Head Rambles

Grandad October 25th, 2007

I’m a bit addled in the head today.

I’m looking after Puppychild for the day, because K8, TAT and LaughingBoy have urgent matters to attend to.

Puppychild is the most adorable child. She is very funny and at that age where she can amuse herself. She has already come up with a couple of comments that have made me wet myself.

The only problem at the moment is that she has a book. She loves that book. It’s a book of fairy tales with nice pictures. There is a little button in the corner of it, and when you press the button it plays a little tune.

And the problem is that she insists that it is ‘bwoken’. It’s not.

But she keeps pressing the button and saying “it’s bwoken”, so that damned tune is playing non-stop.

It’s doing my f*cking head in.

• Around the house , The Family
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Grandad September 23rd, 2007

Today is officially Grandad’s Day

They’ve called it National Grandparents Day, but I know they mean me.

It took a bit of persuading to get Bertie to call it. It involved a few Yen, Roubles and Dollars, a briefcase and Celia Larkin, but he got the €20 in the end. That bloke will do anything for money.

I’ve been told that if I go into St Stephen’s Green and run around like a tool, I’ll get a certificate signed by the Lord Mayor of Dublin. Be still, my beating heart! He can f*ck off. I have enough certificates, signed by better psychiatrists people than the Lord Mayor. I’ll send Puppychild in on the bus and she can run around for me.

The great thing about today is that the daughter has to pay homage yet again. We can screw her between birthdays, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and now Grandparent’s Day. There is no such thing as Daughter’s Day, so it’s all one way traffic. About bloody time. We suffered enough when she was growing up.

And that goes for the rest of you too. You have to pay homage to me and Herself. We will accept the usual financial donations in lieu of gifts.

Please don’t insult us with anything less than €100.

You have to do it.

It’s the law.

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Grandad August 27th, 2007

I am getting concerned.

Some time ago, K8 and TAT started leaving stuff here ‘for storage’.

First it was a log burner. That was followed by a fridge, a patio heater, a gas cylinder and various other bits and pieces. We have also somehow inherited a trampoline and an inflatable children’s pool.

Now TAT has left their computer here. And that is very dear to his heart. He can’t live without his games.

K8 has somehow acquired a key to the house and is insisting that I park permanently in the lane, in case they call. I’m also starting to get their post. And phone calls. The calls for K8 are OK, but the calls for TAT are rather worrying ["Tell TAT that the job is on for Tuesday night" or "Tell TAT that the shipment is arriving in Dingle Bay". They never leave a name or a number.]

They called again on Sunday. TAT rewired my office in a strange way, so that his equipment works but mine doesn’t. K8 cooked us a beautiful barbecue that was like nothing I have ever tasted before. She wouldn’t say what the meat was [but come to think of it, I haven't seen the neighbour's cat since?]. Then she went off and measured all the windows.

This morning we had a couple of strange phone calls. The first was from a builder who wants to convert our garage into a games room. The second was from a rather cranky woman in the “Shangri La” retirement home in Reykjavik, in Iceland about a lifetime booking [?]. Both callers hung up when they realised that K8 wasn’t here.

I am extremely honoured that K8 and TAT want to give me all their furniture and stuff and even their precious computer. It is very generous of them. They are lovely kids.

But why do they want to book themselves into an old folk’s home in Iceland?

I’ll never understand my daughter.

I’m a bit concerned for her.

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Grandad August 26th, 2007

I have nothing to write about today.

I was too busy yesterday for anything interesting to happen.

K8, TAT, Puppychild and Sean turned up for the day as they fancied a trip to the wilds.

It was a normal sort of family visit. TAT took to the back room where he spent the day playing with his computer [not his laptop - he brought his whole damn computer, complete with surround sound, joysticks and the works].

K8 drank the entire remainder of our wine stocks and then stole my car. She went off on the rampage and came back very pleased that she had run two other cars off the road.

Herself and myself tried some new tobacco that TAT had brought as a present. He’s a very thoughtful lad.

Puppychild ran around the place stark naked and did a huge dump in the middle of the lawn. This was too great a challenge so I ran out with my 5-iron and managed to splatter it right across the windscreen of a passing SUV.

All in all, it was just a normal day. Nothing much happened.

They are to come back again today. They would have stayed overnight, but if TAT misses his medication they might lock him up again.

So probably, I’ll have nothing to write about tomorrow, either.

• Around the house , The Family
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Grandad August 22nd, 2007

Yesterday was a good day.

It ended with my winning the Rose of Tralee thingy. But I’ll come to that later.

We went down to the village yesterday to celebrate the fact that the sun was actually shining. I had a very pleasant coffee or two and a puff on the pipe while Sandy gnawed on a tourist child she’d found. Herself went shopping.

We got home to find K8 and Puppychild and Sean there. They had broken in [again] and had made themselves at home.

Puppychild found a pistol that was lying around. She picked it up, pointed it at Herself and shouted “Fweeze!”. Now they don’t have television, so she must have heard this from TAT. I keep telling him not to bring Puppychild with him when he is making ‘withdrawals’ from the bank.

We all played in the garden. I played tennis with Sandy [she has a vicious back-paw!], and Puppychild played with the pistol.

Next thing I knew, she shot me in the leg. She thought this was hilariously funny and shouted “I got you, Gwandad” and collapsed laughing. The blood started pouring down into my shoes, and she thought this was even funnier. “You’re wet” she shouted, and collapsed again. I love that child. She is so happy.

So she carried on taking pot shots at Sandy, while I went in to put on a bandage and get ready for Tralee.

That latter was a bit of an anticlimax.

I entered myself as the Mountain Rose.

I gave Ray D’Arcy a bit of a hard time, and when he asked me about boyfriends, I told him he was a f*cking w*nk*r and to mind his own f*cking business. This went down very well with the crowd, though I think it was when I head-butted him that I got the greatest cheer.

I won, of course.

Unfortunately, I was disqualified after I was found in a highly compromising position with Sharon Ní Bheoláin behind the Dome.

Maybe anticlimax is the wrong word.

• Rambles , The Family
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Grandad August 17th, 2007

As you may have gathered from my comments on yesterday’s post, I was denied my slumber by an emergency phonecall.

Our K8 had gotten herself in a little bit of a pickle and wanted a bit of help from Daddy. And that’s what Daddies are for. Right? [unless of course it's not an emergency, in which case - wrong!]

So I drove down and collected her and Puppychild and we went to collect Sean and we drove back to her place. We had a cup of tea [or two, or three].

I discovered a new facet to my daughter.

She has a lovely new collection of carnivorous plants!

She has a Venus Fly Trap, a Pitcher Plant and another hairy sticky one. We don’t know what the hairy one is called so I’ll call it Fred.

She has a compost bin in the garden, and a plank laid across the bin. The plants sit in a row on the plank. The compost bin attracts its fair share of flies, so the plants are thriving. While we watched, the Venus Flytrap nicely caught yet another meal [it was already eating about five others]. The Pitcher Plant was nicely melting down a bluebottle and the sticky one was nicely coated in half digested flies.

We discussed the possibility of growing a hybrid. Maybe a Venus Flytrap crossed with a redwood tree. Just imagine - a three hundred foot carnivorous plant! Wow! We could plant them in groves around the airports and ferry terminals. They would thrive.

Or cross a Venus Flytrap with a rhododendron and let them grow wild around the Lakes of Killarney. They would have a feast.

We could disguise large Pitcher Plants as swimming pools in the touristy hotels…….

My daughter is weird.

I wonder where she gets it from?

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