The Fall Guy

I once asked an American person I knew why they called all the other seasons by the same names as us, but decided to call autumn the fall instead.

“The answer was simple,” she said, “it is the time of the year that the leaves fall off the tree so it’s called the fall.”

Umm, I thought to myself. That’s just stoopid.

I mean if you were to follow that logic through why would you not call spring ‘the bud,’ or summer ‘the stifling heat time when you need the air conditioning on,’ or something else catchy like that.

Still, I couldn’t help thinking about ‘the fall’ this week as I looked out at the bare branches of the beech tree in my garden.

I love that tree. Every season it has a different look to it and it is simply spectacular. It’s huge, but it’s spectacular.

That doesn’t mean that every once in a while I can’t curse it. That usually happens in autumn.

In autumn, in case you are not American and don’t know this because you can’t get a clue from the name, the leaves fall from the trees.

Not all the trees, but the ones that books tell us lose their leaves in winter.

Even though we know they’ve already lost them in the autumn.

And when they start to fall we suddenly realise how many of the damn things were up there on those branches in the first place.

Most of the leaves have been down now for weeks now, but so far I have resisted the temptation to get out and rake them off the lawn or brush them off the ‘pad.’

I nearly used the word driveway there instead of ‘pad’ but I guess if I’m dissing the use of the word ‘fall’ I surely couldn’t use ‘driveway.’

Anyway the leaves have been falling...and so have the prices. Damn, I thought I was writing a piece for an advertising department again.

What was I saying again? Oh yeah, the leaves have been falling...and I have been patient.

I remember the first year I moved into the house and watched as the leaves swirled up into every wee corner, covered the lawn and stuffed the drainpipes and I thought I need to get out there and get this sorted.

And I did, but there were hundreds, nay thousands, more still on that damn tree and by the time I had finished a couple of hours of back breaking toil and had just stood back to admire my handiwork I noticed that the place was piling up again just as fast as I cleared them.

Now I am more patient. For a start if you don’t rush out and spend hours raking and brushing them away, some of them will be blown away.

Okay so you might be passing the problem on to your neighbours or the kindly folk who sweep the footpaths in our town, but you never know - they might need the exercise.

I’ve also discovered that a cleared lawn acts as some kind of a leaf magnet and even if there are no more leaves left on your own tree, leaves from trees all around seem to blow in and just lie on your grass.

There are disadvantages to this policy of course. If it rains and it has occasionally been known to rain in this part of the world, the leaves get wet and when they get wet they get slippery and when they get slippery you could fall. (Hey maybe that’s why they changed the name.)

Which is why, even though I like to hold off as long as I possibly can, there always comes a day no later than late November when I have to get out there with a rake, brush and big plastic bags in hand and as take as many of those damn leaves away as I possibly can for another year.

I thought about this too recently and tried to remember the last time my better half hauled herself outdoors to help with this annual chore. I couldn’t remember so I asked her why not.

“Oh it’s simple,” she said, “you’re the fall guy.”

And she’s not even American!

Fever pitch

I’ve had hay fever over the past week or so, in fact over the past few weeks, and just for the record, that is not a good thing.

In fact I’d go so far now as to say that it is a nasty enough kind of condition to have to endure in the middle of what we are supposed to be calling summer when we might get to spend a few hours outside.

But then again, “it’s only hay fever,” somebody said to me at the weekend, obviously a somebody who has never had to suffer from this terrible affliction, and then they added “sure it won’t kill you.”

How did he know that it wouldn’t kill me, he doesn’t even know how badly it affects me, so how does he know it won’t kill me.

By the way, it affects me pretty darn badly I’d have to say, especially my eyes.

The runny nose and the sneezing and stuff well, they are awkward and annoying, but since they come with the colds and flus of winter as well, I’m more used to them.

But the eyes, my God the eyes, the constant watering and the itchiness and the redness and did I say about the constant watering…the effects of hay fever on my eyes just drives me crazy.

So watery eyes might not in themselves kill me, but what if say they get really bad when I’m in the car and I crash or I’m crossing the street and I don’t see that big lorry coming until it’s too late and….

Okay so maybe that’s a wee bit of an exaggeration, but we all know Molly Malone died of a fever didn’t she.

And what’s more, with no specific fever ever being mentioned as far as I am aware, I’m not ready to rule out the possibility of her death being caused by hay fever. There was definitely something very fishy about it.

So after days, nay weeks of enduring this torture I decided it was time for me to see how could I cure it. And after days of useless anti histamines and eye drops I turned to the one place I knew there would be a sure fire cure – the internet.

There I discovered that a fever is not an illness itself, but it’s usually a sign that something out of the ordinary is going on in our body.

Well, Dah… “Who the heck wrote this stuff,” I thought to myself, until I read onto the next line which added “Fevers aren’t necessarily bad…” and it was then I was certain that this was written by the same guy who told me mine wouldn’t kill me.

Something out of the ordinary might be the fact that I was losing about three litres of fluid through my eyes every day and found myself wishing my legs could run as fast as my nose.

Yep, I had a damn fever alright, but where were all the cures? First one I looked suggested that the best time to start treating hay fever was in winter when the symptoms hadn’t even arisen yet.

“Oh goodie,” I thought to myself, “just a couple more months of walking around with big red puffy eyes and a runny nose then.” Or I could try some of the other cures like lying with cold teabags or slices of potatoes or cucumbers over my eyes.

I didn’t bother. Not that I wouldn’t try anything to get rid of them, it’s just well that I’ve tried the potato and the tea bag and the cucumber thingy before and well it didn’t work.

There was one suggested cure on the sites I looked at and one that was also suggested by that pal of mine, who said that if I really wanted to try to get shot of the hay fever I could always try acupuncture.

I looked at him in complete horror at the thought of all those needles and said – “well it’s only hay fever you know…it’ll hardly kill me.”

Lifting a finger...or two

When I was very young I used to think that, for a driver, lifting their index finger off the steering wheel as another car approached was an integral part of driving.

It was, I thought, the day time equivalent of dipping your lights.

In fact, so convinced was I that this was something you must do while driving, I used to make sure I did it as well when I was ‘pretend’ driving.

