Rosie Is Tired

I've Been Dreaming Of Sleep - And Ape Men, With Metal Parts

I've had to restrict myself to reading John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things during daylight hours because the Crooked Man was crawling creepily into my dreams. Normally books do not affect my nightmares, but this one is about the fairytale creatures that populate my subconscious sneaking from the books of a young boy and leaching into his already uncomfortable reality.

The Hurler and I were discussing dreams last night (over hot chilli and bottles of Stella, lest you think we're big girl's blouses*) and he reckons he's as suggestible as I am. He followed the conversation up with a stunning example this morning - having spent a good two minutes talking about Batman before we'd eaten dinner, he then dreamt that we were Batman (that's right, both of us) and we were running around buildings in the Docklands as a fundraiser to buy some new bat gear.

For once I'd like my subconscious to suggest that I might be a steel-underpantsed superhero in my dreams, rather than a hapless anti-heroine who is about to have her face eaten by zebra-striped zombie vampires.

*Though we did later go for a stroll down to the river with the Tall One to watch the sun set over the city and eat ice creams.

Review: The Mist

Possibly maybe the best film I have seen in ages. It was hilarious. I'm not entirely sure that it was meant to be, but that just makes it all the better. At one stage one of the characters was shot in the head and a round of applause broke out amongst the audience - I joined in wholeheartedly. The soundtrack was inspired - silent most of the way through and then Dead Can Dance's The Host of Seraphim stirring the post-apocalyptic landscape as our protagonists make their desperate attempt to flee. Man, I thought, how cool would it be if they actually had that in the LandCruiser's tape deck.

The ending was fucking brilliant. Go see it. And bring me with you.

Dangerous Minds

Like most if not all arts graduates, I had an absolute shit attack once I left college. I wasn't qualified to do anything in particular and I had no idea what I'd like to do, so I blundered head-first into teaching. Well, elbow first. I tried a stint as a corporate whore and it didn't really take, so in the spirit of altruism and service to the community I accepted a temporary post in my old alma mater. A nice school with excellent staff, where I would be paid a gazillion euro an hour to babysit teenagers. What could go wrong?

Mid afternoon on day one I had my first class with 6th year foundation level English. 9 boys who already looked like big strong men, and who were fully convinced that they were big strong men. Most had repeated a year during some stage of their academic careers, I'm sure some of them had learning difficulties and I'm very fucking sure that most of them had behavioural problems. We spent a difficult 40 minutes together, but I won.

Day two found them in fine fettle, almost personable in their efforts to impress the new teacher. We were still at the honeymoon getting-to-know-you stage, so I was happy to indulge them in amiable chat. I mooted the idea that we might do some work on day three and asked them what they'd covered in class the previous year, intending on doing some revision. But oh no. English class had been cancelled last year.

I should have known better than to ask, I suppose. They spent 40 minutes telling tales of the three unfortunates who had acted as substitute teachers the previous year. The first of them refused to teach them after flicking paper balls at her had enraged her to breaking point, whereupon one of them threw a metal pencil case at her and hit her in the face. A replacement was brought in, a stern disciplinarian. She had two of them suspended for sexual harassment after they repeatedly complained about being unable to study due to (their) erect nipples - the classroom was freezing because they'd smashed the window with the duster. How this might constitute sexual harassment was beyond them, as they hadn't so much as mentioned her nipples. I stifled a giggle under an immaculately stern poker face, and quietly nodded when they asked me if I'd like to know what happened to the third teacher. I should have said no, but I really did want to know. Turns out they'd started flicking paper balls at him too. Lighted ones. I believe them, because they showed me a video clip. Not to intimidate, but to impress.

I dreaded my classes with them. They took a serious shine to me though and soon proclaimed me their favourite teacher, getting more than a little upset that I wasn't planning on speaking for them at the parent-teacher meetings. We spent most days watching Strictly Ballroom (it's on the curriculum) where they pushed the tables back and waltzed one another around the room, while the guy with ADD coloured the blackboard in from corner to corner with chalk (cleaning it off before the bell went, out of consideration for me). We had tears one day when one of them regaled me with a tale of an injured pigeon he'd filled with bangers and blown to feathers, thinking I would be impressed by his ingenuity when it came to putting the creature out of its misery. I was not, and this upset him. Two of them asked me to be their date for the debutante ball and threatened to batter the shite out of each other in a row over which one had asked me first. I politely declined both. But we got along. I told my friends at home about them and I got voicemail messages with Coolio's Gangster's Paradise playing in the background. Because my friends are very, very funny.

Then one day I arrived in to find them sitting at their desks, with poetry textbooks. I had left them in the care of another young substitute teacher the previous day, as I had an interview for a lecturing job. They had decided on an early lunch, she had refused to let them leave and had threatened to call the principal. So they backed her into a corner and tried to grope her breasts.

