Ah Loan

Glasgow opened with a scene straight out of Trainspotting. On the train at that, all pish, chips and vinegar. Athlone opened, appropriately, in a garage. Not the usual piss and a Kit-Kat en route to Galway garage, but a suburban shop with petrol pumps and Polish counter staff. Ho, and indeed, hum. The shape of things to come?

The girls browsed the shelves, making noise about white wine spritzers and Pringles. Except for Strawberry Shortcake, who snotted herself on a yellow Caution! sign in her haste for the bathroom.

The shape of things to come.

Me? I was eyeing up the Bucky. Throwing it the kind of filthy, lustful looks you reserve for your lover after too much wine. Fingering the cans of Bulmers. I couldn't possibly. I was feeling insecure, you see. My hostess noticed me dithering like a dipso at a disco and pointed out that I was in Athlone, and that she was toting a six pack of Ritz. Bucky and Bulmers it is.

Two hours later agus mise ar mo shó, with Strawberry doing her best to get me on my ear. Maybe it's three hours later. We're in Karma, and it feels like we're in 1996.

I stood around looking cool, thinking cool, thinking I am too cool, for this school. Reality begged to differ. I may have looked every inch the aloof city sophistikitty in my head, but to him I looked approachable, and approach he did. You know him. The small, baldy, sweaty one with his creepy little hands deep in his sticky little pockets, rooting at his testicles. The one you hope isn't looking at you. But he was looking at me, and he fancied his chances. "Are you from Ah Loan yourself?" he barked at my nipples. No, I said. Dublin. "I was going to go outside for a bit of a walk" he said, licking his chapped lips. "I was thinking you'd want to come with me, like". Tempting? No. He broke eye contact then and resumed staring at my tits. "The wife's brother's missus is from Dublin" he mused, thoughtfully. "She's alright".

Butterpigs

"I'm gaunnae kick yer fuckin' heid in, ya bam!" he roared, lurching down the carriage, spraying spit and spilling cider. He brayed laughing and punched his mate in the head. I was delighted.

Glasgow.

Saturday night saw us in the Buff, dancing to Pulp's Disco 2000. "I grew up with woodchip on the walls" I laughed. He pretended to be appalled. He loves his bit of rough with her swinging hips, swigging from a tin of Red Stripe, happy as a lark. The pub is called the Butterfly and the Pig and I like its dinky little ditty -

I’ll never forget falling in love with a butterfly,
a pig was I a pig not she,
you see to fly like her or be like me a butterpig you must be,
to care, to share, to love everywhere, to have curly hair,
is the meaning of the butterfly and the pig,
the odd pair.

Though no odd pair we.

On the windy way home we blessed an amiable drunk with a cigarette in exchange for directions to our warm bed. He wished us a merry Christmas and congratulated himself on being the first to do so. Aye, second turn on the left... into an industrial wasteland from which you may never escape. An hour later and a pish down a laneway - we were lost. The perishing cold gnawed at my cheer and my chips. I hate Glasgow.

But I didn't, not really. On Sunday morning I ate porridge with maple syrup in the Willow Tea Rooms and tried on every red woollen coat in Scotland. We trailed around GoMA, drank Glühwein at the fair, swung rosie cheeked with cold on the carousel swings. I eyed the Helter Skelter longingly but didn't push my luck - it's cute til the carnies have to pry your ample arse off the slide.

To the dreary Dows by Queen Street Station then to watch the football. I sat with a book as a beard, soaking up the locals. The miserable middle-aged women with their shopping, Bacardi Breezers brightening their smiles, the lone and lonely men. A Glaswegian L'Absinthe.

Before boarding the train from Central Station the Jaffa Cake dipped in to the chippie with a Mars Duo. We sat amongst the pigeons then, grinning, greasy with batter and banter. A fitting end to the weekend. Butterpigs both.

Mind The Gap

The train was filling up. Praiseach de phótairí strewn about the carriage, spreading legs and luggage across the seats in an effort to secure some space for their hangovers. Morning-after-the-night-before gaeilgeoirí. The worst kind.

