Stoner’s brainwave
I’ve never met a mother who hasn’t feared summer-time to at least some extent. The mumblings start at this time of year, roughly a month before primary school children are released from captivity to stare blinky-eyed into the sun (or at the television), to revel in their freedom for a whole entire two months. That’s a life-time to a small child, and to it’s parents, and to it’s neighbour’s flower patch for that matter.
How to entertain one’s offspring, but? How to keep them feckin neighbour’s kids from hanging out on your shed roof and torturing your dog all the live-long day? Throwing stones at them gets you in trouble, I found that out the hard way.
I’ve had the most amazing idea in the whole world though.
When them idjits from Dragon’s Den read this they’re going to be throwing millions at me for even TWO percent of the intellectual rights to it.
Prepare to be amazed…
-o0o-
…I got to thinking, why not attach a giant hamster-wheel to the side of your house, but hook it up as a generator at the same time. It would entertain the kids, cure obesity and solve your energy crisis simultaneously!
Think of it this way… a half hour of television would cost ten minutes on the wheel. To re-charge a DS would cost forty-five minutes. Send the dog running on it at high speed for half an hour, and that’s your dishwasher cycle right there!
-o0o-
It’s an un-tapped sustainable energy source that’s just waiting to be abused and I invented it! A Nobel Prize would look lovely beside me Wii, so it would, if anyone’s asking.
(The image above is of Peter Ash and Elvis, his pet hamster, who afforded Ash talk-time on his mobile phone. I wonder how many kilo-watt hours the little smartarse himself is good for?)
Parkour Pops
You know that side-vault thing? That thing people do to scale walls or fences in one fluid jump? I’ve always been a fan of that. It’s quite sexy in its own way, that whole ‘I’m unstoppable’ kind of jesture, but I’ve never been able to do it. That is, I’ve never tried… which means I’ve always been to scared to try. I fear injuries involving face-plants and potentially knocked out teeth, see. I blame my dad for that, not that it’s much of an unjustifiable fear, but.
Paddy’s Day was bright and sunshiny this year, we stopped for icecream, Puppychild and Sir Fartsalot and I, and watched the parade move slowly by to the music of screams and vomits from the carnival nearby. We wandered up and down the sea-front and basked in the hysterics and paid carnival-folk for cheap thrills and people-watched until the sun began to set. This wandering lark was interrupted periodically though, by my need to rest. I’m not a big believer in buggies, mad as it seems, I much prefer to hold mah babies until they’re big enough to walk as it makes for an easier life (and bigger biceps) in the long run. I’m just not very fit.
It was during one such stop that it happened. Sir Fartsalot perching on a wall three feet high, Puppychild dancing an Irish jig on top of said wall, me flailing my arms in a ridiculous sort of pattern making noises of relief, a little girl watching us intently from the other side.
“C’mon Grandad!” she said.
An elderly gentleman suddenly appeared from nowhere, took a large stride, then vaulted cleanly over the wall to the little girl. I’d understand this sort of behaviour if… say… the child was on fire, or was in the path of some heavy object travelling very very fast, but she wasn’t. He was simply a very limber octogenarian, and I won’t deny a certain degree of arousal on my part.
Even Puppychild was impressed. “Super Grandad!” she exclaimed, and I agreed wholeheartedly, his freerunning abilities putting me to shame.
Grandads. They don’t make ‘em like they used to!
Car 54, where are you?
I went to play bingo last night. Well you might think it a sad pursuit to follow for a young woman with plenty of party in her yet, thank you very much, and you might be right, but I couldn’t not go.
Firstly, it was a game in aid of Cystic Fybrosis to build funds for a friend who’s legging it to Paris for the marathon pretty soon, so bums on seats had extra special importance that night.
