieval French poet was more fond of enjambement, or whatever the Hell else youse were working on before I so kindly, out of the infinite goodness of my own heart, took youse in off the street after your universities kicked youse out to fend for yourselves in Lockdownville, Arizona.’

That fixed his wagon for him, and I turned to go out the back door, but a meek sort of whimper as I was flicking the trap door shut with my foot stalled my action. Again, I waited for him to break the silence.

‘It’s sort of that … mmm … the, what shall I call them … sumptuous conditions you have in your beneficence provided us with do not allow us to work 2m away from each other, and thus conform with the government regulations for essential workers and personal space … and all.’

Well, I ask you! Granted these are Phd students, but is a modicum of intelligence not be expected from same anyway?

‘Darzo baby, how long have you been in my employ?’

‘For about a month, Sir.’ The ‘Sir’ was better, but slightly too sycophantic for my liking.

‘And have any of youse either a) displayed any symptoms of boreohnovirus in that time, or b) been in contact with any real people? The answer to both is no, so do not waste your brain cell coming up with a response. So, ipso facto abracadabra, none of youse has the lurgy and none of youse can get it. OK?’

Mistake. I should have just kicked the door shut before the ‘OK’.

‘But … mmm … what about the compulsory exercise?’

He had me there, not that in normal circumstances PhD students wouldn’t run a mile from even the suggestion of playing any kind of sport [run a mile? surely ‘stumble’ or ‘hobble’ would be funnier? – Ed.]. So, if you happen to make it past the security at the entrance to the estate (the gate lodge keeper is Spanish and, as such, is entitled to 2 hours’ sleep during the working day) and happen to see a herd of ill-kempt, pale-faced, overweight (I must cut down on the number of times I empty the food caddy down those stairs) humanoid creatures grazing, or walking in circles that mirror their thought patterns, on any of my lush, rolling fields, be advised that this is Darzán and the Headscratchers out for their weekly – fuck the regulations! – negotiated and agreed period of exercise. Do not, under any circumstances, approach them or attempt to feed them: they are easily startled and may bolt for the semi-private lough. And none of them can swim.

And wash your eyes after viewing.

freeirishpoems

Day 28

Social Distancing

After the quick skite up to Donegal, and the welcome no traffic jam on the way back because of the whole no Toome Fair bonus to the Covid-19 calamity, it’s back to biscuits today as this is a work work day. Yeah, we only get two days off for Easter; that is hardly adequate time to ponder the unfathomable mysteries of the workings of the mind of a god who would send his only son down here, let him hang out with us for about 33.2 years, arrange things so that the son gets killed in such a way that he fulfills all the prophecies about same in the best-selling first volume of The Human Race: My Part in its Downfall, resurrect him three days (but actually only about 36.7 hours) later and thus, potentially, re-open the gates of paradise to us which were closed to us after that business with the serpent and the woman and the kumquat. (It wasn’t an apple: look it up yourselves.) I bet you if we were Muslims we would get a whole week off work. But, then again, Muslims would probably deserve the rest more as they, at least, put some effort into their Lent. Giving up sweets? What sort of suffering is that? Sure that is good for you. Do something hard like taking up heroin for Lent and then trying to quit after the Mass on Holy Thursday night when Lent ends (nihil obstat). I’ll let you know how I am getting on with the yearly cold turkey.

On a work work day, my routine goes a bit like this:

5.53am: Position myself at the kitchen table facing out the bay window to keep an eye on my wildlife, first cup of coffee primed in easy reach of my left hand, an adequate supply of cigarettes clearly visible (to avoid any panic) beside the freshly-polished, cut-glass ashtray on my right. The wildlife mostly takes care of itself, but I am convinced that it appreciates my benevolent, supervisory gaze. To a non-observant observer, it may well look like I am just staring out a window doing nothing, but nothing could be further from the truth. And, as my mate Blaise Pascal often says anyway, the inability to do nothing is the source of all of men’s unhappiness, and who am I to argue with a mathematician?

5.57-6.04am: Coughing.

6.05am: Admiring my shed and the decision taken to situate it at the bottom of the garden under the sweeping branches of the oak tree where it looks really cute. Inspection, from a distance, of the shed serves also as an aide-memoire for the growing list of practical jobs around the estate that I am not going to do today as it contains most of the tools necessary for not doing them.

6.06-6.23am: Break. After all that work looking at the shed, I find I need a bit of a rest, so I’ll fire up the kettle again to consume one of the three types of coffee currently in my carefully-calibrated diet, accompanied by cigarettes number 2 and 3 in the recommended daily intake. I wrote a poem once about the delights of the second cigarette of the morning (the first one is merely utilitarian), but I’ll spare youse the embarrassment of having to write in to say how wonderful it is by not reproducing it here. (Look it up yourselves: it’s not like my published books are not for sale.)

