A Very Merry Unbirthday To Me

My colleagues threw me a surprise birthday party this morning. I was very surprised: it's not my birthday. I ate the cake graciously, though.

Bualadh bos mór don bhFo-choiste Ad Hoc Tae agus Brioscaí

Alt. Title: 2 Years And 653 Posts Later (in which the Jaffa Cake waxes lyrical on my behalf)

Rosie cares so much about her devoted readers that she's asked me to whip up some sort of a second birthday cake for you all on her behalf. The lazy fuckwit.

See, I met Rosie through blogging, and now I'm about to good-n-proper grown-up move in with her. It's a little strange, when I think about it. And I thought about it a lot at first, because I suppose I started off by having some weird form of blogging crush on her. I started reading here when she wrote that post that seemed to hack a few very insecure people off in a big way. Flak was flying, and every cunt in the blogosphere (how I hate that word!) was flying in to give their tuppenceworth. She wasn't so much saying what everyone else was thinking, as saying what everyone else hadn't quite managed to get around to thinking yet. "Why are people being mean to this lady who speaketh only the truth?" I thought to myself, and, like the cunt from the blogosphere that I am, waded in with my tuppenceworth

And I read more, and I back-read (but only a little bit, I don't read so fast).

She often speaks the truth! She's pretty funny! She swears ever so elegantly! She uses italics effectively! She's loquacious! She's uses clever words I don't always understand!*

Today, after being landed with this commission, I did a little more back-reading, just to see what she was writing about in the immediate aftermath of beginning this blog. I had to be careful, though, there might be talk of other fellas' mickeys if I looked in the wrong place. It seems she began with this post and has carried on banging on about herself in much the same vein ever since, only with more bad language and a few posts so emotive that you could feel the tears splashing on the keyboard. Lots of people do that, but she's one of the few who have managed to do it and keep it compelling. If Rosie has nothing to say, she'll generally say fuck-all. But the thing is, and I make my apologies to you all here, since we got together her posting-rate has taken a nosedive to rival Ireland's GDP. Mine has too. Because when you're inclined to telling anyone who'll listen about any little thing that has needled its way into your attentions today, then it comes as a blessed relief when you find that there's one solitary person who's delighted to hear about every little one of them.

She'll carry on posting, she's too talented and far too fond of your affirmations not to. And, with any luck, she'll be asking me to do this again next year.

*Incidentally, she tells me she realised that we'd definitely hit it off after I wrote a post denouncing those who use exclamation marks excessively.

Lá Breithe Shona

On Saturday morning I woke up, 28 years old.

On Sunday morning, the Jaffa Cake wandered into the kitchen to find me cooking a fry, wearing only my knickers, and decided then and there that it must be his birthday.

Aloysisus Wash The Dishes

It Took Two Pillows To Make That Jelly Belly

Tuesday just gone would have marked Crash Grandadicoot's birthday. He was fond of his birthdays as he was fond of Christmas - not for the presents (as he insisted that he already had everything that a man could ever want) but because it gave him an excuse to gather his family around him. I don't know why he felt he needed an excuse as not a weekend goes by where the small 2-up 2-down house isn't swamped by about a gazillion of us, but far be it from me to point this out. Maybe it was the excuse to dress up that he was really after. His Santy rig-out every Christmas was quite the thing, and he was a great man for modelling whatever winterwear he was gifted for his July birthdays.

I spent Monday evening in my Nana's along with my brother and sister, eating her out of house and home. We spent time catching her up on all our gossip and while I knew his birthday was coming up the following day, I didn't mention it. There was plenty of mention of him, as there always is, but not of his birthday. I knew that my uncle was coming over the following evening to bring her down to the Mount Jerome, where his ashes have been interred. She never thought she'd be the graveside type, turns out she is, at least on what would have been his birthday.

I thought about her on Tuesday. I thought about her all day. Wondered if I should call and if I did, what I might say to her. It's not like me - I'm never stuck for words with my nana. I thought I might text her instead, it's how I usually avoid potentially emotional or awkward situations; you can seem proactive and at the same time shunt the ball into the other person's court. And then turn your phone off. But I didn't text her. She only ever gets the first two lines anyway because she keep accidentally deleting the messages when she tries to scroll, but she's 76 (I think) so we'll let her off. What would I have said? Happy really fucking sad birthday? Thinking of you? She knows I'm thinking of her. And him.

