One for the "Blogroll" (I hate that wanky blogspeak)

Check out Rua's fluffy red rant. Funny and off-the-wall, it comes complete with a poetry corner (see the excerpt below). And, he writes in Irish! I have the pleasure of working with him occasionally, it's a little like having a very large red setter puppy in the office.

Diageo Consumer Info

Tequila slammer
bad for grammer

and Sambuka
make ya puke-ah

But Guinness,
Guinness
makes you shit spinnach
and thats just not cool

Gleeful Anticipation

It's that time of year again, folks. The evenings are beginning to draw in, there's conkers* on the trees and the kiddies (and their teachers) are readying themselves for another year of school. I, on the other hand, am off to the Electric Picnic. And I can't fucking wait.

It has its critics (like this grumpy fucker, but then, he criticises everything...) and yes, some of it is warranted. The on-site offy is ludicrously overpriced. There's a fair to middling chance that it'll piss rain (though the same grumpy fucker, for all his glowing recommendations of festivals abroad, bore witness to this at Roskilde this year) but hey, that suits my complexion. The lineup is great, my tent is massive, I'll be in the best of company and the best of humour. There's no part of it that I'm not looking forward to, apart from the journey home on Monday.

In other news, I've been asked to do a screen test to be the new presenter of Pop4. I'm horrified. I'm flattered. I'm very, very scared. I'll do the audition for the laugh, but I don't think you'll be seeing me on the tellybox any time soon. I really would have to start dressing nice once in a while then.

*Horse Chestnuts

It was only a matter of Time

Photo by Rosie, wordz by Ginger Nuts.

He's not Me

I strolled down to the shop this evening to get the makings of a curry for tomorrow night's dinner (I'm entertaining the new parents) and was standing in the half hour queue (ah, Tesco on Baggot St.) minding my own business and enjoying my internal monologue and Amon Tobin on my headphones when some cheeky cunt behind me kicked my basket. I turned around to see an old friend standing behind me.

I hadn't seen him in months, and he looks well. He's the cousin of one of my closest friends and we had a brief moment of passion some 6 years back. I was quite smitten with him at the time, hoped that something might come of it but of course it didn't. In fact, not too long after we'd kissed I ended up kissing another one of the cousins for a while and accompanying him to a family wedding (the groom thought this was fucking hilarious, introduced me to the in-laws as Jezebel the Harlot. They didn't get the reference, and called me Jess for the night). At the same wedding, the original cousin got falling down drunk and kissed a girl in a sparkly dress. They've been together ever since.

When I met him today he was dressed in a suit, looking dapper and well-kept. I wasn't. I had my rucksack full of shopping, he was buying bags at the counter for his designer dinner ingredients which he was taking home to cook for his lady. He offered me a lift, insisted, although it's not far. Turns out he has a new Mercedes, cream leather interior, and that they've just moved to an apartment in Ballsbridge. As a couple, they're the epitome of Celtic Tiger success. And it bores me to tears. Sometimes I think that I'd like to be in their shoes, paired off, settled, stable, secure. But I know it's not me, and I'm glad that he recognised that even when I didn't. He's not me, that life's not me, and I don't think it ever will be. I hope not, anyway.

Mind out for the Leprechauns

Thoroughly modern woman, I am. Sensible(ish), logical, level-headed, rational and reasonable, all of those kind of things. I don't think of myself as being superstitious at all, but Strawberry Shortcake and Ginger Nuts have both pulled me up on some of my more oddball notions recently, and prompted me to think about how fruitcakey they are. My top 7 are as follows (7 being one of the "good" numbers):

• Always salute lone magpies (and then anxiously scan the horizon for more of the little fuckers. Preferably a second -for joy- or a total of four, for a boy...). Country folk spit at them, but then they spit at redheads too, and that's just not nice. A nod will suffice, and a muttered "hello, Mr. Magpie".
  