Of course in my day, ‘pretend driving’ did not involve a Playstation or X-box or anything quite so fancy.

Instead we used a basin. Or the lid of a saucepan.

Basically anything that was round that we were allowed to use – and more often than not even something that we weren’t!

We didn’t have fancy graphics – we had live 3d action.  We got the real feel of movement, because we umm, moved.

Yip, we would have walked or run around with the steering-basin in our hand avoiding obstacles in our path by carefully turning the wheel, I mean basin.

And of course, not forgetting to raise our index finger politely whenever we would meet someone else who was moving in the opposite direction.

We also did the noises.

I mean electric cars were unheard of in those days – although well all longed for the year 2000 when cars would fly like they did in the comic.

What a disappointment that turned out to be – unless you count the bumping inches off the ground as you drive over roads that could possibly be like the surface of the moon.

Anyway, back in my idyllic memory of cars and driving, everything seemed so polite and fun and exciting and I was quite looking forward to the progression from basin or saucepan lid to a real car.

But things have changed.

Driving can be a stressful business now.

I mean for a start we have road rage. People are always in a hurry. Angry and aggressive driving seems to be part of everyday life now.

Most people it would seem live by a simple rule on the road.

Anybody driving slower than them is an idiot – but anybody driving faster than them is a maniac!

And if they lift a single finger off the steering wheel to gesture to you, chances are it is not the same finger or the same gesture of days gone by.

So you can imagine my surprise over recent weeks when driving around Kilcar and Glencolmcille as driver after driver I met on the road, raised their finger or hand – old style – in what seemed like a genuine and friendly salute to another road user. (That was me by the way).

Ok, so maybe I had made it sound a bit like nobody ever does that any more when they do. But here’s the thing, I think most people usually only now do it to a few people they know and who they are pretty sure will acknowledge them in a similar fashion.

So for the first few weeks these gestures in a far-flung part of Donegal caused me some serious headaches.

The first time I’d noticed it, the car was almost past in the opposite direction when I’d realised what had happened.

And then I spent ages wrecking me head wondering who that was, who did I know who drove a car like that and why would they be down in this part of the county.

Umm, oh yeah and what would they say to me about not even giving them a wave back.

And then the driver of the next car did it too and I was sure then that there must be a few people I know touring around the county.

I was wrong. After about the third week I realised that there are still some friendly drivers around. I guess there is no point in stressing or trying to hurry too much when the sheep can decide how fast or how slowly you go on the road.

And that made me happy.

I was driving through one of the most beautiful parts of the entire country and the people were friendly and welcoming and it was all great.

In fact it even made me resolve to be a more courteous driver if I could and it was all going great too until last week when, on the way back home I got stuck in a traffic jam in Ballybofey and the guy in front stopped for the amber light at temporary traffic lights.

Were it not for the fact that I could see from his outline ahead of me that he was huge, I think he would have seen my gesture to him with a finger from both hands.

Instead I just mumbled to myself as I made the gesture below the line of the steering wheel thinking if I this was a saucepan lid and not a steering wheel I could probably clobber him with it.

But then he turned around, looked straight at me and gave a kind of acknowledging wave, so I politely uncurled the rest of my fingers and waved back as I began to wreck my head wondering who the hell he was.

I was almost home when I’d concluded that I didn’t know him at all, he was possibly just being friendly.

At an amber light! Seriously.

He was miles away at this stage, but I waved to him anyway with two fingers.

The fricking eejit.

Power to the people...

I was reminded of that old saying ‘power to the people,’ when a power cut this week robbed me of the use of any of the many electrical items I use so often.

Of course I realise that the people who use the saying ‘power to the people,’ really want the power handed over to the people who say ‘power to the people,’ if you catch my drift.

And hey, that would have suited me fine.

I get on well with my neighbours and all that, but if the ESB had been able to find some way to magically zap some electricity into my house alone, I wouldn’t have been complaining.

But that wasn’t to be, leaving me no option but to start right away into operation survivor.

Frantically, I began searching for the candles.

I knew I’d seen them just the other day as well, all sitting together in a wee box for that just in case time.

Now was their time to shine (okay bad pun, but sure isn’t that to be expected!), but search as I did I couldn’t find the candles. It was just as well it was 4pm in the afternoon and fully bright outside.

Still, while I’ve kinda come to accept that having no electricity means I can’t boil the kettle, I have always been shocked at how much it affects your memory.

Well, okay so maybe that should be just ‘my’ memory, but I’m pretty certain that it isn’t.

After all, how many of you have been in that situation where the power has been cut off, yet when you walked into a room you still automatically flicked the light switch before realising?

Yep, I’ve done it hundreds of times and perhaps ten minutes later have done it again - which all in a roundabout kinda way suggests that power cuts affect your memory.

But it’s not all bad apparently.

According to some people, things like power cuts can help restore the art of conversation.

They point to the fact that people have to talk because there is no TV or radio or stuff like that to distract them.

I’m sure that it is a good thing in some cases, but what happens if like me, you are on your own in the house at the time and you still find yourself having a conversation?

“I’m sure the candles were in that press there.”

“Right, well let’s see Liam, where else could they be? Think now.”

I’m certain there have been people taken away by men in white coats for less over the years.

It also goes to disprove the old saying about people going mad when they get a wee bit of power - I reckon it’s the exact opposite.

In fact once the electricity goes I’m pretty sure there are people like me who all of a sudden find themselves at a loose end.

Even if you were doing something that didn’t require electricity, you all of a sudden think you are missing out on something because you can’t turn on the tv, the radio, the computer and most importantly of all, the kettle.

Indeed during the black-out (I’m not sure you are supposed to call them that when they happen in the middle of the day and it’s, well, not black out) I began to start entertaining thoughts of alternative energy sources.

And because the wind was blowing about 100 mph outside, it was hardly surprising that the first thing that sprung to mind was the possibility of a windmill.

But just then the electricity came back on and I thought, yippee, all’s back to normal.

But you know that alternative energy thing hasn’t gone away.

Yep those windmills are still going round inside my head. 

I'm hoping now they at least generate enough power to improve my memory...