I got a text from my mam that night, not because she was avoiding a potentially emotional or awkward situation but because she's in France. She was texting to tell me that she'd sat chatting to Grandad in a church that overlooked the local grandads at their boules (he played twice a week). She lit a candle and had a cry, but decided not to sing him happy birthday. I read the text and felt ... nothing. Swiftly followed by a sickening guilt at the realisation that I do not miss him as much as I should. And I carried on with my evening, read my book, went to bed.

This morning I am sitting at my desk in work, avoiding translation work and hiding behind my computer because I'm leaking tears as I write. I miss him much more than I had imagined.

Bliain Ar An bhFód

Your Narrator, In Her Youth
(I don't have any photos handy of me at the age of one, okay?)

And so a year has passed since my first foray into blogging - a shite post about a shite weekend, which is as boring to read as it was to write. The label on it neatly sums up my original motivation for starting the blog; I was bored. I discovered blogging in February of last year - I googled something, ended up on Twenty's blog, started reading it and when I had read it in its entirety (I mean his blog, not the post) I moved on to the others he had links to. The one that stuck was Annie Rhiannon's - having harboured notions of myself as a literary genius for as long as I remember, I read hers and thought "I could do that?". And so I did.

Nobody read it, not for ages; I found that very disheartening.

Now you do, and that makes my day.

Happy Birthday, Shithead

Too Few Candles (He's Really Old)

I can't pinpoint when it was that GingerBeard and I became friends. For the longest time I could never remember his name; he'd call in to my office to use my scanner - which was just as well as I'd demanded one when they were fitting out my office and then never used it. I'd promise to email him the files and then have to sit there for ten minutes with my colleague trying to remember what his surname might be so that I could send the stuff on. He earned kudos by calling to have things scanned close to lunchtime and then agreeing to pick me up a sandwich while he was out, somehow this progressed to invitations for after-work pints with himself and his mate ("You should come, he has lovely hair. Bouffant style. Wait til you see..."). By now it feels like I've known him for years.

He drives me mental. He takes the piss out me constantly and in public, laying it on particularly thick about my twin Achilles heels; that I'm lacking in sense of both the common and fashion varieties. He mocks my fickle attitude to romance and my inept pursuit of same. He antagonises me when I have a hangover and am hovering dangerously close to tears. He makes valiant if not always successful efforts to cheer me up when I'm having a black day, and he occasionally brings me chocolate. He thinks my blog is ridiculous* but reads it most days and has perfected the art of making "put that in your blog!" sound just like a stinging riposte. He's stubborn as a pig, kind-hearted, annoyingly overprotective, disarmingly funny and touchingly generous. I piss him off royally and unintentionally by doing all manner of things (like laughing at him when he falls off his bike) but thankfully, he always gets over it.

He turns, oh, I dunno, 38 or something today.

*I should perhaps qualify that by saying that he thinks all blogs are ridiculous, and only reads mine and his brother's. I'm not sure which one of ours he thinks is worse.

An Unpleasant Post About Diarrhoea

What did I get for my birthday? Fucking food poisoning. Other stuff too (nicer stuff) but I reckon the cholera's the one I'll remember.

Having spent yesterday evening in the hospital with Crash Grandadicoot (who serenaded me with Happy Birthday again and demanded that I return the gift he gave me - a jewelled purse - so that he could check that Nana had hanseled* it as she was supposed to) I then went out for dinner with my family (sans my dad, who's off earning our collective keeps in Delhi this week). I came home in good form, packed my bag for today's trip to Galway and hopped into bed, thinking that 27 might not be so bad after all.

I woke up about an hour later, thought "uh oh..." and sprinted for the bathroom, where I spent a happy half hour puking my ring up.

Rinse. Repeat. Ad nauseum until at 4am I woke up on the bathroom floor, having keeled over with the effort of all that projectile vomiting (though it is possible that in my delirious state I had simply decided that it might be easier to sleep there).