She blustered onto the train at Mala, and the other passengers averted their eyes. Mine, however, were fucking glued to her. Mad, brassy burgundy coloured hair, denim jeans and a fringed denim jacket, she was all rhinestones and righteousness, looking about her like she wanted to batter the face off the next one who looked crooked at her. So I swept my handbag into a cuddle on my lap and nodded at the seat beside me. She looked grateful, and a little like she might bite me. Once she'd settled, the natter kicked off; each episode illustrated with photos from her camera phone. I'm pretty intimately acquainted with her domestic situation at this stage, everything from her ma's fibroids to her dog's gluecoma. He has a good heart though, she tells me, so he'll live for ages with it. He just keeps walking into things. I know people just like that, I tell her. She makes me smile all the way to Thurles, this pavee lackeen, and leaves me with a hug and a thank you. For what? I asked her. Nothing, she laughed, and she barrelled back out through the carriage with the same fonn troda on her that she had when she stomped in.

I think I fell a little in love with her.

As the train pulls away from Thurles we pass acres of flooded farmland. There are sheep standing in grumpy little clusters atop the hillocks that punctuate the dreary landscape. A pair of swans glide majestically across the submerged pastures, looking for all the world like they own the place. I stretch out and slip my headphones on, pleased that for the next two hours I can idle in daydreams. There are no more stops until Heuston, so I cast my thoughts adrift again to paddle across the sodden plains. More swan than sheep.

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.

Life Coaching

keith:
how badly do you want a boyfriend?
me:
on a scale of 1-10?
keith:
yep.
me:
27. i've been single for too long. i'm bored shitless.
keith:
i'm just blabbering, i'd be able to suggest something good if i knew you better.
I NEED TO KNOW YOU, ROSIE
what are your passions?
me:
music, writing, cooking, my dogs, my friends, sex, modern art, drinking...
keith:
a recipe for disaster, you'll end up like Courtney Love if you're not careful. look at all the bad men around you, and the culture. it's all about drinking. too much drinking. add sex to that and you'll end up going home with a new man a night, add art to that and you'll meet some artist, develop a coke addiction and end up walking the streets at 4am looking to score a hit of heroin (that's where it always progresses to) any way you can (i.e. sex).
me:
you'd make some lifestyle coach, Keeks. so far your assessment of me is basically "you're fucked".
keith:
there is light at the end of the tunnel. it's not going to be easy. but with the right diet, exercise, horoscopes and yoga, you can get through this. but remember you have to keep truckin' on, the last thing we need is you getting depressed cause then you'll fall behind at work, get onto drugs, lose your friends, and fall into the same quagmire as mentioned earlier.
me:
permission to copy and paste this advice for a blog post if i have a slow day tomorrow? because this is comedy gold.
...
at least i hope to fuck it's comedy.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Kiki. I haven't, but he hasn't let that (or the fact that he lives in Australia) stop him from stepping in and gallantly trying to solve all of my non-existent problems. His brand of advice is peculiar, his brand of humour occasionally offensive, he asks hard questions and is not afraid to make up his own answers. He likes horses, engineering, unsolicited emails and his girlfriend. He is not (yet) a professional Life Coach, but he's good at it, no?

Cárta Poist

The wind whipped my bikini bottoms off our third floor balcony and tossed them onto the street below. Mortified, I belted down the stairs while the other three stood at the window, laughing like hyenas. When I fell out onto the street it was deserted, save for a middle aged man with a baby in a buggy, standing right where I'd seen them land. And there was no sign at all of my knickers. Thinking they might have blown further along the street, I walked a little way in both directions, trying to look nonchalant. It was only when I turned to ask him if he'd seen them that the penny dropped.

May he wear them with pride.

Review: Sex And The City (Again)

The best I can say for it is that it satisfied my curiosity to see it.

What I was impressed with was the crazy bitch sat beside me. Mid twenties, well dressed if not overdressed, bizarre accent halfway between New York and Dublin 4 (I can't figure out which part of it was native - I suspect she may have actually been from Offaly). She hummed to herself while her friend talked during the trailers, then began to hyperventilate when the opening credits kicked in. "Oh my fucking G!!!" she stage-whispered, "I'm so excited!!!". I had guessed, what with all of the exclamation marks. She spent the rest of the film alternating between wild, inappropriate laughter (with hysterical clapping) and deep, snotty, sobbing (with frequent enthusiastic mucus snuffle-ups). I'd love to hook her up with the guy who was sat beside me for I Am Legend. They'd have three-headed babies.

Poetry Cornered

William Butler Yeats

• In a fit of facetiousness, I chose as my sister's thesis title a line from Yeats' dirge, September 1913 (Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, it's with O'Leary in the grave). As it happens, Yeats was an alumni of the same institution (then The Metropolitan School of Art, now the National College of Art and Design).