Something that might pop up from time to time...

I'm starting to get annoyed with toasters. I know that probably sounds silly and getting annoyed with pieces of kitchen equipment probably serves no useful purpose.

But I don’t care - I’m getting annoyed with toasters because, well, they never seem to work properly.

Okay I’m certain that there are brand new toasters that come out of the box and toast brilliantly and never give a day’s trouble and make brilliant toast.

But I’m beginning to wonder if the toaster I have has a mind of its own.

Making toast in that toaster is a bit like doing the lottery. Every now and then you might hit the jackpot, but more often that not you get toast that is too light (is that still just called bread) or you get a burnt offering of biblical proportions.

Both extremes have a level of annoyance attached to them that I’m sure lots of people can identify with.

Or maybe it’s just me?

Maybe I’m just a stoopid person who can’t really work a toaster properly, because ever since we first got our electric toaster many years ago, I can recall problems like this.

It wasn’t always like that. For a while when I was way younger than I am now I remember we used to make our toast on a grill. This was not without its share of problems as far as I can recall either.

You see whatever about the electric toaster’s decision (too light or too dark) most of the time it does at least pop the toast out.

I say most of the time because I have been known to have toasters that didn’t pop - or to have toasters that did pop but not just the thickly sliced bread that I was putting into them.

But under the grill, now that was a whole different ball game. Under the grill means that somebody has to watch the toast.

They need to keep a constant eye on the bread under the hot grill to make sure it has reached its appropriate level of readiness.

When I was younger and we were all getting ready for school in the morning, one of us would usually be assigned that task.

Problems however arose when that person calculated that it would take, say a minute and fifty five seconds for one side of the bread to toast - just enough time to run up the stairs and get their shoes.

But you know that school shoes are never to be found in pairs and once upstairs the search for the lost shoe would run way over the one minute and 55 seconds. The toast watcher would usually be alerted to this by either the waft of burning toast spiraling up the stairs, or the roar of angry brothers or sisters who had stumbled on the inferno, battled bravely to extinguish the flames and then let the shoe searcher have it both barrels for neglecting their post. (or their toast for that matter!)

The arrival in the house of a new electric toaster might not have been as big an event as say the arrival of colour television, but it was going to give everybody time to search for their shoes, finish their homework or queue for the bathroom without fear that the toast would be burned.

Well in theory it would, but the reality came very quickly and soon we discovered that the toaster often spat the bread out as, well bread, or as black as the shoe you’d just spent a minute and 65 seconds searching for.

Which brings me back to the plight of my current toaster. While I am now pretty certain that the buttons for deciding on what level of toasting you required are being moved by persons unknown in the house – I nevertheless searched for a manual to see if there might be some other reason.

Instead the manual just told me things like - never stick a fork into the toaster when it is plugged in! And never operate a toaster submerged in liquids.

Really folks, come on now, surely everybody knows that would just make the toast all soggy!

In the end I’ve decided that I’m just going to have to live with the way toasters work – or don’t as the case may be.

And I guess the fact that they annoy me is something that will just pop up every now and again…

No more bank holidays

I don’t think there should be bank holidays any more. I know, I know, there will be people reading this going - what? Are you mad, man?

Maybe I am, but seriously folks, why should there be bank holidays?

I mean shouldn’t the bank people be working every goddamn minute there is to try and rectify the situation they have helped put the country in.

Bad enough that they’re being bailed out time and again without rewarding them with a holiday too.

I could never figure out what was so special about the banks anyway.

You know, why if they were taking a holiday, should other people have to get the day off too?

I say ‘other people’ because for many years in my chosen profession I never seemed to manage to get bank holidays off and yes folks, I was slightly jealous.

Did I say slightly jealous, I meant very jealous.

But, before you get me wrong, I’m not opposed to holidays, I’m just opposed to bank holidays.

And I know it wouldn’t irk me as much if they weren’t called bank holidays.

But I’m not sure if what other profession we could have them named after.

I mean I’m not sure that people would be over thrilled if they were called, say ‘politicians holidays.’

Or maybe they would, because that might mean we’d have a lot more of them in the year.

Come to think of it, if they were called ‘teachers’ holidays’ the same might apply.

So what profession could we name these elusive holidays after?

We can’t call them a busman’s holiday, because the poor oul busman often has to work driving people around who are off for the day.

Anyway I don’t think people would like it called ‘busman holiday’ because they might get fed up waiting for it to come.

And I don’t think the sense of anticipation for the holiday weekend would be as great if it was a ‘refuse collector holiday,’ because people might just think the weekend would be rubbish.

Fireman’s holiday perhaps? Nah. ‘Hose’ to say when it might be interrupted and you’d get called back to work…

But there must be an appropriate occupation we could choose that would reflect this – day off for almost everybody idea.

Like for instance, we might call them ‘dentist holiday’ because it would mean a few days where people would not be looking down in the mouth.

Or what about calling it a ‘quilt-makers’ holiday,’ so people could look forward to it and associate the few days off work with somebody who wouldn’t be feeling ‘down’ for a few days!

Instead we get holidays called bank holidays and, while it might have been valid at one time, I think it doesn’t add up any more.

And I can think of billions of reasons why it doesn’t add up, but hey who am I to question these things?

Well I don’t care whether I should be questioning this or not, I’m still going to do it.

In fact I’m half thinking about starting a campaign to get the name changed if I can.

At the minute I think I’ve settled on ‘astronaut holiday,’ but I’m not really sure if it’ll take off…

Old school habits...

It was a strange kind of a feeling when I found myself heading off this week to my daughters’ secondary school for an information night about Transition Year.

My eldest girl is due to sit her junior certificate in the summer and so, it seems, we have to look at all the options ahead of her afterwards. I don't recall my parents having to do stuff like this - and on a Champions League night too!

That said, it seems like yesterday when my eldest actually started school and now she’s getting ready to sit her first state exams at the same secondary school I went to what seems like a lifetime ago.

Going back to these open night thingys always seems to bring back all sorts of strange recollections for me of school.

Until my girls started there, I hadn’t really all that much contact with the school that I attended since, well, since I left really.

