A hair of the Grandad

Grandad May 9th, 2008

I went for my annual haircut the other day.

Apart from being a good cutter, I like the bloke there because he doesn’t have a holiday fixation.  I can never understand that weird aspect of haircutting.  You can get chatting to anyone anywhere, and they will talk about the weather, or politics or [God help us] sport, but they never mention holidays.  With hairdressers, it’s always the first question - “Got any holidays planned for this year?”

His opening gambit was “what are you doing with yourself these days?”  This is a tricky question.  If I say ‘work’, they ask me about that, but seeing as I don’t know what I’m doing, it’s hard to explain to them, so we both end up confused.  If I say I’m doing nothing, it sounds lazy, and it’s not true.  I told him I was writing a book, and immediately regretted it.

He perked up and became interested.  We had crossed the boundary of casual chat and had entered the realm of serious conversation, and I knew I was lost because I knew what was coming next.

“What’s the book about?”

I floundered.  I hate that question.  I never know what to say.

“It’s about life,” I said hopefully.

This, of course confused him.  “Is it fact or fiction?” he asked.

Again I was stumped.  “It’s sort of a bit of both, but it’s mainly fact.”  I wasn’t going to tell him about blogging because he was confused enough already.  And even if he was an avid blogger, he would only ask me what my blog is about.  That’s another question that brings me out in a cold sweat.

“It’s about rambles,” I said hopefully.

“Ah! A book about walking?”

“No.  Not that kind of rambles.  It’s about what goes on in my head.”

This utterly bewildered him, so we were both now in the same boat.

He started to ask a couple more questions, but thought better of it, and finished the cutting in silence.  He did a good job.

So, Dear Reader.  I need your help.

What the fuck is this blog about?

How can I describe it in a couple of concise sentences that won’t have people reaching for the Prozac, or quietly phoning the men in white coats?

If you can do that, then you have more or less described the book.

You will be doing me a service and possibly saving my hairdresser’s sanity.  

Evil Austrians

Grandad May 8th, 2008

I accidentally went into my spam mail yesterday.

I was about to click out of it again, but one mail caught my eye.  I’m not sure why.

spam

“Get a totally wicked wiener”

What the hell does that mean?

I know what ‘totally’ is supposed to mean.  It’s that word that is totally overused and is so totally ignorant sounding in any context nowadays.  I presume it crept into modern parlance through one of those ghastly American comedies like ‘Friends’ or ‘Sex in the city’, so everyone pronounces it as ‘todally’. It has become as ubiquitous as ‘like’ [or 'loike'] and has to be scattered like thistledown through every damned sentence these days. This just makes me want to smash the speakers teeth back through their tonsils.

‘Wicked’ means evil or bad.  We all know that.

But what the hell is a ‘wiener’?  I had to look that one up.

Apparently it is either a hot-dog or a German word for a Viennese.

I presume these people aren’t trying to sell me hot-dogs through the Interweb, so it can only be a Viennese.

Why, in the name of all that is holy, does someone want me to have an evil person from Vienna?  Is this some new European law that we all have to adopt a criminal from another country?  Is it some new fashion statement like a replica Rolex watch?  Is this the new ‘must have’ [another horrendous contemporary cliche!]?

I did send off for the ‘fantastic larger rod’ though.

I believe fishing is a very relaxing pastime.

A sting in the tale

Grandad May 7th, 2008

I like nature.

I love the sound of the birds and the hum of the insects.

I never kill anything unless it is a tourist.  Or a wasp.

Tourists are irritating feckers who clutter up the place and make the countyside look untidy.  Shooting them is good sport.

But I cannot for the life of me understand wasps.

What are they for?

I have always hated them and they are the only non-human life form I go out of my way to kill.

I will go out of my way not to harm Just about any other species.  I’m not saying that if I found an homeless Ebola virus, I would offer him accommodation, but you get my gist.

I am forever carefully carrying out spiders, moths and other life forms from the house and setting them free.

When I see a wasp, I see red.  Or rather, I see black and yellow and automatically reach for the swatter.

This weather has brought them out in their droves.  The queens all seem to be looking for nesting places, and I am massacring them at the rate of several a day.  I get a kick out of the thought that killing one queen eliminates thousands of possible future generations.

I was stung by wasps as a child.  But I was also stung by bees, horseflies, nettles and jellyfish, so that argument doesn’t work.  I always treat bees with great tenderness, because I like them.

They say that God gave us friends by way of an apology for giving us relatives, but what are wasps here for?

And why is it that when I smash another wasp against the window pane, I often think of Mary Harney?

harneywasp

Big fat ugly useless creatures.

Irish summers

Grandad May 6th, 2008

To those of you not familiar with Irish weather, we have two kinds of summer here.

The normal summer lasts from May until September.  It is typified by grey skies and rain.  Occasionally, it stops raining for a couple of days, and we call that a drought.  That is when the hose-pipe bans are put in place and we are asked to conserve water.  People complain about the cold and the rain and the standard greeting in the street is “are we ever going to get a summer?”   The rain is invariable at its worst when there is an open air concert planned or when people book their annual leave.

The other is a rarity and it is what we call a heatwave.  This is when the sun shines and the temperature rises above 16 degrees.

