Ghost Writing

me:
write me a blog post, will you? my weekend was so dull that my brain has died.

alarmingly charming and biddable man:
Sure! What topic were you thinking of?

me:
anything.

Honestly, kids, were it left to me I would have summarised my weekend thusly -

Sweeney Todd was okay. Funny Games U.S. was disappointing. I brought the dogs for a swim. It rained a lot. I waited ages for a bus. For nothing. Kings was depressing. Tesco was closed.

~The end~

I went on a wonderful camping trip to Cork last weekend but by the time I had recovered well enough to tell you about it, the stories were stale. Overcome by ennui after my attempts to stay on the straight and narrow this weekend, I spent my evening chatting idly and making plans instead of writing anything worth posting. But the alarmingly charming and biddable man (who has been holed up in a shed writing a script for the last few weeks, and will evidently do anything to avoid it) has kindly summarised my weekend for me, in snappy lines and short scriptwriter sentences:

I awoke last Sunday to a tent filled with the bilious tang of my brother's puke. Some wake-up call. After three solid weekends of debauchery, I decided I should probably take it easy. I would give my overworked organs a weekend off. A decision aided by having various friends and housemates abandon me for weddings and other dubious reasons.

The reward of a boozy Sunday afternoon helped steel my resolve for the barren desert that is Kildare on a Saturday night. My sobriety was quickly taken advantage by a sister wanting a lift into town. The journey that followed featured a leaky roof, aquaplaning and at least one near-death experience.

Upon returning home, I discovered my body covered in welts the size of pound coins. Not midges this time, but my other bete noir: MSG. I knew full well that those jalapeno tortilla chips wouldn't do me any favours, but was a bit much. I finished off the night with a shitload of antihistimines and a cold shower.

I awoke this morning at 8:30. I'm usually looking at this time from the other side. At least there was the boozy afternoon to look forward to.

My ostensible drinking partner returned from coaching spin classes and had a lie down. (A correspondent ponders that spin class 'sounds like an aerobic version of sufi dancing'. I clarified that it's more like cycling on the spot with someone shouting at you.) Too much shouting, perhaps, as he decided to get a head's start on the night's puking instead.

Now, it's all well and good to enter a weekend anticipating wholesale mischief and being denied... But to spend the weekend behaving yourself, even helping others, only to have the rug pulled out at the last minute? Well... that's just plain mean.