I hate being sick. Everybody does. But food poisoning sends me into a bit of a panic, and with good reason. Thankfully I'm now feeling about a gazillion times better than I did this morning but every tummy upset brings the memory of that time flooding back.

Some years ago I was visiting a friend in Trier in Germany. I was booked on the last flight home from Brussels and as I was traveling by train I thought it might be nice to go via Luxembourg, for a quick goo at the place in case I should ever decide to take up one of those translation posts that the government seem to be having such trouble filling. However, the combined effects of a crippling hangover, a bank holiday timetable and a short short span of attention saw me on a train to Saarbrucken instead, and I missed my flight. I headed back to Aachen, where another friend was stationed and where I'd be conveniently close to Charleroi and a cheap flight home. Alas, the baggage handlers in Dublin chose that weekend to strike and there were no flights in or out of the city. I was broke, I needed to get back to college, I'd had enough sauerkraut and schnitzel. Half an hour in an internet café in Cologne and I was booked on a flight from Amsterdam to Belfast - a roundabout way to get from the German-Belgian border back to Dublin but it seemed like the most sensible option at the time. Pissed off, my friend and I went out for a consolation pizza that night. Man, did we live to regret it. Within two hours we had a rota system going for the bathroom, with buckets on standby for emergencies. It'll pass, I thought. Just get home.

So the following day I got a train to the 'Dam, then a plane to Belfast, then a train to Dundalk, then a bus to Dublin, then a lift home to Naas from Dublin via Maynooth. With chronic vomiting and diarrhoea. After a few days at home with no sign of improvement, the doctor was called out to the house. She took some bloods to send off for analysis and two days after that, the hopsickle called to see if I'd like to come in so that they could put me on a drip. It seems that someone in the pizza parlour may not have washed their hands, and we'd caught some form of this. The health board called a day or two later looking for details of where I might have picked it up and cautioning me against contact with small children or the elderly lest I should pass the bacteria on, as apparently it can lead to paralysis and blindness. I spent the next three weeks licking every pensioner that crossed my path, determined to make good use of my superpower.

Nah, I spent the next three weeks crawling from bed to couch and back again, swearing to live a better life if only the diarrhoea would cease for long enough for me to leave the house. Fun times, and pleasant memories to mull over on this, the first day of my 27th year.

*Handselled? I'm not sure of the correct spelling. When you give a gift of a purse, wallet, piggybank, handbag or anything traditionally used to keep money in it is bad luck for it to be empty. You need to include a nominal sum of money to make sure that it will never be empty again.

Letter To An Older Rosie

I Even Stole The Major's Picture

Rosie, a chroí,

How's 35* treating you? I'm writing to you on the eve of your 27th birthday, looking for some reassurance: That you kept up the jogging and that you still pronounce it yogging, in homage to Ron Burgundy. That you've published your novel, and that someone's read it. That you've still got so many good friends. That you've grown out of jaegerbombs. That you've found a better cure for your black days than hot chocolate. That you've gotten a haircut that doesn't make you look like George from the Famous Five. That you've sorted your shit out, stopped having short-lived affairs with men who are plainly not going to fall in love with you and found one you're mad about who will. That you're healthy. That you're happy.

Ag súil go mór le do fhreagra,
R

*Inspired by the Major's Letter, it was originally to be to Rosie aged 30 but the chances of me having my shit together by then are slim to none.

Stopped In My Tracks

I spurned a number of invitations to romantic drinks and dinners yesterday evening to spend a bit of time with my grandparents. Crash Grandadicoot is still holed up in James' Hopsickle, I think he may be going for some kind of record. I took a stroll up there after I'd finished up in work yesterday evening, full of apprehension and snot. I was in no mood for the hospital, for its stomach churning smell of sickness and cabbage, for the small talk or the non-talk with whomever else might be visiting. But I needed to go, I still hadn't been to see him and I was feeling guilty about it and worried - worried that he might have forgotten me.

