Online clothes shopping for fat men

When you weigh an ounce or two more than 20 stones (that's 280 pounds for our Western neighbours... or nearly 128 kilos for our Eastern ones), you eventually come around to the conclusion that the local Dunnes Stores just isn't going to have a good supply of summer clothing that covers your beer belly.

The "smallest" size I can wear these days in tops or teeshirts is XXXL. Now, either the news reports about the slobbering spread of obesity in the Western world isn't getting through to the store buyers, or there are a heck of a lot of slightly built, fit building workers still roaming about. I say this because any given day there is hardly room to manoeuvre around displays of S, M and L sizes in the Menswear departments.

It's like finding a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket to see an XXXL label on a teeshirt in our local shopping centres. I almost knocked Herself over a couple of weeks ago on seeing two (count them!) at the bottom of a pile of polo shirts.

So I've turned to the Internet for summer clothes. Lately I visited a UK-based site, bigteeshirt.co.uk, where I purchased the above classy number. I'll be wearing it this June Bank Holiday weekend as I tend the barbeque and no doubt shall be the life and soul of the party in it for.... oh.... two whole minutes, maybe.

Apart from the printed tees, the site supplies various coloured styles and other clothes up to 13XL sizes. (I'd like to see a label that says XXXXXXXXXXXXXL....!)

The "Anorexia" tee is available at £12.99 (€16.54) with postage and packing extra. In all I chose 5 items: "Anorexia"; the Duke Spirit Linen Mix, the Espionage Cotton tee, and two Izod Cotton Polo Shirts. The whole came to £72.95 (€93.00) inclusive of postage and packing.

By the way, €93.00 would purchase fifteen and a half summer tee shirts of good quality in my local Dunnes Stores outlet. Money sent abroad because they don't cater for my size. Think on, Department Store owners!

Everything came through in good time and good order, with the slight exception of the Izod shirts. The Website also caters for the TALL man as well as the wide, and Herself has been looking askance at me in my brightly coloured cotton dresses. I show her the maker's label and say:

"This is the style in Pakistan!"

But she isn't persuaded. So the moral of the story is to read the Sizing charts provided on the site and do as much online examination of the product as possible before placing an order. I'll definitely be shopping there again.

One might well ask why it is I'm paying for UK Sterling-priced products given the weakness of the US Dollar against the Euro. Well, the US-based sites I visited seem not to be aware of the rest of the world as a potential market. "There is no postal rate for your area" one online ordering system told me. "You'll be contacted with the details of the additional cost once your order is placed."

"One pig in a poke, please!"

Or, if they do, they equate the distance travelled in the post to be roughly equivalent to a trip from Earth to Mars, making the postage and packing rates wildly expensive.

If anyone locates a reasonably-priced US site that sells tees to places outside the USA, please let me know.

E-Bay is another place I've looked, again with mixed results. One guy had an offer of six teeshirts from his online shop for £40 Sterling and wanted another £40 p&p to send it 100 miles to Ireland!

We're not getting thinner, only poorer, it seems. I'm off now to get the garden into order for Sunday's barbie.

Have a great weekend!

Laugh? Nearly cried.

Thursday was a day in which the more I heard the less I understood.

"Will you be sick?" I asked the cat. She sat there impassively, the breakfast of cows hooves and sheep guts labelled "Whiskas" gurgling inside her.

"You'd better not be sick! I'm fed up changing the covers on that bed!"

The cat looked disdainfully at me a moment through half lidded eyes. Then she noticed a sunbeam and danced across the bed and over the chest of drawers, her tail disappearing behind the net curtain.

There was a ding dong at the doorbell and:


"Ve haf come to fit doors..."

Two serious Eastern European gentlemen stood on the step, one proffering a bundle of invoices that indeed included me as a customer expecting a delivery and installation of internal doors on this very date. They looked at me silently, the sides of their mouths turned down. I inspected the papers with the methological precision of a border guard.

"Do you have any vegetables, fruits or livestock?" I asked.

They shook their heads.

"No contraband or anything to declare?"

"Ve haf nothing to declare."

"You'd better come in then."