• Never cut your nails on a Sunday. Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth, Wednesdsay for news, Thursday; new shoes, Friday for sorrow, Saturday; see your true love tomorrow, but Sunday... the devil will be with you all week.
  
• Never put new shoes on the table (I don't know why, I just know that the consequences would be dire)
  
• If you spill salt, throw some over your left shoulder (with your right hand) or you'll die a horrible death. Maybe.
  
• Never try a ring on on your ring finger (you'll end up an unmarried spinster) unless it's someone else's engagement ring, in which case you may try it, turn it three times towards your heart and make a wish (which cannot be for a man, or money, so it's not much fucking use anyway)
• Always wear new clothes for Easter.
  
• Never cross more than two fingers, or you'll jinx whatever you're wishing for.

I could go on, but I'd end up driving myself nuts. I'm sure they're all bollocks, but I'm not going to tempt fate, am I? Better superstitious than sorry.

Scuba Steve

After mam's dramatics, my day improved. Pretending to be musicians, my brother and I blagged our way into one of the gigs (this one, as it featured my love interest from that weekend in An Cheathrú Rua...). Typical me, The Festival of World Cultures and there I am, hanging out in the Gaeilge tent. From there we headed up to catch a bit of Dónal Dineen's set in one of the hotels and again, typical me, I ended up drinking in the car park instead and talking to random strangers. Interesting ones though; these boys. I must keep an eye out for their work.

From there we got a lift into town from a kind if directionally challenged friend (we ended up taking a spin in the wrong direction down Harcourt St's Luas line but beggars can't be choosers- the queue for a taxi in Dun Laoghaire would make your eyes water). On to the POD for a bit of a Pogo and more vodka than was strictly necessary, and then my brother and I barrelled drunkenly into Aprila's chipper, in Portobello, for a bite of dinner. Civilised drunkards that we are, we strolled down the leafy-with-love banks of the Grand Canal and sat down on a bench to enjoy our fare. I had just stood up to shake the curry chips out of my skirt and start for home when I noticed a figure about 20 yards away, standing on the path and wretchedly puking on his own shoes. "Look at this poor fucker!" I exclaimed in glee (always fun to see someone drunker than yourself) and my brother craned his head for a gawk, just in time to see the poor sot pitch head first off the footpath into the canal.

I ran to his rescue, with all the grace of a flat chested C.J. Parker. Just as I reached the spot he'd launched from, a hand shot up from the reeds, and then another. He struggled to standing in the 2ft deep water, huffing and puffing, and breaking his bollix laughing. I helped him out, and backup arrived (in curry-chip stained jeans and a fit of the giggles). "Are you alright, mate?" More giggles. From all three of us. He began fishing various sodden items from the pockets of his biker's jacket, a dripping mobile phone, wet banknotes, smelly canal weed. I asked him if he'd far to go and he explained -with the frank honesty of the truly drunk- that he was close to home, he'd been drinking in The Barge Pub and had just wandered down "for a dump". How glad am I that he wasn't mid shite when he toppled in. "Have you a pen and paper?" he asked. "Take my name and address, and remind me that this happened. Not tomorrow though, in a while, like. Maybe next year. No, in three years time. My name's Stephen, Stephen Boyle. Nice to meet yiz."

I made him promise to walk on the lower path, away from the water, and he staggered off, leaving a dripping trail and laughing spastically to himself. I hope he made it home.

Mammies are Nothing but Trouble

I headed out to the festival yesterday, brimming with good humour and sunshine, and tripped down to the main stage to meet my parents. I missed dad at first, I hadn't seen him in a while and he shaved his 'tache while he was on holidays. (In all my 26 years I've seen him baldyfaced just the once, when I was about 10 and he shaved it for charity. I think we all made strange, mam included, so it was back 3 days later). Gave him a hug, asked where mam was. He pointed to the ambulance parked behind him.

And sure enough there she was, waving out through one of the little windows.