But funnily enough there’s always that one piece of contact that does stand out.

That came about a few years ago as a result of a phone call from one of the teachers I actually liked at the place.

Still, it was the kind of call that sales people normally make. 

You know the kind that catches you out in the morning when you’re still running around trying to get the kids to school and you’ll say anything just to get off the phone.

It was only afterwards I realised that I’d just agreed to write a piece for the school for some publication or other about the long running association my family had with it over the years.

Now this might sound silly, but I especially realised I wasn’t exactly all that fussed about such a task – because my former English teacher was still there.

I mean the bad spelling I could put down to typos due to my one-fingered typing skills, but what about the grammar? 

I was picturing the red pen-marks before I’d even laid a finger on the keyboard.

Anyway my family had a long association with the school mostly due to the fact that there were so many us. We were kind of like hives. First just one appeared but after that came another and then another.

There was no getting rid of us you just had to let us run our course, which, as it happened, turned out to be a marathon.

Member after member of my family passed through the school followed quickly then by members of the next generation.

Year after year we trudged the couple of hundred yards from the house to the school that loomed over the top of our estate like a giant people magnet.

Most of time, even though we were literally five hundred yards away, we somehow always managed to get through the gates about two minutes after the first bell.

The principal at the time - who often stood there waiting for stragglers - maintained the closer we were to heaven, the further away we were from God.

In fact he didn’t just maintain it – he said it over and over again, like a broken record.

Even though I always kind of knew what he meant, I always wondered why he kept saying it?

I mean we were students, this was school - surely the word hell should have been in that sentence somewhere!

Back to the open night though and it was interesting to see how much has changed now and how these school courses were being sold to students and of course their parents.

It all sounded so great that I had to check a couple of times in case I’d gone to the wrong place.

But then I realised I was definitely in the right place, after all I had managed to arrive in two minutes late...

This week's scrapings...

Writing about wallpaper covering school books for my last blog post got me to thinking about the last time I went on the tear and ending up wishing I had got in a professional stripper.

Steady on there now folks - I’m talking about removing wallpaper here!

Thinking back to it you know I’m pretty certain that removing wallpaper must be one of the most horrible jobs of the whole DIY scene.

Thankfully it’s been a while since I’ve had to do it – and even though we don’t have much wallpaper in our house any more, I know I’m very unlikely to be the first to suggest it needs replaced.

You see I still recall fairly vividly the last time that happened and it was left to yours truly to get the old stuff off the walls – even if I wasn’t to be trusted to put the new stuff on afterwards.

And so it was, with trusty scraper in hand I set about to remove paper that I’d agreed was getting to look a bit tatty, but which all of a sudden had me wondering why I was doing this?

After about three or four minutes of scraping off pieces no longer than a centimetre and two broken nails (isn’t amazing how you think your nail can tear pieces a sharp metal scraper can’t) came the temptation to just leave it on and have the new stuff put on over the top of it.

Hey, I know it can be and has been done before.

However that’s not really a good thing to do if - say a few years down the road - you might still want things in the room like, well…furniture.

The problem you see is this - if new paper is continually applied over the old paper then with each new layer your room will get smaller.

And if enough layers are applied well eventually you’d just end up with a tiny space in the centre of a well insulated and probably sound-proof room.

That would probably be great if you happen to need somewhere to practice the bagpipes. But if you are attached to stuff like the sofa and the tv, well there’s nothing else for it but to get the old layer of paper off first.

Now I know there are steam thingys you can hire out to help you strip the paper off the walls, but by the time I realised I was going do have to do this job (this translates to - by the time I was told I had to do this job) all the places where you might hire such equipment were closed.

The best I could manage was a bottle of gooey liquid stuff that had to be mixed with 16 pints of warm water and then applied to the walls with a sponge.

After that apparently, it was just a matter of letting the stuff soak through for a few minutes, then take the scraper and hey presto the old paper should just peel right off.

That was the theory behind it anyway, but of course in practice it was different.

Instead all my memories of wallpaper removal kept coming back to haunt me as the paper tore off in wee strips hardly the size of a finger-nail.

To make matters worse, even though I clearly recall the paper being applied as only one layer, it had decided that it would double the work for me and come off in two – the pattern on one layer that came off with not too much trouble – and then a plain thin piece that stuck to the wall like a leech.

But eventually even that scraped off too, leaving just the piece de resistance – the border!

Now I must admit that it never really crossed my mind before, but I now wonder why anybody in their right minds would want such a thing on their wall.

After all, look at all the wars and conflict borders have caused all over the world over the years, why would anybody want one in their living room?

Just like most of the other borders, once established these things don’t like to be torn away easily and I soon discovered that however ineffective the gooey stuff was against ordinary paste it was useless altogether against border adhesive.

But having set a time limit to get the whole job done, that meant there was nothing now for it but a lot of hard work and elbow grease to scrape away that border. In the end I made it….even if I just scraped inside the time!

I was assured as well that the replacement wallpaper would have a very long lifespan, but a few years on I’m beginning to wonder, just exactly how long is long?

In fact I’m wondering it so much that it might even be time to reflect on whether I really like that sofa after all…and wouldn’t now be a about a good time to start to take up the bagpipes…

Papering over the umm...books!

I was at an open day in my former primary school at the weekend and it got me thinking to how things have changed so much there over the years.

For instance, one of things the school has now is a terrific library packed with recycled books.

As I flipped through one of the books, it reminded me of how recently I had found a book at home that I had many years ago as a student.

What stood out for me, was not that I had found the book, but more that I had neatly written in the corner the price I had paid for it.

I can only assume at this stage that the reason I had written the price on the book, was to ensure I could determine the best possible price whenever I would decide to sell it on.

Since I found the book, I'm guessing I never did actually sell it but it did get me thinking about the way we went to great lengths to keep books in good condition years ago.

This usually involved wallpaper.

I’m not exactly sure where the relationship with wallpaper and schoolbooks began, but whenever I was at school, if you didn’t have wallpaper on your school books you were nobody.

Or maybe you were somebody.

And somebody who could be trusted not to scribble your name or any kind of mindless doodles on your book which in most circumstances would be sold on - or passed down.

