Pumping iron…

I’ve never liked ironing. I don’t know why that is, or, come to think of it, why, if that is the case, that I ever have to do it now.

But I do. Here’s the thing you see, apparently despite all the great strides we’ve made in society these days like not being able to call the postman the postman any more in case we’re perceived to be sexist or something, we still can’t go outside with wrinkly trousers. Hence the ironing.

By the way I still call the postman, the postman, although usually I just call him Dan.

Unless of course the postman happens to be a woman. Then I’d call her Debbie or Mary or whatever her name is.

Oh yeah, she'd be a postwoman too of course.

But all that is an aside to this conundrum of ironing.

I’m not sure why I dislike ironing so much, I think that perhaps secretly I’m always afraid that the phone might ring.

If you need a second to think about that, take a pause now - but as a hint remember the old joke about the guy who burned his ear listening to the match.

So moving swiftly along. Ironing then. I mean folks, seriously is there any logic to it at all?

When I was growing up my mother used to spend hours upon hours on her feet ironing shirts and trousers and, well everything really.

And I’m pretty sure than most other mothers around did the same. There were days you could smell the starch in the air from half a mile away.

Those were usually after good drying days, something I think will be making a return to many parts now.

For ten years or so I don’t think anybody knew what a good drying day was. Every day was a good drying day because, well everything was thrown in the dryer and sure what the hell, it only cost a few pence.

And sure what odds if it shrunk the jumper into something you’d have to put on a teddy bear, sure wasn’t the jumper only ten euro and couldn’t we drive down and buy two more tomorrow.

Fancy dancy garden designers were rooting up clothes lines like they were the biggest weeds they’d ever seen in anybody’s garden and sure nobody seemed to mind at all.

Not like when I was wee and the line used to be packed with trousers and sheets and socks and nearly every week a full football rig – whenever there was a good drying day.

There was a kind logic to it all really when you think of it. Wash the clothes on the day you know they could be dried. But the ironing afterwards thing always kinda baffled me.

It was grand if you were ironing something to put on right away, but I could never see the logic in ironing something that was going to be folded and put away in a cupboard.

I mean, as soon as you folded it you were going to ensure that it would need ironed again. It didn’t tally in with all the carefully thought out strategy of washing and drying.

In fact there was a time when I was younger and used to watch things like the futuristic ‘Space 1999’ that I thought it would be kinda cool in the future because all the clothes would be those jump suity things that I was pretty sure were made from stuff you couldn’t iron. (Well you could but they would stick to the iron, trust me on this I know!)

Instead we’ve gone way past 1999 and people are still nipping their fingers on crotchety old ironing boards and standing around and ironing clothes that they then fold and put into a cupboard.

But always fearful of that phone ringing, my ironing skills are only ever now used on something that will be imminently worn.

It’s not a policy that has drawn widespread approval.

“If you do that the clean laundry pile just increases,” I was told.

To which I replied – ‘Yep, and in creases is the way it’ll stay too!”

The very thought of it pierces through me...

You know I’ve never really quite got the whole piercing thing. You know the sticking bits of metal into bits of your body – deliberately.

I guess there are some who like to do it to shock people or, well to be honest I don’t really know why, but I know that it never appealed to me.

Not that I’m against it per say, I think people are quite entitled to if that’s their thing, but I never really liked pain all that much and anything that would involve pain being inflicted on me, however short that period of time might be, is something that I try to avoid at all costs.

That’s why for instance blood tests and needles and stuff are not exactly high up on my list of things that I like either and it’s not cos I can’t stand the sight of blood or anything.

I have been unfortunate enough to have to have taken some such tests in the past and while I’m pretty certain I build up the extent of the pain much more in my head than it ever actually turns out to be, it’s still not a thing that I have ever looked forward to with any kind of comforting thought.

Which leads me to wonder why anybody would want somebody to come along and deliberately shoot a hole in their body so they could then fill that hole with a piece of metal that quite often festers into a horrible gooey mess.

And the thing is piercing seems to have gone up a notch or seven since the time when I was growing up and only girls and really tough blokes had their ears pierced.

Of course the really tough blokes didn’t have both ears pierced, they usually had one ear pierced and even then only ever as far as I recall wore a wee gold stud ear-ring.

Unless they were a pirate of course and then they could wear some hind of a hoopy thing, but there were never too many pirates around when I was growing up apart from the odd boy in the eighties who might have sold a dodgy video tape or two.

But anyways by and large it was just the tough guys and the girls who had ear rings. I wasn’t a tough guy and I have never had an ear-ring but I do have eight sisters, about half a million nieces and girl cousins and now two daughters, so over the years I have seen the pain a festering ear ring can cause.