• When I was a kid I had a map of Ireland complete with portraits of her literary heroes. Most of them were ancient and beardy looking (I had not, at that stage, developed my preference for hirsute men) but Wilde and Yeats looked young and presentable, so I used imagine them as my boyfriends (there were no teen magazines or pop idols in our house).

• His brother Jack was an expressionist painter, and a very fine one at that. Were I the boys' mother, he'd definitely have been my favourite.

• Apparently William was big into mysticism and the occult. WH Auden criticized this aspect of Yeats' work as the "deplorable spectacle of a grown man occupied with the mumbo-jumbo of magic and the nonsense of India." I copy and pasted that from Wikipedia, so it must be true.

• All of his Irish mysticism stuff bores and annoys me in equal measure - I find it pretentious and very difficult to identify with. I imagine he would probably find me pretentious and very difficult to identify with.

• He is somewhat of a posterboy for unrequited love - having followed Maud Gonne around like a lost puppy for 19 years he finally bedded her in 1908. Whatever he did that night, he made quite an impression: By January 1909, Gonne was sending Yeats letters praising the advantage given to artists who abstain from sex. She must have made a more favourable impression on him, however, as he proposed again to her (proposal #346, I think) and also proposed to her pubescent daughter. He was still rattling on about their one-nighter in A Man Young And Old almost 20 years later (which must have pleased his young wife George no end).
  

Blame Annie and Tim.

The Government Stooge

I have a new hero, and she blogs over here. She writes about life as a civil servant with the flair and wit of a female Flann O' Brien or an English-speaking Máirtín Ó Cadhain; her guide to the typical civil service day is eye-watering (parts one, two and three). What I really love about her though is that she could have been me. Or I could have been her. I'm not sure of the semantics, to be honest. What I mean is that I came horribly close to taking a job as EO with the Civil Service.

Having finally graduated from UCD in 2004 with a degree and an MA in nothing particularly useful, I panicked. I hated my part-time job in the bank with the kind of passion I usually reserve for commenters who correct my grammar, but I hadn't a clue what else to do. I tried teaching for a short while and had what I can honestly say were the worst two months of my entire life (a story for another day) but given that that was the only thing I could obviously apply my qualifications to, I worried that I would end up stuck with it. My previous work experience had seen me work as a fruit picker, shelf stacker and professional ironer of other people's shirts so I was starting with pretty low expectations - the civil service's open competition for executive officers sounded like the short-term answer to all of my prayers. I rattled off an application and a short while later found myself sitting an exam with 50 gazillion other hopefuls of varying shapes and sizes, a sizable chunk of whom looked like they might be dangerous and/or mentally ill. The test was a piece of piss compared to the car crash that was my MA - I just skipped all the bits with numbers in and had a bit of craic with the word puzzle ones. A few months later again I got a letter, I'd done alright in the tests, alright enough to be allowed to repeat the experience.

This was to be a more intimate and intense affair - three short exam papers, an Irish oral exam (optional bonus round) and an interview. Again, the papers were a breeze, bar the one with all of the numbers on it which I more or less ignored. The super Gaeilge bonus round was fun, as evidently the examiners had been expecting some dolt who was just scooping for points and couldn't string a sentence together, so they were thrilled when I proved both able and happy to converse with them. A short break and a cup of tea, then it was time for the interview proper.

I sat in the comfy chairs in the lounge and fidgeted for a bit. Wandered off to the bathroom to use the loo, paused to check that my face was still on straight, nodded to the competition and sashayed confidently back out into the lobby (I was wearing my favourite interview combo of black poloneck, mustard swing skirt, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels). A grey and worried looking man came out to fetch me and ushered me ahead of him into the interview room, where two other grey looking types awaited me.

It was an interview format I hadn't come across before and I've not come across since, in that they asked me if I'd like to consult my notes and reassured me that they would be asking the same questions as they'd asked on the original application form. Em, notes? It seems that all of the other candidates were aware of this bizarre let-me-read-you-what-I-wrote style interview process, and had come along with their scripts to hand. I was the only fucking idiot who hadn't read the small print and had planned on ad-libbing my way into their hearts. Already unimpressed by my non-conformity, they kicked off anyway with a barrage of questions that all started with "It says here that...". I relaxed after a bit and got into my stride, waxing lyrical about my superpowers and beaming smiles at them in a vain effort to lift their grey pallor. And that was when I realised that I could feel the cold plastic of the chair under my thigh. Just the one thigh though, the right one. I shifted in my chair, puzzled. And then realised that my skirt was tucked firmly into my knickers, and had been since my earlier trip to the jacks. The sashaying around the lobby, the confident stroll into the interview, all done with my arse on display.

