On January 6th, which very helpfully fell on a Sunday this year, I was co-opted by a certain party into taking down the Christmas decorations. Apparently this is the day that they have to come down or else you get penalty points on your house insurance or something, so I quickly started untangling wires and unplugging the fibre-optic Santa that my daughter finds so unnerving.
To me of course, it seemed very soon to be taking them down, particularly as we don’t normally put ours up until the weekend before Christmas, on the basis that we’d be fed up of them by the time Christmas comes around. Every year somebody bursts into the kitchen at the end of November to announce that they’ve just seen a house with a Christmas tree in the window and we all tut deprecatingly and say “That’s ridiculous” and “It’s getting earlier and earlier every year.” Although I didn’t actually see it myself, I read on the Beechfield Residents’ website that somebody on that estate had their tree up and lighting on the 1st November, which has to be some sort of a record.
But I duly went about unhooking, untangling and unplugging while my wife wrapped and put them in the boxes that were to go back into the attic until next year, making sure that the unused cards, wrapping paper and crackers were packed in a box to be left next to the attic door, so it should be easy to see if we need to buy any of same next November .
(This is supposed to be a foolproof method but we’ve actually accumulated enough wrapping paper to last us into the next century, so next year I have decided I will set up a stall at the farmer’s market in Ongar and sell it off. I’ve already been practising my “Fifty cent de wrapp’n’ paper. Would ya like a roll, luv?” spiel.)
Finally, when the house seemed as bare as a Minister of Finance’s bank account back in the eighties, I removed the wreath from the front door and was proceeding through the kitchen to hang it on the apex of the shed roof, as is our tradition, when I was stopped by our interior designing expert.
“Where are you going with that?” she asked.
“To the shed, like always,” I answered.
“Oh. I was going to leave it on the front door. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
Of course I know my wife well enough to know that this was not a wistful remark but rather a direct command to go and put it back where I had found it. And, being the dutiful husband that I am, I did so with alacrity.
The wreath remained there all through January. As the needles did not turn brown, there was no reason to consign it to the back garden and here I must complement Dunnes Stores on the wreath’s longevity, which they should use in their advertising next Christmas and if they want to pay me a few shillings for this endorsement, so be it.
If it is still perfectly good, as my wife stated, what is the point of taking it down and leaving it out in the back garden? What was the point, indeed?
Of course, we had to field the occasional puzzled remark from callers. We used up the Russian orthodox Christmas excuse and also the Chinese New Year excuse and I scoured the internet to find other possible feast days that might explain away its presence. A Pancake Tuesday wreath or an Easter wreath, anyone?
It was naturally very handy for giving people directions to our house. “We’re the one near the end of the road with a wreath on the door” became a foolproof way of locating our abode.
I spent a large period of what little leisure time my wife allowed me scouring the local estates to try and see if anybody else still had the wreath in situ. By mid-January, I was starting to widen my search and eventually found such a house in Kilcock, which was a great weight off my mind, and I could stop fretting that we were perhaps unique in the western world.
However it became evident that we had to face up to the reality of the situation and admit that we were the only house in Dublin 15 with a Christmas wreath still on the front door by the time February rolled into town. It was a statement, I told myself. We were telling a disposable world that we would not discard an object simply because society dictated that we should; that we were trying to maintain the natural biodiversity of our house and garden; that we were sending out a signal that a wreath, like a dog, is not just for Christmas.
On my meanderings around the area though, I did notice quite a few icicle lights and one “Merry Christmas” sign still adorning the walls of houses. These unilluminated remnants of the festive season indicated perhaps that they would save the residents time next Christmas. Instead of risking life and limb hanging them up on a freezing cold December afternoon, they need only flick a switch and on they’d come.
However when I suggested to my wife that perhaps we ought to leave the Christmas tree up throughout the year and simply turn it on again in Advent, she gave me one of her famous withering stares that can reduce a man to jelly.
My daughter tried to turn it into a joke. She got a teaspoon from the kitchen drawer (after asking directions from us) and threaded it carefully through the tightly woven foliage.
“Who’s that?” she declared.