They set to with a will, unloading a van full of shiny new timber and absolutely beautiful three-quarter glazed doors. I'd picked them from a catalogue, sight unseen. They were far better than I expected.


I watched as the doorframes were pulled out. Pulled out very carefully, I saw. And any cables or wires knocking around were saved to be hidden again in the new doorframes like expertly installed listening devices.

Each of the men had a tiny pencil, little more than a lead stub that emerged from some orifice from time to time and made arcane runes on the bare wood. When one made a mark, he disappeared outdoors and a sawing or plaing machine would start briefly, shriek through some unnameable torture, then whizz to a halt. The other would then take a measurement, cluck to himself, then disappear into the garden, passed on the way by the first, carrying the newly cut timber and slotting it magically into place. I was rapt.

I sat there, slowly turning to grey under a film of plaster dust as the men removed timbers and replaced timbers and slid their hands over the smooth grain and checked and double-checked that everything was running well. At 12.00 noon precisely, they withdrew two Tupperware containers of pasta and stew from the van's glove compartment, slid them into our microwave and made lunch.

"Kettle?" I asked.

"Tea. Please."

I filled some mugs and looked about. They had both retreated to the van and were smoking cigarettes. The took the tray from me in the garden. Ten minutes later, the saws and planes were going again.

There was another ding-dong. I struggled out of the mound of volcanic ash that seemed to cover everything and found my African neighbour on the doorstep. He looked a little agitated and my ear, tuned to Eastern Europe all day, couldn't quite make out what he was saying. It sounded like:

"Balumba umba umba....this wurk, 'ere."

"Eh?"

I tuned my earlobe a little and made out:

"...und I wawshed my car..."

I looked at his car. Nice car. Kept very well, usually. Wonder where all the dust came from that's covering it...?

"Aw, crap..." I thought. I should have considered earlier asking him to move the car out onto the road and upwind of the work. The two chippies were working furiously on a door's edge and a piece of architrave, respectively, in the drive the one with the better English looking daggers from time to time.

I offered to pay for a car wash. My neighbour looked at me as if I called him a son of a crocodile.

"Or," I said, "I could clean it myself...? I'll do that. When the men are finished working, I'll get a bucket and cloth and give it a wash, okay?"

He drew himself up.

"We ah gud neighbaws. We ah close!" he said, cocking his nose. "We do not fawl owt abawt such things. If you say sorry, I will be happy."

I said I was indeed sorry and that I was upset that he was upset. I should have been more thoughtful and spoken with him earlier. I would still arrange to clean the car if he wished...

He made a dismissive chopping motion with his hand.

"It is fo'gawtten."

And he was gone.

"Dust? Dust? Pah!" the lead carpenter said back inside the house. "I say iz impossible not find dust anywhere! He could park car anywhere and get dust! He crazy man. Crazy man!"

"No," I said. "He was right. We could have done more to save his car from getting so dusty."

I was a little deflated with it all. The doors were still lovely, but after the unexpected complaint a bit of the good had been taken from them. I now felt the coldness of the unheated house with the door permanently open as the chippies came and went. I saw the wood chippings in the carpet and the white dust on the stacked furniture. There seemed no end to the chaos.

Next door, my neighbour took his car out. About an hour later it was back in the driveway with a clean look about it. Back in the driveway. In the same place as before. With my two chippies working away with their saws and drills and planers right beside it...

"Ah, for feck's sake!"

I walked up his driveway and rang the bell.

"Er, you know these men will be working for maybe an hour... or more... yet?"

"I thawt they were nearly finished."

"Could you oblige me... please.... and move the car out onto the road...? Pretty please?"

When he moved the car, I noticed half his driveway was covered in wood chips. I groaned. No wonder he was making a fuss! I grabbed a brush and started sweeping.

There was a mountain of sawdust and chippings in my own drive. I laboured away for half an hour until everything was bagged and tied and tidy.

It was eight o'clock before the men were satisfied that everything that could be done had been done. It was a fabulous job and I was overwhelmed with the quality of the work and of the doors.

"Everytink is gut?"

"Brilliant!"

"If you get doors for upstairs, you call me. I get cheaper."