Secondly, I’m weaning my baby of my booby and this is not going especially well at all. Being a Taurean, he is a very stubborn child and does not see why this plastic crap has suddenly invaded his life before bedtime, so he objects extremely loudly… a sound from which even Mary Poppins herself would need a break from now and then, even if it is only to go bingoing.
Thirdly, the waiters were all naked.
This is a very clever idea. As the caller is announcing his two little ducks see, Mr Naked Waiter is sashaying around the place and cleverly deflecting women’s attention from the balls (as it were) with his cleverly engineered back, sack and crack wax. All I could hear throughout the night were periodic requests from various crevices in the room to repeat the last few numbers, all of which were ignored by the caller, of course.
I, however, payed attention and won three prizes! Yep… having spent the day wiping two sets of cheeks four times each free of brown matter of varying consistency, I had had my fill of arse entirely for the day… even very well shaved and artificially tanned ones that reflected the very rays from heaven itself couldn’t tempt me away from my bingo cards.
What a great night out it turned out to be! So different, so cheap. And er… great crack. Heheh.
Where is my ism?
I find it easier to believe that at the beginning of mankind, we gazed up at the stars and felt very small and lonely and created the need for a universal parent, leading to the creation of Gods. All that other stuff just seems way too far-fetched. But there I believe is something there, and I think Laughingboy has something to do with understanding it.
So many times have strange things happened like this perfect wee house, like the time in the church with Vivaldi, like the strangest feeling in his bedroom as I stoop over his bed performing a myriad of Laughingboy related things; I often feel a presence behind me and I look around and I’m surprised that there’s nobody there, the feeling is that strong. Maybe it’s that vulnerability of having my back to the door, maybe it’s my dead Granny, maybe it’s my overactive imagination.
Did I ever tell you the story of the prophets?
It was when Laughingboy was but a handful of months old, a wee blob of a child who had spent most of his new life in hospital being poked and pricked, and watched by experts of seizures which zapped his tiny brain and made his baby body convulse like the victim of a taser gun forty times a day and all we could do was watch. That was a strange time, most of it has erased itself from my immediate memory, pushed out by new less nightmare-inducing memories over time.
One memory that does stick out however, is that of diagnosis day. Laughingboy’s neurologist had laid it out straight and ugly, the whole truth of Laughingboy’s condition and future, and all about how there would be not much of either. They took Laughingboy away to give us space to think. That hurt.
But what could we do but go to the pub?
Outside of the hospital, Laughingboy’s daddy and I walked in a melted marshmellow haze of unreality, not knowing what to do.
A ringing phone.
It was in the explaining of the whole sticky mess to a third party that made my final resolve break and smash all over the fag-butt-littered street. Ugh. Crying in public is scarletising. I dived into the pub and made a bolt for the jacks in order to score some toilet paper and that was when my shoe fell off.
I can’t remember what shoe I was wearing, nor why it fell off, but I’ve a feeling that if I’d been wearing Converse All-Star runners laced up to the knee at the time, the shoe still would have fallen off. Either way, I found myself fumbling around a dingy pub loo with one wet sock all of a sudden, and grew confused.
The shoe had fallen into the hands of two men who sat directly outside the toilet at the bar, they each had several shots of amber liquid and pints of Guinness in front of them. An aura of spuriousness surrounded them as they leered with gappy teeth at my state of affairs, the man on the left, an emaciated red-faced chap with a cigarette tucked behind a cauliflower ear… he waved my shoe over his head. The other chap made a strange backward laugh and stared a hole through my eye sockets and through the back of my face. His lips moved.
“Howyeh gorgeous!” he leered.
“Ohfafuc..sake, lads. Now’s not a good time, y’know?” *snif* “I’m having a bad day, can I’ve my shoe back please?” I looked pathetic, puffy faced and clogged with hospital air, pretty far from gorgeous.
“Giz a fookin kiss an I’ll givit back tyeh” the first bloke slurred. I sighed, and schlepped away. “Ah c’mere I’m on’y messin’!” he called after me. “What’s wrong wityeh? Smile, sure it may never happen love!”