She'd been fine, dancing to Kila and generally having a ball until she got a pain in her chest and started having difficulty breathing. Luckily there were medics on hand, they took her to the ambulance, checked her out and then decided to whisk her off to St. Michael's to make doubly sure that she was okay. Dad accompanied her to the hospital, my brother and I had an anxiety laden pint while we waited for word of her blood results.

I'm horribly, irrationally superstitious. I knew she'd be fine, but a little voice in my head kept whispering "these things happen in threes, you know". Two friends of mine lost their fathers this summer and though I know better, I sat there making smalltalk and sinking into a panic that I was going to lose my mam.

Turned out she's been shifting furniture at home the day before, with little regard for her bad back or for the abundance of willing bodies nearby who would happily lend a hand. She'd pulled a muscle in her chest, so she's fine.

She nearly gave me a fucking heart attack, though.

Sun is Shining, Weather is Sweet, Yeah...

I'm off out to play.

Eastern European Escapades

I believe I mentioned bouldness on holidays, and as ever am only too happy to elaborate a little on what I got up to. There was the usual fun with hostel bookings ("Female dorm" misheard as "Please may I room with an Italian stag party?") unfamiliar foods ("you taste it", "no, you taste it") and public transport (wrong wagon, third train ticket for our imaginary friend, possibly fake ticket inspectors, haggled fines) but as ever, when I mention bouldness I mean, of course, boys.

Ever scored in a hostel? They do not make life easy for you.

However this suited me just fine on one particular occasion, nay, I was glad of it. Strawberry and I had met some English gents and ended up going out on the tear with them. The Blond was very obviously interested in Strawberry, the other painfully obviously interested in myself. Strawberry has a fine man at home and has no interest in rocking any boats, but was too nice and self-conscious to tell the Blond that (we've all done the "I have a boyfriend, you know" bit just that little bit too early in the conversation, and come off like conceited tits). So it was left to me. I bided my time in telling him, I'm ashamed to admit, because I thought it was funny. He was one of those supremely confident types and they get my goat. Anyway, my wannabe paramour was just the kind of man I'd have not the slightest bit of interest in, and he knew it. He kept angling for compliments or indeed any sign that I'd be willing to play, and getting none. Eventually though he saw his chance, and seized it. True to form, I got billy-bo-jangled drunk (it's an effective defence mechanism against the social discomfort of shit nightclubs) and Romeo made his move, lobbed the gob, went straight for the kill.

Eejit that I am, I sat there and let him.

He decided to strike while he was on a roll, or something (I was pissed, remember?) and the four of us got a taxi back to the hostel. Thinking to further push his luck, he was scanning the nooks and crannies of the place for somewhere to play with his prize undisturbed, but to no avail. "We could share a bunk?" he suggested hopefully. "Fuck off" came the gleeful reply. "I'm going to bed. In my room, and on my own".

I woke the next morning with an acute sense of regret about the kiss, a mounting sense of dread in case he thought it might happen again, and an absolute cunt of a hangover. It was too hot to sleep so decided to retire to the couch and look at my book (I was in no fit state to actually read, but I needed a prop) only to find both couches occupied by two specimens I'd much rather have run into the night before. One of em gave me a big sloppy grin, and I was sold. I spent the next 3 nights scanning the nooks and crannies of the place for somewhere to play with my prize undisturbed, and had remarkably more success than Romeo. I'd love to have brought him home with me. It's not often I meet a man who doesn't put up with any of my shit and it was wholly refreshing. And he may not have been able to dance, but the boy could make me weak at the knees with a kiss. He's off to try his luck in London for the next while, but with a lot of luck he might change his mind and opt for Dublin's fair city instead. I hear the women in London are shit...*

*I may have made that part up, but corroborative evidence would be greatly appreciated

For All the Cows

Great gig last night. The weather was beautiful and the Foo Fighters were in good form, though it was bizarre watching NIN onstage in the sunshine. They seem more suited to a basement club full of people who look like they might bite you. Not that the gig wasn't full of people that looked like they might bite you. I'd say they're all gone home with sunburn after their outdoor sojourn. I felt more than a little self-conscious in my pink cherry-patterned hoodie.

