God be with the days before Christianity
I’m reading ‘The Mists of Avalon’ right now, a book about Arthurian legend from his mother and his sister’s point of view. In them days, it was all about appeasing the Goddess and natural ritual and Bardic poetry and such other lovely stuff, as Christianity and convents slowly crept into their consciousness.
I can’t help but be slightly jealous at the constant mention of the Bealtaine fires. May first every year, everyone in the community douses the home-fires, then celebrates life and re-birth during a giant hooley by a huge fire. As part of the ritual, it’s required by the Goddess that random people should couple up… so named the unity of the Great Mother and her young horned God. Not an orgy, no no, just appreciation for the exuberant healing powers of spring. It’s not just at Bealtaine either… they get to do this every quarter of the year to celebrate the ever-changing stages of life and death. This is most likely the origins of bonfires at Hallowe’en, then? Can you imagine loads of skobies all dressed up as Gardaí and Zombies all shaggin’ away after their sugar rush because the Goddess wants them to?
Pity they didn’t have Youtube back then!
Ham Shank
Several highly disturbing thoughts swirl around my head on a daily basis, it seems unfair that I shouldn’t declare at least one of them here;
Laughingboy is but eight years old now, and he will grow into a man, even if this idea seems absurd to me… there’s little I can do to stop this happening. Men have needs, needs that require locked bathroom doors and copies of Victoria’s Secret. Laughingboy will have needs too, I get preludes every now and then when I unwrap his nappy of a morning to be greeted by a wee stalker winking at me. If your average bloke chokes his turkey at least 356 times a year, who’s going to do that for Laughingboy?!? Do I bring him on holidays to Amsterdam for a month around his birthday to make up for lost time? Do I put an ad in the local newsagents window for some willing lady to do the job every Tuesday?
I once caught a middle aged lady giving her poodle a ham shank on a park bench one day… I wondered then what would happen if she had a disabled son instead of a stupid looking dog? Hang on, I just have to go and vomit for a second…
…that’s better.
I wonder if most people in my position would ever think about the dangers of re-absorbed baby-batter and the side-effects thereof, or is it just me? Mothering is such a weird job sometimes.
How to love thy neighbour's stretchmarks
If there’s one thing lately that irritates me more than an army of wasps at a picnic, it’s the loss of sisterhood in today’s society. Not that I’m a feminist but… (uh-oh…)
What women tend to do nowadays is wrap a compliment in an insult and get away with it scott-free. Much like these examples;
“Walk behind me, you’re a skinny bitch and you’re showing me up.”
“God your hair is gorgeous, I fucking hate you!”
“Your boobs are so perky today Mary, I hope you die in a horrible car accident.”
What would make for a really refreshing change, would be to overhear the following conversation;
“Howye Mary, I prayed for your sebaceous glands last night, I see it paid off!”…”Yeah I thought my hair was extra glossy today, thanks Aine!”
We’ve lost the knack of sisterly caring and support in this heavily patriarchal world, the ying and the yang are totally off kilter and instead of rallying our femininity together again, we wish cancers upon each other and that really, really sucks. Menses are hidden, menopausal women are left on their shelves, caesarean sections rule the day for a quick and easy birth instead of securing a happy and calm environment for mother and baby. We’ve been converted into cows… jealous, backbiting cows.
In the spirit of this, I would like to remind women who we used to be… Goddesses. (WITCH!! WITCH!! I hear you say? Yeah I wouldn’t blame you, for you’ve been conditioned that way.) I shudder to think of the 9 million women who were burned, drowned or commited suicide in defense of their sisterhood. This post is for them, and for you ladies out there who hate your bodies and hate your friends because of theirs.
Let me introduce you to the Goddesses who used to inhabit our souls before they were bet out of us:
Gaia; Knows that stretchmark creams are truly pointless.
~
Hecate: Never could be arsed with the likes of Oil of Olay.
~
Rhiannon: Knows that ‘pale and interesting’ far outweights St Tropez fakeness.
~
Sappho: Born on the island of Lesbos and will kick seven shades out of you for slagging her about it.
~
Yemaja: Wants you to tell her to her face that motherhood isn’t a real job.
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Baba Yaga; Wise beyond Botox
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Isis; Beyond asking if her bum looks big in this.
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Mary; Loves you with or without your Wonderbra.