With that in mind I could never even begin to contemplate some of the piercings that seem to be all the rage these days and the pain that they could bring to areas that should never have to be bathed with antiseptic.

And all this came to mind when I saw a guy in a shopping centre in Dublin today with a huge amount of piercings and a tee shirt that said ‘I can’t go through the day without shocking at least one stranger.’

I guess some people might have been shocked, he did after all look as if he had tripped and fallen head first into a box of fishing tackle, but it just caused me to wonder how much pain he had to through to get to look like he did.

And that was before I began to think about the hassles involved – for instance could you imagine getting caught in the queue at the airport screening machine behind somebody like him?

Beep….Beep….beep. “Oh sorry, I thought I had them all, umm you might want to look away for a minute while I umm, ah, umm, ah ok I think I have it….hope that’s the last of them.”

I have always thought it was a pain that I have to take off my shoes and belt going through those machines, but how much of a pain must it be for a guy with so many piercings….and that’s even before any of them begin to fester!

One to sleep on...if you can!

You know the thing about insomnia is – you can’t bloody well sleep it off! Or is it the one real thing that you can sleep off? I’ve never really been sure about that, though I tend to lean with the first one.
I mean if it’s a condition whereby you can’t sleep…how can you sleep it off?
Sleep is a puzzling thing. I know there are all sorts of statistics about it – things for instance that tell us how many years of our lives we sleep away, but the thing I’ve always wondered about is sleeping patterns.
No, I don’t mean the latest duvet designs – I’m talking about the hours we each sleep and the things that affect us sleeping.
An old teacher I one had at school used to say he’d always been told it was ‘seven hours for a woman, eight hours for a man and ten or more for a pig!’
I always wondered where nine came into the equation, but was always too scared to ask him.
Of course these words of wisdom were directed at the time to myself and my classmates who were in our teenage years – since it was assumed that we’d spend half our time in our beds if we got the chance.
We might well have too, but you know on reflection I’m not sure if there’s much wrong with that sleeping pattern anyway, well at least in comparison to any other.
I mean if you think about it, when you are a little kid you might catch wee cat naps during the day but be roaring your head off all through the night.
A bit bigger and while you sleep a bit longer at night time – you still beat the sun up (and that means so do your parents).
A few years follow when it seems everything might slip into the ‘correct’ sleeping pattern but they soon slip into those lazy teenager years of long sleep ins at every opportunity.
And then not many years after that you could well find the whole cycle starting again if you happen to have small kids of your own and find that you are pacing the floor with them as they roar the house down, and then later discovering the joys of early morning television!
By the time they become teenagers you still won’t be sleeping at night – waiting now until you hear the sound of them coming back in again in the early hours of the morning!
Of course things are different for everybody, I mean some people I know say they can go with just ‘half a sleep.’ I could never figure that out either – I mean you either sleep or you don’t. How can you have half a sleep?
Still, on a recent occasion when I was troubled with late night noise and a sore back as well into the bargain, I’d have given anything for a half hour’s sleep – or even a half a sleep for that matter!
I tried lying on my back, on my front, on my side, on my other side.
I tried sitting and kneeling, I’d even have tried standing on my head if I could have managed it. In the end I just confined myself to jogging circuits of the living room in the hope that I’d eventually tire myself out and fall asleep.
Course it didn’t work, but after three nights I felt sure that I could have a shot at any marathon, if I could just keep my eyes closed for the whole 26 miles.
You know while that didn’t work for me I must admit that I have discovered that there are some fascinating ways in which some people find it almost impossible not to dose off.
Like kids in a car, or some people on a bus or a plane, or for some people watching late night tv.
On this occasion for me it happened to be a large injection and course of painkillers – but thankfully the steps don’t always have to that drastic before I can get some shuteye.
I mean sometimes I just get so tired that the sleep gets the better of me anyway
So for instance, I might be doing something like writing this and zzzzzzzzzz

I can’t get you outta my head…

I’m wondering if it’s just me, or if there are other people out there who find it annoying when a piece of music gets stuck in their head – and just stays there.

And sometimes it can stay there for a couple of days, just swirling around and around and you know that you’ve heard it on the radio or somewhere but you don’t know why it has stayed there.

What usually makes this even more annoying is the fact that quite often, the piece of music that sticks in your head is a piece that, well, that might not be up there among your list of current favourites.

In fact, more often than not, the more annoying a song seems to be, the greater the chance that this will be the one that sticks in your head.

Apparently these annoying songs are called ear worms.

Seriously folks, there has been scientific research carried into all this which has got me thinking that there are very strange things done in the name of science.

In fact, if you were ever to think about it really, there are probably loads of really cool jobs you could do – all in the name of science.

But I’m not sure if researching ear worms is one of them.

For a start I’m wondering why they had to call them ear worms?