I hate that expression.
“I’ve a little baby, across the road in that hospital.” I pointed and scowled and bared my wolfmammy teeth. “They just told us that he’s going to be a little retard, a sodding vegetable for the rest of his life. He’ll never go to school, never say my name, he’ll never get better but will probably get worse so he’ll be in that hospital a lot most likely… you and I will be neighbours, are you sure you want to keep tacking the mick out of me?” The venting of innermost cancerous thoughts made me feel a lot better, straight away.
“Haha! Fuck, is thar’all that’s wrong wityeh? Sure isn’t he still der? Can’t you pick him up if yer want teh and cuddle him whenever yeh want? I’d say you’re pretty fuckin’ lucky missus so shurrup and c’mere and giv’z a kiss!”
I felt a bit stupid all of a sudden.
“I would, but me fella might object, he’s sitting over there.” I pointed to a battle-worn heap of lover.
The two men (it transpired that one man was on a day-release from the Joy to celebrate his birthday, the other a newly retired police-officer) invited themselves over to our table and sat next to us, much to TAT’s dismay. TAT shot me a look of warned desperation and looked like he needed a drink. Sure enough before we knew it, several pairs of pints decorated the table and what could we do, but drink them?
The next four hours were a blur of strange inyourendos, inappropriate jokes, and glimpses of divine wisdom… it took me the best part of the following week to assemble a loose jigsaw in my head of what was said, and why. They told me that we are each given only what we can handle, that there will always be somebody worse off, and that love (or at least a good rattle) can cure everything. Pretty cheesy stuff I know, but they phrased it slightly differently and it was exactly what we needed to hear at that exact moment in our lives.
Weird.
But…
…the most divine thing of all about Laughingboy, is this.
He uses four nappies a day. Anybody with children will tell you that nappies are risky business, changing them requires swift agility in order to dodge the probability that the child will choose that exact moment to empty their bladder (or worse) towards your face.
Laughingboy is nine years old.
That’s roughly 13,140 nappies that we’ve changed since he was born, and not once has he hosed us down, which means there is a force at work that’s even stronger than Murphy’s Law. The sad thing is that when I extend my thanks towards it, I don’t know who I’m talking to, nor if they can hear me. An odd frustration for a cynicist like me.
It’s a weird kind of faith I have, one without an ism, it seems. Tell me I’m crazy? I probably wouldn’t object too much.
Screwed the pooch?
Whenever anybody I know gets a goo on them for a puppy, I always tell them to try ASH Animal Rescue Centre first . It’s in Kiltegan, not far from Baltinglass (one of the prettier towns in this here county of Wicklow), and is one of those companies that operates strictly by the ‘never put a good dog down’ book. They currently home 20 dogs (though numbers rise to 60-ish), 23 cats, one donkey, one horse, 2 pigs, 3 foxes and two rabbits.
Melissa Hayward, a model with an eye for funk recently adopted a Basset Hound from this crowd and was so impressed, she took it upon herself to create a charity calendar to raise funds for the rescue centre.
And create one she did! It’s so stylish… flourishes of retro flood the pages in high intensity colours that demand a first glance, then a second as the quirky sense of humour sneaked into the pictures hits you.
I would personally love to hang this calendar in my livingroom, but if I did, I have a feeling that my husband might object despite all the scantily clad women knocking about.
“Why on earth would he object to scantily clad women?!?” I hear you ask? Well, he’s not the only one. Pet shops have refused to stock it, and twelve of its backers have pulled out of the project in disgust. Even local TV vet Pete Wedderburn appeared to have difficulty holding his cereal down, labelling the calendar ‘distasteful’ and ‘entirely wrong’.