~
Of course there are some other Goddesses that should be included here, but maybe best celebrated in the privacy of one’s own home;
So go on out there and love your women. Wish blessings upon their belts and tell them you think their acne is cute. Sisterhood is dead. Long live sisterhood.
The child that almost was
This is a post about miscarriage. It’s not maudlin, I’m not looking for sympathy, it’s just that it’s a subject that a lot of us come across many times in life that isn’t spoken about much. It’s awkward, it’s deeply personal, and it sends people running. If you would like to run, now’s your chance!
What do you get if you cross a dead guineapig with clock gears?
___________________
You’re still here? Good stuff. This is just my story, maybe it’ll help someday if you’re caught unaware, maybe it’ll help to know… what to say, if anything. If you’re looking for a guide to help you figure out what you’re supposed to be feeling, I’m afraid you’re on your own, for I haven’t figured that part out yet myself.
I wrapped a yellow bow around the pregnancy test, it was February 12th when it tested positive, so it went into a Valentines day card for TAT. He was chuffed beyond reason. Perhaps not the best timing for a child, but when is? I told my mother in law later that it was an intentional accident, much the same as the rest of my kids. Accident and surprise should own the same word, if you ask me.
The week before superstition would allow me to boast about my being on the bubble, it arrived. Lots and lots of blood in all the wrong places and I knew, even before I called my friend for advice, what was happening. The pain followed soon after… a milder form of labour pain but horribly evil with no possible chance of a happy ending. I slugged Vodka. I took Ponstan and Solpadeine, but nothing would take it away. No more baby. Just dead cells and intense discomfort. I had it easy compared to most, which is a horribly scary thought.
I was brought into hospital where an ultrasound told me I’d been carrying those dead cells for four weeks… nature had seen it fit to call it a halt to this kid’s development after only eight weeks of growth. Why, though? Why have Laughingboy develop to term, only to have him suffer with disability in his life? Why take this child now?
The pains stopped suddenly… so suddenly that I wondered if I’d imagined the whole thing, and ten minutes later while seeing a man about a dog, I laid an egg. Right there, into the toiletbowl – *plop*. What a way to go.
I cried, then, purely because I didn’t know what else to be doing at the time. I knew when I scooped the foetus out of the toilet bowl and wrapped it in tissue, that it wasn’t a child, that it probably never was. I wanted to keep it, bury it in a shoebox, and not tell anybody. Instead, I handed the wadge of tissue to the lady at the helpdesk who asked me if I was okay, but I couldn’t answer with anything but a limp smile. A few moments later found me spreadeagled on a hospital bed, being probed for a D & C.
“Seems you’ve done all the work for me!” the doctor smiled.
“Yeah!” I laughed. I actually laughed, as though we were speaking about furniture removal or earwax or something equally as mundane. No sadness, just emptiness.
We stopped off at a relative’s house on the way home against my fervent wishes, and I sat alone on the couch. Nobody spoke of what had happened apart from one or two statements that I really didn’t want to hear, and nobody has mentioned it since. Far too awkward. Far too scary. Get on with your life already, woman, and count your blessings.
It was when I got the letter a week later that it hit home. I was invited to a mass in the hospital for the souls of recently miscarried babies including my own. I didn’t reply. I waited as the day arrived, and as the mass began elsewhere, I suddenly felt immensely guilty, like my baby was floating in a dense fog somewhere, counting on me to release it from it’s horrid limbo. I sat on my couch and tried to ignore it, tried to pray my own prayers, but the feeling stuck. I did nothing for the soul of that child, if there was such a thing, it’s existence on this planet went totally un-noticed. Is that wrong? I don’t know, for nobody’s really given me that much of a chance to talk about it. It’s probably a question which has no answer anyway.
If you do meet someone who’s going through this experience, I can arm you with advice… just listen. That’s all you have to do. Try not to say something for the sake of breaking silence… phrases like ‘It’s probably for the best’, or ‘Sure you can always try again’, or ‘Time’s a great healer’… they really don’t help. Boxes of chocolates go down extremely well, hugs are surprising, human contact sometimes is an excellent remedy… it fills the hollowness wonderfully.
Miscarriage is one of those feelings that stays inside a person. Even though the body is gone, the memory persists, an innate feeling that one has failed in a responsibility to another human being. Somebody died on my watch. It’s a tough cross to bear sometimes, and if left to fester can cause a multitude of other problems. It needs to be let out, so let it out. Talk. Listen. Remember that tiny pile of cells to somebody else, write stories about it.
