Vodafone makes the Mounties look like slackers

If you've been wondering where I've been, and why this blog hasn't been updated in the past three years, I've been hiding from Vodafone.

I don't know when I first made it to their Most Wanted list.  I have had two pay-as-you-go mobile phone accounts with them for years now (although the first one lapsed, and will probably now go straight to Hell as a result).  They always respect the "Do Not Contact Me With Offers If You Want to Live" box when I tick it.  But, apparently, not any more.

The first call came when Herself and I were in a state over the dog.  He had some issues that required the services of a burly man and a heavy pliers.  As a result, any phone calls received unexpectedly in the middle of the day could mean the dog had lost a limb, or put a man's eye out, or even eaten an Alsatian whole.  Well, he is a Jack Russell terrier, after all.

Then the new-phone debacle coincided.  This was the changeover from our much beloved small outdated brick phones to a pair of super slippery newfangled types that require the dexterity of a ninja on cocaine to operate.  My pocket began making strange susurrating noises that I finally figured out was a ring tone.  By the time the bar of soap I'd been told was a phone was in my hand and the right way up the caller had given up.  I recognised a Vodafone Customer Care number in the missed calls register.

The next call came during a meeting at work.  I hammered the device off a colleague until both fell silent.  But it's no use.  The damnable thing continues to haunt me.  And always at the most inopportune time.

This evening while gaining the moral higher ground of dragging an unclaimed change ticket out of the ticket machine on the bus, Vodafone rang again.  I tore the change ticket in halves in my red-mist rage and stood looking dumbly at the driver as he wondered why I was not pulling the now mangled journey ticket from the machine.  I grabbed the shreds and went back for the change ticket after all and sat down.  Vodafone again.

Because I'm not going to answer you at work, while berating a customer for being a customer, nor in the toilet, while chinning my phone out of my trouser pocket as my two hands wave under the drier, nor even when I am made to sit bolt upright in bed like a human right-angle, Vodafone, please stop ringing me.

It's your own time you're wasting.

Okay, Vodafone...

I know I don't use my phone much, except for texting replies to Herself asking if the meeting I'm in the middle of is over yet, or if I'm having a nice day when I'm having a horribly bad one... I know you'd probably not be pleased that I haven't bought a fone with shiny new things on it from you in quite a while. BUT... sending me a text advert at six in the morning -- especially a morning after I'd had a particularly restless and broken night's sleep -- is NOT the way to win me over. Nor Herself, either, you twits. (She got one too.)

I mean it isn't even like I have any notion whatsoever now what it said.

Okay, then. Just piss off.

Right?

Right.

Flying smoke alarm invasion

Herself thinks that putting on the feathers is just too much. I don't think so. Although the giant "worm" made from a discarded vacuum cleaner-hose and painted reddish might be taking things a little far.

But such is the level to which I have been reduced, wearing a dark-coloured boa and flapping about in snorkeling flippers in my back yard, competing in avian psychology with a savage blackbird which has been terrorising the neighbourhood for the past two weeks.

It started innocently enough with Herself and myself "Oooh"-ing and "Aaah"-ing at the lovely trills and warbles from last year's incumbent in the blackbird territory which appears to extend from the bottom of our road -- three or four back gardens in length -- to the top -- maybe another ten or twelve gardens' worth in the other direction. Last year's cock of the walk was a handsome chappy that battled it out in song with his near neighbours.

This year a new pretender has muscled in. And it isn't only other blackbirds which are considered enemies and intruders.

I thought the cats would naturally be a cause of the incessant "Shreep! Shreep! Shreep!" bird alarm calls, but then I realised the cats were inside the house and the only one around was me, minding my own business in a white, plastic garden chair in the rare patch of sunlight.

"Shreep! Shreep! Shreep! Shreep! Shreep!" the bugger says. And not only that: he flies up to the roof of the house in his Shreeping, then down to the wall, then onto the shed roof. On the shed, he ruffs up his tail feathers and makes a mock charge at me, holding his wings up suddenly to make a threatening flurry.

"That only works on other blackbirds, stupid," I said to him. But he kept right on Shreeping. It was getting on my nerves, setting my broken teeth on the last of their edges.

At one point, our tabby cat arrived outside to survey the scene. She watched him go from shed to house to wall to shed to house to wall again. The evil little puss waited until he had gone out of sight then nonchalantly placed herself in ambush on a piece of junk lying up against the wall.

"Swish!" went her claws as he landed briefly on the uppermost concrete block. He dodged easily. But no. He didn't fly away in fear, as might be expected of a reasonable blackbird. He took up position on top of the shed roof and added a "Chuck! Chuck!" to the "Shreep! Shreep! Shreep!" for a while.

The cats are bemused. His strategy is working, because they have generally made it known that they are less comfortable in the back garden during the day than before. Myself, I tend to stay indoors and close the double-glazed windows so I can't hear him. When he doesn't have me to bully, he Shreeps at wood pigeons and women hanging washing.

