One former wedding shirt and a pair of good pants later, I swear to dear sweet baby Ranulph I had become one of them.
The signs? A tin-can line of traffic down the South Circular Road, a bus hugging the pavement trees, a coffee cup of Montague Street and a slip through Foster Place.
New people, new circumstances, a constant wage for the first time in four years. No more freelancing, sweating on the shift sheets, nor emails to editors telling them to keep me in mind for this or that or St Stephen's Day.
It feels good, has felt good, even if I may look down at my attire on a Friday and be accidentally casual.
Some words have been lost for sure, and I haven't imagined Radgering since whenever when, but I'll set aside some hope for now that those will come back in time.
Also, that things will settle themselves into a far greater rhythm, that dread of the end of the month and the slog of inpermanence gone and those two things most happily forgotten.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Friday, March 29, 2013
Sweetheart, I'm graceless
Panic on the streets of Dublin. Panic on the streets of Harcourt. The Casual Fridays stand shoulder to shoulder to shoulder as the tills ring out, and ring out, and ring out again to the tune of several thousand kerchings.
The Londis queue is a coiled rattlesnake of eager boozers, out the door and around the bend, no greater fear than that midnight hour and the shutters coming down.
If you're good at the old time maths, you'll figure there's time for three or four quick jars before getting to the offie and relieving it of half its stock, carried home in a one-man mambo.
And the anger. The indignance. The "how fucking dare they tell us we can't drink on Good Friday, the bastards, and I'll tell you another thing, Jenny, they can stick their property tax up their arses too!"
The "I'm not letting any poxy civil servant..." and the "I wouldn't mind but if I was let drink tomorrow I probably wouldn't bother my hole..." and the "Superquinn are doing a great deal on that Rioja we had in Jimmy's last year..." and the this, and then the that, and then the pubs close and then the plaintive "oh bollix."
But.
"It's grand, we have that bottle of port and those cans of Carlsberg in the shed."
The Londis queue is a coiled rattlesnake of eager boozers, out the door and around the bend, no greater fear than that midnight hour and the shutters coming down.
If you're good at the old time maths, you'll figure there's time for three or four quick jars before getting to the offie and relieving it of half its stock, carried home in a one-man mambo.
And the anger. The indignance. The "how fucking dare they tell us we can't drink on Good Friday, the bastards, and I'll tell you another thing, Jenny, they can stick their property tax up their arses too!"
The "I'm not letting any poxy civil servant..." and the "I wouldn't mind but if I was let drink tomorrow I probably wouldn't bother my hole..." and the "Superquinn are doing a great deal on that Rioja we had in Jimmy's last year..." and the this, and then the that, and then the pubs close and then the plaintive "oh bollix."
But.
"It's grand, we have that bottle of port and those cans of Carlsberg in the shed."
Friday, February 08, 2013
LIVEBLOG: Lost In Translation
0.19: There they are. The pink knickers.
1.01: Death in Vegas play in the background and there's Billo. Or Bill. I don't think he'd take to being called Billo. Jetlagged and looking out at the Tokyo night. He pulls up to the hotel.
2.31: He meets a woman whose name is 'Kawasaki.' He says it's all "very Japanese." It, presumably, is. He gets a note to tell him he's forgotten his son's birthday. Not sound.
3.41: Him sitting on the hotel bed, offof the poster.
3.55: The first sighting of the lounge singer, aka Carol Decker from T'Pau. Lots of Japanese men are smoking. In a bar. Somewhere, Micheál Martin's combover comes unstuck. Bill, meanwhile, tells a couple of travelling businessmen that he's visiting friends. They are drunk and they are cocks. Drunken cocks.
5.31: His wife faxes something about furniture. Why won't she let the man sleep? For the love of fuck.
6.04: The first appearance of Scarlett, being kept awake by Giovanni Ribisi's snoring. He's a bit cool. I don't like him. Just the character, mind, I find the acting of Mr. Ribisi to be agreeable.
7.19: Bill is too tall for his shower. Japanese people are small, you see?
7.59: Bill sees Scarlett in the lift. She thinks he's a dirty old pervert, probably. He's just missing home is all.
8.29: The whiskey ad. The director is a complete looper, and looks very like Dustin NGuyen of 21 Jump Street fame. A very animated man who shouts 'cutto cutto cutto,' which I take to be foreign for 'cut cut cut.' Bill is told to look intense, but he exudes bemusement.