"Nice one," I said, taking down his telephone number, signing his docket, handing them a tip which went into the same place as the butty pencils, which is to say somewhere unknown.

I looked at the chaos of the house and sighed. It would take a day off work to put everything to right again.

After a while, I thought of the neighbour's car out on the road. Mybe someone would run into it. Or scrape it. Or steal it.

"I bet I'll be blamed if it does!"

I nipped upstairs to the bedroom, tugged back the net curtain and leaned on the windowsill to look out to see if the car was okay. My hand squelched in a pool of cat vomit...

"Bad cat!" I said.

The cat opened one eye briefly, brupped pleasantly and went back to sleep.

Heat...! At last...!

I received a very welcome text today from Herself, saying that the plumber had rung her at work and said that the heating system had finally been hooked up and was working.

It's been quite cold over the past couple of days with the wind direction swung around to the north-east. So the weekend was promising to be a chilly one, which our stop-gap electric heaters probably wouldn't have suited.

A blast of heat greeted me as I stumbled in the door. It was WONDERFUL!

Now we're heating every room to drive out the cold from the fabric of the building, which has aided the mould growth I've referred to in a previous post. The two "outdoor" cats have been most impressed; the indoor pussycat has fallen in love with the notion of continuous heat.

We'll ease off on the burning of the gas after the weekend. For now we're enjoying the luxury.

Silent Running

So the plumber announces he has had a job letdown which means he's starting to install the new central heating next week. That's despite the fact that Bord Gáis haven't found a shovel yet and connected us to the yellow fuse... I mean the gas supply. We also haven't mentioned that a bank loan we've not even applied for yet will pay for the central heating, so that should be good.

Tomorrow, I need to demolish a built-in wardrobe and manhandle the whole lot out the window, fix a no-go attic space, uncover a wall in the dining room presently hidden by would-be kitcheny bits, and generally do the plumbing equivalent of cleaning up before the cleaning lady arrives. Bugger me.

Tonight, the house was so cold and damp that I started up two electric radiators in the hall and in the living room. I had to fix the cat's food by the light of a side lamp and leave the computer off. We're church-mouse poor ahead of these renovations and can't afford the electricity, at least at never more than partially-completed showhouse level. All fur coat and no knickers -- that's us.

Hopefully won't need them when the heating goes in though....

Did I say, Bugger me...?

I hate plumbing

As the keyboard floats by again on its circuit through the dining room on its way to the sink hole in the kitchen floor, I have just a few moments to record for you the fact that I hate... no despise... plumbing in all its forms.

That is not in any way to denigrate that portion of people who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of professional pumbing, of course. I have grown in admiration of these folk. I am speaking only personally and from my very limited but, unfortunately, most recent DIY experience.

I have quite literally been baptised in the mysteries of tube cutting, compression joints, non-organic olives and faulty stop cocks over the last few days. I have found that I could not cut a piece of pipe straight if my life was to depend upon it. I have wrestled with brass fittings and adjustable wrenches, stubborn copper pipes and infuriating bends and angles. I have literally been thrown in at the deep end.

As the lapping around my ankles grows more insistent and I really should be thinking of carrying the television up the stairs, I should like to give you my few DIY tips and observations for home plumbing while I can still think of them. They are:

1. You can never have too many lengths of copper pipe. The first time you bend one into a facsimile of a novelty drinking straw by accident you will know this fact is true.


2. You will always attract helpful people while sawing copper pipe in the back of your car at the local DIY store. When I say "Helpful", I mean "trying to be helpful." The first man who grabbed the end of the pipe and held it as I was sawing it so that we might close the boot was indeed quite helpful. If he'd stuck around until I sawed the ends off the other two lengths of pipe, it would have been even more helpful. "Bend it," was the advice of the second helpful passerby. He proceeded to throw his purchases into the boot and bend the last foot of the second pipe I was sawing to demonstrate how useful his advice was. Quite apart from being left with a pipe whose last few inches were bent into uselessness, I was then unexpectedly involved in sifting through the purchases which were mine and the purchases which were his. He left, contentedly, with (I think) only his own goods. Herself stubbed out her ciggy and got out of the driver's seat to hold the final piece of pipe. I don't think I could have benefited from a third plumbing Samaratin. "Swallow it," he might have said. And by that stage I might have tried.


