Archive for the 'Around the town' Category

Seasonal generosity

December 12th, 2011

I’m just back from a trip to Skobieville.

Now Skobieville is a pretty depressing place at the best of times, but on a very wet, windy, grey Winter’s day it is little short of grim.  The only thing about seeing the place on a very wet day is there aren’t so many unemployed skobies hanging around, and the place looks almost tidy [if you ignore all the empty beer cans and chip wrappings blowing in the gutters].

While I was there, I thought it would be an idea to get Herself something for Christmas.

She is not an easy person to buy for that that is putting it mildly.  She has just about everything she needs.  Some blokes buy their missus clothing, but I steer clear of that trap.  Buying clothes for a woman is a chore that is heavily laced with minefields.  Anyhow, she has two full sets of clothing so she can wear one lot while the other is in the wash.  What more would she want? 

Last year I bought her a heater for her shed.  Was she grateful? Was she, hell!  The year before I got her a pair of steel capped boots so she would be more comfortable working in the garden.  Still no gratitude.

After a lot of shopping around without doing any actual shopping, I decided that she was too damned difficult to buy for.  In the end I bought her a packet of fags which in retrospect is damned generous of me.  Have you seen the price of fags in Ireland?  It is a bloody generous present, if you ask me.

I wonder what she is getting me?

I hope it’s something really expensive!

Time travel

August 25th, 2011

There was a tradition in our family that we got our first watch after passing the Intermediate Certificate.

The Inter, as it was known, was taken two years before the Leaving, which meant we would be around 15.  That was in the days where we valued things and were prepared to wait for them and didn’t demand them as a right as soon as we could talk.  Nowadays kids would laugh in your face if you suggested they were 15 before getting their first watch.  For fuck’s sake, by fifteen they have their watches, their mobile phones, their own computers and would have a fucking car if they could get away with it.

I was fired off to boarding school at the tender age of eleven, and as a special concession [hah!] I was given a watch as consolation.

It was a damned good watch.  It kept excellent time and I was proud of it.  It was a straightforward windey-up thing with no fancy extras like depth-gauges or the time in Tokyo or any of that shit.  Three hands and that was your lot.  It didn’t even have numerals.

Over the course of the years that watch went through the wars.  It survived fights, motorbike crashes, being dunked in the sea and the general wear and tear of a teenage life and beyond.  It had a couple of new winders and a couple of new springs but that was it.  The strap was the only thing that needed regular replacement.

One year. herself decided to buy me a new watch.  It was one of those with analogue hands and a wee digital display that gave the time or the day and date.  It was strange not having to wind it.  It didn’t last as long as the original, but I replaced it with an identical model.  I’m on the third incarnation now.  I always go for the same watch [Q&Q?] as it is remarkably accurate, usually to a couple of seconds a month.

I noticed a couple of days ago that the digital display is fading.  That’s a sure sign that the battery is on its last legs.  It’s two years since I replaced it so that’s not too bad.  Today I hope to replace it, and there’s the rub.  Watch batteries of the right size are hard to find.

The only shop I know sells the right size is in the heart of Skobieville.

Fuck!

I hate Skobieville.

Shopping my arse

January 14th, 2011

What the fuck is the attraction of shopping?

To me, shopping is a simple process.  You gain cash by some means or other and you keep that cash.  When you want or need something, you go down to the shop and exchange your hard won cash for the goods.  Simple. 

If I feel the need for a pint, I go into the pub, order it, pay my cash and drink it.  Pretty straightforward?  But now ask yourself what the pleasurable part of that transaction is.    Is it the drinking of the pint or is it the paying of the cash?  I would have thought that the answer is pretty obvious.  After all, no one is going to enter a pub simply for the pleasure of parting with cash?

Women, on the other hand seem to enjoy the spending process.  They even coined a hideous phrase for it – “retail therapy”.  They will happily go shopping, not to purchase their needs but to buy fripparies and trinkets that are just going to clutter the place up.  It is the spending that seems to count and not the end result.  That is fucking weird.

What amuses me is that the gubmint skims around a quarter of their salaries in tax, and they bitch loudly about it.  They then go and throw away a goodly chunk of whatever is left!

