Wine, Woe and Wishes

I had intended keeping this tale of embarrassment and stupidity to myself, but since everyone in my local seems to think that it’s absolutely hilarious I may as well entertain all of you lot at my expense as well.

I think it was on Tuesday last that the rain finally fell, washing away most of the snow and ice and meaning, for the first time in almost a month, that walking was an activity less dangerous than, say, bomb disposal. We had no wine left in our house (dunno, I think it evaporates at room temperature) so I decided to go to the pub. Mrs Tin, who had a lot of chick-films that she wanted to plough her way through, declined to join me, so off I set on my own.

I did notice that at some places on the road the ice had been so thick that it hadn’t quite melted yet, so little islands of it lay here and there, as if people had cut the icing off their Christmas cake and thrown into the street. These were easily avoided, however, so I went to the pub, met some friends and had a very pleasant time. At some stage I thought of Mrs Tin, sitting at home more sober than a football fan at the Qatar World Cup, so I asked the owner did he sell wines by the bottle that I could take home to her. Since take-away wine from a pub tends to be extremely expensive, and since the owner of my local is a decent bloke, he suggested not buying the wine but simply taking some home and replacing it with something similar the next time I was in. I asked for two bottles, he put them into a paper bag, and when I was leaving I took them home with me.

It was raining quite hard when I left, so hard in fact that I put up my umbrella for the first time in weeks, and with the umbrella in one hand and the bag in the other I walked home, head down. I had just reached to end of our road, which I have mentioned before is very steep, when I stood on a little patch of ice. I shot forward onto the ground – and one of the bottles of wine broke.

I lay there for about twenty seconds, face pressed against possibly the only piece of ice left in Northern Europe, yet with rain pouring onto the back of my head. My arms and legs were spread, a line of red liquid was trickling away from my body down the hill, and all I needed was a chalk outline to have auditioned for a role (a very brief one, obviously) in CSI.

I must be honest with you all, who know so much about me, that I did seriously consider just staying lying there, forever. Eventually, though I dragged myself up and limped (my left knee is still very swollen, even now) the last fifty yards to my house. I know you’re all miles ahead of me here, but I may as well set my shame out in print. I reached the front door, juggled umbrella, bag and house-key for a couple of seconds, and dropped the other bottle of wine.

From inside the house the noise must have been deafening, and Mrs Tin rushed to the door, afraid perhaps that someone had smashed our car window, or that I fallen in through our glass front door. I told her what had happened and she said it didn’t matter, she didn’t need wine, but by now self-anger at my own stupidity had taken over from rational thought. I had wanted to bring her home wine, and I was going to bring her home wine. I set off on the half-mile walk back to the pub again.

I didn’t bother with the umbrella, I was too bloody fed-up, and those lucky enough to be in the bar when I burst through the door still laugh every time they tell yet another person about the state I was in. My hair was matted to my head and rain poured off my coat like a fountain.

There was no-one behind the counter and one brave customer said “the bar’s closed, Tinman”.

“No, it isn’t,” I growled.

“Look, it’s ten past eleven, there’s no way he’ll serve any more drink,” my friend ventured.

“He’ll fuckin’ serve me,” I said.

The owner arrived out from the back room at this point, held up a hand as if to point towards the clock, then saw the expression on my face and put it down again. Picture Jack Nicholson’s expression in The Shining, then imagine what he’d have looked like if, just as he put his face to the hole in the door, he’d been bitten on the arse by a rabid Alsatian.

“Dropped the wine,” was all I said.

Wordlessly he put two more bottles in a bag and I slouched home, safely this time. By now Mrs Tin had gone to bed, so I drank the wine myself.

There are wine-writers all over the world who are more gifted at describing wine than I am. They write things like:

Lovingly picked from the south-facing vines of this richly-soiled region, the grapes are gently pressed by the beautiful feet of nubile young maidens before being allowed to mature in oak barrels in a cool, dim cavern. The wine is decanted into hand-crafted bottles, the cork is inserted by blow-pipe and the resultant wine tastes of both fire and ice, with a nose redolent of warm sunny summer days, wortleberry and Imperial Leather soap (look, I only said they write things like this, I didn’t say it was word for word).