3. Never trust a compression joint, nor written advice on how to make one. I took to heart the article which off-handedly advised one not to turn the nut too far as this might flatten the pipe and spent two days fixing leaks while awaiting disaster if the wrench actually tightened anything.


4. Metric and Imperial measure aren't the same. Witness my fancy taps and the Frankenstein's laboratory in the cupboard beneath the sink.


5. Cheap and cheerful waste kits are neither cheap nor do they lead to much cheer. You should find a big bag of O-rings and keep them handy. The ones which come with the kit are made of regurgitated winegums dipped in starch.

Tomorrow, if I can lasso it as it circles the paired animals on the slowly sinking chipboard ark, I shall install the dishwashing machine. I am so looking forward to it already.

So, this man goes to the doctor....

Amazing how quickly your six-month duration prescription runs out, especially when you dodged the hard questions about weight and blood pressure the last time because a Locum doctor was on duty.

I gave up drinking alcohol about four or five weeks ago, following my stomach upset, and have lost around a stone and a half (21 pounds, for our American friends; 9.55 Kilos for our Euro pals) since going off the liquid bread. My face has only two chins now instead of three. And bones in it. And I appear to have only one back now.

I know what my doctor is like, though, so I didn't put much faith in making an impression on him with this news.

"Hmmm," he said. I think doctors say that to make a nice noise in their own heads when the ear pieces of the stethoscope are in. "Your blood pressure is kind of okay in that arm anyway."

"I've lost a stone and a half to come here," I said, half-heartedly. "And I've given up booze."

"It's a good idea to cut down," he mumbled, looking at my computerised record.

"Given up entirely," I said. In a moment I would be giving him the paw for a Scooby snack.

"What weight are you now then?" he asked, absently.

I told him.

"How much is that in Kilos?"

"Ah. I don't know. Knew I meant to convert something to something else before I came out.."

We looked at the cheapo model weighing scales under the examination couch. On the dial the maximum it went to was about a stone less than I weigh.

"But I have lost a stone and a half," I tried, one last time.

"Have I ever given you diet pills?"

"What?"

"To lose weight. Have I ever tried you on something?"

"No... I'm losing weight... No beer... Walking..."

He "Hmmmm-ed" again and printed out a prescription for appetite suppressants.

"I'm not likely to use these...."

"Well, if you feel like you want to, you'll have them."

I was so caught on the back foot by all this I paid my €55 to the doctor's receptionist and next door I just handed the prescriptions to the pharmacist. While he filled them he started asking about whether or not I had a rebate card. Then he got me to fill in a form. Then he got me to sign something. Then the fucker asked me for eighty Euro.

"In the name of Jaysus the-most-fucking-merciful!"

I had to use my Laser card to pay for my usual medicine, a pill for my chesty cough, and a rub for my scabby leg. And for those bloody diet pills I now hear give you the droop and make you lick rusty nails.

I'm still not drinking and I'm still losing about four pounds in weight a week.

Bastard doctors.

My health appears to be someone else's wealth.

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!

Home baking

"Have you ever eaten one of my sponge cakes?" Herself asks me, the other evening, as we are watching television.
"Nope," I say, swigging my beer.
"Didn't you know me when I used to bake sponge cakes and butterfly buns and flans and maringues?"
"Er... no."
"I shall make us a sponge cake at the weekend."

Come the weekend there was a crisis of ounces verses grams. I was entertaining my father in the other room and so I couldn't help much.

"Look it up on the Internet," I said.

An hour later I was eating.... something.... sponge-like....

"Do you like it?"
"Er... yes...."

I chewed at the lump of fruit-topped, cream-filled yellowish stuff. Having to chew or gnaw at a sponge cake is probably an indication that it hasn't come out right.

"I think I didn't get the measurements right," she said. "And I think there was something about folding the mixture rather than beating it."

I seprated my upper teeth from my lower ones with an effort, long enough to say:

"No, babe. It's fine, really."