Seeing our blank faces, she gave the answer immediately.
“Wreath With a Spoon.”
I have since written her out of my will.
Of course I suspect that many of the neighbours thought that we were just too lazy and could’nt find the time nor the energy to remove the damned thing. The social embarrassment was acute and I took to leaving the house only under cover of darkness and then with a jacket over my head. Eventually, when my wife was up in HMV one day looking for the new Lionel Ritchie album that was rumoured to be the best thing he had done since “Hello,” I decided to take matters into my own hands. Rooting out an old paintbox set, I coloured in a portion of the wreath in a convincing light brown.
“I see the wreath’s starting to go,” I murmured over dinner, as she failed to spot the offending withered patch such was her disappointment following her fruitless shopping trip.
The hapless object is now adorning the shed in the back garden, at last genuinely brown and a sad reminder of a Christmas passed all too quickly.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Alternatives to Childminding
(Over the years I have been writing these articles, my wife has censored them stringently, mainly because they reveal too much of the idiosyncrasies of our daily life, which she doesn't want revealed to the world. Sometimes whole paragraphs are erased and once or twice, complete articles.
There has only been one occasion though when Fergus himself has rejected an article, on the grounds that it was "a bit disturbing." This is it)
.
The cost of childminding these days is fast causing a whole generation to become celibate. Queues form daily at the Rotunda with young mothers claiming that “there’s been a dreadful mistake” and can they have a set of rustic placemats and an electric blanket instead? Orphanages are putting up “House Full” signs. Crèches are becoming so successful and enjoy such a high income per capita that many are threatening to secede from the Republic and set up their own thriving autonomous theocracies. Grizzled old prospectors no longer dream of striking oil but now yearn to strike children, to coin a phrase, so to speak, in a metaphorical way.
The whole childminding issue was very much to the fore in the last bye-elections in Kildare and Meath and there is no reason to believe the temper tantrum has abated any in the past two years. Parents in Castleknock are so incandescent with rage about the whole issue that they have been known to tut and shake their heads despairingly whenever the subject is raised.
But what can be done about these toddlers that are breaking their parents’ hearts and bank balances?
The more enlightened companies in Ireland today actively encourage their employees to bring their children to work, though it is hard to complete an urgent report on last month’s unexpected downturn if your three year old is sitting on the keyboard picking her nose. Of course there are still some professions – mountaineers and astronauts come to mind – where bringing baby along is actively discouraged, for some reason.
A taskforce was recently set up by the Minister to pursue the possibility of finding gainful employment for these two to five year olds. If they could prove useful to the economy rather than being serious non-contributors, if they could somehow pay for themselves, then perhaps the social and financial drain on parents would not be quite so acute.
A proposal to send them down t’mine seemed to be on a winner until it was discovered that the last coalmine in Ireland had closed more than a decade previously. Suggestions that “we could send them down anyway” fell on deaf ears, as it was generally seen to be unprofitable to have toddlers wandering around deserted mines eating charcoal.
One of the members of the taskforce, a Mr. O. Schindler, suggested that maybe you could rub them in petroleum jelly and push them up the inside of armament casings to clean them. Again, a quick flip through the Golden Pages revealed a complete absence of munitions factories in Ireland and the plan was reluctantly discarded. A similar suggestion that maybe you could strap them to a pole and use them to clean first floor windows was dismissed when it was pointed out that a simple squeegee incurred far less running costs.
Nappy adverts appear to be almost the sole gainful employment of our country’s pre-schoolers and sadly there are far more applicants than jobs on offer. Unsuccessful auditioners, rejected by Pampers’ equivalent to Simon Cowell, have been known to hit the bottle in an alarming way, sometimes pouring the entire contents over the floor in a fit of temper. Many simply become demoralised and roam around the back streets disconsolately until Barney comes on.
One solution that the Government is seriously promoting is the notion of child farming. Farmers on the outskirts of the capital are frantically seeking profitable usage from their land after the latest round of subsidy cuts has seen them forced to keep their current BMW for more than six months. Some are opting for eco-tourism – hiring out the leaky barn to couples with zithers – though most have developed a sudden yen for growing apartments. Still, child farming is becoming quite a popular alternative.