I feel fucking horrible this morning though. There wasn't much by way of choice at the bar; beer or vinegary piss. I opted for the beer on the basis that I'd have more of it left in my cup after I'd tripped and spilled my way back through the crowd, but I can't drink beer. I can drink most anything else, but three pints and I'm anyone's. It hasn't been a good morning. Mind you, I'm not feeling as rough as Ginger Nuts is this morning. I got a text from him an hour after he was due into work.

"Help"

Serves him right for calling me a knacker yesterday.

Today's Attempt at Dressing Nice*

"Put some shoes on, for fuck's sake. Wandering around the office like a knacker. You'll be drinking out of jam jars next".

Some people just don't get my flighty, ethereal beauty.

*See previous posts about Pole hunting

Auschwitz

On my 3rd day in Krakow, 10 of us from the hostel gathered our hangovers to our bosoms and headed off to Oswiecim, to visit the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps and pay our respects to the millions of people that had suffered there. It was a difficult day.

I hadn't given much thought to the trip beforehand, or to the impact it might have on me. My knowledge of the Nazis has been pretty much limited to primary school history lessons and Indiana Jones films, so my notions of what had happened there were vague, to say the least. Some of the other travelers I'd befriended on the trip had already visited, but nobody spoke at any length about it, other than to say that they'd been there. It's rare that backpackers maintain a dignified silence about anything, had I been more perceptive (and less hungover) this would have been a good indication of what was in store.

The touristy shite around the entrance is minimal, what's needed and no more. We had an hour before our tour was due to begin, so while most of the group opted for a sit down, Strawberry Shortcake and I took a stroll. We were in Auschwitz I (we were later to visit Auschwitz II, or Birkenau) where most of the original buildings have been preserved or restored, and many of them now house museums. Our guide, Anna, took us around some of them later. I found the one containing the loot stolen from prisoners almost physically shocking, and know now why it was the one image from our school textbook that had stayed with me. Seeing so many everyday objects amassed in vast floor-to-ceiling quantities was a very tangible illustration of the scale of the slaughter. Such personal effects too; worn shoes, prosthetic limbs; these are not people's things, they're more than that. But the hardest ones for me were the ones Anna didn't take us to. Individual countries have set up museums on site to remember their dead, and Strawberry and I visited two of these in the hour before the tour, "The Tragedy of the Jews of Slovakia" and "Czech Prisoners in Auschwitz Concentration Camp". The rest of the camp was on such a massive scale that I had genuine difficulty in getting my head around it, but it was in these two buildings that I got a real taste of the horror of what had happened there. Here there were biographies of the individual people who had been taken to Auschwitz, their life histories and cruel deaths documented in black and white. Photos of them with their children. Postcards they had written to their families, posted 3 weeks after their deaths under the pretence that all was well.

Harder for me again, there were pictures of the children. Beautiful, doe-eyed, gawky, jam-faced kids. There were drawings they had made during the short time they lived there, the poems they wrote. Few referred to their surroundings at all, their work is full of hope for a better life and sweet memories of the life they had before their incarceration. What happened to them beggars belief.

It was gratifying to see the respect that people paid to their surroundings while visiting the site. I've traveled some, and have come to expect the worst of tourists. Perhaps it's because the place itself is so physically arresting, perhaps it's the dignity of the staff. I personally found it disconcerting to see the camp on such a beautiful day. It gave the experience a very surreal feeling, that the visual impact of the camp was at such odds with its history and the emotional toll it takes. I was very grateful to have gone there with the group that I did and to have shared the experience, even though it was little spoken of afterwards. Sometimes it's enough just to have been there in one another's company.