I had to go up to Dublin today.  What’s worse, I had to go to Dundrum Shopping Centre.  Of all the shopping experiences I have to endure, this one is the pits.  It is a fucking huge place that is crowded and noisy.  It is the stuff of nightmares.  My ideal is to be strolling though the heather with a fresh breeze in my face, so having to endure the noise and the bustle of that horrendous enclosure is sheer torture.  Yet women actually make a point of going there for no other reason that to wander around in the crowds and spend money on rubbish they don’t need.

Women baffle me.

Why I prefer shopping on my own

May 26th, 2010

I had an appointment with the doctor yesterday.

Normally I’m not that fond of his waiting room, as he has a crap choice of magazines.  Apart from the mandatory pile of ten year old National Geographics, the only magazines he seems to have are Fly Fishing Monthly and the Bunty Annual.  Yesterday however, someone had left a newspaper behind, so I had a grand read and a puff of the pipe while I waited.

Of course the one time I had some decent [relatively speaking] reading matter was the one time he didn’t keep me waiting.

“I’m glad you dropped by” he said.  “I wanted to discuss your drugs.”

“What about ‘em?” I asked.

“I need an extra stash on top of my normal order” he said.  “I have some friends coming for dinner next week.  Any chance of an extra few ounces of your best?”

We sorted that out, and I promised to deliver in time, and of course I completely forgot what I had made the appointment for.  It can’t have been that important anyway, as I still feel fine.

Herself had said she would wait for me in the pub, so I collected her and we headed on into Skobieville. 

First of all, I returned our library books that we had borrowed for our trip to France last year.  I had to do a quick dodge out the door before they realised that the books were a little overdue, but I’m good at that kind of thing.  Then we headed on over to the hardware store.  Herself wanted to look at showers.  I left her looking at shower trays while I went off to get some stuff for the garden.  When I got back, I discovered to my horror that she wants a toilet and hand basin as well.  I don’t know why she wants an indoor toilet – I blame television.  Anyway, she claimed to have found the perfect toilet pan, and said it was very comfortable.  She brought me over to show me which one she wanted. 

“You tried it out?” I asked, as I watched a little rivulet of amber liquid make its way to the edge of the display stand.

“I did” she replied.  “It’s perfect.”

Much to her annoyance, I had to rush her out of the place of course, and we went back home.

We got in a little after six, so I switched on the News on the television.  It was the usual advertisements, but soon Sharon came on the screen.

She looked straight at me and gave that lovely little quirky smile.

“Welcome back” she said.

I don’t know how she knew I was out, but she made the trip worthwhile.

Thank you, Sharon. 

Prejudice

April 12th, 2010

I had to go up to Dublin earlier today.

I fucking hate Dublin, but sometimes these things have to be done.

Seeing as we parked within an ass’s roar of the shops, I knew Herself would vanish, which she did.  It’s like some programming glitch that she has a compulsion to head off shopping even though she doesn’t need anything.  Being wise to the ways of the world, and knowing she was going to be ages buying next to nothing, I found myself a quiet coffee shop with a little sunny terrace out the back.

It was nice there.  I sat in the sunshine, puffing the pipe and supping quite nice coffee and generally contemplating the meaning of life.

Two women came out to the terrace with their sprogs.  One woman was enormously fat and she had a revolting slug of a five year old with her.  The other woman had a wee black girl of around the same age.

I admit I am prejudiced.  I fucking hate fat kids.

I don’t mind kids who are a little overweight, but Little Slug was fucking obese.  He had that red blotchy type of round face that is just crying out for a good decent elbowing.  His mother was in the same league as her son, and her trousers kept slipping to half mast as she didn’t have a waist to support them.  Luckily they never fell the full distance, as I doubt the stomach could have taken that.

In the space of about half an hour, I watched Little Slug work his way through a plate of sausages, a tub of ice cream and two tubs of sweetened creamed rice.  He also had half a mug of coffee and one of those large pots of cola.  When he wasn’t eating [which wasn’t often] he was yelling.  I don’t know what he was yelling for or about; he was just yelling for the sake of it.  His ma kept telling him to shut up but he just ignored her and either yelled again or demanded more food.

I passed the time quietly making mental selections of the various torture devices I would like to use on Little Slug.  I eventually settled on a nice image of myself beating the crap out of him with a baseball bat.

That kid was so full of sugar, caffeine and additives that it was no wonder he was hyperactive and obnoxious.  By the looks of him, I would say he is like that all the time.

I can guarantee that he has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

ADHD my hole.

Just starve the little fucker.

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