I mean if people are finding this music that sticks in their head annoying and unpleasant, thinking of it as some kind of a worm is hardly going to help.

But worms they are and here’s another shocker for you – there are people out there who know how to put the damn things into your head.

Advertising people for a start. You might think that they have come up with a ‘catchy jingle’ but when that damn jingle is running through your head first thing in the morning or when you get up to go to the loo in the middle of the night, you should know you’ve been earwormed!

But advertising jingles are not usually the worst offenders. It usually is a song that is a favourite of radio djs who would appear to just switch and share the same ten or twenty songs at any one time – irrespective of the station.

These are the songs that get played five, six, seven – heck who knows how many times a day.

They are the songs like ‘Who let the dogs out,’ or ‘Macarena’ and hardly ever something good.

I found a lot of this stuff out by asking the google, but the google couldn’t help me do anything about the fact that I’ve had a damn song stuck in my head for two days that I don’t want to be there.

So I’m just trying to sort it myself by listening to different good tunes that I hope will help get shot of the one in there now.

Today it’s the Louis Armstrong classic - ‘Gone Fishin’

And I’m kinda hoping that will send the ear worms writhing away in fear for some time!

Boiling Mad

I’m all for saving the environment and all, but really folks am I the only person in the world to boil the kettle more than once when I’m making tea or coffee? I don’t think so!

To be honest I don’t even know why I do that. I mean it would probably be just as easy to stand there, wait for the kettle to boil and – hey presto – just make the tea or coffee there and then.

It all sounds so easy – except, well except for the fact that a watched kettle never boils.

When I say ‘except for the fact,’ I don’t for a fact know that is actually a fact - if you know what I mean.

But it is something that I was told before and have heard a few times since.

I’m pretty sure indeed that it is not a scientific truth or indeed fact and I am pretty certain that, if I watched the kettle it would boil.

So long as I had put the water in and switched it on that is.

But here’s the thing – watching a kettle is no real fun.

There are other electrical appliances that are more interesting to watch than a kettle.

You can watch a washing machine for instance. Well if it is one of those ones with a glass door, you can.

It won’t be the most exciting thing you’ll ever have watched in your life – but compared to watching a kettle it will be like watching a Hollywood blockbuster.

Then again you could just watch a Hollywood blockbuster on your television or your computer.

Yep, when it comes to electrical appliances that you might want to watch, there are quite a few that would be higher up on the list than a kettle.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons that I choose not to watch the kettle after I have turned it on – but there is one slight problem with that.

Even though you might have been in a different room and thought you had heard the click – can you really be sure that it came from the kettle?

The only way of knowing is – well to push the button and boil the kettle again.

This drives some people really crazy.

They hate it when people boil the kettle more than once. I’m not one of those people. By one of those people I mean the people who are driven crazy by this - not the people who do it.

For instance I can’t say I’ve noticed that it makes any noticeable difference to, well to the water.

Apart from the fact that I know for sure it is boiled.

Of course it would usually be helpful at this point to make the tea, or the coffee, but sometimes that second flick of the switch comes when I’m just passing the kettle en route to doing something important or maybe finishing something important.

This important thing may well involve watching another electrical appliance (the tv not the washing machine!) and, well the button might as a result, be clicked again a couple of more times before the tea or coffee gets made.

And this, apparently is not good for the environment.

I just thought it was bad for my pocket in the week that the electricity bill comes in, but I guess the more electricity we use, the worse it is for the environment.

And yet I think I have a suggestion that could make a difference.

Why can somebody not just make a television that has a kettle built into it?

Unless of course it really is true – you know.

That a watched kettle never boils...

My news...

Today was Friday. It was a sunny day. I like sunny days, they are nice and warm. Some sunny days are not warm though, they are just sunny. Today was just sunny. I think it was cold, but I don’t know because I was inside. I wasn’t cold because I had the fire lit and it was nice and toasty. I was cold tonight because I was outside and it was frosty. But that was night time so that doesn’t count, even if it is still Friday.

 

And in other news...

 

Circus in Lifford?

Children in Lifford are said to be raging this week that the members of the council may have held some kind of a circus and didn’t invite any of them to it.

A local child said they had heard that some councillors were up to old tricks and apparently the Mayor was even walking a tight rope for a while.

They said that they didn’t know how many clowns were there at the time, but said they believed there were probably a few at least.

And the local children say they do not believe the official line that this was not a circus and was in fact a council meeting.

“We might have believed them if we hadn’t heard somebody on the radio saying that the whole thing was intense,” a local child said.

 

Another plan foiled…

Weeks after all the snow and ice have melted it has emerged that some parts of Donegal are still without water. Hundreds of households still have no water and many are having their water rationed and switched off on a nightly basis. It is believed that things have got so bad that the council was considering diluting its water stocks until they realised they didn’t have enough water!

 

Not cool

Meanwhile council members did hear at last week’s meeting that the recent cold weather in the county would leave them with a whopping €4 million bill. It is believed that they are now hoping that the government has some kind of a slush fund they can use to help them out.

 

One for the road?

Gardai say they are concerned about reports they have received about vehicles all over Donegal getting badly beaten up and battered by pieces of road in recent weeks.

A Garda spokesman has warned members of the public to be careful about approaching these roads.

“We have heard of the cars getting badly battered in recent weeks and we would warn people about the dangers certain stretches of tarmac can pose. I mean some of them are cyclepaths!"

 

And finally

In the best tradition of the news we finish with something light…..a feather!

Something shocking

 I'M convinced, although I have no proof whatsoever for actually thinking this, that I am not the only person who absolutely detests those automatic hand dryer things you get in the toilets of busy places like hotels and shopping centres.

For a start I know they are supposed to be environmentally friendly and all that, but to be honest I’ve always been a little bit afraid of them.

After all, they are ELECTRIC hand dryers, and I recall being told time and time again when I was growing up that water and electricity were not a great combination to try to mix.

In fact one teacher I had, I think maybe in second or third class seemed very intent on getting the message across and had us draw pictures time and time again of people getting electrocuted switching on lights and other electrical stuff with wet hands.

I used to love drawing those pictures with the big lightning zaps coming out of them.

But I always struggled when he would tell me that the picture was good, but now I needed a good slogan to go with it.

I was in second class, I didn’t know what ‘slogan’ meant so I just stared at him blankly as if I’d just been zapped in the head by 10,000 volts after switching on the lights with wet hands.

Eventually he would explain and I would come up with something ingenious like ‘don’t switch on electrical stuff if your hands are wet.’

I’m guessing that in those formative years I’d not yet learned to appreciate the humour of Tommy Cooper or the Two Ronnies. 

Nor had I any of the caffeine side effects that might nowadays prompt me to more likely come up with something like “If you don’t want to fry, make sure you’re hands are dry.” 

Anyway, all these lightning zapping flashbacks often come back to me when I’m confronted with one of these so-called hand dryers and I picture myself putting my hands under them to get the shock of my life.

Not that I have to worry on that front usually though, because apparently these things are put in to help us save the planet and I can only guess that includes never actually hooking them up to a power supply.

Now let me first clarify here that I’m talking about those automatic dryers, you know the ones that are supposed to know you have put your wet hands underneath them and turn themselves on and off.

There are also of course the hit the button type, which - considering they involve turning on an electrical appliance with wet hands - I’m not that fussed about either.

The thing is though, they usually work. And if they don’t come on when you push the button, then you know it is probably broken. 

The automatic ones however are a different story. You see you are never quite sure if they are working or not. 

You put your hands under them. Nothing. 

You start to rub your hands together. Nothing. 

You put your hands closer to where you expect the warm air to come from. Nothing. 

You are getting mad now so you risk your life and actually touch the wire grid thingy where the warm air is supposed to come from…nothing. 

You look around to see if nobody is looking (that’s never the case though because there is always a queue at those damn things)…you dry your hands on the legs of your trousers. 

The alternatives however can provide a real dilemma.

You see on the one hand, you could decide not to wash your hands (apparently some people do this I’ve been told) but then you risk spreading germs and disease and infection and, well, you or others might die as a result.

On the other hand you might wash your hands and then find that you can’t get them dry because the damn dryer thingy isn’t working so you resolve next time not to wash them and that could mean you risk spreading spreading germs and disease and infection and, well you or others might die as a result.

Or, you could always do what I do - try to buy trousers that have legs that are reasonably good at absorbing water!

Now if I could only remember where I’ve parked…

I always used to wonder what kinda person would drive around in one of those horrendous really bright canary yellow cars or indeed any of those vehicles in any of those stand out mad bright colours.

Until today that is.

Today I wished my car - which I think might be silver under the dirt - was electric blue or canary yellow or shocking pink – anything except, well except silver under the dirt.

You see today I was in a carpark.

Carparks are great. I mean if you are driving a car around and you need a place to park, a carpark can be really handy.

But there is a downside to this and that is that lots of other people are usually thinking the same way.

This can often lead to there being a lot of cars in a carpark at any one time.

To be honest, this in itself is not necessarily a bad thing either, it’s just that well, usually the cars are all those kinda normal colours.

You know blue or red or black or white or silver under the dirt.

And I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but a lot of cars are pretty much the same shape these days too.

This can cause great confusion in a place like a carpark, because, well it can sometimes be difficult to find your car.