Above all, never, never feel too ashamed to talk about it.
However you find this, whether it’s by search-term or by fate, I hope it helps. I hope it’s comforting to find you’re not as alone as you think you are, male or female, brother or cousin twice removed. You’re the proud owner of a new scar and it defines who you are. Wear it. It’s beautiful in its own weird way.
Retaliation
I worried for my name for a moment this weekend in the knowledge that I would be forced to abandon my loyal men and women followers, but only for a moment. The unavoidable trip to the donkey santuary left their mission wide open without my guidance, but as my loyal submarine commander told me upon my return;
“Often in war, lines of communication become cut off. That’s where you have to trust your cells of fighters to carry on without you. The first sign of a fine leader is that your people can carry on when you’re not there. All Hail K8 the Gr8!”
Okay, so I added that last bit but the surprise party went down a treat and conveyed the same message. Such nice people. In fact, it would seem that their dedication has inflamed them into epic tasks. The uniform is fresh from production seven months ahead of schedule! To see their faces… their triumph as they handed me the last uniform with plastered fingers and exclaimed: “We just love the smell of Napalm in Blogger.” I shed a tear.
The blog bombings were inspirational.
These brave soldiers defended me to the hilt in my absence against an unholy torrent of abuse and I am so proud to be their leader. They are true K8opian heroes.
What a mess my good name has become!!!
Brutal allegations of a grievious nature have been pinned upon me on the internet and I would hereby most defiantly like to tell you that these are all false. To think that I would sell cigarettes to small children?!? I merely teach them how to roll their own, thus cutting down on pocket money expenses and eliminating arsenic poisoning. If they’re going to smoke, they might as well do it properly.
It is a sad fact that ‘He who must not be mentioned’… *sigh* link… has based his entire defense on lies. Such cheap tricks, such shameful tactics.
This is what I look like. All the time, even when I’ve just squshed an increadibly large spider barefoot in the dark by mistake on a stumbling visit to the loo.
All I can offer to you, my loyal people, is the truth. We all know that the truth is far uglier thing than fiction, as you will soon find out. Spies have been deployed all over the capital city of Maxiland in an effort to sample the taste of their regime, and they return feeling very ill indeed and carrying video tape footage that suprisingly didn’t burn to a crisp the very moment it was recorded.
The great leader of Maxiland is a wanker.
I do not use the word in its derogatory sense, it is simply pure fact. I offer to you some damning evidence as recorded by my faithful troops;
“I’ve wanked pretty much everywhere. If I’ve been to a place more than twice, chances are I’ve blown my beans in the surroundings … Every room of every house I’ve ever lived in, or visited. Every room of every place I’ve ever been employed in, or visited. A car. A bus. A phone box.”
“I remember a time I was walking past Ann Summers on O’Connell Street and there was an old dude outside the front door, and God love him he was trying to catch a glimpse of some girl changing into underwear or the salesgirl running through a demo of a new dildo and he had his hands hidden under his over coat. I would have judged, maybe even stopped him but I was on my way to Brown Thomas to whack off all over the Manolo Blahnik displays.”
Won’t somebody please think of the children?
—
Overheard at a bus-stop;
“And I left the shop, went and calmed myself down with a nice shot of crack.”
—
One brave soldier even had the nerve to engage this so-called ‘leader’ at the bookies and recorded the following perplexing information;
“Yeah, “I guess I turned to drugs and murder after I saw my drunken father mowed down by a devilishly handsome Ford Fiesta driver when I turned 5. He turned to look at me, and said “Happy birthday, sweetheart” and then turned to face his death.”"
A man with such weighty responsiblities who has learned his leadership skills in prison is not a pretty sight. I fear for his people, I imagine an evolved landscape of Orks, poor pure elvenfolk who got caught up in the madness and are now forever damned. I urge those people to step back, to have a proper look at this leader of theirs… a man who hates bank holidays, who enjoys having his privates gnawed on by zombified hamsters, who doesn’t actually have such an innate fear of tampax!
“In all the commotion I forgot my tissues, but as it turns out “feminine products” are much more absorbent for a runny nose than even the strongest tissue, and the smooth applicator does make a difference.”