I know I couldn’t. Which is why the wallpaper always came in handy.

It was probably around that time that I also discovered that covering a book (we used to always call it backing a book for some reason) requires the same kind of dexterity that people who are good at wrapping presents have.

I was not one of those people back then and funnily enough it is not something that has come to me with the experience of years.

There was a particular knack to it, making sure the paper was cut and folded in just the right places so that when you tried to close the book it wouldn’t spring open again.

I also discovered that using wood-chip wallpaper always made things that little bit more difficult, not to mention the fact that it increased significantly your chances of getting a splinter every time you reached into your schoolbag.

Instead we usually used old pieces of left-over wallpaper - mostly very old pieces from wallpaper that was nowhere to be found on any wall in the house any more.

The reason for this apparently was - we couldn’t use left-over pieces of wallpaper presently on the wall because these were needed in case a piece had to be fixed or patched.

The trouble with this of course was that this usually meant that your book was ‘backed’ with wallpaper that was terribly out of fashion.

Indeed I’m wondering now if there were at least some teachers who spent their lunch breaks trying to imagine what the inside of the various students’ houses looked like on the basis of how their books were covered.

Perhaps they thought that every wall in your sitting room was still covered with that dodgy looking flowery wallpaper that made an appearance in the mid seventies.

This may also have been the reason that some people began to put brown paper on their childrens’ books. And, if they couldn’t afford the brown paper they just turned the wallpaper around leaving the blank side on the outside.

If you wanted to be really fancy you used that sticky plastic paper, (fablon I think we called it at the time) - sometimes stuff with wood patterns on it so it looked as if your book was covered with a cheap sheet of wood.

Well that is of course, if you could imagine a sheet of wood with bubbles in it.

But it’s all different these days - or so I thought until the open day when one of the students showed me the fancy interactive whiteboards all linked up to a laptop computer

“So, do you know how the whiteboard works,” I asked.

“It’s all worked off the laptop computer, you can write on it like an ordinary board, but you can play games and all too,” she said.

“And do you know how to work the laptop,” I asked further.

“Oh yes,” she replied, “I have my own – I just put a new wallpaper on it this morning…”

Okay, so maybe things haven’t changed that much after all…

What's in a name?

Don’t you just hate it when that happens. You know, when somebody comes up to speak to you and you can’t for the life of you remember their name.

It happened to me once at the airport just as we’d checked our bags in and started to amble away from the queue. As I glanced around a girl in the queue spoke to me and caught me right off guard.

‘I know what you’re thinking – I should know that face from somewhere,’ she said to me confidently.

Actually I was thinking, if I don’t find the loos quickly there’s gonna be a huge puddle here in the middle of check-in area 4.

The thing is, even when she spoke to me and I looked towards her, I hadn’t the foggiest idea who she was. 

No siree, nothing registered up in the old grey matter to suggest that – ‘well now that you mention it your face does look familiar.’

So, I had to wing it and edged towards her wondering how I was ever going to talk my way out of this one.

And then it hit me – her baggage label – all I’d have to do is get a glance at the label and I’d be okay. But the dang thing was hanging on the case at a very awkward angle this was going to be tough.

‘So off to America then too,’ I said dumbly, since she was standing in the same queue I’d been in and the plane wasn’t going anywhere else.

‘Yeah,’ she said, but she sensed my unease and just as she added ‘you don’t know me do you,’ her hand moved, the label flapped around and I confidently replied – ‘yeah, course I do and proceeded to tell her.’

The thing is, once I saw her name I knew right away who she was – what hadn’t struck me until much later was of course that if she’d been married to the guy she was standing in line with and who I definitely didn’t recognise (and who I’m sure saw me looking at the label) and she had taken his surname - I’d still have been stumped.

Yeah, so, it’s all very well when you’re at an airport and somebody happens to have a name-tag on their case for you to get a glance at, but these old memory blanks can hit anywhere and rarely is there a way out like I had at the airport.

After all there are not too many people who trundle a case up and down the street to the shops.

So what do you do when a sudden memory blank hits when you’ve been spoken to by somebody who obviously recognises you and who thinks you should know them too?

Do you small talk in the hope that something will trigger a memory, or do you just get away with a ‘ah, how are you,’ and walk away torturing yourself all day trying to think, now ‘who was that then?’

One old guy I knew said he had a solution because he called everybody male ‘Matt’ and everybody female ‘Mary.’

“Ah, It’s much simpler than trying to remember a whole lot of names,’ he told me one time, adding ‘and it means I never get anybody’s name wrong.’

Course it meant that he actually got most peoples' name wrong, but that never seemed to bother him too much.

To me there were just a couple of things wrong with his logic. For starters, every conversation would start as if there was an echo.

John: ‘Well how are you Matt?’

Paddy: ‘Ah, not so bad Matt.’

Mick: ‘How’s Matt, and Matt?’

John: ‘Fine Matt’

Paddy:  ‘Grand Matt.’

Another thing if the men were all Matts, well women would just walk all over us, wouldn’t they?

The real bugging thing for me though is that it wouldn’t be my right name!
And it gets on my nerves when some people I know seem always to get a mental block when they see me and feel obliged to call me by the first of my brothers’ names they can think of.

To be honest it’s not a new thing. I mean it happened (as I suspect it does in most families) when I was growing up – ‘I said stop that racket Raymondjosephconor, I mean Liam.’

It was even worse if my mother struggled with one of the girls names, with eight of them in the family it was like a litany sometimes before she got the right one out.’

But then that’s something you never mind (and even have a laugh at) in your family. You expect more from strangers don’t you!

I mean they might only ever see you once in a while, but you still expect that the very least they could do is get your damn name right.

You know, maybe I’ll start hauling a suitcase around with me after all…

Organised confusion

I’m not sure this week whether I actually hate my shed, or love it.

You see on the one hand I am thinking that whoever came up with the concept of a shed, came up with one of the best inventions ever.

After all when you have a shed you can throw all sorts of junk out into it and, well, that’s that, until of course you actually need to go to the shed to try and find something.

This can often be a problem. Especially if your shed looks like mine.

You see not everything is quite as easy to get your hands on in my shed as it might be in somebody else’s.

And yet the thing is, if it is in there, I usually have a fair idea of whereabouts it is.

Yep, that’s right - it’s not like I don’t have a system or anything - it’s just, well it is my system.

Okay it might be a bit of a stretch to call it a system, but I kinda know where the stuff is which usually means that I can find it... and sure isn’t that what counts in the end!

Still, every now and then I wonder why I can’t be more organised and be like some of the people I know who have sheds where everything is catalogued in rows and the tools are hung up in alphabetical order.

And then I remember... I have a life. 

I mean come off it. Who the heck has time to be standing working out whether spade, shovel or scythe comes first in their alphabetical line-up of tools?

Well okay, I’m pretty sure not too many people use a scythe these days, but you get my point.

And anyway, as I say, it’s not like I don’t have a system, it’s just that I usually tend to file most things, (well okay then everything), under ‘M’ for miscellaneous.

This filing system of course gives me a little bit of flexibility on where I can actually store things, which of course in reality just means – I can throw it anywhere into the shed.

But there is a problem with all of this and it brings me back to the start of the blog post, which is pretty unusual you’ll have to agree cos usually when I go off on a rant about stuff like this I tend to get sidetracked and, hey did you see that penalty in the Chelsea game tonight, a bit dodgy don’t you agree.

Ooops there I go again, almost sidetracked.

Oh yeah, the problem with just throwing stuff into the shed, is well, this…Sometimes when you want to get stuff out you might have to take about three hundred other things out first, climb over another few, move another couple around a bit and then hope it is in the corner you thought it was before you started.

I was thinking about this recently when I had to get something from my shed and had to wade through all sorts of crap to get it.

And then I wondered why half of this stuff was in there at all. 
Of course I knew why it was in there, it was because I was told to get rid of it last year when the last spring cleaning session was taking place.
And well, some of the stuff I thought might be useful and I decided, umm, I’ll get a chance to go through it again and I’ll sort it all out and then I’ll dump whatever is useless and keep the rest.

What a bloody lie!

Once it gets to the shed it just adds to the mountain of bikes and toys and old lamps and well all sorts of crap that, if you didn’t have a shed, you’d probably just get rid of.

Having mountains and mountains things stored away like that can really drive you crazy if you are trying to find something amidst all the junk.

But then again, it would probably be far worse if you didn’t have a system...

That weird dream

Isn’t that dream weird. You know the one when you think you are falling from somewhere and you start to panic and you thrash your arms out to save yourself and they suddenly hit the mattress and you jump up, your eyes open and you realise…wow it was only a dream.

And then you go back to sleep again.

Don't you think that’s a bit weird too.

Well okay, perhaps it’s not all that weird, after all if you were in a deep sleep you’d probably like to go back, but it’s the whole trauma thing I’m talking about.

Let’s take the whole dreaming, sleeping thing out for a second and think about this.

Imagine you actually were falling.

No really, really falling from some tall skyscraper or cliff or something that is, well, umm…very tall.

You might have done a bit of screaming at the start and the decided there was nothing else for it and just closed your eyes and waited. (Or you might have just decided to scream and scream and well, scream.)

And then, in a freak flash of nature (work with me here folks this is a very unlikely scenario I’m trying to paint) some kinda very strong, but still warm and friendly continental wind swirls up the street and catches you at the last minute and you fall to the ground with no more than a gentle bump. (The whole Superman thing would have been just too unbelievable!)

Perhaps I’m wrong about this, but I reckon that while you’d be feeling very lucky, you might also be pretty traumatised by this whole series of events and - unless you were on the receiving end of some heavy sedatives - the last thing you’d want to do is sleep.

Anyway I mention that falling dream because well, it happened to me.

Not the dream, well okay the dream too, but far worse than that - the actual wide-awake falling thingy.

Umm, well falling might be a bit of an exaggeration.

It was more like stepping.

You see I don’t really like ladders, nasty dangerous things, and I’m not really sure why.

People have suggested that it is because I am afraid of heights, but I’m not really sure if that is the case.

I mean I’ve been up in high buildings before and it didn’t bother me looking out the window or going out on a balcony and stuff.

But then you didn’t quite get the sensation that the building might topple over at any moment if there was a gust of wind or if you moved to your right or to your left.

Ladders on the other hand, while I’m certain have been quite useful inventions, are hardly the most stable of working environments.

When I was younger and stoopider or maybe braver, I did go on ladders sometimes – but as I think back on it, probably not without trepidation.

However in recent times, I think the furthest I’ve got is to actually put the ladder once against the wall of the house, get as far as the bottom rung and then step off picturing the whole falling back to earth thing with a bang.

It is perhaps that which has caused me to occasionally have that falling dream, but there are others that are harder to explain.

Like for instance the one where I sit down at a computer and type up all the nonsense in my head…and people still read it...

Sizing things up...

I don’t know what a tracker mortgage is – but I do know what size tee-shirt I wear!

Until recently I thought that most people over the age of say, 14, would also have a fair idea of such clothing trivia, but in recent weeks I finally realised that this is not the case.

At the risk of making a broad sweeping statement, I will now make a broad sweeping statement – I have decided that most women don’t have a clue what size they are.

Umm, or maybe that should be – they don’t want to admit it.

This piece of divine inspiration finally dawned on me last weekend when I saw a nervous-looking guy standing and trying to look inconspicuous outside a store fitting room.

For the record – if I were ever to run for an election – banning these changing rooms would form part of my manifesto, and I’m pretty certain that that would pick me up a few hundred votes from men.

Because here’s the thing folks – men hate these changing rooms.

No sorry, hate is not the right word – detest, loathe, despise – something stronger than just hate.

There are a number of reasons for this – not least is the fact that women who do go into them seem to take an inordinate amount of time trying things on.

I can almost hear female readers of this blog now crying – but men use these changing rooms too – but here’s the thing, except for the rarest of occasions - they never really want to!

Nope, for the most part I’d say men who use these changing rooms are cajoled into using them by a wife or girlfriend who urges them to ‘go try it on to we see what it looks like.’