10.14: Bill looks like Herman Munster. Too much eye-liner. "More... intensity!" the translator tells him. He just wants to be in Neary's.
11.32: Scarlett takes the train to a monastery. She later tells her sister on the phone that she 'felt nothing.' For me, she should stop her cod-acting and just have a Twix for herself.
13.39: Her sister sounds like a dickhead, all the same.
13.51: She's doing her make-up and tying up her hair. And lying on the bed. And hanging up decorations. She bangs her foot. She'll feel that in the morning, no way she'll be fit to face Grimsby Town on Saturday.
15.00: Giovanni Ribisi's getting ready to leave, but not before giving out to her for smoking in the room. He has a point. She should really go outside. But he loses credibility for wearing sunglasses indoors. What a geebag.
16.04: Bill's channel hopping, comes across one of his old films, an aged hooker calls to the door. "May I enter?" She asks him to 'lip my stockings.' She means 'rip.' He has no idea what the fuck is going on. She seems to think that his premium fantasy involves imprisonment and degradation, but he just wants her gone.
18.10: Next morning. He's eating breakfast with chopsticks. Breakfast sushi. Just crazy enough to work.
19.04: He's been invited to stay until Friday. He'd rather drink paint, but says he'll check with his agent.
19.34: 'Fred the agent' tells him to stay. Otherwise there wouldn't be a plot, not that there's much of a plot, but y'know... Anyway, he's making the whiskey ad and the director asks him to be Lodger Moore. James Bond. He's drinking iced tea, wants a real drink. Again with the eye-liner. (I'm never making a whiskey ad in Tokyo. Especially not a fictional one where I'm pretending to be Bill Murray pretending to Lodger Moore.)
22.45: Carol Decker again, making a complete and total BAGS of Scarborough Fair. For the love of crikey. This is Bill and Scarlett's meet-cute, she sends him over a Japanese delicacy and he toasts her from afar. He enters the lift and thinks "still got it!"
24.27: He's in the gym, and reminds me of John Barnes in that Lucozade Sport ad, except he's not very good at exercising and makes a bollix of the whole thing.
25.38: Anna Faris, playing an actress, enters. I wouldn't let her near the house. Far too shrill. She was crap in Friends, and that's saying something.
26.56: Scarlett and Giovanni have a little squabble and he fucks off for the rest of the film.
27.34: More Anna Faris, talking to some assembled journalists. Scarlett watches her press conference and thinks to herself, "I'd like to kick her in the back of the face."
29.00: Scarlett plays with some pretty flowers. She might get to like this Tokyo place after all.
30.00: Nothing on telly at night, so she heads down to the bar. She has the right idea. Booze is definitely better than indecipherable Japanese cartoons.
31.00: Bill's at the bar. This is the proper first encounter. He suggests a whiskey, she orders a vodka tonic. He reveals he's being paid €2m to endorse the whiskey. Nice work*.
*Prick.
32.00: He lights her cigarette, she asks if he's having a mid-life crisis. Bill dispenses some wisdom. I become distracted by the whiskey in his glass. Looks nice. Easily a triple.
33.00: Bill watches some aqua-aerobics, Scarlett goes to Dr. Quirkeys. She doesn't seem to be having a good time. I realise that Japanese pop music is really rather catchy.
35.17: Hang on, Giovanni Ribisi's back. I thought he'd pissed off! He should brush his hair. The cut of him.
35.55: Oh fuck. Anna Faris... Hell is full of Anna Farii.
37.15: Bill and Scarlett again. Safe ground. He's trying to organise a prison break. Remember Prison Break? I never saw it, but heard it was good, and then shite, and then quite good again.
38.11: Giovanni's wearing sunglasses indoors again. If ever a man needed a waterboarding...
39.00: Right, he's properly gone now. Time for Scarlett to look wan and lovely as she surveys the landscape from on high to some Japanese mood music...
FAST FORWARD...
So, what DOES he whisper in her ear at the end? I reckon he's warning her to avoid Rick's Hamburgers at all costs, but it's open to interpretation...
