December 25th

I suppose most of you got out of bed on Christmas morning at a leisurely hour and lazed about the place in your bedclothes (or the clothes you wore to bed if there is a difference as I suspect there is), and stamped on your Christmas morning in various other ways, the indelible mark of idleness.

Spare a thought then for your unfortunate blogger, who was duty-bound to get up and cycle in the frost and first falling snow of the winter (as he hummed that most appropriate Bing Crosby Christmas song… ‘Frosty the Snowman’…), across the city to ring the bells of what was once the pride of Irish Catholicism: the Protestant Cathedral of Christchurch.

I did this somewhat weak and weary in the bleak December (ah distinctly I remember etc.), for I had been up very late the evening before to ring those very same bells to call folk to a midnight mass, and perhaps also to awaken the children in the locality, and restart their desperate eye-lid clenching efforts to sleep for Santa who would bestow the good and/or sleeping children of the world with presents to make up for his own lousy up-bringing, the loss of his childhood due to premature pop-stardom, and his dissatisfaction at being black (or is that some other wacko who only comes out once a year that I’m thinking of?).

On a whim, I went into the service for once, and found it to be pretty Christmassy, but not especially Christian. As a footnote that will have to appear in the main body (as my asides generally do with the help of these very facilitating parentheses as I am not technologically advance enough to pull the footnote thing off), I’d like to say that I will not be apologising for bitching about Christianity on the principal grounds that Saints Peter and Paul regularly did so all the time according the New Testament (man that testament is getting old) and they were both martyred brutally and grotesquely (if there’s a difference which this time I suspect there is not) which is, as you know, a clear sign of their great holiness and divine favour – not like Judas who fell and hit his head one of his ill-gotten rocks, which as you also know, is a clear sign of God’s disfavour [end of inappropriately long in-text footnote]. I say that the service was not especially Christian, as it was lacking any real sharing of love or affection – which according to the text of the mass, is what this Jebus is all about. Take that very solemn, “Take this all of you…” bit. That’s absolutely brilliant! He’s is essentially saying that his life is being sacrificed for nothing more than encouraging people to just sit down together and to share their food with one another. He is saying if you want to remember me, celebrate. Have a larf. Eat some bread. Have a little vino. I couldn’t help but think that some of Christianity’s (in general) policies of solemnity and standing, and silence and draughty churches or somewhat at odds at his ‘have-a-relax, let’s-all-be-mates’ attitude (don’t correct me on this by the way – I have a degree in theology and I’m not afraid to use it… to inflict paper cuts). We should probably all wear more sandals and one-piece dresses more often as well – maybe take the donkey to work instead of the bus the odd day – you know, just to be holy and stuff.

So the point is, in case you lost it, which I’m sure you didn’t was that I was a bit tired getting up in the morning – that’s worth writing a blog about, right?

So anyway. Christmas. Thanks to those of you who saw fit to put me on their spam ‘Happy Christmas’ text list, and you’re welcome all of you who got personalized but only marginally more sincere text message from yours somewhat-truly.

I thought that I was returning to my childhood by hand-making my (3) Christmas Cards this year but I didn’t expect that my mother would make the reminiscence all too complete by not realizing that she was looking at the picture of a snowman the wrong way up and saying it was ‘very nice’. They should have sent me to art classes instead. I mean who ever made a career out of ‘music’ anyway.

FYI, this year’s crackers read:

Q: How do you make gold soup?
A: With 24 carrots.

Q: Where do rabbits learn to fly helicopters?
A: The hare-force.

Q: What kind of bow can you not tie?
A: A rainbow.

Smart-ass comments:
1. I expect it would still be more orange than gold and what’s a recipe doing here, I thought they were supposed to be jokes.
2. Bet that’s funded by the CIA against a common enemy: Elmer Fudd (who looks a lot like Michael Gorbecov (sp?) now that I think of it. Is the 'I' still for 'intelligence'?).
3. Doesn’t it usually only become a bow once you tie it? And on a related note, what do you usually have before it becomes a bow? An unbow? A pre-bow?

Vocational Trainig

Continuing my recent spate of incopmetence [sic], I lost my ID card in the hospital yesterday.

The interim solutions that one has to employ when this happens are twofold.