A man’s brain does not work like that.

A man can see quite well what it looks like when it is hanging on the rack – and providing it’s the right size and the right price – and he actually wants it - he might buy it.

In contrast a female shopper has a much different approach and as a result will often traipse to a fitting room with an armful of stuff, leaving the unsuspecting husband or boyfriend to stand outside shuffling their feet and trying to stare at the ceiling or floor.

Last weekend’s guy was one such unfortunate, and vaguely knowing him from football and recognising the symptoms of the agony he was going through, I decided I’d be the good Samaritan and talk to him for a moment or two.

While standing there I also noticed that a few of the females who were going into the fitting rooms had a number of the same item, in what I can only assume were different sizes.

Now the fact that so many females use these fitting rooms is evidence enough in my court to suggest that most women don’t have a clue what size they are – but bringing several items the same in at the same time, just adds to it.

Over the course of the week this had me perplexed until I finally came to the conclusion that the blouses were as follows – the size she hoped she was, the size she thought she was and finally the size she feared she might actually be.

As it turns out, it was the guy I was talking to that pointed out the woman heading into the changing room with three identical blouses, and as he shook his head in disbelief he explained that he’d been standing outside the changing room for almost ten minutes.

This of course in man shopping time can feel like anything up to half a day and I really could not help feeling sorry for him.

Especially when I saw him still standing there ten minutes later when I was going in to try on a pair of jeans…

Half cut...

You know I got to wondering at the weekend about the fact that there’s a sign at the barber’s shop where I get my hair cut simply saying ‘Liar’s corner.’

What I was wondering of course was, if the guy who trust to cut my hair on a regular basis is really a barber at all?

I mean wouldn’t that be horrible – going to a barber’s shop for years and then discovering that the person who has been moving sharp implements around your head is really not a barber but something else like umm, say a photographer or a taxi driver.

Think about it for a minute – you’re not going to just plop yourself in a chair and let any old nut move sharp objects around your head now are you?

I suppose that is what makes getting your hair cut in a new place one of the most frightening experiences you can have.

After all - if you end up going somewhere new for a haircut - there is always the tendency to imagine the worst possible scenario.

On the one occasion in recent years when I went out of convenience to a different place in another town, I must say things were pretty scary.

For a start I spent a good five minutes searching the walls for evidence of diplomas and awards, which I thought might comfort me. 

I’m not really sure why because in the barbers shop I normally go to there is only one certificate as far as I can recall – certifying that this is Liar’s corner. There’s also a photo of Elvis getting his hair cut by the barber’s granddad with one of the sets of clippers he still uses now…. and you were wondering why there was a Liar’s Corner sign?

You know what though, despite all that I’m still comfortable there.

On my only visit in recent years to a different place, after scanning for certificates I spent the rest of the time checking that there was no visible evidence of large boxes of plasters or bandages in view.

After all in my worst ever barber’s experience (when I was about seven) I got the top of my ear clipped by an elderly man wearing triple glazing glasses.

As a result, years of bad haircuts by my sisters followed as I point blank refused to go back to the barbers until I heard that old guy had died.

That’s not to say that when I did start going back to a barber’s to get my hair cut that they were all works of art. 
In fact one place in Dublin when I was at college was absolutely woeful, but still managed to attract me in because, being a student noticed it was cheap! I should have known the reason for that was because they’d never get anybody in otherwise and my last visit there came after a guy came in and asked for too much off the front, not enough off the back and a cut on his left ear.

‘I can’t do that,’ said the barber.

‘Why not, you did it the last time,’ the guy replied!

Those memories all came flooding back as I stood just inside the door of this strange salon.

And, as I was busily searching for evidence of certificates and diplomas, I was also quickly perusing the ‘style’ posters on the walls.

I think the posters were to attract you to choose a certain style. To say these people have gained confidence from this new look.

Maybe they did, but these were not styles you’d see when you’d walk out that door again and into the street. Not the hair you’d see on ordinary people who can sometimes only give it a dash of water and quick comb and out the door with a piece of toast in their hand in the morning.

No these styles would require more than a comb and a hair dryer, more like NASA technology and a team of experts to get every strand in place.

These were styles that required time and effort and as I looked at them I started to wonder if I really needed to get my hair cut after all.

Maybe it would do for that extra few days until the weekend when the shop I was used to would be opened after all …it’s hard to beat the divvil you know…especially when he has never cut you…well not yet anyway!

Course after reading this all that might change, but hey at least I could always say then that I have something in common with Elvis!

Yep, I like burgers too….

The farcical heave

The events of the past week in Irish politics got me thinking of Christy Moore's version of Lanigan's Ball, wondering if Brian Cowen would survive or not. Was he out, was he in again? What the hell was going on? It was hardly a surprise then that when I sat down to write the blog, this forced it's way onto the page...

In the house of the Dáil, Brian and all his merry men

Battered the books ‘til we hadn’t a shilling

But the IMF came and they made it all grand again,

Gave us some cash and sure turned things around

But then one by one and all in rotation

Some boys and some girls they all started to ask

if Brian Cowen’s time shouldn’t come to cessation

so they pulled out the knives and put on the masks

Quick as a wink in bars and Mercedes,

Meetings were held to plan disarray

Martin, O’Dea and the Hanafin lady,

counting up hands to see who’d vote yay

The plan it was set, take Brian to the slaughter

That was the message that flew round the Dáil

But it wasn’t thought out as well as it oughtta

And Brian called their bluff, he threw a curve ball

Six long days we watched from Dublin, six long days they did nothing at all

Six long days we watched from Dublin, the farcical heave up in Fianna Fail

They were whispers and rumours, nonsencial stances

Nobody thought the bold Brian would twig

But Mary and him they soon banished the nonsense

When they called for a vote at a press conference gig.

“Now boys and girls you all should vote for me”

Brian told his troops and they mostly agreed

Michael’s heave failed as pals turned coat you see

And Biffo’s still leader it was then decreed.

Well the boys were all merry, girls were all happy

Next day in the Dáil they were all cracking jokes

But the shit hit the fan and things they got scrappy

When Brian he revealed ministerial strokes

The Greens they went mad and they called “Holy murder!”