My undercover interviewer almost passed out when this information was recorded, this golden piece of damning evidence. She is now away in the Bahamas for some well earned R&R, but not before she found out that the Queen of Maxiland - the position I so politely requested in the days before this cruel war began – is an avid fan of Boyzone. Boyzone. While Keith Duffy is already in my army for his sensual comedic skills, I cannot condone the music. He knows that. We’re cool.
Would you really fancy ‘Love me for a reason’ playing in the cold interior of an army tank as you advance into battle? Would it motivate you into killing yourself or the enemy? I think you know the answer.
Do not be fooled by this leader’s big puppyblog eyes. He is no innocent, I fear this past weekend’s infiltration is but the tip of the iceberg, that Maxiland is a scurrilous place and should be gravely avoided.
This is a rare photograph of the elusive character taken at a so-called ‘Peace’ rally yesterday (on the right, beside Baino’s oranges:
I think it fair to say that this man has issues.
The Blogosfear – Part V
Part I/Part II/Part III/Part IV/Part V/Part VI/Part VII/Part VIII
The family’s plans for Halloween were somewhat spurious this year. Given the option of a night in my mother-in-law’s or a weekend at my cousin’s house in Mullingar, I chose option C; (I had to fake a rather good breakdown for this option to be plausible) a weekend away on my own. Not being entirely flushed with cash, I did an inter-net search using the words ‘Guesthouse, cheap, remote, Ireland’. The search engine asked me if I was feeling lucky, and it just so happened that I was…
I browsed the comments, of which there were only two.
The first said: ‘My sister had to be booked into the clinic after she stayed here’, the second: ‘This house tested the limits of my humanity! To be avoided.’ Sheer curiosity made me book a room right there and then.
3:00 am
The baby in my arms is screaming fitfully, its jaws look dis-jointed, much like those of a snake as it attempts to swallow something five times its size. Its hands… no, its claws grab at my hair and pull it out in fistfuls, but all I can do is cuddle it in the hope it could be pacified. Its eyes bulge, grow larger and larger… they turn into balloons filled with a noxious fluid which sloshes around inside, threatening to drown me when the child’s eyeballs inevitably pop. The eyeballs don’t pop… the image dissappears as I wake, sweating. Shouting.
“Please don’t!!! He didn’t mean it, please don’t do it!!!”
It’s all gone away and I am extrmely grateful.
My stomach curdles in remembrance of the nightmare, it’ll take a while for those images to abate. I look around, lost for a second until I remember where I am. A strange smell wafts that wasn’t there when I had fallen asleep, and a peculiar scraping noise can be heard from above. I slide out of bed and look up, searching for form in the dusky light. Holes. There are holes peppered into the ceiling plaster. Ugh. I put my tracksuit on and distinctly hear a disappointed groan.
That can’t be good.
A baby screams. My blood curdles and suddenly changes direction rending my extremities cold and the hairs on my body prickly like a million thorns… the memory of my nightmare returns and threatens to stupefy me. If intuition came in neon lights, mine would be putting a serious energy scourge on this godforsaken grid in this moment, for it is screaming to me that madness is standing right behind my bedroom door. The benign piece of wood seems to throb as I stare at it and against all my wishes, the doorknob begins to turn.
“Hey!” My voice squeaks in a panicked cadence that isn’t my own. “How about an old-fashioned knock first?!”
The door swings slowly open and light oozes into my room like a puddle of radioactive waste. A woman stands on the threshold holding a bundle. Her hair is long and straw-like and her eyes… her eyes are bearing right into my core, into my past. I can tell she knows my worst fears immediately. I freeze as she holds the bundle towards me. This is too surreal for me.
“The baby hassssssssh to go. We don’ wannishh. You wannisssh? Can’ take’n no more!!” her accent is masked by her stumbling speech pattern.
I pull my adrenaline together into a virtual wrecking ball and slam my body against the back of the door in an effort to close it. Fuck the baby. Its cries are all wrong, just like in the dream… I don’t care if I hurt it. My shoulder crashes against the outer edge of the door, but it goes nowhere. A dart of pain storms through my shoulder and neck and I fall back towards the bed, now in full view of the occupants of the doorway. I screw my eyes shut in horror and tell myself it isn’t real. Even foulness has its limits in everyday society.