The first is that one loiters outside the builing waiting to sneak in when someone else opens the door. This security breach is so common that little remarks are paid. It's still irritating and embarassing though - particularly when one's monkey compounds the issue by taking one's wallet (and 'the piss') and tries to swipe everything in it from credit cards to five-year-old condoms in an effort to get the door open or does 'brass monkey' impressions to emphasise that it's pretty cold outside and not so nice to be standing around.

The second is to broach a security guard inside the Emergency Department so that one can get up to one's new shiney office (away from the smell of mixed and various emergency secretions, emanations and ablutions) through another magic door.

This is an opportunity to see in action, how Irish professionalism and culture is being promulgated to the great benefit of some inward immigrants. You see, we have here a number of new and young eastern european security staff as well as a few long-standing irish staff. If you ask the older Irish guy to swipe you through somewhere, while he does so, he'll probably say something like: "Wha? Sure yo don't work here a' rall you don't. Never saw ya before inmebleedin life! Well yer an awlful ol' gobshite losin yer card arencha? I don't get paid enough to be dealin wi' feckin eejits like ya. Now go'on an get routa me hair and do some bleedin work - what time dja call this anyway?"

Now some of the newer staff have picked up on the hospital's sound security policies very quickly, though their english/dublin still needs a little work so you get something like: " You do not work here. No? I joke. You sure? You are a stupid. You know this? I joke."

I like what they've done with the genre and I think I'll go to the new guys in future.

Rollercoasters and Bungy Jumps

A feeling of sadness that is unrelated to any discernable external influence is a very confusing feeling. Naturally also, it feels a bit sad.

My acquaintance with the phenomenon known, diagnosed and perhaps often misdiagnosed, as depression; is related entirely to my job documenting parasuicides, of which an abundance are medicated for this intangible incorporeal condition.

Sometimes, and I would suggest this purely anecdotally – ‘most often’ – sadness is actually sadness and is not depression by the OED definition. People on anti-depressants might not be depressed but actually, shock-horror-and-whoda-thunkit sad. Good, old-fashioned, life failed to meet my expectations and now I’m sad, sadness.

My mate, Healy, has a solution for this. It’s ‘have a laugh’. Fair play my friend.

Now a man with my many reasons to be happy, as well as my readily experiential happiness, really has no business talking about the subject of unhappiness. I, with thanks to Healy and many good-natured friends like him, have many and regular opportunities to enjoy life and ‘have a laugh’, and this does indeed make me happy, thank you very much.

Much like the ‘insomnia’ that in only a very tenuous way links to the actual definition of the word that I spoke of in my last blog, I had a little draught of depression (depression of the sad-without-reason variety you understand) on Saturday afternoon, and as I’ve said, a feeling of sadness that is unrelated to any discernable external influence is a very confusing feeling and naturally also, it feels a bit sad.

I found a peculiar (but perhaps to some rather obvious) cure to this unreasonable emotion later in the day. The cure to the unreasonable emotion was simply a reasonable one. I suddenly realized that in an effort to curb the departing cufufflement of the person I was in the pub with earlier in the day, I had actually been cufuffled myself, and had left the most purely sentimentally valuable item I have in the pub. Now, three hours later, I was predicting I had lost the scarf that was so dear to me as it represented such tender emotions to me as it was for me, a scarf that had knitted into it, the love I had for its knitter, the sadness of my belief that she had let me down terribly, and most importantly of all, the hours of effort it took to knit that scarf that to me was a warmly-received apology and near-recompense for the heart-breaking disappointment I had previously felt.

All the way into town on the bus I nauseously contemplated its irreplaceability. You should have seen me blush and take to my heals when the girl who was thankfully sitting on it in the pub, laughed incredulously when I spontaneously declared, “Thank god. That’s such a relief. Thank you so much…” and smelled it like it was an enormous wad of cash to a successful criminal mastermind. I had also thought on the bus that I would probably part with more than €100 to get that scarf back. I asked myself how high I would bid, if I had to – in this bizarre affection-testing scenario. I know only too well that I spent much more for the sake of the knitter, knowing also that I would not ever do so again.

In the end, my paying of a reward came in a random act of grateful kindness at the bus-stop outside the pub, in which I paid for a taxi for myself and a teenage girl who was getting battered and soaked by the wind and cold rain.