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Exclusive: Ireland's road users are granted 'drink drive permits'
April 2014:
DANNY HEALY-RAE WAS celebrating today after his controversial motion to allow 'drink driving in moderation' was passed by a Dáil majority of 90-76.
The Kerry councillor first proposed the issuing of permits "to drink two or three pints before driving home" to members of isolated rural communities in January 2013, provoking outrage amongst those members of society vehemently opposed to carnage on Irish roads.
While legislation seemed unlikely at that point, it has now been passed by a Government keen to steer the national debate away from the subject of an ailing economy.
One TD, who did not wish to be named, said: "There was a time when a piece of legislation such as this would never have even come to a vote, but the collective inebriation of the Dáil chamber, coupled with the need to reduce the country's rural population and therefore the burden on the Exchequer, should see it pass easily."
A jubilant Cllr Healy-Rae called it a "victory for common sense."
"I've met all sorts of people from communities throughout Kerry who were initially opposed to the scheme, citing all sorts of guff about months of physiotherapy, families broken up and wounds that never heal, but I soon found that after a couple a couple of rounds they were able to see my way of thinking," he said at his pub in Kilgarvan, County Kerry.
When shown evidence that stricter drink-drive rules, introduced in the Road Traffic Act 2011, had greatly reduced the number of accidental deaths and injuries on Ireland's roads, Cllr Healy-Rae was nonplussed.
"Look, you can show me all manner of statistics and numbers and data and all that jazz, but the fact is that a couple of pints never hurted anyone."
Back in January 2013, Cllr Healy-Rae said: "There are many people locked in at home now in rural, isolated places who are looking at the four walls and they can't get out because they can't even have one drink."
When it was pointed out to the Independent Councillor that alcohol itself acts as a depressant and has been ruled ineffective in the fight against deteriorating mental health, he responded: "Where I come from there's no harm whatsoever in telling a man to cop himself on and throwing a ball o' milk his way, do you get me?
"Look, nobody knows more than I the benefits of a few pints of an evening, playing cards or what have you? As a young lad I walked those same roads and even got the odd lick of a Toyota Corolla or Mike Hassett's jeep, and has it done me any harm?"
Monday, January 21, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
On writing...
...or, being more accurate, things I do to avoid my lifelong ambition...
Housework
Socks are no longer my nemesis, they are no longer the fuel on which runs the washing machine, they go in and come out in pairs. Hers carefully folded, mine nonchalantly balled. I have come familiar with the principle of keeping... the whites... separate, a maxim I treated with slapdash around my Charleville Road days, and I now possess the ability to undress and dress the bed in fewer than nine minutes.
That first sentence, though. The terror.
Sky Sports News
What is its allure? Allure, surely, is the wrong word to describe the shouting behemoth that is recycled news features about pitch invaders and the going at Sandown. Yet my fingers move with swift grace over the buttons 4 and 0 and 8 at least 14 times a day, my eyes roboting through the on screen data and the red (not even the yellow!) ticker at the bottom.
That opening paragraph, mind you. Fuck.
Dublin City Centre or, y'know, 'Town'
Bus. Off at George's Street. Look at the menus of restaurants I'd like to try but probably never will. Down Exchequer Street. Tut as someone sneezes in close proximity to me. Scoff at the Casual Fridays. Cross the road to be wherever the nearest chugger won't 'dude' me. Sit at a window drinking passable coffee. Take out a notebook and find relief at no pen. Wonder what I'm missing on Sky Sports News. Check my phone (no texts, an endorsement on LinkedIn, a blanket mail from Trip Advisor that I never signed up for, somebody I've never met LOLing on a Facebook update and spam from a Jesus freak). Back up Exchequer Street. Into Dunnes Stores to buy some chewing gum. Ponder an apostrophe. Bus home. Relief.
How many chapters?
The Internet
That greatest thief of time. Today, for instance, I found myself Googling helicopter crashes alongside the filmography of Anne Bancroft, the careers of several Swindon Town footballers and job opportunities in HMV, just for the craic of it. I frowned at the fascination of people who think their cat is, like, "just the cutest" and the only feline in the world who has licked a nicely embroidered IKEA cushion.
I used to read the blogs of others as a safe stayaway from putting words in melancholic, heartbreaking order myself, but my favourite writers have been dormant, perhaps swallowed whole by the one-twist-and-you're-done knocking shop that is the Twitter.