Anyway, there’s not a writer on earth who would have described this wine in those terms. If I were a wine writer my review would be what I believe they call fruity, and would run thus:

This wine is called CYP, it’s from Chile, and now I know how the Chilean miners disposed of their pee during their ordeal.

And of course I’d to buy four bottles of wine to replace this gunk.

So there’s my tale of wine and woe. And the wishes?

Well, they’re for all of you. I wish all of you all the very best for 2011. Thank you all for reading, thank you all for commenting, thank you all for caring.

Happy New Year to all of you.

Tin x

Nothing Left, Right

Now that Christmas is over we are left with the perennial problem of what to do with the leftovers.

Back in the Middle Ages many of these problems were solved due to sieges. A ham dropped from the top of a castle could knock five or six invaders off a ladder into the moat below, while on the other side a flaming Christmas pudding fired out of a catapult over the ramparts could cause untold damage to those within the castle itself, especially if you were the one unlucky enough to be hit by the sprig of holly.

In these supposedly more enlightened times we are not allowed use food as weaponry, so we have to be a bit more inventive. Here are a couple of suggestions:

Turkey. Why did you buy one so big? Did you expect the Plymouth Argyle Football Team’s bus to break down outside your house, and that you’d have to feed them all? (Why Plymouth Argyle? Well, they’re reading out the football scores on the TV at the moment and I decided I’d put in whatever team was read out next). Anyway, the turkey is crouched there, still the size of Garfield, glaring scornfully at you. You could, of course, simply cut slices off and eat them cold, but remember that the most dreadful suffering known to man, that off trying to come off drugs or cigarettes, is referred to as “cold turkey”, and I can’t regard that as a ringing endorsement. Many and varied will be the recipes that you will employ over the coming days as you try to serve turkey in a variety of different guises. Turkey soup, turkey curry, turkey bolognese, turkey smoothies, turkey ice cream, turkey crispie cakes, turkey candy floss, it doesn’t matter what you try, your kids will know that it’s turkey and will beg to be fed something else.

My own suggestion is Turkey Wellington. Put on your boots, walk down to the beach and hurl the turkey as far out into the sea as you can.

Ham. Succulent and juicy on Christmas Day, it’s now as hard and joyless as Ryvita, and is the weight of a VW Beetle. Bring it to Oxygen next year to keep your tent from blowing away.

Gibblets. Seriously, what were you thinking? Stuff put into a plastic bag and stuck up a turkey’s bum. And you’re surprised that there’s some left over? Sneak them into a litter bin when you’re out at midnight putting your bottles into the bottle bank (We all go to the bottle bank at midnight, none of us want our neighbours to see that we’ve got through seventeen bottles of wine in four days).

I realise of course that many of you may have had a goose. If you did, well done, but we’re not here to talk about your love life.

The trimmings are simple enough. Cranberry sauce makes a very good wasp-trap in summer. That pink goo that goes on the top of prawn cocktail is a good replacement for L’Oreal moisturiser, if you’re suffering the January Blues and feel that you’re not actually worth it. Stuffing, once it’s gone hard, is useful for gritting your driveway. Brandy butter is an effective hair-gel, especially if you’re going for the Jedward look. Corn-on-the-cob, if planted in your back garden, will grow into a beanstalk with the Jolly Green Giant at the top.

And what of sprouts? You bought a string bag with two hundred of them in it, even though you knew that each member of your family would eat only one. Now you’ve to get rid of the rest, and they don’t have the kind of taste that is easily hidden. You could sneak one sliver into that foaming stuff that Dr Jekyll used to drink when he wanted to become Mr Hyde, and half-way through he’d stop and say “hang on, I think there’s sprouts in this”.