I spent the remainder of the interview shifting in my seat like one plagued with piles, thankfully dislodging the hem of my skirt just before I had to shake their hands and scuttle out of the room again. The bitch I'd nodded to as I was leaving the jacks earlier was sitting there with her notes, looking smug, thrilled that I'd made such a literal arse of myself. I shot her a filthy look and sloped off home.

A month later, my results arrived. No. 1 on the panel. Fuck her and her trouser suit.

Aon Focal, Daw Focal

I rose from my bed at an unreasonable hour today to spend an interminably long morning interviewing trainee teachers. So keen was I to get the fuck out of there afterwards that I didn't even stick around for the free lunch, and I was starving. But I needed to get away.

For those of you unfortunate enough not to be Irish; a little background. We have two official languages here, Irish and English, and though most everyone speaks English only a minority are fluent in Irish. It is, however, a compulsory subject in both primary and secondary education and as a consequence all primary school teachers in the country are obliged to have a proficiency in Irish (let's not open a can of worms and call it "fluency"). Teachers who have trained abroad must pass an Irish language exam before we let them near the kids and teachers training here study Irish language and literature as part of their course. Which is where I come in. I don't teach them (thankfully) but I am drafted in a couple of times a year to put them through their paces and make sure they've done their homework.

It does not make for an ideal Saturday morning, and it's a good job they pay me an obscene amount of money* to do it. I had the same conversation 19 times over with 19 young women, each of whom broke out in a nervous rash at the sight of me and then did their level best to stay schtum for 10 minutes in order to avoid making any grammatical errors. Eventually most of them twig that I can't/won't let them go until they've spoken to me so that I might assess their language skills but this usually takes about ten minutes of gentle cajoling from me and a lifetime of fucking fidgeting and avoiding eye contact on their part. The conversations are excruciating, banalities exchanged in pidgin Irish** punctuated by uncomfortable silences and nervous laughter. They do, however, give me a valuable insight into the criteria for primary school teachers in Ireland:

• You must be from either Mullingar or Wexford
• If you don't play sports you damn well better play an instrument (preferably brass or woodwind)
• You must express a distaste for all things Dublin and a burning desire to move back to Mullingar/Wexford and Mammy as soon as possible (Mammy is always to be referred to by her full title and with a capital M)
• You must have no interest whatsoever in reading books (bar P.S. I Love You) or watching films (bar P.S. I Love You)
• Your summer holidays will be spend in Santa Ponza.
• Your musical interests will include Pink, Boyzone, Celine Dion and (bizarrely) Meat Loaf.

I fear for our nation's children. There is a strange and conservative atmosphere in the college - it feels more like a school (or a nunnery) and you know instinctively not to run in the corridors. The students are almost all female and wholesome with it, it's like one big girls' club.

Not for me.

*It's probably not an obscene amount of money to anyone who has a real-life grown-up job but when you're a monkey like I am and you're accustomed to being paid in peanuts, it's quite the pot o' gold.
**Occasionally I get a fluent one and the conversation flows. It's still limited to Mullingar/Wexford and Cecelia fucking Ahern though.

Review: Lars And The Real Girl

A very considerate film about love, loneliness and mental illness.

I liked it.

Phuck Off (Review: In The Name Of The Fada)

I made a half-empty promise there recently to review Des Bishop's latest offering, In the Name of the Fada. Thankfully a nice lady in Co. Chorcaí has saved me the bother and written one herself instead. Please adopt a sanctimonious and slightly whingeing tone as you read:

I was reminded by my gaelgóir friends to watch Des Bishop's Irish language programme, In The Name of the Fada, on RTÉ (March 13).
[Strike #1: Gaeilgeoirí don't have non-Gaeilgeoir friends, do they? And if you insist on referring to Irish speakers as if they merit a special category of friend - learn to spell Gaeilgeoir. Or look it up. Whatevs.]

The effervescent, high-pitched tone baffled me.
[Effervescence and Gaeilge, like Mentos and Diet Coke, do not mix. Oh no, wait...]

This new Irish word starting with 'ph' and ending with 'k' in phonetic sounds kept coming into his delivery of newly-acquired Irish; in fact it was used almost twice in some abairtí gearra.
[I believe the word may have been "fuck", Eilís, with an "f". The Urban Dictionary gives a handy guide to its usage.]