The blond lady with the crazy eyes is not alone – she drops the bundle she has been carrying to reveal that it had been a decoy. The moth-eaten material falls pathetically around the heels of the man who stands beside her… a man whose features are wrong, all wrong, in the manner of a person who is borne from genes too closely linked. His stumpy fingers hold a rope, and attached to the other end is a rotting mass of child. The suggestion of bone beneath the mess is indescribable, the smell unbelievable. The baby. Oh, this is too evil. Too wrong. I beg with my sanity to stay with me.
Through the darkness of my eyelids I sense movement and realise that blackness is an even worse enemy than the truth, so my eyes snap open to welcome the horror. The baby is being held at arm’s length, as though it was being offered to me.
“She seen it now, that be th’end of tha’ gird’le!!” His nostrils flare as he laughs with mania, a flash of silver crosses his palm as the door is all too suddenly slammed shut, defying the laws of physics.
Darkness, but not silence.
Hissing.
Snakes? A jar of insects? What the hell is the noise? The answer reaches me before I have a chance to search for a light switch.
I gag. The air is suddenly scarce and filled with a billion microscopic razor blades. When it fills my lungs I retch as I feel it try to turn me inside-out. My eyes burn, fluid streams not from my tear ducts, but from my eyes themselves, like they are melting and are trickling down my cheeks in scalding rivers of putrid pus. My nose is occluded by two red-hot pokers and is frantically trying to extinguish the heat itself with a torrent of mucus… it oozes into my mouth and onto the carpet as I bend forward and gag helplessly. Even my ears are suffering from an unruly hell. What the hell is this stuff? This clogging, fogging gas that makes me want to shove my head down the unsavoury toilet and flush?
Death perhaps seems a welcome escape, but not before I notice the old cracked window frame through the noxious fug. I drag my body to an almost upright position, and sneeze the poison out violently. Liquid gushes from my head as though I am a possessed hobo and I frantically wipe and claw at my face to clear my view.
I hurl myself at the window and cherish the sweet sound of shattering glass and cool clean Irish air as I plunge to my death.
Or not.
I land on the porch roof and roll… THUD… onto the leafy ground below. The last of the poisoned CS gas leaves my lungs with the blow and I gasp. Oxygen floods my brain, enough to fuel the last remnants of adrenaline I have left and I run.
See Kate run. Run Kate run.
I am almost at the gaping maw of the front gate when I hear it… the all-too realistic human plea.
Assaulted
I blundered into the kitchen this morning in a foggy overslept haze and saw two unwelcome sights immediately.
The first was a note left by TAT who had come in from work at 7.30am.
“There’s something wrong with the SatNav. I’ll fix it later.”
NOOOO!!! I shudder at the thought of having to conduct my working day using the primitive dog-eared map… the potential embarrassment of having to whip it out in front of a customer in panic when they ask to be brought to some God forsaken suburb of inner-city Dublin makes me want to go back to bed for the day. Disaster.
Then I found the empty salt and pepper cannisters. They stood to attention on the kitchen table and there might as well have been another note saying ‘Toddler was ‘ere’ beside them. I broke out my CSI kit to look for evidence but found nothing… no trail of distruction, no prints or fibres. Damn, she’s getting good. I searched high up and low down for the contents of the cannisters… in the bin, the sink, her cereal bowl, the bath… everywhere with no joy.
Then I heard a tiny noise.
“pffft”
I turned to the direction of the sound and listened.
“pfft” It was the sound of a Guinea-Pig sneezing. Then I remembered Puppychild’s penchant for animal torture (first sign of a budding psychopath?) and dashed over to the hutch.
Yep. Each pig was covered in a fine dust of pepper and salt granules and was grooming furiously, their tiny eyes glued shut as a result of nature’s cruel decision to deprive them of the ability to cry the salt out. Poor wee feckers. I went to grab a toothbrush to groom the stuff out, and let a horribly evil thought cross my mind.
Guinea-Pigs are fat and don’t excersice much, but then again neither does anyone else in the family. This means they should be quite succulent. Peruvians eat them like Big Macs… have done for centuries, and think it hilarious that we keep them as pets.
Puppychild has pretty much taken care of the first stage of preparation… she salted them roughly an hour ago, so they should be nice and tender by now.
The oven’s pre-heating and I’ve got my razor-blade ready… my stomach is rumbling at the thought of breakfast. I’ll call it the ‘Full Irish Peruvian surprise’ I think.
