I walked into the room and sat on the one remaining padded chair, the one beside the window with the cracked white frames.  An old man sat on my right, staring at the ceiling, breathing slowly and laboriously.  He smelled of Mothballs and sweated whiskey.  A lady sat four chairs to my left, totally engrossed in a blue matt of wool which she worked dilligently with a crochet hook.  I removed my book from my shoulder bag and flicked towards the bookmark.

We sat that way for a while, breathing, stitching, reading.  A low muffled male voice boomed from the Doctor’s surgery in the room next door, and rain patted the windowpane behind me rhythmically.  The door opened.

A little girl peeped nervously into the room and cowered as her cover was blown blatantly by her mother behind her who swept the door open in a mess of wet umbrella and exasperated sighs.  She chose the hard wooden seat opposite me, an old church pew rescued from furniture auction limbo, and lifted the small girl onto her knee.  A children’s book lay on top of a bundle of magazines at the corner of the pew, and after a moment or two of dripping, she picked it up and opened it.

“Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Sarah…”  she began.

I earwigged for a minute or two, then stopped pretending to read and concentrated on my paragraph for the eighth time.  My brain fused two worlds together as I read and listened and turned pages.  The lady carried on crocheting, the old man began to doze.

A story unravelled from the church pew about a fallen star which was injured and rescued by a little girl named Sarah, fixed with a sticky plaster from a first aid box and minded back to health.  The little girl on her mother’s knee listened intently as she heard about the star’s decline in brighness and glitter, empathised deeply with the Sarah in the story, and sucked the knuckle of her left thumb.  The mother’s voice, quiet and soothing, stopped suddenly as the waiting room door opened and a paediatrician’s face poked through the gap.

The book was closed, upended by the premature summons, and the memory of her voice was left to ring in the air.  She made her exit, child in arms.

The room went back to its original state of crocheting, pattering, breathing and reading for a few moments, but a new energy resounded and flittered around the room like an invisible moth.  Eventually, the old man got up and approached the church bench slowly, shuffling via the center table full of National Geographic magazines but leaving them untouched. He picked up the children’s book, leafed slowly to the second-last page, and buried his myopic eyes into its print.  His breathing grew inaudible.  I watched intently from the corner of my eye.

After an eternity, the old man still standing, turned the page and read the final few words of text… then he looked up.  He let a small chortle escape his throat, smiled, and left the room with a slightly peppier step.  I wondered if he was senile, or maybe by either twist of miracle or flipped state of mind, had just found a cure for his illness.

I never found out what happened to Sarah in the end, but then again I’m not sure I want to.

She went far far away and left her cat with Pacino, who also bought her car and promised to forward the cash.  A month later, the cat got run over but survived; the car’s fender got seriously bent, but survived.  Pacino lost his job, but this is unrelated.  The cat recovers quietly in the garden while the hair slowly falls off its blackened tail… I think it might be a Manx cat soon.  I want to take it into my house and spoil it but Pacino likes the company.  He owes me money, but that’s also unrelated.

She calls me up and panics over the line, which is difficult to deal with when there’s a five second time-delay; I keep interrupting her by mistake.  She demands to know why Pacino’s phone doesn’t work and pleads with me to get him to forward some money else she’s out on her ear.  She would then be forced to come home and find that her car is worthless and I don’t want to be around if that happens.

I have to go now and think up some harsh words for Pacino, but I’m shit with confrontation.  I want to slap him and tell him to stop being a gobshite most of all, but that would only make me feel good because I’m not the one with the problem.  I could go and mother him and try to get him to admit that he needs help, but he’s a proud fucker and would take an eternity to crack.  I could waft a few hundreds in his face and tell him I’ll go halfway if he can match it, only to have him owe me more money that can’t be repaid.  I feel sorry for him.  I feel sorry for her.  I don’t know what to do next.

I may have mentioned my neighbour once or twice before… since we moved here eight months ago, she’s been a huge part of this house.  Every now and then she’d bring a six-pack by and we’d talk nonsense until silly o’clock.  Other times she’d bring something sparkly or jingly for Laughingboy to play with, or a pair of fake wings for Puppychild.  We’d shirk housework together in the front garden under the sun and trapse through cowpats with our dogs, she gave me books on family herbal medicine, I gave her my ear whenever she had a gripe, which happened quite often.

She’s moving to the U.S. tomorrow morning forever and ever, so arrived this morning with a crateful of treasure which has kept me amused all day.

I gained:

-A copy of The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
-’For every child, a better world‘ by Kermit the Frog
-Methuen’s ‘The Beatles A – Z’
-A special (eventually collector’s) commemorative edition of TIME magazine’s view of the Obama election
-Magic of the Celtic Otherworld
-A DC comic – Catwoman, dated 1st August 1993
-A Beano annual from 1993
-A Gustav Klimt print of Emilie Flöge (who looks not unlike my neighbour at all at all funnily enough)
-Several jars and herbal teas and picture frames and a clay ‘bits and bobs’ vase covered in runic writing
-A pair of funky Moccasins

I lost:

-A friend.