6.24-6.52am: Real work. This can include reading the paper (not today’s paper, the remnants of The Irish Times from the previous Saturday which I have not yet edited), reading a bit out of The Bible in Irish if it is a Saturday (do not even go there – sometimes I do work work on a Saturday to get ahead of the game so that I can perform my Ibero-Hiberno siesta during the working week with no consequent guilt) or a drop of writing.

6.53-6.55am: Measurement of Adequate Sleep Procedure. This is a complicated process which involves a severe and thorough self-examination to ascertain whether or not I am sufficiently rested to begin to take on a day’s work work. As part of the procedure, I will undergo my first blood sugar level check of the day (providing the nurse has turned up) and stuff some of the many and varied legal drugs into me that my chronic and terminal condition requires. Depending on the results of the the Adequate Sleep Procedure (verified by two independent and fully-qualified GPs and not any of those student ones they are letting loose on the great unwashed due to the Kerfuffle), I will either begin the complicated process of deciding which type of shower to have (wet, Andytown or full Andytown), having said shower, picking out my wardrobe for the day (usually I use the walk-in one in the West Wing, but there are alternatives), getting dressed, smoking my last cigarette as a free man and then hoking out the work work laptop and firing it up; or else go back to bed until such time as the numbers from the measurement of adequate sleep are more acceptable.

Except today, of course, as there is an emergency with the wildlife that requires my urgent attention: two of the blackbirds are having a squabble over territorial rights, and I need to explain to them that neither of them actually owns said territory – it is all in the part-time wife’s name for tax purposes. I might have a healthy, open-air cigarette while I am out there.

freeirishpoems

Day 27

swans at lough begSocial Distancing

(Those second two are less than 2m apart, surely?)

My Icelandic swans have left me. This is not a euphemism for ‘I’ve lost my marbles’ by the way, but neither is that, as I actually have lost my marbles, particularly the big, blue, cloudy Booler one I won off Aidso in p7. I would like to blame it on part-time wife’s vindictive practice of throwing my things out, or ‘tidying up’ as she calls it, but I am only approximately 98.2% certain that I did not mislay them myself, so I’ll keep that one off the charge sheet for the time being. When the first in line to the throne (not a position in the queue for the facilities in the hacienda) was young(er) and innocent(er), he once asked for marbles as a Christmas present. Pretty easy job for Santa, you’re thinking, but these had to be special marbles, to wit, they were to have miniature, 3D figures of Cú Chulainn encased within the glass. I wonder was that the same year he found out about the non-existence of Father Christmas?

The same boy has recently found out, due to the GCSE Religious Studies course he used to be following, about (what he believes to be) the non-existence of God. Illogically, he is very angry with God, even though He doesn’t exist. This takes part-time wife to the fair, but I actually enjoy the crack of engaging with what teenager 2 thinks are irrefutable arguments about why we should blame all the inequities and problems of the World on a deity that doesn’t exist. It’s not really a fair fight, as son and heir has only the one O Level so far (one he picked up before the meltdown) and it doesn’t look like he’ll be getting any more ‘real’ ones according to the latest fiction from the Department of Education. On a practical matter, he inquired as to when his new-found faith in the non-existence of God would result in his excusal from the (previously) weekly, family trundle to Mass. ‘When you’re paying rent,’ I replied, which both of us understood as a euphemism for ‘when you leave home’ as the notion of resident wage-earners actually handing over any dosh to their poverty-striken parents seems to have gone the way of all flesh. When he then produced the standard teenage whine that that wasn’t fair, with admirable patience and good grace, I explained to him, again, that nobody ever said life was going to be fair. He’s a good guy really, but I wouldn’t put it past him to have prayed (illogically – he is a teenager) for something like Covid-19 in order for him to get out of going to Mass. But I don’t wish to saddle him with complete blame for the Kerfuffle in case he gets Twitter-shamed.