Yum.
Eroticow
This isn’t my story, it’s the Accidental Terrorist’s because fortunately, daytime taxi driving doesn’t spew up many stories like this one.
We sat in the sunroom to eat dinner this evening, and as we ate, he relayed his adventures to me. The fork to mouth repetition slowed more and more as the story unfolded, and I began to feel sick, it’s that good.
He told me about how he’d picked up two men and two women from Bray at around closing time o’clock. Dropping one of the men off along the way, he continued to Ballybrack trying hard not to listen to the conversation being held between the two girls in the back of the car.
“Why?” I asked. ”What were they talking about?”
“Nothing much, it was just riddled with curses but… I know some blokes who find cursing women repulsive and I never understood why until now. It was trashy, really crude.”
“Oh. Carry on.”
“Then she got her tits out.”
Apparently the loudest of the two women, who happened to be the girlfriend of the remaining bloke in the car, opened her top for the world to see. TAT swears his eyes were on the road but I’m dubious.
Then, she began to appeal to TAT with ‘this really annoying whiny scumbag voice’ to stop somewhere so that she could pee. He did – he stopped at a perfect spot on the road adjoining a small green area protected by bushes, and pointed her towards them. Did she use them? Did she fuck. She opened her door, squatted by the rear tyre on a busy road, and splashed her pints back home right there in front of him.
When TAT finally pulled up outside the house, the same girl got out of the car, crawled about on the pavement for a bit while she got her co-ordination back and then stumbled to the front of the car where she turned around, bent over and lifted her dress over her head, revealing every last detailed orifice. She then re-robed, and as she was laughing and walking through her front gate, she yelled back at TAT;
“So do you want to come in for yer hole?”
I dropped my fork when he got to that part. I clapped my hands over my ears and shouted “LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA” for a good five minutes. The image of this bint saying that to him… my bear, the King to my Queen… I felt like throwing my entire dinner up back onto the plate. It disturbed me to the core.
Die, evil slapper bitch, DIE
Will this girl cry with shame tomorrow morning when the memories float to the top of her scummy mind? I doubt it. Will she do it again? Most definately… why break old habits? Bray is full of these women. They are all over Ireland, giving it away like it was the Ebola virus. AIDS and STDs are on the rampage but they don’t give a shit. Babies are born without a snowball’s chance in hell of making it straight, and are found lurking ominously under bridges and on street corners looking dodgy. Village of the damned.
Won’t they please legalize prostitution?
These people are in serious need of precaution and a cleaner environment… seriously, some pubs are pure cattlemarkets. The men don’t even bother to dress up, they just leave their farmer’s shirts on. The women wear seriously ridiculously skimpy clothes (okay, okay, I wore greyhound* skirts and sent the wrong messages entirely too when I was a kid, but I grew out of it!) and rub themselves against anything with a pulse. So, all a bloke has to do is walk in the door, and SCORE! his beans are cooked.
Everyone loves sex. It’s our most basic calling, but it’s still very much in the underworld when it should be out in the open! Clean, safe, there whenever you need it. Bring back prostitution and save our small towns. PLEASE.
* 2 inches from the hair
The post in which K8 slags the knackers
Once again, K8’s faith in humanity is given a massive whack across the face with an iron crowbar.
I have defended the travelling community before (being that I live amongst them and kind of feel I should give it a shot)… I think I said something about them deserving the right to fight for respect within an unforgiving settled community?
What complete bollocks this is.
Here’s the scene:
-0-
I’m parked up at a garage in Bray, looking for a lady who wants to go to Arklow as per instructions from the taxi base. I’m scanning the area which is deserted apart from a young lad aged eleven or twelve who sits by himself on a window-sill with his head resting on his knees. Being that I am a girl who tends to think outside her box, I approach the kid.
“Hey kid… you looking for a taxi?”
The kid looks up and seems somewhat relieved. “Yeah, I want to go home to Arklow” he says.
I convey my successful pick up over the CB and am informed that the fare would be €65. I turn around to the kid. “Do you think you can handle €65?”
The kid looks panicky and says; “Oh no I have no money with me, my mammy said she’d pay for me when I get home. She’ll give you the money then.”
Fishy, but still highly likely.
“What’s the address?” I ask.
“I dunno” the kid says apologetically; “we only just moved in. It’s near the main street”.