If you are now shaking your head in disbelief and saying to yourself what kind of fool would not be able to find their car in a carpark, then I know you don’t drive.

Everybody who drives has, at one stage or another in their lives, walked into a carpark and thought to themselves – ‘oh oh, now where exactly am I parked again?’

In fact this is such a common global phenomenon, that around the world things have been developed to help unwitting motorists – like huge big signs.

These are often colour coded and usually have big numbers or letters on them. Say an Orange sign with the number 5A on it.

It’s a good enough system in theory. I mean all you have to do is look around for the sign when you get out of the car, remember what it says and then when you get back you’ll know you are in the right general direction when you see that sign.

I never remember to look.

Well, when I say never, I mean hardly ever. Sometimes when I have very organised passengers with me, like my wife, I daren’t forget to look. And what’s more I’ll even write it down somewhere so I don’t forget.

But usually, I never look.

I mean I’ve just parked and I’m only going to nip into the shop for five minutes, I’m not going to forget where I left the car.

Until I’m returning that is.

It’s usually then when I get that kinda uneasy feeling that I should have looked for the big sign and written it down somewhere.

Thankfully I know I am not alone.

On more than one occasion in the past while in my car I’ve had people come over, open the passenger door and sit in, only to jump out again apologetically because they’ve realised that they are in the wrong vehicle.

This has usually given me a sense of real satisfaction – mostly because it confirms my assertion that all people don’t wash their cars every week - is right.

I mean how else could somebody mistakenly think my car was theirs unless theirs was silver under the dirt too.

And yet overall the whole 'not being able to find the car thing' is quite an uneasy and unpleasant experience.

And it is at times like that, when I am walking around uneasily in a carpark hoping for clues, that I think how much more civilised walking is.

I mean when you walk, you don’t have to worry about the whole parking thing – no matter how big your feet or your shoes.

In fact the more I thought about it on my way home (after I eventually found the car) the more determined I was to cut back on the amount of time I spent in my car and instead planned to use my two feet when I could instead.

And it was all going to plan too until this evening when I decided I would walk to the shop for some milk.

Only to discover... I couldn’t remember where I’d left my shoes…

Nothing today.

Not going to post anything long today. Been stuck in front of the computer for about ten hours straight. It was great to have something to do!

Few new ideas for the days ahead. Will get there eventually.

Whatever...

I’m like, so whatever. Which, apparently is not really a good thing.

But I am, according to my daughters who who seem to have picked up half of their vocabulary from American tv shows, visits to America or in this case I think from the singer Avril Lavigne.

In the recent past I have also been labelled as ‘random,’ ‘bogus’ and ‘awesome,’ at various times, but the ‘like so whatever’ has been my favourite.

That’s because it combines two of the words that appear to have muscled their way into the language now to be used freely by anyone who can’t think of anything more coherent to say.

And it’s not just kids either by the way because I heard a woman on a radio talk show recently who used the word ‘like’ about 200 times during her time on air.

So, like, if I like, can’t like, think of anything like else to say like, I have like a ready made filler, like.

Yeah, whatever.

It’s not such a new thing really I suppose.

I mean down the road from me in Derry, the word ‘high’ has forced its way into a similar position of importance.

So for instance if a person from there were to describe the Empire State Building they might say “it’s wile high, high.”

And we’d like, totally think this was bogus and would always, like, have a secret chuckle to ourselves, like.

All that said I’m baffled as to why people are going so crazy about these latest trends, unless like me they are worried they will not be able to catch on to the way words can now be used at biscuit.

I was going to say at random, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be used in that way any more so I took the biscuit.

Anyway one of the reasons English professors are pinpointing as a cause in the breakdown in our language is the growth of text messaging.

Text messaging by the way is apparently more popular here in Ireland than anywhere else in the world.

To be really cool these days you have to have discovered text messaging and by that I mean, be able to text message to people without using actual words.

Yep, to be a real text it should really be sent in text language which means that if anyone over 30 receives one they won’t have a clue what the message is.

You see text language is really not a new language, but a whole old language with big pieces chopped off.

For instance if I was to say “hello to someone” using that system it would be something like - L O 2 Sum 1.

You can also say such wonderful phrases as BCNU (be seeing you) or 2moro (tomorrow) all without having to tap out the whole word or phrase on the tiny phone keypad.

It wasn’t that long ago that if you had people sitting in a pub staring at their mobile phones and grinning away to themselves there was a fair old chance they might be on the way to being hauled away by men in white coats.

Of course a couple of years ago we didn’t have the problem because then we barely knew how to turn on a mobile phone never mind use them to send text messages or e.mail or play games and even maybe the odd time actually phone somebody!

Nowadays though text junkies are everywhere, in shops and buses and offices – all grinning away because sum 1 has asked them ruok (are you okay).

