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!

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.

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.

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. 

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.

I had to get new lenses fitted to the old spectacles.  It was a second attempt as the first lot of lenses were guntered and fair play to the girl in the shop – she refused to fit them, and sent them back to the lens makers.  Either that, or she fancied me [no surprise there] as she asked for my phone number the first time I was there and has been phoning me at intervals on the pretext of giving progress reports.

Skobieville is a town that has become dedicated to Skobies.  You won’t find much there if you want to do a normal days shopping.  I have noticed that over the years, the decent shops have all closed and now all you will find are pubs, betting shops and takeaways.  There are about fifteen Chinese Takeaways per head of the population, and betting shops alternate with pubs all the way down the main street.

On Saturday, I noticed a new phenomenon – the tattoo parlour.

Our wonderful government are constantly harping on about the Mary Harney Pig Flu Pandemic but I think they have missed the real threat.  There is a pandemic of tattoo parlours in Skobieville.  I don’t know where they all came from but they are everywhere.  Just out of interest, I did a Google for tattoo parlours in Skobieville and came up with over 100,000 results, which shows it’s not just in my mind.

I could never understand tattoos.  I can understand how someone might dye their hair or even shave it off to appear fashionable but hair dye grows out, and shaved heads just grow so the damage is temporary.  Tattoos on the other hand are for life.  I mean to say, wouldn’t I look a right Wally now if I had some tattoo etched across my back extolling the virtues of some long forgotten 60s rock group? 

I have to be careful now as my daughter went and got herself tattooed.  I suppose in years to come when she is hitting her sixties she can always get them removed?

This is the thing about tattoos though – they are permanent.  It may only take a good drunken night and short while in a parlour to get one, but to remove it requires laser surgery.  That is not only very expensive, but [I hope] a lot more painful than the original tattoo.  Even then you are likely to be scarred for life.  And if I had had “Big John” tattooed on my todger and then wanted it removed, I don’t think I’d want a laser gun being aimed Down There, if you get my drift?

Of course, Skobies get tattooed for no apparent reason at all, and that probably explains the pandemic.  A tattoo is as mandatory to a Skobie as a mobile phone a can of lager and five illegitimate kids, to go with the ultra tight skirt and the plunging neckline. Other people however get tattoos because they are fashionable, because their friends have them of [God help us] because some pea brained “celebrity” has them.  However, fashions change,  friends change and with a bit of luck “celebrities” end up on the compost heap or a drug clinic, so what happens to the tattoo then?

Someone help me out here.  Someone please explain why people permanently mutilate themselves?

Is it because they want to remember how to spell?

I hate going into town because of the lack of parking and the stench of Skobies, and I was dreading going in as I had a lot to do and this entailed trying to park in different parts of town.

Something very strange happened.

At my first port of call, there was a parking space directly outside.  I put this down to an anomaly in the Space Time Continuum and went about my business.

Having finished there, I reluctantly left my neat parking space, and drove to the other end of town for my next port of call.  I really began to question the reality of the situation when I found a grand space there, exactly where I wanted it.

I had a few places to visit, so set off.  The first port of call was an office supplies shop to get some ink for my printer.  For the last couple of weeks, I have been forced to print all my documents in red or blue or some strange combination, as my black ink cartridge was empty.  For some reason, people give you strange looks if you present them with an official document that is printed in pink.  I have this strange knack of buying printers that are the only ones whose cartridges are impossible to buy.  The usual response is that they have every known cartridge known to man in stock except for the one I’m looking for.  When I told the bloke in the shop what model printer I had, there was the usual sharp intake of breath that I know so well.

“I’m sorry, but you’re out of luck on that one.  We don’t have colour cartridges for that model, and only one black ink cartridge left.”

Once again, my luck was holding out so I bought it.

The next thing I had to do was get some things for the car for driving in France.  I wandered into the motor factors and got my beam benders and a couple of other things.  While I was there, I decided to try my luck which seemed to be holding out remarkably well.  For a couple of weeks now, I have been looking for a fine, single core insulated wire, to complete my electric fence to stop Sandy wandering.  I need about fifty meters of it.  I had called into a couple of places in the past and they always tried to flog me three core mains cable or telephone extension cable or even television co-axial cable.  Do they think I’m daft?

“I know this is a long shot” I said to the doddery bloke behind the counter, “but do you sell wire?  I need fine single core insulated wire and a lot of it.”

“I don’t think we have anything like that, but I’ll have a look.”

He wandered over to a stand and started muttering to himself.  Eventually he announced that they didn’t, but while he had been doing his mutterings, I had been poking around in a bin and what did I find?  I found a reel of fine, single core insulated wire that is apparently used for earthing car speakers or something.  It was on a reel, and stamped on the side of the reel were those three glorious letters – 50m!

I had a coffee and a smoke then to celebrate my successes, and mused upon my day.  I contemplated buying a lottery ticket, but decided that I didn’t need that much money.  Then to my amazement I realised that I had only seen one Skobie the entire trip.  She had come into the motor factors to borrow a funnel as her car had run out of petrol and she needed to fill it from a jerry can.

She just stank of petrol.

Crowds.

Shops.

Any place that is all concrete and glass, and not a blade of grass to be seen.

Combine the above three into one, and you get a shopping centre.

Again, there are shopping centres and there are shopping centres.  Some are almost tolerable.  Some are just mindless edifices dedicated to consumerism.

The king and queen of the latter has to be the Dundrum Shopping Centre, or as they prefer to call it, Dundrum Town Centre.

When I was a lot younger, I used to work in Dundrum.  It was a pleasant enough little village with a couple of pubs and a television factory [where I worked].