I could never be a teacher.

Trackmarks And Tears

The new nurse smiled brightly at me and started jabbering in a pleasantly singsong Welsh accent about the weather and my hair and her shoes and the computer and the other nurse and the [I had tuned out at this point - I hadn't had breakfast and was starting to get cranky]. "So" she trilled "that'll be 5 of the orange ones, two pink, one clear and a yellow one too, I suppose" and then she looked at me for confirmation. "Great!" I beamed, not a fucking notion what she was prattling on about. It was only after she'd stuck me with the needle that I noticed the mountain of vials she had stacked at my elbow, each one with a colour coded cap. I sat there trying to look brave and trying even harder not to puke on her, horrified by the sight of the needle in my arm. "You've very deep veins!" she exclaimed, more by way of a compliment than anything else, I think. "We'll just give it a little wiggle, I know there's one here somewhere..."

Knick Knack Paddywhack

I rolled out of bed this morning, dressed myself from head to toe in mismatched shades of green, high-hoed it to Carrolls' Irish Gift Shop to purchase some of those flattering shorts with the fake arse cheeks hanging out the back (póg mo thóin scrawled across them in homage to the Oirish language) had some chugger paint shamrocks on my cheeks and forehead, climbed onto the roof of a phonebox down at College Green, heckled the Americans below as they jostled for a vantage point from which to view the parade and then hightailed it to a packed Temple Bar pub to spill Guinness, sing offensive rebel songs and drink til I fancied Burger King.

Oh no, wait...

I got up, met my brother, strolled into town to marvel at the efforts that everyone else had gone to to celebrate our national holiday and then headed to Da Pino's for a pizza (the remains of which are reheating in the oven as I type - aubergines, broccoli, pepperoni, chillies, sweet peppers and cheese). The weather was beautiful so we walked then from Dame St. out to Ringsend, following the Liffey and taking a few photographs along the way, talking through some of the things that have been going on for us over the last couple of weeks. They've been a difficult few weeks.

Back to my flat then for tea and a DVD (28 Weeks Later - terrifying, brilliant) and then another stroll, this time to Parnell St via George's Dock, where we picked up the Hurler and headed to the cinema to see Be Kind, Rewind (which was very charming, Mos Def more than making up for the annoyance that is Jack Black). We walked home again via Scruffy Murphys, where the lads had a Guinness each and I had an orange juice. I'm bursting with virtue and pizza now, and am going straight to bed before my halo slips.

The Answer To All Of My Prayers?

There is much talk these days of how difficult it is to meet someone - romantically speaking - in this, the modern era. Indeed I have done a lot of such shitetalking myself after a few drinks. It is hard (I'm still single) and though theoretically teh internehts makes even dating easy, it hasn't done much for me, I tell you. The 'net may be changing the game elsewhere but online dating still has quite a stigma attached to it in Ireland. The accepted method for acquiring a future life partner here is to (a) meet them through a friend (an excellent option as this can often mean that they come with a recommendation and/or a returns policy) or (b) to take your chances in the last chance saloon of the pub and hope that the complete stranger you've brought home will not look like the Elephant Man/your boss/his sister once you take your beer goggles off. Online dating is (somewhat bizarrely, when you consider the risks associated with option (b) above) thought to be unsafe; dating websites are presumed to be populated by psychopathically lonely losers and blind dates are considered a form of social suicide. So what are modern Irish singletons who have run out of patience with these paltry options to do? Why - return to those hallowed times! When men were men and women wore shoulder-pads. When love was a slow-dance, all left feet and hard-ons. To quote Mr. Calvin Harris, it was acceptable in the eightees.

I was shuffling and shuftying along through the city this morning when I noticed a new horror nested on the corner of Nassau St. and Kildare St. The unattractive sign outside promises pessimistically safe times: No Drugs, No Drunks, No Problems. But for the singleton who's tired of flailing around pathetically to dance tunes, trying in vain to impress the object of their tequila-fulled affections with pop-n-lock(ed) robot dancing, the sign also offers a glimmer of hope. For the club is GR80s (geddit?) and their USP* is their slow sets.