March. Marching orders, more like…:
There. You’ve seen it. Are you all okay? Anyone in need of defibrillators out there? Jeez. Yes, the puppy is apparently suckling the model’s boob. But isn’t it cute and yet confusingly sexy?!? Doesn’t that show overtones of nurturing associated with the rescue centre, or is this just plain old animal torture? The model doesn’t think so, Agata’s a follower of PETA and is well used to their extreme advertising… apparently the Irish just aren’t ready for it yet though. (Down with this sort of thing!!!) The Daily Mail had a field-day with it, but still published all the pictures, hey.
Co-creator Adelheid Walsh is quoted as saying: ‘We were left really frustrated and in floods of tears because we had all worked for hundreds of hours on this and for free because we wanted to help an animal charity. Then we have people dropping off from the campaign and feminists telling us we are degrading women – we are not.’
Ash themselves refuse to apologise, their spokeswoman Helena Le Mahieu states: ‘The cause is more important. It’s a beautiful calendar and the picture is very tasteful. People should get over the minor details like this and get behind this calendar.’
It leads me to wonder… is it animal cruelty that’s taboo here, or breastfeeding? Either way I find it pretty fascinating and encourage all animal-loving, quirk-searching charity enthusiasts out there to buy a copy. It’s such an excellent cause, not to mention a pretty excellent conversation starter. What do you think?
Click here to buy :)
Undercover something-or-other
““It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”*
Now that masked faces have robbed this country of its affluence, I’m thinking that protesting and re-electing is pointless. We need to think on our feet and invent ways to earn money off the books, tax-free, catch them at their own game sort of thing.
Of course there’s babysitting, but we’ve moved on from that, hey. There’s house cleaning, but ugh, there’s a job! It’s tough enough managing my own house, let alone being in somebody else’s while they breathe down my neck as I iron their Y-fronts. There’s artistry, book writing, but that’s more of a long-term sort of goal… I’m aiming towards a sunny holiday around May-ish, see.
So,
Coming out of the shower the other day (I always get my best ideas in the shower), it hit me. An idea that was so dark, so weird and twisted, so utterly messed up… it just had to work. You see, most people I talk to don’t expect that sort of thing from me, so I get strange looks. You though, you’re different, I can’t see your faces as you judge me so it’s okay!
-o0o-
Small children are vulnerable little objects, I myself have three and my waters are in constant turmoil over the fact. I broke the innocence barrier of my four year old a while back and told her that there was no such thing as monsters, except those that are hidden within people (insert serious face here). Those in cars with sweets, those that say they know me, etc…
She always looks at me with her big brown eyes and says that she will say ‘NO!’ but what if…
…what if there’s a giant Hello Kitty doll on their back seat? What if yon sicko tells her she’s a long-lost princess destined to be the Queen of a very small island? Would she enter the car then? I’d nearly pay somebody I know, just to have them drive by and test the question out.
How weird would it be for me to to that job???
-o0o-
Seriously though.
I could explain my theory to local schools. I could talk to the Gardee about it, and gain a clearance certificate that would back me up in interviews with parents, and propose to them a scheme that could keep children safe from harm. All I’d have to do is drive up to the agreed child, and test it. If it fails, I drive it around the block, give it a good lecturing and then drive it home. If it passes, job done!
When I put the theory across to The Accidental Terrorist, he suggested that the same thing could be done with teenagers, from a drugs point of view. Other people thought I should be sectioned.
But what of my dark and twisted friends of webland? What do you think?
*Charles Darwin (no stranger to strange looks I’d imagine)
Counting electric sheep
Things were tough last Friday night. A recent rash of local house break-ins had me edgy, and a pretty violent lightning storm boomed itself around my bedroom in surround sound and killed any chance of sleep stone dead.
I dozed fitfully and dreamed of weapons that I could use against a potential burglar, then had vivid and graphic nightmares about the various ways my weapons could be used against me.
Gradually more and more members of the family joined me in my bed as the night went on, and I woke in the early morning to find I’d been breastfeeding the dog.