In yet another silver lining to the pandemic currently sweeping the World and causing countless deaths, Toome Fair was called off yesterday. Actually, it was called off a couple of weeks ago, but yesterday was when it didn’t take place. Which is a blessing without parallel for me, in particular, but also, I suspect, for most of the residents of Greater Toome. Because the whole thing is a crock of shite: Nutt’s Corner goes to the country for the day sort of affair, stalls selling plastic on both sides of the main street, a funfair with only about two good rides in it, more fast food-poisoning outlets than you could shake a stick at and, down a side street off the main drag, a herd of straggly, knackered horses and ponies whose proper, humane habitat should be the inside of a can of dog food. But, because it is there and within the carrying distance of one of the sounds a type of hunting dog makes if the wind is in the right direction ( a beagle’s gowl, for newcomers to the blog), the annual debate about to go or not to go plays out for about two hours on Easter Monday before I eventually force the resident teenagers into the car and drive in the direction of the nearest village to the extensive estate where I have been living for thirteen years now in social isolation – this lockdown stuff is old hat to me. The debate occurs because the teenagers are never actually sure whether or not they want to go, when they get there refuse to go on either of the two good rides in the crappy funfair, do not want to risk a trip to the hospital by trying any of the fried delicacies on offer and generally slouch from one end of the town to the other as if it is the last place in the World they want to be and are there against their will. Which they generally are, as it ends up being me who physically stuffs them into the back seat of the car before driving off in a mood that can best be described as not holiday. The part-time wife, being a local and having had her fill as a teenager of drunk, Lent-freed, old farmers passing comments on her nubility outside the one hotel in the half-horse town, waves us off from the front entrance to the estate with a smile bordering on the malevolent but firmly in the vindictive region. She’ll get hers later when she has to deal with the returned teenagers traumatised with the embarrassment of having been present when their father drew attention to himself by speaking in public – the second worst crime in the teenage faults of parents book. Work out the worst crime for yourselves; I shouldn’t have to do all the work.

My presence is a sort of community service to my disadvantaged neighbours. (Their main disadvantage lies in not being me.) It affords them the opportunity of pulling their one joke out of their dry well of humour [well of dry humour? – Ed] (I know what I meant – me) as they meet us on our derogatory slump past the nearly dead equines. ‘Gonna buy her a wee pony, Philip?’ they mock-inquire, one after the other like it is the wittiest line known to mankind. Some of them, though, are obviously spouting the line out of near maniacal desperation, having themselves fallen for the line one year and actually purchased a pony for wee Jacinta, now finding themselves saddled (did you see …?) with the expense of hay, building a stable and a good field ruined by being churned into mulch by the hooves of the death row escapee. Like your first mate who gets a mortgage, the only way out of their Hell that they can imagine is by dragging everyone else into the same pit of pestilence they are in. Sorry lads, I did not come down the Lagan in a bubble and you would need to get up earlier in the morning, or later at night, to catch me out with that one.

So, yeah, the swans. Upped and left with not so much as a ‘Thanks for all the grass, Phil. See you next year!’ Gone just like they came, akin to a practitioner of larceny during the hours of darkness. You can read more about them here, but be warned, there are more inaccuracies in that article than there are Icelandic swans on the shores of Lough Beg. I might come back to them, but one of the main ones is in the first sentence: Lough Beg is not in County Derry; neither is it in County Londonderry, wherever that is. My semi-private lough is the border between Antrim and Derry, and so, like hailstone accents à la Graeme McDowell, MBE, it is neither one thing nor the other, neither here nor there.

I have no idea what prompts the swans (Whopper swans they are called, as opposed to their disabled cousins) to leave so suddenly. I would advise them that two sunny days in a row here is not a reliable indicator of a change of season. In fact, I would further advise them to stay the odd year and enjoy the severity of an Irish Summer if it is blue-knuckle cold they are after. But, there they are, gone, just like les neiges d’antan. They always piss off in the middle of the night though. Maybe there is less air traffic between Lough Beg International Airport and Iceland at that time of the day and this means fewer traffic jams on their way home. Or maybe they are just a bit embarrassed about all that free, Irish grass (will only our grasses grow free?) they have been stuffing into themselves for the past six months or so without express permission from the owners of the amphibious fields. I am pretty sure some of the fat fuckers will have to pay an excess baggage fine when they arrive in Reykjavik airport, and good enough for them, I say. (For clarity’s sake, I will point out that I am referring to the overweight swans, not to the fat fuckers of farmers who own the watery fields.)

I will miss them, though. But they’ll be back. And so, worse luck, will Toome Fair.

freeirishpoems

Housekeeping

Day 26

Not that type of housekeeping, so look away now if you were tuning in for hints on how to get stains out of a white leather armchair or that sort of stuff. But, since you asked, freshly-squeezed lemon, an ordinary dish cloth and a bit of elbow grease will do the job, but why would you bother? Surely the faded coffee-cup circles and the rubbed in cigarette ash add character to the seat of creativity from which I do most of my work work, a portion of my real work and nearly all of my pontificating to family members – if you insist on an approximate figure for the pontificating it is around the 77.2% mark, for the good reason that sometimes I have to chase family members from room to room in order to pontificate successfully at them. The part-time wife requests that I let it be known that, regardless of the position from which it occurs, a full 100.0% of my communications to the family could, and should, be classified as pontificating. So fair play to her for learning some mathematics (never her strong point) during the Kerfuffle.