Home, Sweet Home

I'm normally a little bit thrilled when the wheels hit the tarmac in Dublin. Not so yesterday morning. I felt thoroughly wretched, and did not want to be home. I'm sure a lot of it had to do with how tired I was (I hadn't had more than 4 hours sleep on any night of the previous three, and I don't function well without at least 10 hours). Packing before going to the airport had been a truly horrific experience, I was so wrecked leaving the hostel in Krakow that I was close to hallucinating (what had kept me from my bed was absolutely worth it, but that's a tale for another post).

I never ever thought of myself as the backpacker type. I smell better, for one thing. I always bring too many clothes and a bag that I cannot actually lift myself. I snore, embarrassingly, and worry about it when I have to share a room (unless I can atone for it with sexual favours, in which case, my snoring must be considered "charming"). I'm allergic to most forms of public transport. I'm not 19 years old anymore. I could go on, but you get the idea.

After the trip to Belarus I pretty much decided that independent travel was probably not for me, though I fancy the idea. I've always thought that I'm a pretty gregarious individual, but over there I felt myself struggle a bit with the group, and it knocked my social confidence. The last two weeks have restored it tenfold though. I think the difference was in getting to choose the company I kept, rather than traveling with a group. And d'ya know what? I'd talk to the wall, and it'd talk back. A big stupid smile will get you anywhere, and with most other travellers a friendly hello is enough to elicit conversation, sometimes even dinner and a night on the tiles. I've met some fucking headcases over the last few weeks, and I'd love to be able to take them all home and introduce them to the fine array of headcases I've cultivated as friends here. It'd make for messy fun.

My traveling companion, Strawberry Shortcake, was (and is) the best you could ask for (I'm not just writing this because I know she'll read it...) in that she's easygoing, funny, and attracts good looking men like moths to a flame, so it'll be tempting to head off with her again. But I'm itching to go it alone and see what happens. My mam'll worry and my nana will wear her knees out saying novenas for me but I'll make up for it by calling home once in a while and keeping a blog that'd be suitable for them to read. This one won't be, by the time I get around to telling you what I actually got up to on my trip.

I haven't started my Pole hunting yet, by the way. I had just about enough energy to dress myself this morning, but nowhere near enough to dress nice. In fact I now suspect that my pants may well be pyjama bottoms (from the leisurewear section in Penneys... I don't know if that's their code for jammies or not. The local kids all wear their jammies to the shops though, so I'll fit right in). Tomorrow's going to be a scruffy day too, I'm off to see NIN and the Foo Fighters tomorrow eve and it's bound to piss rain.

I is Polski

I've had a half hour to myself before the madness begins and I genuinely meant to spend it recounting my tales of Gdansk and Warsaw, but I made the fatal error or having a quick look to see what was new on I Can Has Cheezburger? Those fucking lolcats are fierce distracting. I shall no doubt tell my tales in lurid technicolour detail some other time, when I'm at home and it's raining and nobody will come for midweek beers.

For the meantime though it will suffice to say that Gdansk was beautiful, and I'd liked to have spent longer there had we been in different accommodation (we ended up staying in a church out in the suburbs... don't ask). Plan ahead, folks. It was nice though, like a 2 night retreat punctuated by stressful bus journeys (I am mildly allergic to public transport, and intend to regale Sweary with tales of some of my more colourful journeys when I return). Those suburban buses hadn't a patch on yesterday's rail excursion though. Come back, Iarnrod Eireann, all is forgiven.

I've decided after only 3 days (4? 5? every day's like fucking Sunday) in Poland that I want to marry a Polish man and have his babies. They're so manly and handsome... (the men, not the babies. The babies are usually cute and Cabbage Patchish). Dublin and my sometime hometown of Naas are both chock full of Poles, so all I need do now is find out where they congregate of an evening, learn a few key phrases, and dress nice once in a while. Maybe I'll wear that bikini out some night. They're bound to fall at my feet.

But on the Bright Side...