Irish people grasped this whole text concept pretty quickly although they were encouraged by the phone companies anxious to muscle in on the extra cash they could make. For those struggling to catch on there are even booklets to help people in their search for useful text words.

In the list there are things like – H8 (hate) or ….wait for this one ‘2’ which apparently can mean to, two or too!

In an effort to find out if the book company had wasted its time producing such a book, I went along and asked some people on the streets and here’s what I found out:

Mary - “The booklet was like so helpful, like, it really was, like.”

John – “It was awesome, dude.”

Pat – “See that wee book high, some job high.”

Avril – “It’s like, so whatever.”

And, apparently…that is not a good thing.

Nuthin to crow about...

I think I might hate crows. I know, I know, that is a terrible thing to be saying about some of God’s wee creatures, but they annoy me…a lot.

Okay, so maybe hate is too strong a word but I don’t think ‘strongly detest’ or dislike is strong enough.

Worse than me coming to realise that I might happen to hate them though, is my annoyance at myself for letting these creatures get on my nerves so much.

They are, after all, pretty darn stupid. Well at least that’s we’re led to believe.

I mean come off it now, any bird that can scared away by an old coat tied to a stick must be pretty dumb.

Yet, dumb and all as they might be, they have succeeded in getting on my nerves.

That’s because there is a large tree outside my house, which these crows seem to have decided is an ideal stopping point both late in the evening and early in the morning.

They have been using the tree for years now as some kind of a roadside or I mean airside rest spot, (or maybe it’s a crow-bar!) and there are certain times that they appear to get noisier and noisier.

The scientific reason for why they gather like this is apparently all guesswork.

Well at least when I asked ‘the google’ the best I could get was a whole bunch of theories, but it seems that crows have been gathering like this in roosts for, well as long as there have been crows. (Apparently their feathers and their fore feathers have been doing this for years!)

Some say it is the old safety in numbers thing, protection from predators, some meanwhile suggest that these crows get together to share information on where they might best get food.

I’ve been thinking that if they keep this up over the winter it might be where they might get killed, despite their safety in numbers thing.

Well okay that was pretty dramatic.

I mean how the heck would I kill 200 crows in the tree in one go anyway, it was just a badly thought out idle threat.

Still, I wonder is that where they get their collective name from…a murder of crows?

The thought of electrocution did cross my mind, but it all seems so complicated as to how they can sit on those wires and survive, so the best I could come up with to get rid of them was a kind of home made solution.

And that is, when the noise gets to the point where I can no longer take it any more, I open the window and try to scare them away.

I no longer shout at them though.

That method stopped promptly after the time I stood at the front door roaring ‘go on, get away from here,’ which prompted no reaction from the stupid crows but saw one terrified girl out for an early morning walk, scuttle past my gate in terror.

Now I clap. I know it’s pathetic, but it works. Well kinda.

I just open the window or the door and I clap as loud as I can and the panic starts and they kinda half-think about staying but another clap comes and they go. I told you they were dumb.

Well they were dumb, but this past week they seem to have decided that it’s just an oul scare tactic and more and more of them have been sitting tight in the tree.

It got to the point where I no longer just opened the window, but actually went out to the garden to try to scare them away, but they seem to go when they are good and ready and not when I want them to.

Running out of ideas I wondered if there was any way I could get these crows evicted from my tree, but apparently not.

Seems as if they have a ‘caws’ in a contract that says otherwise….

On yer marks, get set…

In case you missed it at the last Olympics or World Athletics Championships, I have to tell you that Usain Bolt is fast.

Well, let’s revise that a little. He’s very fast.

In fact, he’s the fastest in the world over 100 metres and 200 metres. And you know, by the looks of him, he might even be able to go faster some day.

Most people who have watched on in amazement at the arrival of this fantastic superstar on the world athletics stage still marvel at how he can almost take his foot of the gas in some races and still cruise over the line.

It’s not what we’re used to in a race like the 100 metres where everybody goes full pelt and has barely time to think about what they are doing before the race comes to an end.

But Usain seems to cruise over the last number of metres and I’ve heard people say that it must be amazing to be able to that.

And it is. And I say that with a certain degree of authority - because I know.

Okay, so I might not know what it feels like to streak away from the field in an Olympic or World Championships final, but I have won a 100 metres race with some yards to spare. Or should that be metres.

It’s not something I’m proud of though.

It’s not exactly like I cheated, and somewhere I think I still have the medal I won, it’s just that I don’t consider it to have been won fairly and squarely.

At first I was just a spectator you see. Standing nearby when the boys under tens were lining up for the 100 metres sprint at a summer sports day.

That was until the man organising the race spotted me and asked why I wasn’t running.