Having passed the quarter of a century milestone yesterday (not me, ya tool! the blog), the IT Crowd in its wisdom decreed that the ‘news’ page of this site could do with a bit of a once-over. They call this pointless activity ‘housekeeping’ in the trade, apparently, and if it keeps them out of trouble and puts in their day for them, who am I to argue? I only own the place, after all, it is not as if I am in sole charge of it. But on that housekeeping point, in an interesting linguistic aside [interesting to whom, exactly? – Ed.] the cognate Irish word timireacht was instrumental in my bringing about a successful, and definitive, conclusion to the whole spurious obair bhaile concocted controversy. People with more time on their hands than sense had constructed out of low-fat air a query as to whether the universally understood noun phrase obair bhaile was in fact ambiguous and could also mean ‘housework’ along with its usual meaning of ‘academic torture devised by teachers to ruin pupils’ home lives too’. My linguistic lessers are never totally satisfied with a bald ‘no’ from me (see Hairgate II), although it would save a lot of time if they could develop this habit. So I hit them with the timireacht scud missile to shut them up, and further informed them that I had retrieved it, unbidden, from the béal of a native speaker as the word he naturally used for the unnatural, and unnecessary, activity ‘housework’, and they could put that in their clay pipes and smoke it if they liked, but they should in any case never mention their artificially-constructed ambiguity again. At least, not in my presence. What they do in their spare time is of no concern, nor interest, to me.

Back to the TechHeads though. Apparently, their ‘improvements’ to the site will make it more user-friendly. Now they did not consult me beforehand to ascertain whether or not such an outcome was even an ambition of mine, and it was certainly not in the Top Ten the last time I checked, but I did not have time to bring this point up with them as we were diverted into a 2.56 hrs semantic, and, betimes, pedantic, discussion on how on Earth (or wherever you are reading this from) it could be possible to ‘improve’ on perfection. The ‘discussion’ – if what was basically a monologue can be so described – reached no definitive conclusion; always the best type of interaction with others, I feel, as it avoids tedious court cases afterwards. I will summarise the main points, and explore the whole ‘user-friendly’ chimera (how can a person described as a ‘user’ also be friendly, I ask you?), in a substantial memo to their line manager. In the mean time, and I am feeling pretty mean about the whole waste of my valuable Space and Time in case you feel like pointing out that ‘mean time’ should be one word, here are the details of the ‘improvements’.

Details

Titles of Posts: Each post will from now on be titled according to the pattern Day # sequentially, apart from today’s post as a negotiated and agreed moral protest by the content provider. This should also facilitate study for the up-coming class test as not all posts will bear the title ‘Social Distancing’. The smart boy in the class has already noticed that some archived posts have been re-titled according to this ridiculous invasion of my private privacy; this is explained by the unlikely fact that SquareBracketsHead actually did some work over the weekend and carried out a modicum of actual editing instead of accosting, and interrupting, me in the middle of my daily therapy session. As a further exam tip, those looking for bonus marks in the class test would do well to include especially those posts so re-titled in their study timetable.

Comments: No idea why anyone would want or need to (see previous argument about the impossibility of improving on perfection), but here is the idiot’s guide – although Shirleen has, in fact, already worked out how to do it. Whatever way you get into the ‘news’ section of this website, if you hover one of your wireless mouses over the title of any post you see on screen until it is highlighted, then click on it, you will be transported to a place behind the curtain where you can do all sorts of things, including leaving a comment. You will have to scroll down to get there, but surely even idiots knew this? As for what the difference between leaving a comment and leaving a reply is, ask the TechHeads.

Previous Post/Next Post: There is also the facility when down there to access – I dunno, what should I call them? – past and future pearls of wisdom from the content provider. This should prove an invaluable aid to those studying for the exam. Please note (faut-il?) that if you are in fact reading the most recent post, the Next Post button, for reasons of time travel, will not be available.

Your Fellow Inmates: If, for any reason under God, you wish to view comments made by your fellow captives, y’all can scroll down to the actual footer of the page, and a few clicks will provide you with full access to how other people contrive to waste my time. These Recent Comments are also available to view without going through any of the rigmarole of clicking on post titles above. If Zaphod Beeblebrox’s advice to under-developed species was, and it was, ‘Bang the rocks together, guys!’ then my parting instruction to homo sapiens (before I go back to my home planet Pluto) would be, ‘Always scroll all the way down. And read my complete email, not just the first sentence. And Keep Calm and Combat Covid. Now wash your minds.’

That should about cover it. Abnormal service will be resumed tomorrow, on the assumption that there be a tomorrow. (?Subjunctive correct, Bee?)