Something smelled funny, and I don’t mean metaphorically. The child was scruffy, and smelled very faintly of urine (as many children do) but also had an unmistakeable accent. He looked nervous, and was hugging a bottle of orange soda. He had intelligent eyes, and looked me directly in the pupils when he spoke to me.
My instinct roared. It warned me that I was about to be swindled, but I wondered if I had the right to refuse a child safe passage to his parent? What if he was speaking the truth? I’m a mother, I can’t do that to a kid! Besides (more truthfully), €65 is a lot to turn down.
I take off. The kid asks me how far it was to Arklow, but apart from that one question he is silent for the entire journey. When we arrive at the town, he directs me into a small housing estate on the outskirts.
“It’s that house on the corner, I’ll be back in a second”
I let him out, scolding my instinct for being such a cynical bitch. Then I watch as the kid passes the house in question at high speed, and dissappears around the corner on to the main road. I fire the ignition and fly after him in first gear. The main road is deserted. I crawl up and down for a few minutes knowing well that the little fucker is hiding somewhere.
I drive back to the housing estate and call the taxi base to see if there is any protocol for this type of thing. Apparently the union doesn’t have an insurance policy against runners, because there is no union. I ring the accidental terrorist who tells me to come home (seeing as I happily live near Arklow anyway) and informs me that he regrettably has no secret ninja techniques for dealing with this situation. The Police are dreadfully under-funded and would probably appreciate my not informing them of this misdemeanour.
I couldn’t go home. I wanted to find him and run him over.
I drive very quietly until I get back to the road the kid would be walking. I shift into neutral and slink along with my eyes peeled.
About 200m ahead of me, I spot an old man. There’s someone else too, who briefly flashes a face, then hops over the 6ft wall beside him. I toy with the idea of scaling the wall to chase the kid, but thought better being that my trousers cost a few bob. Anyway, what use would there be in catching him? Sure, I could beat him up a bit to calm the anger, but I’d still be broke.
I stop to speak to the old man who does indeed identify a young boy holding a bottle of orange soda. He also tells me that the field over the wall beside us could be used as a shortcut to get to the traveller’s quarters ‘over the way’ as he puts it.
End of pathetic sodding scene.
-0-
I knew that kid was a knacker. I still drove him ‘home’ because it was the end of my shift and I was heading that way anyway. I was aware of the kid’s movements the whole time, but he gave me no cause for concern whatsoever. He just sat back with his arms crossed and gazed out the window silently which is refreshing for someone with my job.
I’m not angry about the money, I’m angry that I was so fucking naive to think that it’s possible that there is such a thing as an honest traveller.
They are a crafty race who have plenty of scruples and plenty of cash, so do not take your eyes off a traveller for one fucking second if you find yourself near one, for they would have the eyes sold out of your head soon as look at you, no matter what age they are. Kudos to them, they had me fooled… but not anymore.
They’re in a great position… they don’t pay taxes, and it’s well known that they enjoy the fruits of ill-gotten gains, yet the gardaí won’t go anywhere near them. They demand respect from the community and free land from the council, then fleece them as soon as their backs are turned!
Where’s the honour in that, though?! Why is it that the only events warranting shop and pub shut-down around here are Christmas day, and a knacker’s funeral? They live by skimming money off tax paying citizens… so why are we respecting that again?
If they’re so great, then why aren’t we all travellers? I’m already halfway there, sure. We’re scrounging a house off the council, but at least we’re trying to get back on this bastard of a housing ladder… we were almost on it too, once, but slipped off again when Laughingboy was born. Circumstance kicked us in the nuts and now here we are, still trying to crawl out of the dependancy pit seven years later. It sucks! Yet, there the knackers smugly sit in their dingy halting sites, knowing that their head-men and women of the family are worth literally millions of euros.
Here’s an insane question: If you had millions of euros would you squat in a dingy piss-stinking commune in the clogged pores of the Irish countryside, or would you bugger off to Thailand?
Answers on a postcard to:
One pissed off taxi driver
28 Shithole View
Dunfoundusaplacetohousethescumbags
Co. Wicklow
Ireland
(What?! What do you mean this post is too long? It’s not! My blog is too narrow!)
Hairy me
I seriously love it when blokes go all taboo. Nickhereandnow in his infinite excellent wisdom, wrote his view on hairiness (and prevention of) today. I leaped with joy to read his post, as it’s a great excuse to have a go, especially seeing as I may just be the hairiest girl in the world.