Don't get me started on trying to cohere a narrative.
Housework
Socks are no longer my nemesis, they are no longer the fuel on which runs the washing machine, they go in and come out in pairs. Hers carefully folded, mine nonchalantly balled. I have come familiar with the principle of keeping... the whites... separate, a maxim I treated with slapdash around my Charleville Road days, and I now possess the ability to undress and dress the bed in fewer than nine minutes.
That first sentence, though. The terror.
Sky Sports News
What is its allure? Allure, surely, is the wrong word to describe the shouting behemoth that is recycled news features about pitch invaders and the going at Sandown. Yet my fingers move with swift grace over the buttons 4 and 0 and 8 at least 14 times a day, my eyes roboting through the on screen data and the red (not even the yellow!) ticker at the bottom.
That opening paragraph, mind you. Fuck.
Dublin City Centre or, y'know, 'Town'
Bus. Off at George's Street. Look at the menus of restaurants I'd like to try but probably never will. Down Exchequer Street. Tut as someone sneezes in close proximity to me. Scoff at the Casual Fridays. Cross the road to be wherever the nearest chugger won't 'dude' me. Sit at a window drinking passable coffee. Take out a notebook and find relief at no pen. Wonder what I'm missing on Sky Sports News. Check my phone (no texts, an endorsement on LinkedIn, a blanket mail from Trip Advisor that I never signed up for, somebody I've never met LOLing on a Facebook update and spam from a Jesus freak). Back up Exchequer Street. Into Dunnes Stores to buy some chewing gum. Ponder an apostrophe. Bus home. Relief.
How many chapters?
The Internet
That greatest thief of time. Today, for instance, I found myself Googling helicopter crashes alongside the filmography of Anne Bancroft, the careers of several Swindon Town footballers and job opportunities in HMV, just for the craic of it. I frowned at the fascination of people who think their cat is, like, "just the cutest" and the only feline in the world who has licked a nicely embroidered IKEA cushion.
I used to read the blogs of others as a safe stayaway from putting words in melancholic, heartbreaking order myself, but my favourite writers have been dormant, perhaps swallowed whole by the one-twist-and-you're-done knocking shop that is the Twitter.
Don't get me started on trying to cohere a narrative.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
What if they'd been right?
No more shares. No more privacy controls. No more aggregation. No more unsolicited links. No more laughing out loud. No more plaintive Instagram posturing. No more guilt. No more flash mobs, photo bombing, hipster bashing. No more psychoanalysis. Jesus, no more tagging. No more four square, twitpics, no more 'can we share your current location?'
No more Royle Family Christmas specials, no more Jean Byrne. No more Katherine Lynch, and no more Homeland. No more preposterousness, networking, keeping up and falling behind. No more Masterchef, Man vs Food, Dobbo, no more Sky Sports News.
No more January transfer window. No more countdown clocks. No more Jeff Stelling, and no Merse. No more love. No more hate. No more Love/Hate. No more watercooler wet dreams. No more trees, sand, Oscar-baiting and no more Chevrolets.
No more Vodafone, no more customer service menus. No more stout. No more John Mulligan. No more mortgages, no more debt. No more hierarchy. No more death. No more ill fitted suits, union flags, or sociopathic taximen.
No more waiting for things to happen. No more hoping things don't happen. No more doorbells. No more gas bills. No more hope. No more despair.
No more haircuts. No more Bowie. No more Formula 1, and no more fucking Gangnam Style. No more Roddy Doyle, but no more Cecilia Ahern.
No more retweets, quoted tweets, double tweets, tweetweets, hyperlinks and, finally, no more bluster at all.
Friday, December 28, 2012
Riposte
Are you having a good Christmas?
Do you know something? I am.
Have you consumed?
Overmuchly.
Do you spend an inordinate amount of time giving out about things beyond your control, TV shows you are supposed to like, social media trends and the decline in quality of mince pies?
I spend an inordinate amount of time moaning about moaning, and the world somehow consumes itself with it.
Do you have a pension plan?
I do not have a plan.
Do you feel really satisfied with life every once in a while and then worry that you're being smug and then worry that the act of worrying about being smug is in itself really smug, or else a mask for many other concerns because you aren't all that satisfied at all, are you?
I actually spend far too much time worrying about the state of others' minds, to give my own too much concern at all.