Poo.

We got to Bangkok after a fag-free 18 hours of flight, entirely cranky and pretty damn sweaty with it.  Considering this season is off-peak, I wonder what their ‘summertime’ heat feels like.  It’s hot right now.  Very hot. 

After a night of stormy shopping at dodgy street markets in Ko San Road, we moved on to Chiang-Mai, in the North of Thailand.  There we were hustled into sight-seeing tours that began at 6am and involved riding elephants bareback, cuddling fully-grown tigers (but not squeezing too tight), feeling sorry for women who eat, sleep and bathe with 4 kilos of iron coils around their necks (even though our pity is unfounded because they think it the sexiest thing since teabags), rafting down rivers, exploring temples in underground caves, and trying to ignore the harrowing ‘looky looky!’ pleas of small children with friendship bracelets and their mothers with tacky but pretty homemade crafts, all desperate for our Bahts.  We came with empty bags, now they are full.

While all this was amazing to experience, the lack of sleep invariably led to fiery cranky Sang-Som fuelled arguments at night time, so we were pretty glad to get out of Touristville and down to the Islands on the South-East coast.  Here in Ko-Samui, things are different.  Things are slow, and tourists are black as coffee.  I and TAT feel like milk bottles by comparison.

Night time is the best, when things cool down and Geckos appear with strange and funky wee beasties to serenade you at dinnertime.  Small kids appear with candles and cloth balloons and send them soaring into the stratosphere, the sky flashes every few seconds as thunderstorms loom overhead, yet there is no boom, only lightning, like our own pyrotechnics show.  Occasionally a single clap of lightning will hit a short distance from where we stand and scare the holy b’jeezus out of our eardrums, but that’s all part of the fun.

We’re pooching off to another island tomorrow.

Same same, but different.

I’m not so sure I should be posting this, it’s not very entertaining and is cryptic of yawnworthy proportions, but it’s an attempt to give form to this vast confusion, the formation of written word sometimes helps.  Whether it should be published for the world to see or not, that’s another matter, but the void must be filled no matter how ridiculous the content.

I got news today.  It’s not bad news, bad is the wrong word, even tragic is a laughable word in this instance.  I got good news too – we finally got the key to our new house.  What should be a new and exciting time is really a joke, a big joke in the grand scheme of things.  The emptiness of the new house is really the emptiness of the world.  A world that should stop today; it should just stop turning, Christmas should be cancelled for life is too cruel for such nice things to happen.

I can’t say what’s happened, partially for the family that it’s happened to, partially because I just can’t write it down.  I talked to God last night and for the first time in my life he answered.  He really answered and I’m now grouped with the rest of the loonies the cynical world has refused to accept.  God told me to stop praying.  I didn’t hear a voice, instead I felt it.  An unmistakeable block that told me my prayers were pointless, that the answer was already carved out.  I could pray for anything else with the feeling I was being heard, but my true heartfelt request was denied.  You don’t want to know how many tears I shed during that prayer.   Today I understood why.  In the midst of shifting boxes and keeping appointments and talking earnestly to strangers, there was a strange void and soon enough I learned that the inevitable had happened.  Such grief.

It didn’t even happen to me.  It’s a story that you’d hear on the radio or see in a film that would render you senseless with wretched melancholy, the sort you never could be ready for.  It’s anybody’s story, they just don’t know it yet and that’s what hurts.

Things might be quiet around here for a while.  I have said this before, and yet have found the blog addiction too strong to resist despite priorities and have posted anyway.  I don’t feel that pull these days though, things really do need to be taken care of.  This is the best and the worst time of my life and it’ll appear here, when the sweet smell of broadband finally comes into play.  Until then there will be a void, filled with this boring and depressive drivel that nobody will be arsed to read. 

-Knock Knock

-Who’s there?

-Life.

-Fuck off and leave me alone.

-Ok.

Time has most certainly flown here in Headrambles Manor.  The three weeks are up and the aul’ pair should be back safe and sound and lording it up tomorrow evening.  Slides, anyone?

It’s sad to say but the highlight over the last three weeks isn’t the beautiful forest walks or the extra book reading time or the insane parties, because none of this happened.  No, the highlight has been the vast increase in internet speed…  wow, you’ve no idea how much I missed broadband.

So you’d think I’d spend the time researching all sorts of interesting but useless facts about various things, or reading and commenting on as many blogs as possible, wouldn’t you?  Nope!  I’ve been whoring around on Facebook, kidnapping people, playing endless games of Crazy Taxi and feeding other people’s virtual pets.  Complete waste of time, certainly,  but the best holiday I’ve had in ages!