I was at a loss and reached for my bíobla na Gaeilge (Ó Domhnall), but failed to find such a word.
[I hear they're bringing out a Lolcat edition! I'm excited.]

However, this f..k focal kept 'adorning' each Irish sentence, and as it was not in keeping with the rich, flowery blas of the gaeilge that I learned, I lost interest and switched my TV to 'balbh'.
[Had they censored the subtitles?]

I was reminded of that old saying 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'.
[I suspect you might be proof positive of that, Eilís.]

Eilís Uí Bhriain
Caisleán Uí Liatháin
Co Chorcaí
[source]

Abie Philbin-Bowman has written a review too, in the Dubliner. A scathing review, which is not at all self-promoting or shortsighted. (I suspect that scathing should be in inverted commas too, or air-quotes, or some such shit, for I suspect that's how the piece was conceived in Abie's head). He slates Bishop's assertion that Irish is "becoming associated with forward thinking and innovation"; according to the bould Abie, "Such self-delusion is a vanity project we can ill afford."

Reviews: Why bother your hole writing your own when you can take the piss out of someone else's?

I'm At A Loss For A Title

I don't normally do lazy look-what-I-read-in-the-paper posts (being so self-absorbed that I assume the trivialities of my own life to be far more interesting than anything I read in the papers) but this one was too good not to pass on. From this morning's Irish Times:

A woman (35) in Kansas sat on her boyfriend's toilet for two years. Sheriff Bryan Whipple of Ness City said it appeared her skin had grown around the seat.

She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

"We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital," Whipple said. "She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body. It is hard to imagine . . . I still have a hard time imagining it myself."

Her boyfriend told police he brought her food and water, and asked her every day to come out of the bathroom. "Her reply would be, 'maybe tomorrow'."

Police are investigating whether she was mistreated but she has refused to co-operate.

What the fuck?

For Terence

Here's why.

Rosie's Tired Brain Does A Disco Dance

I was tipping along the Grand Canal on my way to work this morning when I got an overwhelming urge to dance across the flagstones, like Michael Jackson in the Billie Jean video. But I am rhythmically dyslexic and the song I was listening to was Thom Yorke's Harrowdown Hill, so I think I must be going mad.

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?

Animal Lovers

As my previous request has yielded nothing particularly helpful, I turned to my googlemachine for answers. Yahoo Answers came up with the goods, yes indeedy.

The Burning Question:
If you were an animal, what would you be and why?

Answer from the neurotic but danerous (sic) #1:
I would be a mouse because people would leave you alone and I'd be able to scurry. I'd also lead a danerous life with people always trying to trap you and stuff.

Answer from the lonely reject that is #2:
I would like to be a single cell organism which breaks into two cells as a process of reproduction and practically either lives multiple lives later on or dies the time it reproduces. Again no hassles of searching the right mate as I break myself up to create something new.

Answer from the "joker" of the pack, #3:
i wanna be a dog for real because i wanna see what it's like to really do it d o g g y style. i wanna know if doggy vaj is funner than people vaj. i bet it's tighter.
just kiffing.

How mad are those fuckers? Imagine getting stuck on a bus with them for oh, 5 weeks, crossing the Australian outback. And having a gun, but only two bullets.

I'm rethinking my application.

Answers On A Postcard, Please

The folk who want to send me on holidays to Australia to pick up "hunks" have asked me to submit some digital photos of myself and to fill out this retarded application form before they whisk me away to make all of my dreams come true.

A little like LC did, now that I think of it.

Anyway, I'm having a little bother. The questionnaire is very deliberately "zany" (with capital air-quotes) and I'm not sure if its silly nature is designed to encourage dullards to get a little krayzee in the name of good television or if it is in fact designed to weed out people like me who are maybe a little too genuinely krayzee to take with you across the outback on a bus. I think my best bet would be to err on the safe and "quirky" side of mental, so with that in mind, your help with the following would be very much appreciated. If you don't think you know me well enough to hazard a guess at the answers, make shit up. They're not going to know, are they?