There was a definite clunk when a piece of leftover spong hit the bottom of the kitchen bin. I could feel strange protestations starting up in my gut.

Herself Googled for sponge cake recipes.

"I know what went wrong!" she shouted in to the other room. "I'll make you a proper one tomorrow!"

So, today, I'm eating a wafer-thin sponge-cake that hasn't turned out either. But it is lighter than yesterday's.

"I know where I went wrong. I'll make another one tomorrow that will be right this time. I promise."

My gut is thanking Heaven that we're back at work on Tuesday. It might not have survived an extra day of sponge making.

"You can write about it," Herself said. "On condition you write a sequel when it turns out...."

Watch this space.

Bank Holiday Monday

"Arrgh! I've lost the television channel!" Herself shouts from the other room.
I have pulled up the chair to the computer table and am about to surf my handful of regularly-frequented sites on the Interweb.
"What?" I say, turning down Europe, playing "The Final Countdown", in glorious 80s rock-god stylee on the PC's disk drive.
"Hurry up! I've lost the channel and yer woman is about to take away Jason's baby on Corrie!"
"What does it say on screen?"
"AV something!"
"Press the button below the green button."
"That's on the other remote! I'm using the video remote!"
Herself prefers the volume controls on the video remote. Grand until you press the wrong button. I give up on heading for Venus and go in and grab a couple of remote controls to find UTV.
I've just spent my Bank Holiday Monday with my head in a larder cabinet. I started it on Easter Saturday, which God proceeded to punish me for by making absolutely everything that could go wrong... well.... go wrong. Dowels miraculously became unattached. Cabinet sides flopped apart and fixings pulled themselves and large sections of chipboard asunder. I cursed like Job in the worst of his scabbiness. Finally, I gave up in the hope of having a better head for the work another day. It didn't happen that way. Instead, though I fixed the problems that arose on Friday, the new iron mongery of the gizzard of the larder itself -- imported especially from England and delivered at 9.00 am on Saturday morning by two burly, good humoured bald men, one of whom declared that I was not the WillieW he had one time worked with -- proved a hazard to my mental health. If a bracket could go on upside down, I put it on upside down. If a runner could be inside out, it was inside out. And if a screw could avoid the head of a screwdriver and fall into the guts of the galvanised machine works it did. But I persevered. The work should take two hours, not two days, but it's done. Tomorrow I shall add doors (also ordered from England), go on the bus for door handles, then leave the kitchen project for a while until our money reserves are built up a bit to buy more parts.
I have to say it's starting to look like a modern kitchen now, and not just a haphazard DIY project.
Interestingly, the CD is now playing "Bed of Nails" by Alice Cooper. I ain't that far gone just yet, thanks.

Ozone layer gone

"It's global warming now, boys!"
"But what about the ozone layer and its great big hole?"
"Old news."
"CFCs?"
"Yesterday."
"Aerosols?"
"Spray 'em to heck! We've a new scare."
"Bandwagon?"
"Definitely."
"What about the water rising?"
"Ever hear of Noah?"
"I see his ark every night on a beer ad."
"Says it all then really, doesn't it?"
"Fear?"
"Yep."
"Shame?"
"Yep."
"Best two subjects for advertisements?"
"Only next to the 'Stupid Man' ads."
"Rock on."

Checklist for building a kitchen cupboard

Go to work. Check.
Go to meeting. Check.
Leave work at 12.30pm. Check.
Visit Veterinary Surgery before 1.00pm. Check.
Wait for bus. Check.
Listen to Thump! as arse hits ground having actually frozen off. Check.
Get home late because of bloody buses. Check.
Visit blogs on PC. Check.
Make tea. Check.
Drink tea and eat slice rhubarb pie. Check.
Chase ginger cat out of garden with broom. Check.
Spend 15 minutes in bathroom. Check.
Say Hello to cat in bedroom. Check.
Change out of work clothes. Check.
Bang head on staircase looking for boots. Check.
Open flatpack and follow instructions. Check.

Easy.

Dogs don't talk.

Are you alive?

Yes.

Then prove it. Stand up.