I have heard him from inside our kitchen and walked boldly outside clapping my hands loudly. This has some effect -- maybe because it has an auditory component that the little fecker understands -- because he ducks over the perimeter into another garden out of reach and "Shreeps!" at me from a safe distance. But it's only a temporary respite. I need to show him who the boss is.

So in the end I find myself in the black boa and the flippers, clutching a giant fake worm. If he wants to be top of the pecking order around here he's in for a disappointment. I can strut better than him, and catch bigger worms, and flap bigger wings. Just watch me, little birdy!

Herself has gone to watch the television news.

She says she's not answering the door to any more policemen.

You might have been in the wrong political party anyhow, missus

RTE radio's Morning Ireland programme, this morning. Twenty percent of the environmentally-savvy Green Party are ticked off that the party will be going into government with Fianna Fáil:

Interviewer: "Will you be resigning your membership of the Green Party over this?"
Lady Green: "Yes I will... And we will be gathering next week outside the Dáil to protest and burn our cards."

Sheesh!

Culture shock

The bus pulled in at the terminus at The Square and in keeping with tradition the passengers disembarked and the engine was switched off and somebody started to complain as the driver tried to go on his break.

"You're late!" the middle aged Dublin woman said to the African in the Dublin Bus uniform who was trying to wave her off the step so he could shut the door.

She stepped back down onto the pavement.

"I've been waiting here for hours and then you just go on a break!"

The driver calmly closed the door. He said:

"How many hours?"

There was a definite look of surprise on the woman's face. Not only was she, a native Irishwoman, being addressed by a black person, but also by a black person in a position of authority. It was evidently a shock to her system.

"How many hours have you been waiting?" he asked. "One hour? Two hours...?"

She looked at him in bewilderment.

"Half an hour!" he said. The bus arrives every thirty minutes or so.

She retreated to the relative safety of the bus shelter. No-one else joined in the argument on her side.

"That's right," she rallied. "You go on your break now and get your cup of coffee or whatever it is you're getting."

The driver spoke quietly to her and I couldn't make out what he said. But her reply must have included something along the lines of

"And what are you going to do about it?" because he then said, loud enough for all to hear:

"I can refuse to take you on this bus. All of these people can travel. You cannot."

He turned and walked off in into the Square.

Ten minutes later we boarded the bus. The complaining passenger politely proffered her fare and was given a ticket. A few stops on, a friend joined her. They spoke cheerfully abut the weather and about hospital appointments and stuff like that. Then after a quarter hour their voices lowered and they whispered together. I wonder what the subject was.

Nice one, driver. I think.

Angry Drunk delays bus

To continue my public transport theme, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the bus this evening, although obviously boarded by passengers, was in no hurry to leave the terminus at The Square. After I'd paid my fare to the female driver (who, it seemed, looked at me kind of strangely), I turned and was nearly knocked over by a drunk who was sitting near the exit and was leaning out to harrangue the private-security-firm man standing by the bus stop. I went upstairs, hoping yer man wouldn't follow.

Rab C. Nesbitt is fine when he's on telly, but not so fun in full spate on a bus on a Friday evening when all anyone wants to do is get home, get packed in ice-cubes and forget about the week.

"G'er on ye fat bash-tard! Ge' on the bus! I'll.... KILL... ye...!"

The fat bash-tard grinned at him through the window-pane, knowing that backup was on the way.

"Driver! Drive the bush...! You have de power."

Sirens were wailing in the distance. Unfortunately, when I looked, it was an ambulance on its way to the nearby hospital and not the Gardai.

"C'mon the bush! I... DARE ya! Ye shee... He can't. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

The security man was joined by two others. They passed around cigarettes and made occasional use of their radios. Then the Garda car pulled up. Quietly. No fuss.

Three guards, one of them of higher rank, judging by his epaulettes appeared. Two boarded the bus and asked Angry Drunk if he was causing trouble.

"No! No! It's the men being horrible. They think they're guards...!"

Then, inexplicably, the driver told them she didn't need help. Someone in a seat behind me said:
"Fuck's sake! Now we'll have to listen to this crap for the next hour!"

"They're not taking him off!"

The Gardai checked the driver was okay with taking her passenger. She was. So off we went.

Yer man says: "They shuddent give a fri' like that."

The bus rolled on. Picking up passengers. Some laughed at him.

"I went home and I dropped the bag... But I'm supposed to shurrup. I'll shurrup."

Angry Drunk gargled a few random words more then stepped off the bus into Tallaght Village. He was zig-zagging in the general direction of Molloy's Pub when I last saw him.

There was an Angry Drunk in my own childhood whose exploits I'd largely put out of my mind until today. I remember the vague hostility though the fog towards anything and everything, from dinner-plates to television to neighbours. Even towards the dog. A long drawn out incapable snarling that continued even in his sleep.

Me? I'm a Quiet Angry Drunk instead. And only Angry if that's all right with everyone else.

Anyhow, as soon as I got home I opened a beer.

Cheers!