But the point of the story is this: it was a little lesson for me in how real emotions, however distressing, are therapeutic and healthy in a way that such intangible emotions such as a bout of inexplicable sadness are not. But the real clincher is that it gave me a corporeal experience of what I had only appreciated theoretically before: that when a person who is suffering emotionally takes out a blade and cuts their own flesh, this, however misguided or ill-advised, can be an act of therapy and not necessarily an act of destruction.

In the middle of the... I go walking in the...

It occurred to me as I was trying to decide whether I wanted to write about a couple of strange insomniac hours, or the events surrounding my purchase of a baguette today; that my blog is essentially frivolous.

Then it occurred to me that this thought itself was something of a folly, so here’s a bit about what I got up to at 2am last Tuesday, and a bit about the guy in the SPAR on Grafton street:

I usually sleep. On Monday-into-Tuesday night I had the unexpected and unmistakable sensation of consciousness. Now we could go into the ins-and-outs of what was keeping me up, but this is (if you can believe it) less important than the up-ness itself, and it comes down to dull physiological rather than juicy psychological influences anyway.

I was reluctant to engage that effective sleep aid that boys learn (and utilize to great effect – some, I believe, to a quite a degree of artistry) at some stage in their puberty. And so I considered other options and thought that some water would help. So I went down stairs with my lucky pint glass to obtain a portion (well, a pint to be exact) of said liquid. At the sink, I noticed that I hadn’t put my bike in the shed as it had been locked when I arrived etc… so I went out anyway, scantily clad as I was, and was very surprised that it was such a mild evening given that this is January and Ireland, and me – with my sinewy but ever-so-attractive (but much under-appreciated) body.

So I had a bit of a walkabout, paid a visit to the chin-up pole, did a few chin-ups, reacquainted myself with the garden bench and that type of thing before finally realizing that if I were seen I would no doubt be sent for psychological assessment. Of course I would explain the physiological factors in all their dullness then, given that they would now be of immense and persuasive importance, but perhaps it would alas be by then too late.

Being out in the garden in the middle of the night reminded me of the first of two times in my life (and they happened within a few days of each other) when I went sleep-walking. In the autumn of 2000, I woke up out in the rain naked (and if truth be told somewhat aroused). True story. Kinda scary. Interesting experience.

Then I retired to my room (lest there be confusion, not in 2000 – though that’s what I did then as well – I mean on Mon/Tues) and listened to an M Ward CD and it was just ahhhh. Lovely. I also wrote a letter to someone who lives very far away, and by the end of the album I was then quite satisfied that I had lulled my body into the requisite relaxation, hydration and fatigue to invite imminent sleep, and also deciding that I had quite enjoyed my insomnia and it’d be a nice affliction to have once every couple of months – if it could be handled so gently. I still couldn’t sleep though, so it’s a good job* there was a plan B to hand*.

Well enough of that! Moving hastily along…

[Those of you who have lives or sense should probably stop reading now. The rest is just about a peculiar sandwich vendor]

I’ve been going to SPAR on Grafton Street for salmon baguettes lately. I don't know of anywhere else you can get salmon Baguettes for 3 euro something.

When I went yesterday, there was this dude who I've seen there, but hadn't ordered a sambo from before. He was washing something and was visibly annoyed that I had come in. We stood then making prolonged eye-contact with one another. I was waiting for the perfunctory invitation of a "What can I get ya?" as one does. It was not forthcoming so I just piped up to bring the staring to a conclusion.

He asked me how much I usually pay for this sandwich, and I thought, "Oh-oh, there goes the cheap salmon sandwiches," but said, "blah blah blah." He told me that because i interrupted him, today it would cost 4.50. I laughed. He said he wasn't joking. I nodded with a furrowed brow, wondering if I should take a confrontational or a jovial tone. At which point he informed me that he was joking and told me that he had been trying to make people angry all day. I enquired after his success. He said it wasn't good, and that vegetarians were particularly hard to piss off. He just didn't seem to have that natural sense of PR that the rest of us have picked up by osmosis. I turned down the opportunity to tell him that he was lacking in this area as he was kind of scaring me at this point. I expect he'll be manager by next week.