Okay. See? I'm standing.

Proves nothing. Can you walk?

I think so. Yes. I'm walking. See?

I can change that.

Oh, fuck off! It's my birthday. Or it was when I started out this morning...

Bet you can't make it to bed in one piece.

Bet I can. And do you know what else?

What?

I'm not going to go to sleep just yet. That'd be just what you want me to do, little doggy. Sleep and dream and worry about things. I think I'll write a bit in my blog and tell the world about you.

So?

So nothing. It isn't all about you, Matey. I may even listen to some music and then go to sleep.

You're a fucking rebel, alright. But I'll still be here in the morning, won't I?

So will I.

Happy Birthday.

Same to you, pal.

The Hare and Tortoise prepare lists

Herself is running mad about the room.

"Where's my Christmas list?"

"You mean, of all the presents you're going to get me?" I ask, innocently.

"No..... Of all the jobs that need doing before Christmas."

I find the list, which is something like three pages long. Lists are things that run other people's lives. I'm not a fan of them. My mother, for example, used to leave them everywhere for herself to look up later and wonder where they came from.

Make breakfast.

Something for dinner.

Then in her later life, she would leave them for me. And notes. I found one in a fold of an old armchair one day a couple of years back. It reads: "Fried stuff for Dad in the morning."

It was reminding me to make the breakfast I made every single sorrowful day, in case I forgot.

Bugger lists.

So, my Christmas list, faulty and all as it is, is inside my head. It consists of two major instructions:

"1. Buy presents (If you want to).

"2. Don't worry (If you want to)."

I'm getting there.

We're all getting there.

Merry Christmas, if I haven't wished it for you already. And even if I did.

Water, the village pump and progress

I was in Edmondstown last week on business and took a few minutes to reacquaint myself with the Owendoher river, still in its relatively wild state before it enters the concrete viaduct by the school.

This picture was taken at the bend by Mrs Kavanagh's old cottage, where a branch of it disappears in a tunnel under the Edmondstown Road to re-emerge on the western side by Rathfarnham Golf Course. The entrance to the "Kilmashogue Cemetery" passes over it.

Owendoher is the anglicised version of the Irish, Abhainn Dór, or River of Gold, which as you can possibly make out from the picture, describes the golden sand and gravel in its streambed.

"You wouldn't drink from a well these days," Mary Keating said in the staff restaurant a few days ago. "All the cows and everything now..."

Carmel disagreed with her.

"Sure the spring water bubbles up and drives out anything."

I was surprised to find a picture of a village pump which is almost identical to the one that used to be in Edmondstown before the worry about nitrates and ecoli and the rest made the Council take it away and connect a smaller pump into the water main. It was described on the Internet as a "19th-Century Village Water Pump" and was for sale on a U.K. garden antiques site along with other relics of our shared histories. In the picture (right) you can see the hook on the nozzle on which a bucket would be hung. Our pump differed in that a hole had been made in the hook such that it made a water fountain for drinking from if the main spout was blocked up by the heel of your hand.

The pump only failed once as far as I can remember. In the 1970s a summer drought made water very scarce, and the pump went dry for a time. We were forced to rely on the spring well at my grandmother's, which never seemed to fail. Even then, I think my mother was becoming concerned about pollutants, and the open-topped well with its stream that bubbled up out of the bank wasn't her natural choice for drinking water. The houses in the area tended to rely on dry toilets or septic tanks which could easily percolate into the waters.

Our national pastime of littering extends to waters as well, of course. As far back as the 1930s, my father slashed the sole of his foot in the Owendoher when paddling. The culprit was a broken bottle.

Some weeks back a customer rang me to complain that someone had emptied the contents of a septic tank into the Owendoher. Being biased by my own childhood playing in its waters, I was horrified at the notion, but colleagues who work in the area of water pollution said it was very common. I suppose the incident was probably a mark of our "development" since the 1930s. A rare broken bottle once containing a ha'penny's worth of pop is now replaced with a frequent tankful of cess sucked up at a million-euro bungalow by a cowboy too busy to cross the city traffic to dispose of it properly. How far we've come since the village pump.