Reader's Choice #2

On Medication

for mysterious Billy, who likes pharmacists too

I've mentioned before that I have quite a close relationship with my pharmacist. He's short of stature and bald as an egg, with a winsome demeanour and creepily small hands. I entertain his awkward flirtations, he fills my lengthy prescriptions. We make it work. So imagine his surprise and delight this morning when I hobbled into his shop and hoiked up my skirt. Did I say delight? I meant horror. He licked his eyebrows for a second or two as the hem lifted but when he saw the state of the thigh I was proffering for his inspection - puffy and swollen with a nasty red bite - there was a flicker of revulsion before he forced his solicitous face back on.

The bite in question was not from an adventurous lover, but a midge. A common-or-garden in my fucking back garden midge. I am n'allergick to the little bastards and am usually careful (that intoxicating fragrance? It's deet, darling...) but in a fit of overtiredness and hangover I shed boots and tights when I got in from Cork on Monday evening and sat bare-legged in the garden, eating my dinner. When I woke yesterday morning, my thigh had swollen to the size of a tree trunk (and okay, it wasn't that far off it to begin with, but at least it was pleasantly milky in colour). I stuffed myself with antihistamines and slathered on the cortisone before heading into work, where I divided my day between whiny complaining and narcoleptic napping.

Determined to rid myself of stumpthigh, I shambled stiff-legged into Pharmacist this morning to demand that he make it better. I showed him my grievous injury (much to the amusement of the mean lady pharmacist*) but all I got was sympathy, an ice-pack and more fucking antihistamines. Unwilling to suffer another dozy day in work, I took some Pro Plus to counteract their soporific effects and found myself wide eyed and knackered, cranky as a crack addict for the morning (and with a freezing cold, massive and still red and itchy thigh).

Good times.

My sympathetic co-workers suggested that I shut the fuck up whining about it and try a poultice when I got home. I reckoned it couldn't hurt, so I've replaced the ice-pack with some warm soggy bread, and made quite the mess in the kitchen. Honestly, I don't think I've ever looked this fetching - in my pants, covered in sog, living in squalor, wild-eyed with itchy distress, and blogging about it.

*I've just realised that that post is dedicated to Billser too. People will think we have a problem.

Beswankled once again, but feeling the better for it

I've just returned from 5 days in Italy to a miserable rain sodden Dublin. What the fuck is up with the weather at the moment? Granted it makes for a wonderful conversation opener with the city's taxi drivers, but it's putting everyone in awful bad humour. My good self in particular, as I had to pay one of the city's finest to ferry me home from work today. I'm not usually a lazy shite, preferring to stroll the leafy-with-love banks of the Grand Canal (even in the rain!) or to dice with death and pedestrians on my bicycle, but I had to fork out a tenner today to listen to some bollix's patter all through the traffic home. My trip to Italy was wonderful in all respects but one; I got another mosquito bite. Just the one, but yet again the cunt went for my ankle and almost immediately it ballooned into a discoloured and horribly unattractive swankle. I haven't been able to get into a pair of shoes since last Thursday, and though the flip-flops served me well in Italy, they're not so suited to Dublin's monsoon rains.

Of course, a four mile round trip isn't the best idea on a swankle anyway. Neither my finances nor my patience will stretch to daily taxi rides though, so I've my foot on ice and a face full of antihistamines (they're smashing right before bedtime!) in the hope that I'll have ankles again by the morning. A nice brisk pace in and out to the office will go some way towards counteracting all the eleventy course meals I ate while away. So will not eating for the next week.

The trip had a purpose other than gluttony for pasta and veal; a treasured friend was biting the bullet and marrying his seven year sweetheart. I just had to go to see it for myself, as did the other 109 guests. The wedding was in Italy as they wanted to keep it small and minimise the pomp and ceremony, so one can only imagine what it might have been like were it in Mullingar as per the original plan. I wasn't expecting to enjoy it to be honest, feeling a little under pressure to look lovely and charm strangers (only the latter would be a forté of mine...) not to mention behave myself in the company of both my parents and copious amounts of free booze, but I had an absolute ball.

And behaved myself to boot. I even met a nice boy (a teacher! how horribly respectable!) and didn't kiss him; a sure sign that I've a genuine interest. Judging by the sly winks and unsubtle nudges I was getting from the assembled company on my last night there, he may have been exhibiting some signs of interest himself. He's still there (being of a respectable profession with a ridiculous amount of holidays) but I've made some preliminary enquiries, so let's sit back and hope like fuck that he takes the bait when he gets home.

Someone has to.

