Head Rambles

When balls have dropped

Grandad May 11th, 2008

I rue the day I taught that bloody dog to play tennis.

Now that summer is here [albeit temporarily?] she is insisting on several games a day.

She starts off in the early afternoon. She finds a tennis ball, and there are a few around, and then drops it. The sound of a tennis ball bouncing on the floor is common these days.

If I ignore her, she picks it up and drops it again, because she likes the bouncing noise.

If I continue to ignore her, she gets pissed off and starts throwing the ball at me.

Yesterday was the worst. Herself was nagging me over something or other, and the nagging was accompanied by the sound of a tennis ball constantly bouncing. It did my head in.

So I give Sandy a game. She always beats me and leaves me knackered. She then takes a short rest and the whole thing starts all over again. We’re up to about five games a day now.

I am a shadow of my former self. Sandy is as fit as a fiddle.

Afterwards, as the sun is going down, she heads off to sleep with Bruno.

sandy2

Or maybe Teddy.

She’s a randy fickle bitch.

Down at heel

Grandad May 10th, 2008

I went into town yesterday.

Town has always been a haven for Skobies, and I was shocked to find that they were in a minority. The place has been overrun with foreigners. I was relieved though to see that the foreigners are learning fast.

All the foreign girls are getting pregnant as fast as they can, and are pushing prams around to get into practice. They are getting very adept at the knack of pushing a pram while lighting a cigarette and talking loudly into their mobile phones all at the same time.

All the foreign lads are learning the tricks of hanging around the betting shops and throwing empty lager cans at their passing women.

In no time at all, Skobieville will be back to normal, but with different languages.

One of the reasons I went into town was to buy a pair of shoes, as the soles had fallen off my old ones.

I’m fussy about shoes. I couldn’t give a damn what they look like as long as they are comfortable and hard wearing. I went through quite a selection before finding a lovely pair. The girl who was serving me had a lovely pair too. [She was foreign, of course]

I was about to pay when Herself turned up. I threw her out because she was smoking a fag, and that’s not allowed in town. But she put it out, and came back in.

“You’re not buying those?” she said in horror.

“Why not?”

“Because they are lime green. You’d look a right eejit.”

“What about these then?”

“No. Not in a thousand years.”

“Why not?”

“Because they have little lights that flash in the heels. Everyone will laugh at you.”

I sighed, and picked an ordinary pair of shoes. They weren’t quite as comfortable as the others, but I prefer discomfort to nagging.

The only problem is that the heels aren’t quite as thick as the old ones. So if I stand still for more than a moment or two, I fall over backwards. Herself has to keep picking me up.

Serves her right for being so picky.

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.

Rambles , The Book
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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.