John called his team and he gathered them all

And then they swore blind that they might go no further

So they hid in a room ‘til election was called.

Six long days we watched from Dublin, six long days they did nothing at all

Six long days we watched from Dublin, the farcical heave up in Fianna Fail

Boys oh boys ‘tis then there was ructions

And Brian once again found himself in the stew

Vincent Browne on his show, he made some deductions

And Lenihan kicked up a hullabaloo

There was all sorts of noise from the opposite benches

Their luck at this sham they could hardly believe,

While the Fianna Fail boys headed back to the trenches

As rumours flew round of another planned heave

Six long days we watched from Dublin, six long days they did nothing at all

Six long days we watched from Dublin, the farcical heave up in Fianna Fail

A vegetable plot...

As a parent I often find myself in a dilemma when it comes to meal times since apparently I’m supposed to encourage my children to eat vegetables because they are so good for you.

The thing is, although I do eat some vegetables, there are plenty I don’t and just won’t eat, so it becomes kinda hypocritical of me to say make sure you eat up all your greens if my plate is veggie free.

You may not be surprised to know then that as I was growing up it was often said that I was a fussy eater.

This was then used as an explanation as to why I was so skinny and why - if you had you turned me sideways and got me to stick my tongue out - I could have passed for a zip.

But there is a lot of misinformation doing the rounds about vegetables and I think it’s time somebody umm... spilled the beans.

For instance there’s the whole carrot thing. How many of us when we were growing up heard that carrots are good for you and they are good for your eyes?

Well I have absolute proof that they are not – because when I was growing up I tested this theory by sticking a carrot in my brother’s eye once and he couldn’t see for a week!

Funny thing is, I quite like carrots, but I have noticed over the years that when it comes to vegetables, carrots are always the first to come up!

Still, there are worse, like Brussels Sprouts for instance. These wee green balls are just nasty and I’m convinced that they were developed for some means of chemical warfare many hundreds of years ago.

And some people seem to mad for them especially at Christmas. It is as if Christmas wouldn’t be the same without having them on the table.

If I’m asked now if I like Brussels Sprouts I always politely say yes, but if it is ever noticed that I still leave them all on my plate, I usually just add that I don’t like them enough to actually eat them.

And anyway I’ve been wondering about this whole eating vegetables thing because they don’t seem to have anyone fighting on their behalf.

And let’s face it folks eating vegetables has to be worse than eating meat because when you think about it, at least the animals have some chance of running away!

The poor old veggies stand no chance and how do we know that they don’t have feelings?

I mean in the vegetable world we know that corn has ears, potatoes have eyes and beanstalk.

And of course cabbages have hearts and not only do lettuce have heads, we have all heard over the years - lettuce pray.

In fact I’m pretty certain they even mourn their dead and when a cauliflower died once there was a large turnip at the funeral.

All that said we’re still being urged to eat these poor wee critters and still being told that they are really good for us.

In fact, to make them sound even better for us we’re now being sold not just any old plain vegetables, we can even eat organic vegetables – which apparently are even better for us.

But I’ve made up my mind that it’s just wrong to eat these vegetables even if I do occasionally have to buy them for my other half and my children.

In fact just last week I stopped at an organic vegetable stall to get some.

“I don’t really eat vegetables. These are for my wife – have they been sprayed with any poisonous chemicals,” I asked the stall owner.

“No,” he said...”you’ll have to do that yourself!”

Good Clean Dirt

I know there is an advert on telly right now asking viewers if they have, but I for one have never spent time wondering where the bits of food washed off plates by my dishwasher go to.

There could be a few reasons for this, I reckon.

One might be for instance the fact that Donegal County Council has been turning our water off every night for about a month now, so our dishwasher – which was usually only ever turned on once a day (and usually after 6pm at night) – doesn’t be switched on much any more.

However a more likely scenario is the fact that I actually have a life.

I mean, come on folks, anybody who sits around wondering where the food gets washed away to really needs to get out more.

What the advert did get me thinking of however, is how these cleaning companies are trying harder and harder to scare the byjasus out of us.

For instance, you know the ones where they show us all the places that germs live.

Yep, even after we clean things those germs are still there.

Unless of course we clean with the stuff they are selling.

And even that will only be for a while.

After all, these things usually come in a new and improved version at some point.

“Now Cleanupia doesn’t just clean and kill 99% of all germs, because new and improved Cleanupia cleans, kills 99% of all germs – and smells nicer too!”

You know the kind of stuff.

I watched three or four of these adverts recently and began to wonder how the human species ever managed to survive this long.

It’s not that I’m against cleaning or anything it’s just that, well I kinda grew up in an era where we had such a thing as ‘good clean dirt.’

To be honest, I never really understood that concept enough to be able to actually define it now in words, but I’m guessing it might have been discovered by the same person who invented the five-second rule.

Some people I know are totally shocked by the concept of the five-second rule.

I have always found it kinda ironic that these are usually the type of people who have floors so clean ‘you could eat your dinner off them.’

Personally, I have to admit that I have adapted the five-second rule to six, ten, heck maybe even twenty seconds depending on how badly I wanted the piece of unfortunately dropped item on the floor/ground.

Oh yeah – and I’m still around today folks to write about it.

You see in some ways I reckon that since our ancestors lived in caves for years upon years and lived in mud cabins and huts of all kinds, our bodies are used to living around a certain level of dirt and germs and bugs and stuff.

It’s why we come built in with an immune system and wee filtery hair things in our nostrils and well, common sense enough not to extend the five-second rule even to five-seconds if your chocolate éclair has fallen into fresh cow dung.

If we are to follow the example of the adverts however, our lives would be just one endless circular motion of cleaning – wax on, wax off, over and over and over and over and over…well you get the picture.

To me that seems a bit excessive. Excessive compulsive even. And excessive compulsive anything does not seem like a good thing in my book.

Let’s face it folks we don’t want to be cleaning and wiping everything to such a state that we drive ourselves to the point of extinction by the teeniest of germs – which is why I’m thinking of starting a campaign online for the return of ‘good clean dirt.’

I’m hoping it goes viral…