You might have seen this face before:
This smug mug belongs to my father, who bestowed his wisdom, height, and Wookie genes upon me. Now you perhaps will appreciate my point.
Freud would have it that I would prefer the bearded bloke when seeking a mate, but this for some reason went out the window when I chose a man with exactly two hairs on his chest. Freud also said that a woman is either constantly running towards her father, or away from him. If you saw my dad standing on top of his pile of tourist carcasses, you’d probably choose the latter, too. With the exception of Gimme perhaps, bearded men are generally too ‘nice’ for me, being that I like just a pinch of bad-boy in my men.
Anyway, being that I am with a minimally hairy bloke, a lot of discussion has led me to understand that excess hair on my own self is not appreciated. I have been asked to visit the beautician’s quarters for a ‘bald eagle’ of late (TAT’s knowledge of the hairstyles in that region astounded me). I refused point blank, as I have already experience pube waxing and found it not to my taste, especially when you’re being done by a vindictive cow who insists on ripping away at the same raw and bleeding patch 17 times.
Then, in my infinite female wisdom, I challenged TAT. I told him I’d go the va-general whole hog on the day he went through with a back, crack, and sack wax. We agreed to leave it at that, for that was good enough for this particular gander (‘Bollox to that!’ he said. ‘Exactly!’ I said).
The thing is though, you might be here expecting me to fully support this sort of image:
Not a chance, matey. The gals at school were the first to point out what a freak I was. Then when my best friend’s little brother began to call me ‘Dr. Zaius’, I knew it was time, and deforestation began against my mother’s wishes.
-x-
My de-fuzzing attempts are as follows:
-I tried Immac first (now Veet) which is a type of acid which, when applied to the skin, produces a very weird smell to let you know your skin is being poisoned. Then after a while, one washes said acid off, along with scorched dead hairs. Not so with us very hairy chicks! We just end up with alien legs that still need to be shaved despite chemically raw conditions. Binned.
-I tried those electric shavers twice. The first time it was useless. The second time came years later when I had forgotten how useless they were but they are still useless. Binned.
-I tried waxing once when I decided for some unknown reason that the midwife in the hospital in which I was due to explode shortly at the time, might be offended by my… umm… genetic condition. Bikini waxes hurt. They really sodding hurt. And, to make matters prettier, there were many craters, and much ingrown nastiness to follow. I tried home kits a few times on my arms, but with crap results. The pain was overtaken by the frustration of being totally unable to uproot the final 15% of the really stubborn hairs. It was almost the death of me, so it was binned.
-I even tried one of those electrolysis machines, bought on Ebay for fifty quid. The principle is that you hold this pen (which is wired to the mains) in your left hand. Instead of a nib, the pen has a micro-thin wire which you insert into the root of your offending hair. You then touch the silver part of the pen with your wet hand, and ‘BZZZZZZZT’ – you complete the circuit and get root electrocution. It smells rotten, it feels rotten, and you’d have to do it a rotten further 15,000,000 times to kill all the hair on your body. Binned.
My only man is your average disposable razor blade (especially the ‘new’ and ‘improved’ ones!), and a large bottle of Fruit of the Earth Crystal Clear Aloe Gel.
-x-
It takes me half an hour to shave everything (trying to shave one’s toe-knuckles with severe myopia is a serious challenge), much longer if I’m expecting a trip to the swimming pool or beach. It sucks, but I don’t mind, because there is not a chance in hell you’d find me letting it grow. It doesn’t feel natural, ironically, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the media talking. If a bloke were to walk up to me and tell me that hairy women are his greatest turn on, I’d run away.
Anthropologically, it doesn’t make sense for women to be hairy. Sure… didn’t they get to stay in caves and nurture young? Men of course needed hair to keep the warm and display their virility and that’s lovely… I’m a magnet to a scruffy stubble, as long as it’s only a few days old. Men needhair, but I don’t really understand how evolution hasn’t phased it out yet for women… Mother Nature must have gotten the hint by now that it’s out-dated and un-wanted?! In fact, this guy claims women are generally getting hairier, and yes, there is indeed a blog dedicated to the subject out there! Hairy Women Blog.
Is this one of natures oldest jokes? I sure as hell ain’t laughing.