“I’m eleven,” I said, “and it’s an under ten race.”

I was still talking as he was pushing me onto the starting line muttering something about the fact that I was so wee that nobody would know or say anything.

But I kept telling him, and in some kind of an effort to even things up he pushed me behind the line about a yard or so and told me it was ok because everybody else now had a headstart.

I don’t know how many people were in the race, but they were all yards behind me when I broke through the tape at the other end. Well, I say tape, I think it was actually that blue baler twine, but at least people holding it on the end line kinda dropped it so you could run through.

That was a relief because I did think at one stage that this rope was going to cut me in half.

That bit I can actually still remember. That and the bit where a big woman grabbed me by the arm to whisk me away to get my medal at the end. I think that as well as the medal, I still have the bruise.

The rest - apart from the start where I still couldn’t believe I was running in an under ten race - is all a bit of a blur.

But I’m pretty sure when I had eaten up the yard headstart and then began to pass those in front of me, it must have been a pretty awesome Usain-Bolt-like feeling - even if I was a cheater who was a year older.

Particularly for me.

Okay I might not be as slow as treacle coming out of a tin, but sprinting wasn’t exactly my thing. (And if you were at the football training in Raphoe this week you would see that it still isn't!)

My brother Ray was the sprinter. He had boxes filled with medals won in the 100 metres and 200 metres and not just ones he’d won at sports days either. He had fancy medals with Ulster crests in them and won at all sorts of athletic events.

Me, I was more of a middle distance runner. If I had to run at all.

But even though I was a member of an athletics club and I do have some medals for running middle distance races, I decided pretty early on that running was not my thing.

It wasn’t a decision I made as I walked away from the medals tent with my under tens 100m gold.

But that last place in the under twelves 100 metres a half an hour later might have played a part in it….

Get the picture? I can't...

I’ve always been fascinated by television, which as it happens is quite handy since I spend quite a bit of time in front of it.

Well, okay as it happens I don’t spend as much time as I might like in front of it.

Yep, that’s despite the fact that you’d think I would have more time than ever now to try to sit down and try to catch up with some of those programmes I have recorded or even watch a few of those dvd box-sets I have bought.

But I don’t, and yet I’m still fascinated by the whole television technology stuff.

One of the things that really astonished me and gets me wondering, is that whole beaming in wee dots kinda thing.

Let’s face it folks that is pretty amazing and I’ve often wondered how the dots know what order to come back in to everybody’s screen on.

Indeed I’ve often wondered how they know when they zap through the air, which houses to go to and which to avoid.

But it is the arriving through the satellite and re-arranging themselves perfectly on my screen again that has always filled me with admiration.

Until today that is.

You see for quite a while now, my television dotty things have decided that they will act up any time it gets wet and windy. And now that the snow is gone again, that will probably be more or less every day.

So, when the wind and the rain came back today, the picture I’ve been getting on my satellite stations has been breaking up.

The only things that work well are the programmes I have already recorded on the system. As a result, any time the wind and the rain comes, they are the fall back so that at least there is something to watch.

However I’m not really the best at working that side of the technology and I’ve discovered recently that the programmes I save on the system are ones that I’ve had such an interest in anyway that I’ve watched them when they were being screened.

But, hey, at least there is something to watch when the picture breaks up as it has been doing.

I suppose that is one of the disadvantages of having the satellite dish stuck on the side of the house - every now and then can get in the way of the wind.

Apparently, that is the most likely cause of what happened to my stations this time again according to the guy who fixes my satellite stuff when it goes wonky.

Of course it’s not fixed yet because, while he was able to diagnose on the phone what the problem was likely to be, he hasn’t arrived yet to sort it out.

He’ll be around apparently on Tuesday. I haven’t cleared my schedules to sit in and wait.

You see from experience I know that “I’ll be around on Tuesday,” doesn’t necessarily mean that. He’s more likely to land unexpectedly some day that you’re skint.

You’ll probably have sat down gone through all the bills that had been mounting up and begun to moan about the fact that you haven’t got a penny (obviously not in front of the tv because the flicking picture thing is just annoying at this stage) when he’ll arrive with the tool box, spend 10 minutes attaching some wire or other and then you’ll be landed with another bill.

One of the bills for me right now is the television licence bill, which a few days ago arrived through the letterbox.

I hate paying the tv licence, I think it is terrible that we have to pay such a fee, but I’m wondering now if I could just photocopy last year’s and make that do.

After all, I am right now only able to watch repeats...

The best laid plans...

Don’t you just hate it when a plan doesn’t come together? This could be any plan, but today I’m talking about a specific plan.

At this point I should probably outline what that plan is, but I was thinking of stringing out this sentence anyway because I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to write about this whole plan not coming together thing.