Do you participate in that ah here leave it out hilarity even though you know it's not really very funny?
I certainly fucking don't. I bristle at it, it disturbs me, it is acid to my sensibility.
Have you ever eaten four pieces of shortbread in alarmingly quick succession?
In my doughier years, quite possibly.
Did it hurt?
Most definitely.
Do other things hurt?
Oh most certainly.
Is it OK to go shopping on the 26th of December?
Anyone who rails against it has too much time to rail.
Is it OK to loudly proclaim your despair with the world over people going shopping on the 26th of December?
It isn't. People love to moan.
Is it?
They can have at it, but I'm over there, ignoring them.
Have you read a book recently and was it good?
I am at the moment and yes, it is good, though I struggle to see its point.
Do you not have time for reading?
I have plenty of time for reading, but I don't use it often enough to read.
Do you watch more than four hours of reality TV a week?
I doubt I watch four minutes of reality TV a year.
Do you believe that America will ever sort its shit out with guns?
No, I despairingly don't.
Do you gripe about auto-correct? Do you jangle your keys? Would you buy a gun if you lived in America? Do you get vexed?
I do, yeah I do, no I wouldn't and yes I absolutely do.
Do you regret a lot of the things you did in your early twenties and some of the things you did last week?
I regret many of the stupid things I've said over the years, some of them recent.
Do you think that foetuses have a soul and can you explain what that might be?
I have trouble with anyone who thinks they can define what a soul is, let alone when it is felt.
Do you ridicule the religious?
No, I don't. I ridicule the stupid.
Are you, the evangelical church up the road wishes to know, the victim of an ancestral curse?
They can fuck right off and mind their own business.
Do you ever pray? If you do sometimes pray do you mentally sign off with "almost certainly not, I know, but just in case,LOL!!"?
I'm not comfortable.
Did you read the small print?
More and more.
Have you claimed your tax back?
Less and less.
Do you do something to break a sweat every day?
No.
Can you touch your toes?
Yes, if I sit comfortably and raise them to me.
Are you aware that this entire concept comes from Padgett Powell's 'The Interrogative Mood', but that this particular dude hasn't read it because writing a whole book like this and getting it published and expecting people to pay for it would be taking the piss, right?
I did not know that, and I'm fairly certain I didn't expect to write this blog either.
Am I wrecking your head?
My head is rarely unwrecked.
Has anyone ever accused you of being a hipster?
They'd soon know about it if they had.
Can you go now?
I can not go yet.
Is it getting better?
It's getting worse, but will get better.
Did you get what you wanted? Do you feel at home? Did you have a good year?
.
Do you know something? I am.
Have you consumed?
Overmuchly.
Do you spend an inordinate amount of time giving out about things beyond your control, TV shows you are supposed to like, social media trends and the decline in quality of mince pies?
I spend an inordinate amount of time moaning about moaning, and the world somehow consumes itself with it.
Do you have a pension plan?
I do not have a plan.
Do you feel really satisfied with life every once in a while and then worry that you're being smug and then worry that the act of worrying about being smug is in itself really smug, or else a mask for many other concerns because you aren't all that satisfied at all, are you?
I actually spend far too much time worrying about the state of others' minds, to give my own too much concern at all.
Do you participate in that ah here leave it out hilarity even though you know it's not really very funny?
I certainly fucking don't. I bristle at it, it disturbs me, it is acid to my sensibility.
Have you ever eaten four pieces of shortbread in alarmingly quick succession?
In my doughier years, quite possibly.
Did it hurt?
Most definitely.
Do other things hurt?
Oh most certainly.
Is it OK to go shopping on the 26th of December?
Anyone who rails against it has too much time to rail.
Is it OK to loudly proclaim your despair with the world over people going shopping on the 26th of December?
It isn't. People love to moan.
Is it?
They can have at it, but I'm over there, ignoring them.
Have you read a book recently and was it good?
I am at the moment and yes, it is good, though I struggle to see its point.
Do you not have time for reading?
I have plenty of time for reading, but I don't use it often enough to read.
Do you watch more than four hours of reality TV a week?
I doubt I watch four minutes of reality TV a year.
Do you believe that America will ever sort its shit out with guns?
No, I despairingly don't.