I nearly puked. I cannot imagine anything worse than revisiting the slow set horrors of my teenage years (which were in the 90s, incidentally, but we were a little behind the times. Besides, GR90s just doesn't have the same zing! to it). The way the dancefloor cleared as soon as the first bars of a Mariah Carey/Whitney Houston/Bryan Fucking Adams song kicked in, except for one drunken lunatic who'd been dancing alone and had simply not noticed. The way the floor gradually filled with groping couples, usually comprised of your friends and boys they knew you fancied. The way the drunken lunatic would ricochet off them until he was eventually expelled from the floor, at which point he'd lurch in your direction, go straight for your tits and then try to ask you to dance but be unable to pronounce "want", "to" or "dance". The way your sober, well-meaning and well-mannered but unattractive friend would step in to save you - resulting in an awkward once-around-the-floor where you try to hold him at arms' length to avoid his erection before feigning thirst and/or incontinence and rushing off to the bar and/or bathroom. It took me years of hard work and costly drugs to repair the damage that school discos and nightclub slow sets did to my teenage self-confidence. I suspect that one night in GR80s would see all of my efforts undone. I shall be avoiding that one like the plague.

*Unique Selling Point - apparently it's a dating thing?

My Eyes! My Eyes!

Have you seen this? The horror. I watched it open mouthed through my fingers. It was almost enough to rouse me from my sickbed. Almost.

So, Are You Going Anywhere Nice On Your Holidays?

I'm generally happy enough to make smalltalk. It passes the time, makes people feel more comfortable in forced social situations and gives me endless opportunities to regale strangers with Walter Mitty esque tales of my adventures without having to worry that I'll be found out (who doesn't tell extravagant lies to taxi drivers?). But I hate making smalltalk when in front of a mirror; at the hairdresser's, say, or in the beautician's. Because I can see the lies tripping off my tongue and I redden instantly. I've discovered that I can manage the hairdresser's by pretending to be engrossed in the latest glossy magazine (okay, it's not entirely pretending. Grandad will be disgusted but I too have a morbid fascination with shiny useless objects... WWTDD is often the highlight of my day). The beautician's, however, poses a problem. They have big mirrors fixed on each wall of the treatment room which means that when you go for a bikini wax (like I did this morning) you get a wonderful view of your vagina too. And it's very hard to maintain enough concentration to lie when you're exposed so vulnerably and have a stranger hovering over your lady garden with hot wax and strips of cotton.

So instead of lying I find myself telling her everything. I think my brain panics at the sight of the wax and hopes (in vain) that full disclosure of whatever happens to be in my head will result in some kind of leniency on her part. Smalltalk with strangers doesn't necessarily have to be one lie after another (it's just more fun that way) but it certainly shouldn't consist of the brutal gory truth either. Sinéad does not need to know that I haven't had a wax since the last time I had sex, and that I haven't had sex in a while either. Because beauticians (like hairdressers) are masters of sympathetic flattery and a consolatory reply to a revelation like that goes something like "There there. I'm sure you'll find somebody to ride you eh, you know, soon..." (trails off uncomfortably). I'd say she thinks I'm a right fucking spacer. I think next time I'll pretend to have lost my voice. It'll be a relief for us both.

Rolf Harris na Gaeilge

Tadhg does his best Gil Grissom Impression

I was a lazy wagon in college, as an undergrad at least. I'm paying for it now. I pulled my socks up a little (under duress) when I undertook to do an MA (because I didn't fancy leaving college and having to get a job) but not quite enough to atone for my previous bone-idleness. Now that I'm out in the big bad world and trying to earn a living for myself I've discovered that my brain atrophies at at frightening rate when I'm not studying, so last year I decided to bite off more than I can chew take on a part-time postgrad course. I love it, but as I studiously avoided tutorials for oh, 3 years or more, I'm just about keeping my head above water grammar-wise. So I've decided to get a little help this year in the form of an advanced grammar class. Which is where I was subjected to this:

Amhrán an Ghaeilgeora Mhóir
(Mac Dhonnagáin)

Mura bhfuil an tuiseal ginideach agat
Agus smacht ar do chuid “h”annaí
Níl suim dá laghad agam ionat
Mar is cinnte go mbrisfidh tú mo chroí
Ach más Gaeilgeoir snasta blasta thú
Is má thuigeann tú cúrsaí gramadaí
Tar trasna na páirce móire chugam
Táim anseo i dtóin an tí.

Translated (roughly, and not by me) as:

If you don’t have a good grasp of the genitive case
And your “h”s aren’t in good shape
I have no interest in you
Because you’re sure to break my heart
But if you’re a polished, skilled Irish speaker,
And if you’re well across the grammar
Come across the big field to me,
I’m here in back of the house

As if reading it and underlining the finer points of the grammar wasn't punishment enough, we then had to listen to it. You can do the same yourself if so inclined here. A quote on the website boldly proclaims that "This classic recording from 1988 was greeted with horror by Irish-language purists when first released". I can't say I'm surprised, Irish-language purists have ears just like the rest of us so they were bound to find it offensive.

Would that I hadn't been such a dosser in college the first (or second) time around.