Well, okay then, the plan I refer to is this – thinking you can get into a shop and out again in a specific time frame. By specific, I mean, quickly.

I thought I could do that today. In fact I was pretty certain that I’d be able to do it, and then things all just went horribly wrong.

At the start though everything seemed to be going quite smoothly.

For a start I was on my own, so therefore I knew there would not be any unnecessary interruptions or distractions. In itself that could have been worth anything from between ten minutes to an hour, so I was confident that I could get in, pick up the things I needed to get and then, get out again inside twenty minutes. That was the plan.

On top of that, there were also plenty of handy parking spaces, something that is not always the case and thirdly I had even remembered to bring not just the right coin for the trolley, but also my own bags for the shopping.

Now all I had to do was – get in, get the stuff and get out.

And again it seemed that things were going well, until that dreaded of times – going to the checkout.

Maybe it is just me, but somehow I always seem to manage to select the queue that moves the slowest and that always seems to happens no matter how hard I try to avoid it.

I was bearing this in mind when I scanned along all twenty checkouts today. There were two or three that I ruled out right away.

The self-service things for a start. Have you ever used those self-service yokes? They are a disaster!

I thought the whole point of them was to try to speed things up.

A lot of time you have to scan, re-scan and eventually ask the person from the shop to come and help. Surely it would just be quicker to put an ordinary till on and get that person from the shop to scan the stuff.

Anyway the self-service checkouts were ruled out as were the three tills next to them where the queue had stretched to six trolleys.

But down at the end, furthest away from the doors, the queues at the checkouts were shorter and it was there I found myself having to make the decision – which queue do I join?

In the end I found what I thought was the perfect checkout. There was only one trolley at the till and the customer had most of the goods out and on the belt.

What I didn’t bank on was the slowest checkout operator of all time.

Within the first half hour I think I had come up with any number of names for her, ranging from the ‘Slowy Gonzalez’ to ‘Stupid…

Oh yeah, it wasn’t actually a half hour, it just felt like it.

It was just 14 minutes. But, seriously, fourteen minutes at one till behind one customer.

Maybe this checkout operator was a person who read that tortoise and the hare story and actually believed it.

I felt like telling her that in the real world, the tortoise wouldn’t win, that people liked fast food and fast cars and especially fast queues in supermarkets.

In fact I felt like calling for a manager and asking why somebody so slow would be put in such a position of importance.

Instead I just stood grumbling (into myself at that - not even out loud!), checking my watch and thinking, I’m going to write about this when I get home.

Well, I suppose at least that was one plan that did come together…

(Okay then, writing this took me longer than I thought it would too…dammit!)

‘Three little pigs’ to get the chop?

News just in – It has emerged that the story of “The Three Little Pigs” may have to be withdrawn from book stores and re-written when it was discovered this week that none of the pigs had planning permission for their houses.

In fact all three houses mentioned in the well known story have now been branded as ‘illegal developments’ and while it is believed that two of the developments – the straw and stick houses – have since been demolished, the third structure is, at this point, still standing.

According to council sources an effort to serve an order on the occupants of the house proved unsuccessful when the council official serving the notice slipped and fell into a large vat of boiling water.

It is understood that among the features of concern to the planning department was the fact that the letter-box for the house was, for some strange reason, located on the chimney.

However it is also believed that there were a series of other issues of concern expressed about the mixed multi-development, which sprang up in three adjacent sites.

“Serious concerns had been expressed by the Fire Officer about the safety standards of the stick and straw houses and considering the fact that neither had been granted planning permission it was decided to have them demolished.”

However that decision has been blasted by Chris P. Bacon, spokesman for the pigs, who insisted they were Danish and did not know they needed to apply for planning permission.

“I have never come across a rasher decision in all my life. All we were trying to do was to keep the wolf from the door, but now we have to deal with this. It’s like we’re being put through the bacon slicer for no reason,” he said.

He suggested that an application was being made for retention for the brick house, but suggested that a stumbling block (and not the one on the roof that the council agent fell over) was the fact that the pigs were not local even though they had lived in the area for some time after arriving from Denmark.

“At the minute we are hoping to get a letter from some local politicians stating that the pigs have lived in the area for a long time. If it works it could really save our bacon,” said one of the pigs.

However it is thought that planners have them by the short and curlies and the brick house is also facing the chop.

Meanwhile a spokesperson for the Fairy Tale Wolves Association has said they are delighted it has finally emerged that they were not responsible for the demolition of the two houses or indeed for frightening occupants of the third house.

“A number of stories have circulated which have adversely affected our reputation and have led to a widespread notion that for some reason we are ‘big and bad.’

We’re delighted that the truth is finally out because all this talk of us being bad is just an ‘howl wives tale’ their spokesman concluded.