They demolished that factory and a couple of hundred acres of surrounding land and built what I can only describe as a cathedral devoted to the god of hedonism.  It is not a Town centre, as the centre of Dundrum is further down the road.  It isn’t even a town.  But they have to glorify it to con the ignorant masses.

I was there once.  I had to call in to collect something and the experience was a nightmare.  It is vast.  It is anonymous.  It is packed to the gills with the kind of shop that the world could well do without.  There are 166 shops in the one building.  One hundred and sixty fucking six shops.  And they are all the worst kind of shop.  Most are clothing shops selling fancy brand named crap to people who are as idiotic as the prices.

I have to go there today.  I am dreading it, but I have no choice.  To me, visiting that centre is only one step away from being dumped in New York.  It is hell on earth.

I thought that while I was there, I might as well get a couple of yokes that I need for the car.

You would think that out of one hundred and sixty fucking six shops, one of them would be a motor factors.  But no.  There are forty one shops selling ladies fashions, but not one miserable shop where you could buy a headlight bulb.  Fuck that.

Frankly, I can only think of one use for that place.

I’m going to use it to test fire one of my new batch of nuclear missiles as soon as they arrive.

I hope it’s full of brain-dead shoppers buying their NEXT and their Gap and their Tommy Hilfiger.

The world will be a better place.

Normally I wouldn’t mention such a mundane thing, but this was different.

The difference was that I wasn’t drinking down in the pub.  I was in a different place, that I wouldn’t class as a pub at all.  It was a hell hole of a drinking emporium that almost had me screaming to sign The Pledge just to get out of it.

The pub in the village is a nice quiet spot.  It is a place of quiet chat and conviviality where the locals go for a few pints, a smoke and maybe a game of cards.  The only sounds to be heard there are the murmur of conversation, the clink of the glasses and occasionally the soft thump of Spanner passing out off his stool.  It is an oasis of calm in a hectic life where we set the world to rights and have a laugh.

The place I was in on Saturday was different.

It was one of those modern places, and the first thing that struck me when I walked in was the noise.  There was fucking music blaring out of speakers that seemed to be everywhere.  Where there wasn’t a loudspeaker, there was a television.  This place was like the television section of Power City as there were fucking screens everywhere, and they were all showing football.  Of course everyone was shouting at each other over the background noise and the overall experience was one of sensory overload.

I sat down in the quietest corner I could find, under one of the television screens.  For some reason, all the televisions were on without sound, so it was a little quieter there.

I hadn’t been there long when this bloke came in with his girlfriend and sat down near me.  She was pleasant enough on the eye, so that was something for me to ogle.  All he was interested in though was the football on the screen.  He started shouting at the muted figures and got really worked up over the match.  At one stage, someone obviously nearly scored a goal and Wanker nearly had a heart attack.  He roared at the screen and waved his fists in the air while his poor girlfriend tried to concentrate on the crossword she was doing.  At this stage, I hoped someone would score a goal, as it would be interesting to watch someone having a coronary.

Unfortunately, the blokes I was waiting on arrived so I had to leave Wanker and his girlfriend to it.  We went out the back to the beer garden, where it was cold, but at least it was quiet and there was no nauseating stench of stale perfume and farts.

A while later, as we left, I had a look to see if Wanker was still there but he wasn’t. 

Apparently someone had scored a goal.

The ambulance was just leaving as we stepped outside into the night air.

The fact is, I was Out.  [Why do people start sentences with ‘The fact is’?  I hate that.]

I had to go to one of those great warehouses they call DIY stores.  I had a load of stuff to buy, such as paint, wire netting, floorboards and a cattle prod.

I wandered around for half an hour.  The musak was bloody awful so I tended to head for the quiet corner, which wasn’t very helpful as the only thing they had there was toilet seats.

Not wanting a toilet seat, just at the moment, I had to brave the musak and head out amongst the endless shelves of paint tins, claw hammers and things to hang on your wall.  I found the paint easily enough as they had great stacks of the fucking stuff at the end of each aisle.  Paint brushes were easy to find as they were strategically placed behind the lighting section.  You couldn’t miss the floorboards as the pile was so big it looked like it was waiting to be loaded on a ship.

I couldn’t find the wire netting though.

I searched everywhere.  I found wattle fencing and bamboo fencing.  I found razor wire and I found three-core wire, but no wire netting.

I found a bloke who looked like he worked in the place.

‘Excuse me!’ says I.  ‘Can you point me in the direction of the wire netting?’

He pondered this for a moment.

‘I know it’s around somewhere’ he said while looking at the ceiling for divine inspiration.

He wandered off, and I followed him.

He peered around a couple of corners and walked down a few aisles and eventually, he accidentally tripped over a roll of wire netting that someone had left lying out on the floor.  He picked himself up, beamed at me with delight and then vanished as only a sales assistant can.

I now knew where everything was, and I did my calculations as to how much of what I wanted that I wanted.  I then went up to the main information desk to find out where to get a bloke to help me carry the floorboards out as they were fucking heavy.  She paged Paddy, and Paddy duly turned up.  It was my friend of the wire netting fame.

He beamed at me again, and I explained to him that I needed someone to carry half a ton of floorboards.  I told him I would do it, but that I had a bad back.  He immediately claimed that he had a bad back too, so we looked each other up and down, and decided we were well matched liars. He grabbed one of those low loader things they have and headed off to the furniture section.  I called him back and told him the floor boards were in the other direction.  He looked a bit confused but followed me anyway.

We reached the flooring section, to his surprise and delight and loaded the trolley.  I also loaded all the rest of my stuff.

‘Hold on’ says I, ‘I nearly forgot the wire netting.’

‘I don’t think we do wire netting’ he said apologetically.

And I thought I was bad.