So you’ll have to employ some lateral thinking, and don’t use them as food at all. Next time you go paintballing slip one or two of them into your gun. Anyone you shoot is going to look like a green-blooded Vulcan. Squash one onto a footpath and when someone walks by howl in anguish and accuse them of treading on your frog. If you have very religious neighbours keeping bouncing some off their roof and tell them God is punishing us with a plague of snot. Stick one into the exhaust pipe of another neighbour and watch him shoot the head off his garden gnome when he starts his car. Send two of them to the FBI with a ransom note saying “we want two million or next time you get one of the Hulk’s fingers”.

See, there are lots of things you can do with sprouts. Just as long as you don’t have to eat them.

Twaz the Night After…

Good old Tinceslas looked out

On the Feast of Stephen

When the snow lay all about

Deep and crisp and even

He swore words like “poot” and “darn” and

even “sticks of fiddle”

When he saw to his delight

Rain began to pi-hid-le.

He saw snowmen melt away

In the local par-ark

Like those Nazis melted

in “The Raiders of the Lost Ark”

He went out and brought some bread

Milk and and sparkling water

Till today the shops had seemed

As far away as Mor-hor-dor.

He went to his local pub

Once he’d stocked his larder

Cos he’s hadn’t been outside

So he needed lager.

Well, Guinness really, but that rhymes,

And that seems to matter

When you write a post that’s

in Iambic penta-ma-hat-er.

A game was on the TV set,

Tottenham versus Villa

Lots of chances, lots of goals,

Really was a thriller.

Spurs’goals came through Van Der Vaart

Godsend to a blogger

Coz the jokes are far too much

I just didn’t boh-hoh-ther.

Though it still may freeze again

And the ice might harden

I’m just thrilled that that I have seen

Green grass in my garden.

Every day is one day more

Closer to the summer.

Never will we moan again

If it’s fairly duh-hell-er.

Pipe and Slippers

It was silent in the sitting-room apart from the ticking of the old grandfather clock that had stood there virtually since time itself began. The woman rocking gently in the rocking-chair by the fireplace looked up at the clock, put down her knitting and smiled. Her husband would be home from work soon.

He would be cranky, he would be chilled to the bone, and he would be very,very tired.

And with good reason. In the space of just one night he would have visited every child on the planet, distributing gifts. And if you think that’s tough, keep in mind that he’d have been shot at by jet-fighters as a UFO. He’d have had to swerve around that bloody flying snowman singing “Walking in the Air” in a high falsetto (his voice wasn’t surprising really, Santa himself always felt especially cold around the groinal area at that altitude, and he didn’t even have snowballs).

Worst of all he’d have been forcibly reminded yet again that if your preferred mode of transport is to ride on a sleigh behind eight reindeer travelling at terrifying speed, you’re going to end up spending a lot of time wiping shit off your face.

It had been a tough year. The news that Tiger Woods had feet of clay but other, firmer parts had meant that Santa had been left with four million copies of the “Tiger Woods PGA 2011” video game. Always a man able to spot a craze in its earliest days he’d had his elves make fifty million vuvuzelas, but then every sports venue on the planet had banned them. And even his staple stocking-filler, the game of Monopoly, had died in popularity, since in every house the winner would be turned on by the other players, who would refer to him as “a greedy, crooked money-grabbing developer bollocks”, even if the winner was the four-year old baby of the family.

But they had found replacements, just as they always had in the past. The invention of the X-Box Kinect, the fact that Take That had re-formed and released an album, the new “Mary Byrne” Barbie (essentially, Barbie in a Tesco uniform) meant that Santa had left with a selection of toys that would satisfy every child.

Mrs Claus put his dinner in the oven to heat (since they did live at the North Pole, their dinner was venison, but they managed to keep this very, very quiet) and moved his pipe and slippers nearer to the fire. She had already gone carefully through the TV schedules to make sure they didn’t end up watching one of those films that suggested that her husband didn’t exist, since they depressed him, or one of those ones where someone accidentally knocks him out and has to do his job for him, since they just made him snort in derision.

She still had occasional nightmares about the year when he sat staring in open-mouthed horror at Bad Santa. If you’re reading this, Billy Bob Thornton, well, that’s why you’ve got coal in your stocking ever since (I don’t just mean for Christmas, either, every morning when Billy Bob puts on his socks he finds coal in them).