Do you gripe about auto-correct? Do you jangle your keys? Would you buy a gun if you lived in America? Do you get vexed?
I do, yeah I do, no I wouldn't and yes I absolutely do.
Do you regret a lot of the things you did in your early twenties and some of the things you did last week?
I regret many of the stupid things I've said over the years, some of them recent.
Do you think that foetuses have a soul and can you explain what that might be?
I have trouble with anyone who thinks they can define what a soul is, let alone when it is felt.
Do you ridicule the religious?
No, I don't. I ridicule the stupid.
Are you, the evangelical church up the road wishes to know, the victim of an ancestral curse?
They can fuck right off and mind their own business.
Do you ever pray? If you do sometimes pray do you mentally sign off with "almost certainly not, I know, but just in case,LOL!!"?
I'm not comfortable.
Did you read the small print?
More and more.
Have you claimed your tax back?
Less and less.
Do you do something to break a sweat every day?
No.
Can you touch your toes?
Yes, if I sit comfortably and raise them to me.
Are you aware that this entire concept comes from Padgett Powell's 'The Interrogative Mood', but that this particular dude hasn't read it because writing a whole book like this and getting it published and expecting people to pay for it would be taking the piss, right?
I did not know that, and I'm fairly certain I didn't expect to write this blog either.
Am I wrecking your head?
My head is rarely unwrecked.
Has anyone ever accused you of being a hipster?
They'd soon know about it if they had.
Can you go now?
I can not go yet.
Is it getting better?
It's getting worse, but will get better.
Did you get what you wanted? Do you feel at home? Did you have a good year?
.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Dubliners
"I know you wouldn't think it lookin' at me, love, but I'm a junkie."
Full marks for honesty to her, if not for her powers of self observation. She was a giveaway, telling the strung-out mister to her left - on the back seat of the 16 - that he was "nothin' but a mean cunt, I've hash on me and you're not gettin' any cos you're just a mean cunt y'are."
He was a man of many noises, none of them English, just a stream of groans and nods and the pluralisation of "wharrayaonabou'yatickdopeyeh?"
I wondered myself what she, the thick dope, was on about as getting any kind of sense out of this beard wisp yoke was an exercise in stupidity. He was badly, badly fucked up on smack cocaine or whatever the hipsters don't call it.
She'd turn on him, then turn to us, then turn on him again. All sorts of names, all manner of abuse to a man whose floating head was left back in some squat on Townsend Street, to my imagining.
How he could have flagged down a bus, paid a fare, made his way up the stairs was beyond me. He must have just appeared there, his heroin superpower that of multilocation.
She softened towards him as the bus turned up George's Street, stopped stabbing him with fingers made entirely from bone, even rubbed his head and said repeatedly, "yer alrigh,' yer bird will sort yet out, yer' alrigh,' yer bird..."
She asked him where he was getting off.
"Bleedin' Horse, meet me bird..."
"I'll help ya off the bus. Get ready now," she said to him, but the act of remembering a specific anything had sent him back to unconsciousness, his head hitting the top of the seat in front of him and his mouth slackening out some drool.
"GERRUP YA CUNT!"
Her language was appalling.
"GERRUP OURRA THAT YA PRICK! People on the bus won't know what to make of ya..."
"Euuuuggggggghhhhh."
"Come on, press that bell missus, will yeh? Come on... You've to meet your bird..."
Eventually, she shovelled him up on to his feet, bowled him to the top of the stairs.
"Here..." was the last thing I heard her say to him. "What's your name?"
"Daithí," he said back to her.
"Nice to meet yih, Daithí, I'm Teresa."
Exeunt.
Full marks for honesty to her, if not for her powers of self observation. She was a giveaway, telling the strung-out mister to her left - on the back seat of the 16 - that he was "nothin' but a mean cunt, I've hash on me and you're not gettin' any cos you're just a mean cunt y'are."
He was a man of many noises, none of them English, just a stream of groans and nods and the pluralisation of "wharrayaonabou'yatickdopeyeh?"
I wondered myself what she, the thick dope, was on about as getting any kind of sense out of this beard wisp yoke was an exercise in stupidity. He was badly, badly fucked up on smack cocaine or whatever the hipsters don't call it.
She'd turn on him, then turn to us, then turn on him again. All sorts of names, all manner of abuse to a man whose floating head was left back in some squat on Townsend Street, to my imagining.