THERE’s a day that can only improve by comparison.
Babyniverous
Why is it that when people admire babies, they speak of cannibalism?
It’s happened several times to me and Sir Fartsalot. A young wan who helps me out with Laughingboy from time to time, she wanted to melt my baby down and spread him on toast. A neighbour pinched Sir Fartsalot’s leg, and told me she wanted to just sink her teeth into it. My cousin wants to gnaw on his bellybutton while she watches Coronation Street.
I myself have yearned to chew on his chubby cheeky cheeks from time to time, and I find myself alarmed that nobody finds this disturbing in the slightest. It’s all so Salad Fingers.
Have you ever witnessed this bizarre behaviour?!? What does it say about us as a supposedly socially savvy species; that we want to absorb the baby’s purity and digest its essense like the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal, maybe… or maybe we sense that the baby’s flesh is tender meat and we get peckish? Why people get so vicious when they see a set of baby bobbly toes is beyond me.
I bet it’s just because we want to become one with the purity. How primeval… but it makes sense to me now.
Never mind!
As you were…
FUBAR dog.
What do you get if you cross a sheep with a rat? A reep maybe. Or a shat.
Apparently it’s none of the above. Apparently you get one of these:
It’s a cross between a Bichon Frise and a Shitsu, what I might call a Scut. Certainly not a dog, that’s for sure.
When it was placed in my charge for the weekend, I accepted gracefully for the sake of the entertainment of Puppychild, but swore to take the piss out of it at every available opportunity, as you do. I bathed it, and made it look like a drowned rat and laughed at it, and laughed at it again when it re-appeared the next morning fluffier than a tumble-dried tampon.
Since introducing it to Laughingboy however, I’ve changed my mind. It respectfully pawed his chest and snuffed in his ears and made Laughingboy giggle and put up with the wild thrashing arm-flaps that ensued. It fell asleep on the kid’s chest and ignored the grabby wetness of a six month old baby with great temperance. My estimation of it went up several notches.
Then, when it came with me to the bathroom while I pee’d and curled up to scratch its itch by my feet; as if to say ‘If you run out of bogroll, I’m always here in emergencies…’ I fell another 10% in love.
Should my friend return on Sunday looking for her dog (?) only to have me tell her it’s dead while I sneakily hide it in the shed… you wouldn’t judge me, would you?
(Yeah, it was me that put the hairclips in its barnet. Not because it’s cute, but because the poor pissant can’t see for its messed up fringe. I can identify with that.)
Watever
I think I’ve pissed Buddha off. I fell in love with the little guy in Thailand, so I brought him home and made a little altar for him in the bog. He is surrounded by some pine cones which were lovingly painted by a three-year-old girl, a few spiky Chestnut husks and a wee glass butterfly. A shotglass holds a glob of mála, into this I stick incense, the aroma from which never hurts in bogland.
The thing is, according to behaviours spotted in Thailand I should also be leaving water with him, and tiny plates of food at mealtimes, and chunks of fresh fruit in case he gets the munchies. I should be stringing garlands of flowers around his neck and I’m guessing that exposing him to my pimply white arse at shower time is right out, considering bare shouldered women are booted right out of their Wats back home with no apologies whatsoever.
But what happens if you piss off a deity? When a Thai person finally sinks into their pillow at night after a long slog, then wakes with a start when they realise they forgot to feed Buddha… would they stay sleeping, or would they worry about the starvation of the wee statue and fret and finally get up to do the job, pushed forcibly by unending guilt? What would their mother-in-law have to say about it?
Something weird lies ahead for me and my pimply arse, I can feel it. The afterlife will find me on my hands and knees with a toothbrush, or stuck as a mosquito for all eternity. I can understand now why leaving Thailand with a copy of their deity is illegal, the mass negligence would be catastrophic, resulting in God knows Wat.
If only we Irish had the same sort of adoration in us. We’d be a whole lot nicer!