She glanced again at the clock. Nearly time now. It wasn’t always easy being Mrs Claus. She’d abandoned her own career plans at be a Fairy Godmother to live with him in a place so miles from anywhere that there were no poor scullery-maids to help, and no pumpkins or mice to transform (she did once win the TransSiberia Sled Race with an entry she made from a Christmas pudding and four penguins, but that was just to prove to herself that she still could). Her husband’s job meant he travelled a lot. Some of the girl-elves were really hot. She had to lie to all her friends about what he worked at (she told them he sold timeshare in igloos). And although they’d been married and shared a bedroom for literally centuries now she still found something vaguely creepy about the fact that he could see her when she was sleeping, and knew when she was awake.

And any second now he’d fall in the front door, drop soot-covered clothing onto their white polar-bear skin rug, and slump grumpily onto the couch.  But she would bring those pipe and slippers, she’d listen sympathetically to his grumblings about narrow chimneys, the loudness of church-bells if they ring just as you happen to be passing at steeple level, and about how the traditional bottle of Guinness had been replaced in many houses this year by a glass of Lidl sherry.

And in time he’d calm down. He’d tell her of the smile that would spread across the face of some sleeping child as her arm reached around the doll she’d asked for. He’d tell her of the heartwarming letters from children asking him to make sure he gave them less and poorer children more this year. He’d grin as he related how he crept into the house of the person who wrote the Mr Blobby Christmas No 1 and filled his turkey with Marmite. Soon the first “ho, ho, ho” would escape from his lips, soon his little round belly would shake when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly. Soon he’d be her own, wonderful man again.

Her husband brought joy all around the world. She loved him very much.

Tis the Night…

Just a few hours left now.

I’ve learnt a lot this extraordinary, snowbound hell of a Christmas. I’ve learnt, for example, that it is possible to go Christmas shopping without a car. Yesterday Mrs Tin, Tinson1 and I headed off to Tesco armed with nothing more than a lot of Bag-for-Life bags and a grim determination, and arrived home with everything we need.

I’ve learnt that the backpack that I take to work every morning is the perfect size for fitting a turkey into. I’ve also learnt that a turkey in your backpack is a lot heavier that you’d expect.

I’ve learnt that a lot of the things we used to think we need we don’t actually need (sad story, here. Tingirl and I discussed how we could happily live  without sprouts, and I said ” and also those chip-shaped things on your plate that you think are going to be chips but disappointingly turn out to be some sort of parsnip yoke”, and Tingirl said “ugh, yes, I know exactly what you mean”, and Mrs Tin sadly said “well, this is all news to me”, so I hope she realises that everything else she cooks is gorgeous).

I’ve learnt that there’s a lot less pressure when the weather is shite, that you can just say to the kids “sorry, we didn’t get to buy so-and-so”. knowing that they’ll understand.

I’ve learnt just five minutes ago that no matter how great the boots you buy and no matter how careful you are it is still possible to land violently on your back when walking down a hill.

And I’ve been reminded that traditions built with your children will never die out, no matter how old they get. Tinson1 and I went to the pub this morning, as we have done every year since he was eight, to wrap presents from him to his mum and his younger brother and sister. We will leave out a can of Guinness, a mince pie and a carrot by the chimney tonight, though the kids know full well that it is me who has to get through them all. And we will all gather in Tingirl’s room just before they all go to bed, and I will read “The Night Before Christmas”, and we will all chant the last line “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night”, just as we have don every year since we became a family instead of just a couple.

For all those reasons, today is my Christmas. Tomorrow is just a day of eating and drinking, but today is a day in which I have built traditions and memories that I hope they will never forget.

And to you, all my dear blogging friends, I offer you this. I sometimes look up a website called amazingjokes.com, and occasionally they don’t tell a joke, they do stuff like reporting silliest answers ever given on an insurance form or something like that. Months ago they printed a list of answers given by small children when asked what love is. My very favourite was by a 4-year old girl called Tracy who said “love is what makes you smile when you’re tired” (and I’ve kept that in my head so many times over the last few months), but the reason I mention it now is because some 7-year old called Bobby (may he live in happiness forever), said:

“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”

Have a lovely day tomorrow, all my friends.

Lots of love

Tin xx

Randm Wurdz

While trying to order tickets online as a Christmas present (can’t say for whom, the walls have ears, or at least laptops) I eventually reached that stage where you have to copy a word that’s on the screen, in order to prove that you’re not a robot.

Since I can’t imagine many robots going, say, to a Tommy Tiernan show and intoning “ha, ha, ha” at the funny bits I’m not quite sure what the point of this is, but the reason that I mention it is that the word I had to type was “shema”.

Surely that’s a real word. It simply means the mother of a baby girl, rather than a boy, in which case she’s a “hema” (if she’s just had triplets she’s a”listen-buddy-you’re-getting-the-snip-right-now-today-or I’m-doing-it-myself,-they-don’t-call-them-pruning-shears-for-nothing-you-know-ma”).

This got me thinking. Maybe all the words that appear really are real but obscure words, so in the interests of research I went back onto the website, kept hitting the refresh button (I think I may have accidentally bought 500 tickets to Bon Jovi, by the way) and came up with the following words for which I am suggesting the attached meanings.

• Torzit . A cruel jibe, tomenting someone about their acne.
• Prinal. A quick peek into the next urinal at your neighbour’s, er, package.
• Bersetu. A tantrum thrown by the leading lady in a ballet.
• Burierse. The act of falling into snow or water up to your waist.
• Slogomic. The new economics, we work harder & harder for absolutely nothing.
• Stizedro. Pancho Villa’s middle name.
• Wishi. A raw fish with a wishy-washy, almost non-existent taste. Also known as sushi.
• Ovirri. A chain of Gynecology Clinics in Finland.
• Myinsah. An army phrase, meaning “am I doing this correctly?”. It is believed to have originated during the desert campaign in WW11, when men were men and women were miles away.
• Spleje. That white splotch that’s left across your windscreen after you’ve hit a fly.
• HELYSG. An adverting slogan in a campaign for vegetables that was never used. The letters stood for “Hey, Eat Lettuce, You’ll Shit Green!”
• Holdp. A bizarre armed robbery in which the only thing stolen is a letter “U”.

And finally, Barmium. A new type of drug they’ve put Tinman on which both calms him and makes him come up with rubbish like this.

Let It Go, Let It Go, Let it Go

The first few days were picturesque.

The next few were conversation-starting as one swapped horror stories of journeys to or from work. The  following few were community-building as people pushed stuck cars, swept footpaths, helped the elderly with their shopping. Now it’s just a pain in the arse, regardless of whether you keep falling on yours or not.

I left my office yesterday at 4.45 and arrived home at ten past ten. I live 19 miles from my office, and this is the 21st Century. Ugg the Caveman, before he invented the wheel, could have travelled quicker pushing his cart on its four coaster-shaped appendages. Lot and his family could have travelled quicker, even while carrying Mrs Lot after her unfortunate glance over her shoulder. Moby Dick could travelled quicker, even if it was stranded on land like a, like a, like a beached whale.

And don’t tell me it’s because it’s winter. The Ice-Age travelled quicker than we did, and winter was pretty well when it did most of its travelling.

Students of flora and fauna must find the whole thing fascinating. Summer brings out strawberries, wasps and women in bikinis. Winter brings out snowdrops, polar bears (no, I know not here, but give it a few years) and gobshites-who-hate-driving-in-snow-but-do-it-anyway.

My bus left Dublin at five yesterday and eventually had to abandon us five miles from Greystones at 8.25. A bus is heavy enough and has large enough wheels to drive through the snow, and there is a Bus-Only lane virtually the whole way, so it should have been a piece of piss. Unfortunately the sudden onset of winter (in fairness, it’s not surprising people don’t expect it, it only comes once very four seasons) means a certain type of self-centred cretin will decide that the rules of the road do not apply in bad weather and will drive in said Bus-Only lane, at a speed which suggests that the lane itself is a piece of piss, which has frozen solid. The cretin will, of course, put on his hazard lights, so that’s ok then.