He used to call me #1 Grandchild, you see. He still might, on a good day. I'm the eldest of his gazillion grandkids but with a nudge and a wink he told me that it was more to this pecking order than age. It was a joke at the expense of the other kids; but fuck them, I like to think that he was partly serious and that despite my tragic lack of coordination and/or interest in sport I really am his favourite. He forgets things so easily now though that I was worried he might have forgotten me in my three week absence, and that would break my heart. This weighed down my walk, I was cold and hungry too, tired and cantalach. My mam called to see where I was at, we had our wires crossed and I was now going to miss dinner in my nana's - I got angry with her, short, ended the call in a fit of pique.

I walked on, smoking furiously and seething quietly for no good reason, trying to concentrate on the music coming through my headphones and fighting back the irrational tears. And then I noticed the Hybrid Love Seat. It's a fence, essentially, a boundary sculpture between the flat complex and the Luas stop at the hospital entrance. And it's lovely. It's thoughtful, engaging and beautiful street furniture. I stopped walking, stopped sulking, took a few minutes to read the plaque about the work, took a few minutes more to admire the bronze castings and then took stock of all that was bothering me and resolved to go for a hot chocolate before venturing up to see Crash Grandadicoot.

He was in good form, full of piss and vinegar. He sang Happy Birthday to me ("What's that song they sing again? What does it go like?") and demanded that I put my new boots up on the bed to show him. He told my nana that she looked well in her yellow sweatshirt - almost good enough to *mwah!* (making kissy noises through his gums). I came away from the visit delighted that I'd stopped by and delighted that I'd taken the time to stop by the kids' love seat on my way in, to gather my thoughts and get my shit together. I'll not leave it 3 weeks before I call in to see him again.

You can read all the bumf about the Hybrid Love Seat on the artist's site.

Regrets? I've Had A Few

• Replying "kinda, sure work away!" when the dentist asked me if I still had any sensation in my jaw (turns out I needed two more doses of anaesthetic).
• Using the 20 minutes of mild euphoria experienced after leaving the dentist's to buy unfashionable and ugly runners to go jogging in.
  
• Deciding to walk home.
  
• Wearing plimsolls today when wellies would have been more appropriate.
• Making a "cheer up" cup of tea when my face is so numb that I can't blink, never mind sip like a lady.
• Spilling said tea all over my duvet (for I have retreated to bed with my book in a huff).
• Eating just half of my lunch when I should have known solids would be off the menu later.
• Agreeing to go to fucking Cavan next weekend to speak about something that I don't really understand at a conference for bored and hungover students.

Still, tomorrow my brother turns the same age as me and to celebrate we're heading to The Sugar Club for what promises to be a very good night.

The Spanish Exposition Art Competition!

Well, things got a little serious around here yesterday didn't they? What with me whingeing about my poxy ovaries and everyone getting their knickers in a knot over young Lorcan, the tiger cub the nation would most like to cuff around the ears. So I shall keep it fluffy today. I've hefted myself from my sickbed and made it to work this morning, so I'm full of goodish cheer. Still full of snot, mind you, but with less of the crushing pain across my sinuses that I've had for the past few days.

Anyway, I have a birthday coming up in a month or so. I shall be turning 27 and I am not one bit happy about it, but that's for another day. To celebrate my impending almost-middle age I've decided to go ahead and do something I've wanted to do for years - get a tattoo. Something discreet and tasteful; I'm going to get a floral design on my right foot. Exactly what design though? This is where you, gentle readers, come in. I'm looking for ideas. Each flower has a symbolic meaning so I need to take that into consideration (daffodils, for example, are said to signify deceitfulness, so that would not be good). So get your crayons out, your thinking caps on, your googlemachines fired up etc. and email your suggestions to me tout suite.

A Transformer? A Blow-Up Doll? Nivea Visage for Men?

My flatmate, with his trademark tact and subtlety, reminded me over dinner last night that he turns 32 21 today and that I appeared to have forgotten his birthday. I laughed and asked him if he'd mind paying for dinner as I'd forgotten my wallet. I should have been pissed off that he was levelling this heinous accusation a day in advance of any crime on my part, but we both knew he was right. I now have some making up to do.

So, what to get a stroppy Swede for his 32nd 21st birthday?