During a heatwave, everyone goes mad and goes around wearing next to nothing.  They complain about the heat and how their gardens are drying up.  On the rare occasions when heatwaves coincide with weekends, they pile into their cars and all head for Brittas Bay.  When they get there, they complain about the crowds, and then on the way home again, they complain about the traffic jams.  After two days of this they are muttering about how they wish it would cool down a bit because the heat is killing them.

Heatwaves usually occur in the lead up to the end of year school exams, thereby ensuring that no study is done.  They also usually occur mid-week, when everyone is at work anyway.  They rarely occur when people take their annual leave.

We are enjoying the End of Year Exam Heatwave at the moment.  It is expected to last until Thursday.  But then it may end tomorrow, or Friday.  It’s unlikely to last until Saturday, because people will be off work then.  Heatwaves rarely last more than a week.  Another one should be due at the beginning of next month because that is when the exams actually take place.

Unfortunately, this time, the heatwave coincided with a bank holiday.  This led to the entire transport infrastructure grinding to a halt as everyone frantically headed for the seaside.  Rumour has it that nobody actually reached the beaches at all.  They just sat in their traffic jams until around mid afternoon when they all turned around and went home in disgust. 

I stayed at home and did some gardening.  The estate was getting a bit out of hand as it has been sopping wet up until now.  I actually managed to get the grass cut, and made a respectable little pile of grass cuttings.

grass

That blur on the left is Sandy.  She is ambushing me for a game of tennis.

I’m sorry about the quality of the photograph.  I forgot to set the camera for sunlight, because it’s a setting I rarely use.

The sweet smell of Romanians

Grandad May 4th, 2008

Luckily I woke early yesterday, because there was a knock on the door at nine.

There were three blokes there, and one stepped forward and shook me by the hand.  He said something but he was foreign, so I haven’t a clue what he said.  He stood and looked at me as if I was supposed to be expecting them.

After a minute of this, he got impatient and the three of them marched into our living room.  They were big blokes, and I couldn’t set Herself on them because she was still asleep.

They looked at the walls, and they looked at the ceiling.  They pointed at things and asked me questions.  I hadn’t a clue what they were talking about so I nodded.

One of them mimed at me that he wanted me to take him for a drive.  That was fine by me as it was a nice day.  So we headed off.  He told me where to steer by pointing.

We ended up at a hardware store.  He was out of the car like a flash and I had to run to keep up with him.  He grabbed a trolley and filled it up with tins of paint.  He then rushed over to the check-out where he stood looking at me like a lost puppy.  Obviously he expected me to pay, which I did.  Luckily I had my selection of credit cards with me, so Olusegun Olakojo of Nigeria paid for that lot.

We drove home to find that the other two lads had moved everything out of the living room, and had locked Herself in the bedroom where she was protesting loudly.  Whatever they were at, they went up in my estimation for that.

I got an atlas and brought it into them.  They looked at me blankly.  I opened the atlas and pointed to it, and then the three of them.  They flipped through the pages and pointed at Romania. At least I had that sorted out.  It also explained why I couldn’t understand them as my Romanian is crap and my Romany is even worse.  I left them to whatever it was they were doing.

Soon the smell of paint permeated the house, and it gave me a headache.  So I spent the day with the windows open and chewing Syndol.

At six, they vanished.

They had put everything back where it belonged and the walls and ceiling had all been painted.  The glare off the bright paint added to my headache, so I was forced to put on sunglasses.  In fairness to them, they had done a brilliant job, whoever they were.  I went off down to the pub for a few pints to get away from the smell.

I got home at around eleven and remembered that Herself was still locked in the bedroom, so I let her out.  She made a rush for the bathroom.

It was all her fault.  She has a habit of ringing strange phone numbers that she finds hanging on the local shop notice board.  She had phoned one and had obviously given the impression we wanted work done.

She bitched for the rest of the evening about being hungry and the smell of paint and everything else.  We had to sleep with all the doors and windows open.

That’ll teach her to leave those phone numbers alone.

Rural depopulation

Grandad May 3rd, 2008

I went down to the village yesterday.

It was a nice sunny day, though there was a bit of a nip in the air.  It was ideal weather for a coffee and a smoke of the pipe.

The terrace in front of the coffee shop was packed, which surprised me as it was Friday.  Then I discovered they were all Dutch.  They weren’t wearing clogs or anything like that, but I recognised the language.  I was a bit annoyed that they had taken my usual table but there is always a place kept for me, so Sandy and I settled down.

I had a bit of a problem with all these Dutch.  There were a lot of them and I only had the car with me, so logistics decided their fate.  I just wasn’t in the mood for multiple trips to the land fill.

Later, I was wandering down to buy some tobacco and I heard the unmistakable screech of an American accent.  There were three of them and they were chatting to a local.  Sandy and I implemented our usual plan.  Sandy pretended to have a dump [I knew she was only pretending, because she is incredibly discreet about her toiletries], and I lit my pipe.

I was disgusted.  The Americans were looking for directions, and he was actually telling them the right way.

They thanked him [I found it hard not to throw up], and told them that he seemed to know the area very well.  He replied in an awful Stage Oirish manner “yarra, sure I have lived here for sixty years, man and boy”.  At that stage I did throw up, and Sandy did do a dump.

I let the Americans go.

But I did have my trip to the land fill.

We have standards to maintain in the village, after all.

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