At each junction cars will drive out in front of the bus rather than have to stop and try and start again. The fact that the bus that they’ve planted themselves in front of might have problems of its own stopping, but might instead crush their car like a steamroller crushing Wile E Coyote does not seem to occur to them.

Had the road ahead been at clear as it should have been then we’d have reached Windgates hill between Bray and Greystones  long before it became impassable. Instead we spent three hours behind people who Bambi on ice would have laughed at. Indeed, had Bambi on ice been wearing fish as flip-flops and riding a pogo-stick, he would still have laughed at them. By the time they’d all crawled off the road into their hopefully slippery driveways (may their chrysanthemums be crushed) the hill (it has the same gradient, by the way, as the side of the Empire State Building) was closed to traffic. On the first Monday of this Ice Age (was it really only November 29th?) I’d walked home from Windgates, but that was from the top. This time I was starting from the bottom on the Bray side, a fine, bracing five-mile walk. I must gleefully report that community spirit still survives, as half way down the Greystones side I was saved by an angel in a wingéd chariot, cleverly taking human shape as an old man in glasses and a fifteen year-old Micra, who drove me the rest of the way home.

Today saw me travel by train. The first one this morning broke down and we’d to change train, and the one I came home on this evening was so crowded that I enjoyed endured intimacies that I haven’t felt since my disco days.

So all in all, I’m fed up with it.

You’ll notice I’ve turned off the bloody snow on the blog. Somehow it just didn’t seem funny anymore.

Digging It

I spent this afternoon asleep on the couch in the living room.

This is not a rare occurrence. At some stage over the last few years my metabolism decided that what I needed most on a weekend afternoon was a bit of a sit-down and a nice nap, so each Saturday and Sunday I turn on a football match, rest my eyes for a couple of seconds, then turn on the news two hours later to find out who won. This is either a sign of advancing age, or I don’t actually like football as much as I think I do.

Today’s doze, though, was the well-earned sleep of the honest labourer. Last night’s return of the bloody snow meant that our driveway and the footpath outside our house were again a white blanket of lethalness, and in a burst of community spirit that surprised me more than anyone I went out and cleared them.

We live in a corner house so the footpath goes around the side of the garden to a little lane into the next estate, so there was quite a lot of sweeping involved, followed by a lot of hacking at the icy parts that refused to be swept, all the while with the seven dwarves’ “Hi-ho” song going on in my head. I went out wearing the hated beanie hat, gloves, a long scarf, a hoodie, a coat and these badass boots that I bought on Friday so that I won’t have to slide along on my bum from now till Christmas. As I worked the hat came off first, then then the gloves then the scarf and finally the coat, and the hoodie only stayed on because I realised I was wearing an I♥NY T-shirt with Betty Boop on it in biker gear that I thought was really cool when I bought it but I find that I haven’t the nerve to wear in public.

I arrived back in after two hours glowing, feeling macho and neanderthal. I felt the urge to shoot a mammoth with a flint-tipped spear. I felt the urge to eat a Yorkie bar. I felt the urge to put on a plaid shirt, get my toolbox and put up some shelves.

I did none of these things, because there are no mammoths in Greystones, eating a Yorkie is like biting into a concrete block and I own neither a plaid shirt nor a toolbox. So instead I gave into my fourth urge, which was to have a bit of a sit-down and a nice nap.

That was two hours ago, and I’m now fighting off a fifth urge, which is to roll around on the floor moaning in pain. My arms ache, my calves ache, the palms of my hands ache and for some reason the right cheek of my arse aches.

I bet it snows overnight.

Sucking Up

I was in the men’s room in the office this morning, washing my hands, when I had a bit of a mishap.

I held the soap dispenser at slightly the wrong angle and when I pressed the nozzle at the top a splurt of blue goo splashed onto my shirt.