I’m sorry if I’ve annoyed anybody with stupid requests, but the bonus is that I’ve finally discovered what the fuck ‘l33t’ and ‘pwn’ means (World of Weirdcraft or something…).  Also I happily found pretty much every friend I’ve ever known in my life!  The application searches for friends of friends that you already have and suggests people you might know; my old classroom is slowly re-assembling before my eyes which beats the pants off a reunion in my view.

I’m heading back to the dingy underworld of country dial-up tomorrow, so normal service will resume if inspiration should find its way through the fog… I’ll let you know.

*sigh*

Can somebody please look after my virtual dog?

Life in a Semi-D isn’t always easy.

I knew my neighbour was the same breed of smartarse as myself from the minute I set eyes on her.  We knew that there would be a lot of unwanted information shared between us… our super thrifty local authority houses are separated only by a layer or two of plaster-covered polystyrene from the sounds of it, so we knew to keep the t.v. volume low and be aware of the decibel levels of our arguments.  There is something, however, that is very difficult to keep secret.

1.00am – Thump thump thump etc…

1.15am – Thumpthumpthumpthump *pause* thumpthumpthumpthump etc..

1.30am – Thump.  Thump.  Thump. *groan* Thump. *groan* etc…

… this would carry on for a surprisingly long time and we would try so hard not to listen but you know how it is… there’s always the part of us that didn’t mind listening at all, especially since it let us off the hook in the bedroom accoustics on our own side.  We listened to each other’s love-lives for a full month before anyone had the balls to say anything.

Then it happened.  We met each other on our front-door steps one morning and shared a shmoke, but said nothing.  The atmosphere was pregnant, each of us dying to take the piss.  It just needed one trigger… a badly timed pun would do… anything.

“Took a trip to Bargaintown yesterday and got meself a new three-piece…” my neighbour finally said.  “Got bunk-beds for the kids on order too!”

“Savage… gotta love the bunk beds!”  I said, teetering on the edge of a dirty grin.

“Yeah speaking of beds…” (here we go!) “… Ye wouldn’t push yours about a foot away from the wall, would ye?”

That was it.  We exploded in a torrent of filthy laughter and revelled in each other’s embarrassment and it was good.  The issue did eventually require that we both go out and buy sturdier beds (with obligatory celebratory pint!) and since then it’s been quite peaceful… until last night.

It started at about 3.30am and continued for two hours.  I won’t go into details except to say that it was graphic, and awakened a newfound respect in me for my neighbour’s husband.  He really is a trooper by the sounds of it.

She knew just from the look on my face this morning… that ‘HA!! I’m surprised you can walk!!’ face …that no apology was necessary.

I went into town for a few bits today and had a sudden goo for a burger and a portion of tasty-chips but when I dived into the shop to find my neighbour’s husband waiting to take my order I stopped in my tracks.  I nervously examined the menu for a few seconds and decided to go hungry instead and walked away, for the temptation to enquire after his battered sausage was far too great.

There’s a darn good blog out there, I don’t know if you’ve come across it before… it’s only a few months old.

No, wait.  ‘darn good’ doesn’t cut it.  Revolutionary, maybe.  It is a blog with many users, though nobody knows exactly how many, and only one username.  It is total and complete anonymity, created for the expulsion of secrets from the souls of virtual people.  Why would you want to hear other people’s secrets?  Because the un-told facts are comforting and can help to soothe its reader’s secret paranoia, and it’s a glimpse at the true raw undercoat of society.  It’s why we love those glossy magazines with Geri Halliwell’s stretch-marks all over the cover.

I coud be anyone. I could say anything. And a small part of the whirling cloud of secret lies in my head can lift and I can feel a little lighter as I go through the day.

This is what confession was for, before we all lost faith.

This is what God used to do before we stopped believing in him.

There is no God and so we blog. (Anonymous)

To quote a comment on one of the posts:

I confess to the last post of humour and I put it there because I felt the tone of the writing & comments so far was too serious and too self-absorbed. Contrary to funny, the comments to me have an air of forced false sympathy & I think they need to be more real.

It was my protest against the blog turning into a place to wallow and be wallowed without constructive support or advice.

Sit on the fence why don’t I. (Anonymous)

It’s time to get real, to learn how to let go of social conditioning and face the begrudgers.  Fair play Rick O’Shea (hey that rhymes…) for thinking it up.

It’s called:

http://thelivesofothers.wordpress.com/

Ahhh. I love it when the Kleeneze people come around. A catalogue full of interesting things you don’t need at low-low prices…

5… For honest homeowners:

4… Au-hairigizmo?

3… Make banana abuse history:

2… For when the bog-roll Barbie just isn’t enough:

1.. ‘Fat bottomed girls’ must be a riot!

I found this over at Betty the Sheep: