Sign of the Times

Today, I am standing in a frill-free, foreign-owned supermarket, peering at the Schnitzeblibil herself has found at a bargain price.

"What is a Schnitzeblibl?" I ask, innocently. It's been a long week.

Herself looks down her nose at the foreign label on the plastic bottle.

"It's either a shampoo... or a salad dressing. I'm not sure."

"Ah."

I lift up a green net bag.

"And the Defergaumin?"

"Six for the price of four," she says.

"Do you think," I ask. "Do you think the Defergaumin could be served with the Schnitzeblibl?"

"Don't be silly," she says. "Look, give me that trolley and go and look at the Man stuff."

I examine the rotary motor mower; poke briefly at the energy-saving L.E.D. work lamp; try on then put back the protective chainsaw boots. I meet Herself in the next aisle, where she is wrestling another woman to the ground, growling menacingly.

"MY....! I said MY Liebenhaffabudenschtiffel!"

In the car park, a man is tentatively cutting off a shopping trolley wheel with a brand new plasma rig.

"Only nine-ninty nine in the third aisle," he says, grinning.

I pack the groceries into the car and we drive away.

Other lives

A few pensioners returning from a coffee in The Square, a woman about 40 with a ponytail, and I were travelling on the 77A. No-one was particularly paying attention to the old lady alone in the front seat. The sun was shining, the traffic at least moving. Next thing she picks a mobile phone out of her bag and makes a call:

"I'm ringing," she says, in the posh voice that old ladies acquire when they are taking the high ground. "I'm ringing to tell you I am very sick and I'm on my way to the doctor. So there will be NO drinks, you'll be happy to hear, AND the phone will be OFF tonight!"

The little conversations about the bus buzzed low as everybody tried to listen in without being too obvious. The impact of the lady's pronouncement was hindered somewhat by the recipient being a little deaf.

"I said, I'm very sick and I'm on my way to the doctor."

"Yes, the doctor. I'm on the bus now."

"I'm nearly there. Goodbye."

She hung up and gazed out the window, everybody looking sidelong at her. She didn't look too unhealthy. In her early 70s, maybe. Large mop of hair with bold, blonde highlights. A spare woman, head held high, eyes peering out from behind her black rimmed glasses.

She stood up, clutching the smooth, chrome hand-holds with a fist full of heavy gold rings. Gathering her coat around her she marched imperiously to the exit.

When she'd gone, the conversations murmured on again, gradually buzzing louder about weather and gardens and the price of things.

Me nerves...!

Herself leaves me a "note" like a contract drawn up by a particularly paranoid American lawyer, in which she suggests, (if I'm feeling up to it), I might, (for example), remove wet clothes from the washing machine and hang them in the specified place, or, (if the action mentioned in Section 1 is impossible), I could feed the cat (but only) if I go to the shop and buy either (a), wild red salmon, or, (b) sardines in vegetable oil (not tomato sauce), and, (assuming I have gone to the shop), a six-pack of lager and a large bottle of (sugar free) 7-Up.

At the bottom of the note it says: "P.T.O."

On the other side, in alternating red ink and blue ink, it continues with a suggestion that (if I was really feeling fit) I might (a), hang a rack of kitchen implements on the wall, (b), put the missing hardboard backs on the cupboards beneath the sink, and/or (c), put longer electrical flexes on the two side lamps.

While the cat is sucking up great gobs of wild, red salmon in the other room, I sit at the dining room table twiddling with electrical connections.

There is something bred into me about electricity that means that even though the whole project is entirely disconnected and not even remotely near an electrical outlet, I am still being extremely wary. I inspect the two-core cable critically, finding a little nick in the insulation which means I'll have to cut that piece off for safety and reconnect the lampholder. As I'm twisting the screw into the "Live" terminal, there's an unmerciful shrieking twin blast that rises me at least six inches out of the chair, scattering screwdrivers and screws and electrical cables everywhere.

I open my eyes and see the "New Message" symbol on my mobile phone, resting on the table.

It's a note from Herself.

"What's for dinner?" she asks.

Grumbling, I send back:

"What are you making?"

I turn back to the scattered bits and pieces, pick up the screwdriver and start attaching the "Neutral" wire. Five seconds later the phone shrieks twice and I nearly bite off the end of my tongue in fright.

I read the dinner menu suggestion and instructions as to where I can find the ingredients. I send off a terse "Alright."

My fingers drum on the table. Two more shrieks from the phone announce the inevitable:

"Are you okay?"

I'm switching off that bloody phone before I do anything else in this house.

...got no worries; got no cares....

Herself starts the day off with that question dreaded by men everywhere:
"Do you remember last night?"
I lie there half in and out of consciousness. A few minutes earlier, I was trying to find a bus home from Wicklow. Then the five-to-eight weather forecast was unceremoniously switched on on the radio and woke me up from the dream.
"Er... No...?"
She throws clean socks and teeshirts at me. I brush them aside as it's getting hard to breathe under the mound.
"I woke up in the middle of the night to find you leaning over me."
"Oh, aye...!"
"And you said: 'I've lost my hug'!"
"I don't remember that."
"So I gave you a hug and you hugged me back. It was lovely. A lovely big hug."
"Feck! Don't remember that at all!"
So, there you go....
I lost my hug....
Wish someone had warned me.

Why the cat smells marmalade on my leg

I've a head-cold.
Herself has a dicky shoulder.
The weather has been Arctic cold.
This morning Herself knocked over one of our small, cheap, glass salt cellars and broke it into pieces. Bad luck was definitely supposed to follow.
As I'd been promising Herself we'd get one, we bought a small, flat-screen telly for the kitchen today and I couldn't get the thing to tune in until I disconnected all the cables from the grown-up telly and DVD and video player and the digital box and the PC and possibly the service for the whole road. But it tuned in, eventually.
In the meantime, Herself did everything possible to find jobs that would aggravate her sore shoulder.
"Aaargh!" She shouted from upstairs.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm washing the bathroom floor."
I watched the snow on the screen and pressed another button.
"Use the other arm," I said.
There were barely audible murmurings from somewhere upstairs.
There was a twanging, crashing noise from the landing.
"What was that?" I shouted up, as a fuzzy Irish rugby team made heavy work of defeating burly, blurry-blue Italians.
"Clothes horse," came the reply. "I'm putting clothes on the bannisters to dry."
"Use the other arm," I said. "By the way... Did you tell the doctor about that shoulder?"
"No."
"I see."
I fiddled with coaxial cable and started tacking staples into the side of the door saddle. The vacuum cleaner started up somewhere behind me.
"Aaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaa-aargh!"
I stopped tapping, momentarily.
"What is it?"
"My shoulder! I can't finish the hoovering! It hurts!"
"Leave the hoovering then!"
"I can't!"
"Why not?"
"Because it's Saturday. I have to have the house clean on Saturday."
"Okay, I'll finish the hoovering later."
I tapped in some more staples, crawling about on the tiled floor, backing into the dining room and bumping against chairs and one hot radiator.
I hear another "Aaaargh!"
"What....?"
"I'm mopping the living room floor. The bucket is heavy and hurts my shoulder when I pick it up!"
"Use the other hand to pick it up then."
Sweat is dripping onto the floor as I pull cable along behind the radiator, twist it in behind the computer desk and twiddle it under the dining room door into the living room and the TV signal outlet box.
I say:
"Have you taken any anti-inflammatories?"
"No."
I plug in the plug and the picture tunes in on Herself's new early-morning putting-on-makeup-in-the-kitchen piece of telly technology.
I say:
"It's working."
Herself meets me in the kitchen and reaching for a glass of lemonade with her right hand -- the one that is attached to the arm that is swinging on the dodgy shoulder -- she knocks it all over the counter. She says something nasty and starts mopping up the spill.
I pass her the rolling pin. She's going to make a meat pie for dinner if it kills us both.
Opening a cupboard (with her right hand, the one that has the dodgy shoulder) she ducks as a half pot of marmalade sails out and falls to its death on the floor tiles below. Apart from the bits of glass glued together by the marmalade, the rest of it goes into a hundred little pieces that scatter all over the place. A large wodge of peel sticks to the side of my leg. We stand looking at it as it slowly slides down the cuff of my trousers, slithers down my boot and finally comes to rest.
"You know," I say. "It's been that kind of day, hasn't it?"
"Yes," she says, through gritted teeth.
Pastry gets a pounding with the occasional accompaniment of a loud
"Aaargh!"

As seen on TV

Now, you know I love Herself dearly, but there are times... Today I was tiling again. The floor of our porch needed some treatment so we decided on some tiles which we accidentally found in Woodies and which have now all gone down, cut bits and all, over the past two weekends. I need to grout them tomorrow. My knees are already complaining and I haven't even confirmed to them that the date with the hard floor is still on.

So I was working in my slippers today. I thought:

"If one of those tiles slips off the work bench and skewers your toe, it's your own fault, you know?"

No such skewering took place. I reassured myself that the lack of work boots was a minor bullet dodging event that I would not repeat. Next time, it's boots all the way. Anyhow, I now didn't have to look for my slippers. Sure, weren't they on my feet?

Herself arrived in from the shops, looking despondant.

"I only bought two new tablecloths, a decorative table for the porch, a new salad bowl and a bunch of stuff I'm not going to tell you about," she said, miserably. "There was nothing in the shops."

One of the soon-to-be-revealed items was a set of three LED lights for awkwards spots. You put in a load of batteries and give the thing a push and it lights up under your stairs or in your toolbox or in your pocket or anywhere else you need a light.

"One will do for when you want to adjust the gas boiler," Herself said.

I didn't doubt her, and after tidying up after my tile laying, folding up the work bench and putting it neatly, if temporarily, under the stairs, and putting aside a roasting tin from the oven which had mysteriously appeared in the way, I put in batteries and fumbled with self-adhesive strips in the semi-darkness by the boiler. Herself carried on cooking Saturday lunch.

There was a gut-wreching CLANG!

"Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!" I hinted, my head stuck under the stairs in an LED dazzle as the thing flew to bits and disappeared into a now well-lit hidey hole. The fact that the heating system was now clearly and visibly on 1.5 bar was of no comfort to me.

"What's wrong?" Herself asked from the kitchen.

"I'm crippled!" I roared.

"From what?" she asked, poking her head around the door.

"From this feckin' roasting tin!" I said, pointing. A second tin (not the one I had dilligently moved out of the way, of course), had been hung, by persons unknown, on the leg of my folded up workbench and had neatly guillotined the arch of my foot while I played silly buggers with the LED light. Oh, Jesus! It hurt!

From the kitchen came the sound of muffled giggling. I was not amused:

"Feck you and your LED lights! My bleedin' foot!"

I swear, the next time she brings home something that needs gutting, hanging, skinning, assembly, switching on or putting out... SHE CAN FECKIN' WELL DO IT HERSELF!

My poor foot...!

I know what label this post will have

"No," I say. "There hasn't been a leak from the bathroom pipes. Those puddles are made up of droplets of sweat from my poor brow as I put together the pelmet for under the kitchen units."

Today has involved unscrewing, drilling, screwing (not the good kind), hanging, sweeping, sawing, more sweeping, and more screwing (again not the good kind).

"Do you think the pelmets should be flush with the underside of the unit doors, like you have them, or should they be set back a bit," Herself asks.

We look at a brochure. The kitchen designers have them both ways.

"Must be a matter of personal taste," I say.

Herself rings Herself's Daughter and asks what her kitchen looks like. Naturally, it's the opposite of what I have laboured at for half the day.

I say: "Well, it's better to tell me you prefer it one way or another NOW, before I do any more."

I unscrew the screws and offer up the pelmet in the new, non-flush, just-like-Herself's-daughter's-kitchen position.

"I prefer it the other way," she says.

I'll start over tomorrow.

Did Gustave Eiffel have this trouble too?

So with the dust rapidly settling over the recent invasion of plumbers, the dismantling of built in furniture, the hauling and moiling and toiling to get junk out of rooms and out of the way, and finally the whole effort to put things back into some form of organisation, the question that Herself lies across the railway track of my quiet train of thought this afternoon is a momentous one:

"Where are my slippers?"

Now how in the name of Jaysus am I supposed to know where your slippers are? I ask in the quietness of my own mind. I know the possible consequences of saying this out loud, of course.

"I think they're in my wardrobe," she says.

This means I have to go root about in a wardrobe into which we flung everything in a frenzy three days ago. I am on my hands and knees with a torch between my teeth being threatened by an avalanche of handbags and carrier bags of Christmas decorations. There is a jungle of hanging clothes right above my head. A belt buckle swings down and hits me smartly on the ear. The thin, plastic cover of a dry cleaned something tries to grab and smother me. It's getting dangerous in here.

After five minutes struggle I give up.

"Can't find them."

She sighs and disappears up the stairs. In about three seconds she reappears, wearing slippers.

"Where were they?" I ask.

"In the wardrobe."

"Naturally."

"What?"

"Nothing. Just clearing my throat."

Why Howard Hughes stopped using public transport

The single decked 49 bus is not a favourite of mine as you may recall from this post. Too many odd things can happen on a single-decker when all your whole muddled, post-work brain wants is the familiar stale sweaty smell and shrieking noises of a regular, overcrowded one-up-one-down on wheels.

Tonight a lady in her 50s sat down in the seat ahead of me on the single-decked 49 bus. Well-dressed with skirts that almost touched the floor, where her three or four bags of newly purchased Dunnes Stores clothes or home wares were nestled, she had on a smart camel hair coat or its fake equivalent. A nice, well-turned out lady you would think.

As the bus reached Aherns pub on the Old Bawn Road, she saluted it by tilting to the left on one cheek of her bum and letting off a smart, sharp, retorting fart that went "Fra-a-ap!" Then, quite unperturbed, she gathered up her bags and alighted at the next stop.

A young Asian man who was uncomfortably perched on an aisle seat threw himself gratefuly into the unoccupied space by the window.

I was thinking of tapping him on the shoulder and asking if he thought the seat was unusually warm.

I hope I'm on time for the double-decker tomorrow.

Into the outdoors....

"The grass needs mowing," Herself says. "I suppose I could manage to get it done when I finish the breakfast, the ironing, the washing of the kitchen floor, the hoovering...."

"No it doesn't," I say from behind the safety of the television remote control. "It was only done three weeks ago."

"One of the cats got lost in it yesterday."

"That cat always had a poor sense of direction."

"And it's going to rain. If it rains, the grass will be a foot taller in a few days and then I'll have to mow it when I finish the breakfast, the ironing, the washing of the kitchen floor, the hoovering..."

And so I find myself in the savana that is our back garden, pootling about with a faulty electrical hover mower. Every time it goes over a blade of grass that has the audacity to stand upright, the little plastic disposable blade thingy breaks and I have to stop and fit another one.

Oh, and I really hate electric strimmers. It's now official. No matter how I try to wind the replacement cord on, it becomes entangled and unusable. Or it unwinds completely into a deadly, flying weapon that puts cats and me to flight.

"I'm never using that again," I sulk, stomping by with the mower past Herself, who is making progress with a steam iron through a mini-Mount Everest of wrinkled shirts while hoovering with the other hand.

In the front garden, it begins to rain. I am on the grass verge by the road, overlooked by dry neighbours drinking tea and standing smugly in their living rooms looking out. They mowed their grass yesterday, or course, when the weather forecast rightly predicted dry weather. So, I can't stop now. It will only satisfy the neighbours.

The clouds make a noise like a toilet flushing. I mow on.

Sheets of water pass vertically before my eyes, some of them on the way back up having bounced off the ground. There is a hammering sound on the outside of my cap, which is now a lot closer to my head than when I started out. Small blue sparks are rising from the mower. From time to time its "Errr-uhh...!" noise fails and drops to a sputtering gurgle.

I mow on.

I can't see out of my glasses any more, so they dangle precariously from the tip of my nose where a cataract flows from the peak of my cap.

At last, as grey smoke begins to rise from the extension lead, I grab the mower, wind up the flex as best I can, and gallop for the house.

"Is it raining?" Herself asks sweetly.

"Grumph!" I say, squelching towards the garden shed with the dripping mower. I throw it bodily through the doorway and slouch back into the house, drenched to the skin. I dry off, change my clothes and get to sit down at the computer.

Five minutes later a voice comes from the kitchen:

"You wouldn't just sweep the grass off the path, would you?"

Just popping out then.

I may be some time...

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.

Does a brownie point outweigh a "You're-Dead" point?

"There is something," I say to myself, as I hear the first hailstones start to pound off the windows, "That I should have done a few minutes back. Now what was it?"

I peer through the slats of the vertical blinds at the darkened back garden. A tabby cat, stung by the first hail, rushes out from under the hedge and after a false start finds in a panic the cat flap in the shed and jumps inside.

I grin.

Then I see the washing hanging on the line.

"Okay. I'm dead."

Then I realise that it is mostly made up of a wash that *I* put into the machine yesterday evening. Yes, I actually turned a dial and pushed a button. Must have earned at least one brownie point for that, eh?

Nope. I'm only fooling myself. I'm still dead.