Anyway, back to the wedding. At the risk of sounding like a big girl's blouse, it was a genuinely moving occasion. There was a series of misfortunes and a comedy of errors in the run up to it; the groom's sister took ill and didn't make it over, the groom left his suit in the airport, the choirboy got wankered and smashed his head off a pool table (needing 8 stitches and a good slagging), one of the groomsmen had his clothes and cash delivered by the cops having woken up in his knickers in the piazza in the wee small hours, one of the pretty ladies stood on a sea urchin, that kind of thing. But the day itself went without a hitch. (Or it didn't... pardon the disgustingly obvious pun). She looked beautiful, he looked proud, they both looked happy and grateful for their good fortune. I got to wear my big sunglasses and a bigger hat, and someone told me I looked like Buffy in that dirty teen chick flick adaptation of Les Liasons Dangereuses (untrue, but very flattering). There was no Come on Eileen, no Birdy Song, no Cliff Richard, just some ancient local boys who looked like they'd been embalmed and then reanimated for the occasion, belting out the tunes in the corner as we ate our way into the early hours of Saturday morning. My brother -the best man- gave a speech that was both sweet and utterly mortifying, and carried it off with eloquence he didn't know he had. My parents reminisced about their own wedding (at 22 years of age, it seems unimaginable now) and my faith in romance felt magically restored.

So here's to optimism. I hope a few more of my mates decide to tie the knot soon, because in spite of the rain and the swankles, it's put me in a good mood.

So, Belarus, eh?

I believe I may have mentioned (eleventy billion times) how unprepared I was for last week's humanitarian adventure, having been roped in just 2 weeks beforehand. Man, did I underestimate the impact it would have on me. Okay, I knew (as did everyone else who knows me) that the cycle would likely kill me. As it happened, the mosquitoes got there first, so I was spared the indignity of falling off my bike and instead suffered the indignity of 3 days on a bus with my legs in the air (which is not nearly as kinky as it sounds) and dropping my pants in the back of an ambulance (which, again, is not as fun as I'd like to imagine). Those days on the bus were hard. 35 degrees outside, travelling along at 4mph behind the cyclists, smiling at the jibes from my fellow travellers about how this was a handy excuse not to cycle and trying not to hate them as much as I hated the mosquitoes. I had some low moments, and were it not for the company of a fellow banjaxed budgie and our two medics I think I would have been on the next flight home.

But the cycling (or not) was only for 3 days, and for me was never the real point of the trip. Having spent two rowdy nights in Minsk at the start of the trip, we left the small village of Babruysk and headed for our first destination, a sanatorium in Svetlagorsk. The institution on whose grounds we pitched for the night acts as a sort of summer camp for local children, something that is apparently very much a Belarussian tradition. Sort of like my brother and I being packed off kicking and screaming to Stewart's Hospital for 3 weeks every summer, I suppose. Tightly controlled fun is the name of the game! Still, this was a gentle introduction to the mindset and culture behind the places we would see during the rest of our trip.

I hadn't appreciated how different the Belarussian culture would be to Irish culture. Belarus is effectively a dictatorship, and that much is apparent the moment you step off the plane in Minsk. We'd been forwarned that the militia are not to be fucked with, and one look at them was enough to reinforce that. I met a group of musicians on the last night of the trip (a Beatles tribute band from Amsterdam... you'd wonder) who told me of a scene they'd witnessed at the festival they'd played at the day before. A group of young lads were set upon and batoned by the militia and when the band asked why, it was explained to them that the kids had been waving the old Belarussian flag, rather than the new one approved by President Alexander Lukashenko. Jeez. I know the Gardaí come in for some flak here, but you'd generally have to be properly acting the cunt to get a kicking for it. Anyway, we learned quickly and coped with the politics the same way the locals do; keep a low profile, and don't piss people off.

From Svetlagorsk we travelled on to Rechitsa, where we had a charming welcome from the resident kids. The director of the institution in Rechitsa is the local hero, Ivan Ivanovitch, a military man who runs a tight ship but must have a huge heart. We didn't get to spend long with the kids there as we'd be interrupting their routine but the ones we met were gorgeous, and made everyone feel that their suffering (be it bike or bus related) had been worthwhile. The kids put on a concert for us that night, shouting tunelessly to the rancid strains of a piano accordion, and I don't think there was anyone there who had ever clapped harder at a gig. To see kids so happy to engage and so eager to befriend us, despite their sad circumstances and limited prospects, was truly a lesson in humble optimism.

At this stage of the trip, everyone was feeling the emotional strain as well as the physical, and it showed. We dealt with it each night in the way that large groups of relative strangers with limited options tend to do (vodka was readily available at about €3 a bottle). Not exemplary behaviour, I grant you, but as a social lubricant and a short-term coping mechanism we owe a lot to the boozing we did on the trip.

Fuck it, sure I didn't have an 80k cycle ahead of me the following morning. What did I care?

Our final port of call before heading back to Minsk was a place called Vasilevka, near Gomel in the south of Belarus. The institution we visited there played host to us for 3 days, and will play on my mind for the rest of my life. But more anon. It was a long week, and I need a stiff drink.