1. What's your idea of fun? (keep it clean.)
   
2. What's the craziest thing you've ever done? (keep it clean...)
   
3. Describe yourself in three words. (articulate? cynical? romantic?)
   
4. If you were an animal, what would you be, and why? (keep it clean!)
   
5. What's the most romantic thing you've ever done? (keep it... *sigh*)
   

In case you think I'm being a lazy bitch and getting you to fill out my application for me, I assure you that I have managed to answer some of the questions myself. Do you have a full driver's licence? Indeed and I do. What is your date of birth? 27 years ago from next Thursday. Describe your ideal man? Adrien Brody.

Things got curious towards the end, with question no #18: Tell us all you know about BMXs. My answer:

Not a massive amount, if I'm honest. My sister's ex was into them but he was also into vegetarianism, so that doesn't help.

I had one as a kid though, as did my brother. I'm not sure where we got them, but we weren't cool enough to realise that they were cool. My parents brought us to the BMX track in Marlay Park once in an effort to train us into some tricks, but I started crying after I saw the height of the bumps and hillocks and refused to play. My brother gave it a go and promptly busted his face. Game over.

Other than that, try Wikipedia.

PS. Why do you want to know?

Tomorrow: we choose a photo.

Tomfoolery!

I hopped into the taxi, bade the genial driver a good morning and settled in to stare out the window into the rain and the traffic. The radio was tuned (inevitably) to Dublin's Country Mix where the deejay was asking listeners to call, text, email or telex with their answers for the morning's competition (I think on Dublin's Country Mix they must have deejays, if not disk jockeys - certainly there are no DJs).

The puzzle he posed was thus: 11% of women and 16% of men admit to doing this in the workplace.

"Ah now" said genial taxi driver "that's a tough one, what do you reckon?" I looked at him in the mirror, trying to work out if he was taking the piss out of me or not. It seemed not. Fuck, I thought, it's a bit of a racy competition for Dublin's Country Mix at this hour of the morning, isn't it? I couldn't hide my dirty snigger from the driver as I hazarded a few guesses in my head.

11% of women and 16% of men admit to having affairs in the workplace... 11% of women and 16% of men admit to sleeping in the workplace... 11% of women and 16% of men admit to masturbating in the workplace... 11% of women and 16% of men admit to lusting after the boss in the workplace... 11% of women and 16% of men admit to not washing their hands after using the toilet in the workplace... 11% of women and 16% of men admit to picking their noses in the workplace...

A nice Garth Brooks number and the first few calls and texts began to trickle through. And fuck me if they didn't make me feel like such a deviant for entertaining thoughts such as the ones above. Breda wanted to know if it might be "going for a jog at lunchtime". Ann thought it might be "smiling at their colleagues in the morning". James, the dark horse, thought it might be that they "have a cigarette outside with some of the others". Thomas called to say that it was his seventieth birthday and that he thought it might be "playing the fool. You know, play acting, a bit of tomfoolery!".

"I think he might have it there" said genial taxi driver, nodding to himself.

You've Been Flirting Again

I had an absolute cunt of a day in work today. Approaching deadlines, encroaching work experience students, technical glitches, bureaucratic hitches. A ton of stupid shit that needs to be sorted, oh, some time last week. And I looked like I was having one of those days in work, too. I'd gotten up late this morning having gone to bed last night with damp hair, leaving me with a do like an extra from the Lion King. Jeans, blah jumper, grumpy scowl. Hot. I headed out late morning to do a few things around the village. Get my boots fixed after wearing the heels off them at the weekend, pick up my medication, buy some lunch. And returned half an hour later perplexed but much cheered.

First to the cobbler's; a cheeky redheaded chap as befits his profession. So when would you like to come back and see me? Cue a quizzical look from me (surely he can't be flirting with me?) and then an embarrassed pause from him. Come back, I mean - to collect your boots?

Then to the chemist's to get my prescription filled. What's your address? Right. Oh, I have another address here, a Rathmines one? Oh. (again? Come off it...) You're a very mysterious lady then, aren't you? Keeping me guessing... I can't be sure as I was panicking and backing slowly out the door at this point, but I think he may actually have winked at me.

Feathers ruffled, I headed in to the deli next door to buy lunch (well, Monster Munch, if I'm honest, but I decided that a turkey sandwich wouldn't kill me). I stood waiting for the sandwich man to finish chatting to his mate, pretending not to earwig on their conversation but trying to keep my sniggers to myself (he's funny). Finally it was my turn. So, what gossip have you got for me? I'll trade you salacious gossip for a sandwich. You look like you might have something good to share.

WHAT THE FUCK?

I'm going to work unwashed and dressed up like a car crash from now on. It seems to work for me, at least with the village shopkeeps.