...I'm having a ball other than that (and I've met some pretty ridey backpackers, and am only fantastic at chatting them up, so I reckon Poland will be fun)

A Romantic Disappointment

So I've made it as far as Vilnius. I was particularly looking forward to getting here as I was meeting up with a former sweetheart from Lithuania. We'd been seeing one another in Dublin last summer, not for very long but for long enough to be pretty enamoured with one another and for me to be a bit put out when he went home, initially to visit his dying nana (can't really gripe about that, I suppose) and then to stay, because he was tired of working in his shitty job in Dublin.

We kept in touch, and I emailed him when I was planning this trip to let him know that I'd be in town. Couldn't wait to meet up with him, he's easygoing, good fun, good company, awful cute and brilliant in bed. I couldn't help thinking that if he'd stayed in Dublin he could have kept me out of all kinds of trouble over the last year (I've been bold... at one stage earning myself the nickname "Hurricane Clare" for the devastation I was wreaking around me. I think it's a phase). But fucking hell, a year at home has changed him.

He was always very dismissive of Lithuania ("Prick Country") and Lithuanians ("Snakes") saying that it has no culture to speak of, after years of Russian occupation and the legacy of the Gulags. He's a pessimistic character anyway (I'm a horrible optimist) but he kept harping on at me for what he considers my stupid decision to visit the country, calling me naive and complaining about everything under the sun. Nothing does my head in like a whingebag, but for all his shiteing on about his wastrel fellow countrymen, he hasn't bothered his hole to get a job since he came back, and all he does is drink.

Admittedly I drink a lot myself, but I eat too. And work. And stuff.

Anyway, instead of the reunion I was looking forward to, I got 3 days of whining in between him being utterly wasted on some kind of cherry liqueur named after a dead statesman.

So I'm off on the night bus to Gdansk. Fuck that. I can do better.

Ugh

Remedied. Remedial.

Edit no. 56 of the shortest but most well-intentioned Post

Was going to chronicle my latest adventures, but some cunt's put tippex all over the keys of the hostel keyboard and I really can't be arsed. All's well though, I'm only slightly drunk but I plan to remedy that shortly.

Having a Ball

Sitting in the hostel with a manky hangover, covered in suncream and glitter. Befriended half of Australia and Holland last night, and shared a room with nine strapping Italian boys. Off to Lithuania this evening, Latvia will miss me...

Holiday Update from Gate B26 in Dublin Airport

We've just discovered that the hostel we've booked for our last few days of the trip in Krakow is actually... in fucking Riga. This does not bode well.

Taxi to the airport, please!

Féile an Dóilín, jeez.

Rírá agus ruaille buaille, rap, rainneach, ragóil is ragairne, gean, grá is gal..

I'd tell you all about it, but I need to pack a bag. I've to be in Latvia in about 6 hours time.

I'd Do Me

I went shopping yesterday after work, ostensibly for tissues for my still snotty nose but of course I was waylaid, and ended up buying shoes. It happens. However, mindful of next week's holiday, I also bought myself a bikini.

I'm sure girls buy bikinis every day, sometimes even wear them. It's not a big deal. But it is for me. Mortifyingly self-conscious, the thoughts of even trying one on -much less wearing it in public- makes me cringe. But I was the only idiot in Australia last year with a onesie on, and I looked ridiculous. So I thought I'd brave it, give it a go.

I didn't try it on in the shop, obviously. Baby steps. (Also, they put these protective stickers in the fanny bit that tend to curl up and stick to your knickers and inevitably have someone else's pubes stuck to them. I don't like that.) I didn't even try it on when I got home. I waited until I was going to bed because then I'd be undressing anyway, so trying it on would not seem like a big deal (and if it didn't fit there's a good chance I'd have forgotten I'd even bought it by morning).

I looked in the mirror. I looked fucking hot.

I dunno if it was the Exputex/Benylin/Anadin/Strepsil combo or if I genuinely am a bit of a ride in the right light and a black bikini. We'll pray for the latter, but in case it's the former I'm going to start practicing slipping over-the-counter cold remedies into people's coffee.