How he could have flagged down a bus, paid a fare, made his way up the stairs was beyond me. He must have just appeared there, his heroin superpower that of multilocation.
She softened towards him as the bus turned up George's Street, stopped stabbing him with fingers made entirely from bone, even rubbed his head and said repeatedly, "yer alrigh,' yer bird will sort yet out, yer' alrigh,' yer bird..."
She asked him where he was getting off.
"Bleedin' Horse, meet me bird..."
"I'll help ya off the bus. Get ready now," she said to him, but the act of remembering a specific anything had sent him back to unconsciousness, his head hitting the top of the seat in front of him and his mouth slackening out some drool.
"GERRUP YA CUNT!"
Her language was appalling.
"GERRUP OURRA THAT YA PRICK! People on the bus won't know what to make of ya..."
"Euuuuggggggghhhhh."
"Come on, press that bell missus, will yeh? Come on... You've to meet your bird..."
Eventually, she shovelled him up on to his feet, bowled him to the top of the stairs.
"Here..." was the last thing I heard her say to him. "What's your name?"
"Daithí," he said back to her.
"Nice to meet yih, Daithí, I'm Teresa."
Exeunt.
Friday, October 26, 2012
I have a word with myself
She's 30 today, my sister, and I wonder how the hell that happened so bloody soon after we were sending her to the shop on the promise that, "we'll time you."
I wonder what her record time might have been had we not shrugged and told her that we forgot to start the timer as soon as she left the gate, then asked her for the change.
It makes me feel old, a bit, but it's seeded a headblog through town.
A headblog through town where I lie to the lady at the free biscuit stall, telling her I'll be back later to put money where my greedy guts are.
(I do that a lot, fibbing to total strangers, at least once a day if I can help it.)
I walk out to Grafton Street, looking down at my phone, waiting for the world to tell me what's happening. I don't look up to see for myself, and get tangled up in a leash with three dogs, taking my lesson before freeing myself.
I dare the man in the Concern vest to call me 'dude,' but I think he knows me, knows not to, and he stalks another as I pass Tower, Nourish, the place with the cakes and the International Bar. I meet this man but I don't stop. He's talking to someone else so I don't interrupt, just pass on my best and move on.
Coffee. George's Street. That place, Simon's Place. I sit outside despite the chill and spy on the hipsters, the Casual Fridays, the ladies just lunched and the visitors looking up, up, up at the tops of the gay bars opposite.
I spy in plain sight, then take out my phone. I make notes that mean nothing like 'woman imaginary friend' and 'ideas for pizza...' I judge people, and judge myself for judging people, and give myself a headache before the bus arrives.
I get on the 9 and see the man with three dogs, I see him seeing me so I go back to my phone and wonder why, oh why, am I hidden from my own news feed...
I have a word with myself.
I wonder what her record time might have been had we not shrugged and told her that we forgot to start the timer as soon as she left the gate, then asked her for the change.
It makes me feel old, a bit, but it's seeded a headblog through town.
A headblog through town where I lie to the lady at the free biscuit stall, telling her I'll be back later to put money where my greedy guts are.
(I do that a lot, fibbing to total strangers, at least once a day if I can help it.)
I walk out to Grafton Street, looking down at my phone, waiting for the world to tell me what's happening. I don't look up to see for myself, and get tangled up in a leash with three dogs, taking my lesson before freeing myself.
I dare the man in the Concern vest to call me 'dude,' but I think he knows me, knows not to, and he stalks another as I pass Tower, Nourish, the place with the cakes and the International Bar. I meet this man but I don't stop. He's talking to someone else so I don't interrupt, just pass on my best and move on.
Coffee. George's Street. That place, Simon's Place. I sit outside despite the chill and spy on the hipsters, the Casual Fridays, the ladies just lunched and the visitors looking up, up, up at the tops of the gay bars opposite.
I spy in plain sight, then take out my phone. I make notes that mean nothing like 'woman imaginary friend' and 'ideas for pizza...' I judge people, and judge myself for judging people, and give myself a headache before the bus arrives.
I get on the 9 and see the man with three dogs, I see him seeing me so I go back to my phone and wonder why, oh why, am I hidden from my own news feed...
I have a word with myself.
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