The whole thing made me so uncomfortable I didn't ask for cheese. And that my friends, is the gratedest God edam traged(der)y of the whole story.

Novelty Hand-Shakes

Do you know anyone (men usually) who do sophisticated hand shakes that include inter alia (as they say in legalese) grabbing your thumb in their fist, sliding your palms off one another and doing the finger-click-point thing?

Down with that sort of thing.

Now maybe I'm a tad officious in my demeanor, and this makes me dull and conservative; but this aside, I know how I like my hand-shakes, and I'd appreciate a little consideration.

What's particularly ironic about this trend is that the guys who do it, seem to be the very manly-types who would have called me 'gay' and roughed me up or somesuch when in my pre-teens I played patty-cake with my sister or whatever other pig-tailed young lady happened to be available.

Now despite the fact that I still pretty much remember all the rhymes and actions, I've left 'patty-cake' back in 1990 (or '94 - whatever). You guys need to follow my lead.

Granted it may be argued that this type of hand-shake connotes a long standing friendship or a desire for one, but if anyone I knew for a long time suggested (especially when I were in my twenties!) that we compose a fancy hand-shake, I'd tell them that they really what they needed was just either a little more lovin, or a little more beer.

Also, while it may be considered in the alternative, an appropriate substitution for the maneuver that men find so difficult to perform with one another colloquially known as hug. I say rubbish. Even a half hug or a firm but meaningful grabbing of the shoulder or bicep gets the point across, and requires a lot less dexterity than all this finger-trickery; and has so much more dignity besides.

Up with this sort of thing.

Of course q-mojo ignores the whole issue relating to reticence about sexuality or personal space and shows his affection by, grooming monkey-style, grabbing, kissing and sometimes grinding.

The rest of us have not quite (more irony - isn't irony just magic?) evolved to this point yet.

Bloody Heck (or 'Coag-u-later' - it's tough when you have two equally lame titles)

A few months ago I donated my blood (well, as much as I could spare) for the sake of some important hospital-type research-thingy which was to establish blood-something average-whatsits (and to an equivalent extent for the sake of a free sandwich).

Then last Wednesday night I got a phone call from the National Centre for Hereditary Coagulation Disorders (to whom james-juice or a james-juice report had been passed by the original researchers – whoever they are) telling me that my blood indicated some ‘abnormalities’ and that they would 'advise' me to give a sample to be re-screened the following morning (they don’t believe in ‘letting the grass grow under em,’ as my dear mum might say); which I did – but there were no sandwiches this time. The sandwiches the frist time were crap anyway, so I actually didn't mind this so much.

They took quite a bit of blood (which strikes as a bit of mean thing to do to someone whom they suspect has a bleeding disorder), said that I would have to come in the following week for a fancier platelet test as well; and of course reassured me that I had little cause for concern until the full results are back… unless I cut myself any way seriously – in which case I should go ONLY to St. James’ Hospital and inform the staff that the 24-hour on-call NCHCD doctor should be called IMMEDIATELY.

Bloody Heck.

Now this is the kind of thing that could keep a fella up at night, so it’s a good job I respond to anything at all taxing by having a bit of nap. I’m not really a panicker, and like the nice medi-vampires say, I've little to worry about... yet. Also, I don't seem to have the symptoms they reckon I should have in any great abundance. So this isn't so much intended as a sympathy-evoking blog, but now that I've started I can see that it doesn't make much of a read on any level at all really unless you like stories about free sandwiches or if you didn't know how to spell coagulation.

I feel kind sleepy right now actually. I’ve been in the sigh-brary all bore-ning trying to study constitutional law; the most interesting fact I derived from which was that according to the English version of the 1937 constitution, the President has to be at least 35 years old, but according to the Irish version (which takes precedence despite the fact that it itself was supposed to be an accurate translation of the original English text) there is a typo which says that a candidate needs have to have completed their 35th year. Personally, I think both are about 30 years shy (one moreso than the other obviously)of what the actual figure should be. It’s the kind of job that’d suit an active retiree. I can’t imagine why anyone younger would want to spend their time cutting ribbons, smiling perfunctorily, and being paraded and shunted around like the winner of a beautiful baby competition… though I do like lollipops… maybe it wouldn’t be so bad being a baby after all… oh wait… what was I?... zzz zzz zzz zzz.