I know little of clothes-washing protocol.  Phrases like Even At Low Temperatures, Fabric Softener or Don’t Mix Whites With Colours (how does Ronald McDonald wash his outfit?) are phrases that, well, wash over me, but even I reckoned that blue glop, if left untouched, could have ghastly effects on a green polo shirt. I quickly splashed water from the sink onto it until I was happy that the shirt no longer looked as if it was covered in liquidised smurf.

My problem now was that I now had a large round wet patch, and while it was on my tummy and therefore didn’t look like I’d had some incontinent accident (“poor old Tinman,” the Young Wans in the office would have been saying, “well, he IS getting on a bit, I mean he’s been senile for ages”) it did make me look like I’d been afflicted like one of the guys from Alien. Therefore I decided to have a go at drying my shirt before venturing outside.

The hand dryers in our toilets are these Dyson Airblade things, as shown in the picture (no, that’s not me, I copied the picture off the internet), and I have written before about the problems I encountered when I tried to dry my face in one (I likened it to being snogged by an ostrich). Shirt drying, though, was easier to manage, I just slid my shirt down over the front jaw of the machine.

A howling stream of warm air rushed up the outside of my shirt, but as an unexpected bonus its twin rushed up the inside, buffeting me from navel to nipples in a thermal tornado. And not only was it deliciously, tinglingly warm, but it was so powerful that I could practically feel it toning my muscles as well like those vibrating belt things that they sell on the telly in one of those offers that is not available in shops. I might start my own fitness video using one, it’s a lot more fun than sit-ups.

Anyway, as another cold front sweeps down over our country tonight, due to last at least a week, here’s a tip.

Go dry your shirt in a hand-dryer, and enjoy a warm front instead.

Back to the Farm

As I said yesterday I went back to see my psychiatrist this morning.

The appointment was at 7.30 am (nutsness never sleeps) so once again I was able to get the same bus that I normally get to work. I wrote about this last time, and about how people who were beginning to become familiar might notice when I suddenly got off at a different stop, one that you would only get off at if you were going to St John of Gods. I wrote that this was a touch embarrassing.

But that was back when I had only started catching that bus to work. In the intervening time I have become a regular, and am now on “good morning” terms with the man and woman who are at my stop each morning. We exchange pleasantries (“the service has gone cat, hasn’t it”), utter cliches (“this time two weeks it’ll all be over”) and, since we all get off at the same stop as well, we wish other a good day as we separate. By my standards they’re practically bosom buddies.

Thus it was hard to ignore the looks of surprise, first on Gerry’s face, then downstairs on Bernie’s (yes, I still sit upstairs on the bus, like a kid) when I mumbled “see you tomorrow” as I got off the bus five miles earlier than usual, right in front of Ireland’s best known mental hospital. From short snippets during our morning chats I have deduced that Bernie works in the clinic in the Mater Hospital, and that Gerry is a Judge. From this morning’s short journey they have probably deduced that I’m a loony. Tomorrow morning at the bus-stop should be fun.

And what of my visit? Well, we both agree that I am so much better in so many ways, if it weren’t for the bloody derealisation, which I can best describe as “being living, but not alive” (I’m proud of that, I’m thinking of offering it to my shrink for use in the paper he’s bound to write about me someday). It’s odd, the original depression is pretty well gone (I haven’t had a really bad attack for well over a year now) but the derealisation it left behind just lasts and lasts, like the aftertaste of Marmite. As my shrink says himself it’s known to be notoriously hard to shift, but he has done lots of research. I have now been given another type of medication to try, and I would be beginning to suspect that the Latin name for my condition is doptestus giniiporcus (drug-trial guinea pig) were it not for the fact that these have worked on two of his patients. Both of them, by the way, got the derealisation from using stuff from Head Shops, so the products they sell aren’t just harmless herbs.

Anyway, I’ll try them, and I’m also trying one or two other things. One thing which always helps with any problem, of course, is talking about it to a sympathetic listener, and having this space to talk about being a spacer to all of you has helped enormously. For the hour or so that I’ve been writing this I’ve been fully absorbed, and it’s great to have something in which I feel totally involved.

Thanks once again, guys.