Farmers drive down to the local market – normally Tesco or Dunnes – and round up all the stray youngsters sitting on the floor in a strop. These are then herded into a trailer by a sheepdog invariably called “Boy” and then the farmer drives them back and sets them loose on his land.
“You have to round them up in the evenings and bring ‘em into the barn,” says Vladimir Duffy of Whitechurch Farm, Kilbride, who wishes to remain anonymous. “The noise does get to you at times but once they get a handful of Hunky Doreys they’re generally quite docile until morning.”
The E.U. subsidy on child farming is still comparatively large compared to turnips or sugar beet and many farmers can have a quota of up to 300 toddlers an acre. On the better run estates, farmers employ local lads to go around pulling faces and blowing raspberry noises on their forearms to amuse the kiddies, thereby significantly increasing the tonnage.
Generally the farmers keep the livestock until they are ready to go to school and then send them back to shell-shocked parents, providing they haven’t moved in the meantime. As well as pocketing a sizable amount from Brussels, the farmer also receives the cost of comics and rusks from the parents.
But though the financial rewards are high, anybody venturing into a child farm enterprise should realise that it is not a big bowl of cherries, as Farmer Duffy, his face in silhouette, explains.
“Its hard work rearing childer,” he states, spitting on the palms of his hands and rubbing them on his trousers to emphasise the point. “They’re very dirty animals and mucking out is not a pleasant job at all at all, so it isn’t. I’ve heard some people actually let them into their houses but you couldn’t keep the house intact if you did that.
“Most of the time they’re quite content to wander around foraging for worms and the like, but sometimes you’ve got to sit down and read ‘em Goldilocks and the three bears or some other fanciful nonsense, just to stop ‘em hyperventilating. But no pain, no gain – isn’t that what they say?”
He is critical of human rights organisations who claim that the children are treated like cattle and forced to exist in barbaric conditions. “My childer are the happiest childer y’ever saw,” he claims. “We shear them three times a year and dip ‘em every week or so. They have all manner o’ biscuit tins and cardboard boxes to play with and sure they’re well used to the branding by now.”
There has only been one occasion though when Fergus himself has rejected an article, on the grounds that it was "a bit disturbing." This is it)
.
The cost of childminding these days is fast causing a whole generation to become celibate. Queues form daily at the Rotunda with young mothers claiming that “there’s been a dreadful mistake” and can they have a set of rustic placemats and an electric blanket instead? Orphanages are putting up “House Full” signs. Crèches are becoming so successful and enjoy such a high income per capita that many are threatening to secede from the Republic and set up their own thriving autonomous theocracies. Grizzled old prospectors no longer dream of striking oil but now yearn to strike children, to coin a phrase, so to speak, in a metaphorical way.
The whole childminding issue was very much to the fore in the last bye-elections in Kildare and Meath and there is no reason to believe the temper tantrum has abated any in the past two years. Parents in Castleknock are so incandescent with rage about the whole issue that they have been known to tut and shake their heads despairingly whenever the subject is raised.
But what can be done about these toddlers that are breaking their parents’ hearts and bank balances?
The more enlightened companies in Ireland today actively encourage their employees to bring their children to work, though it is hard to complete an urgent report on last month’s unexpected downturn if your three year old is sitting on the keyboard picking her nose. Of course there are still some professions – mountaineers and astronauts come to mind – where bringing baby along is actively discouraged, for some reason.
A taskforce was recently set up by the Minister to pursue the possibility of finding gainful employment for these two to five year olds. If they could prove useful to the economy rather than being serious non-contributors, if they could somehow pay for themselves, then perhaps the social and financial drain on parents would not be quite so acute.
A proposal to send them down t’mine seemed to be on a winner until it was discovered that the last coalmine in Ireland had closed more than a decade previously. Suggestions that “we could send them down anyway” fell on deaf ears, as it was generally seen to be unprofitable to have toddlers wandering around deserted mines eating charcoal.
One of the members of the taskforce, a Mr. O. Schindler, suggested that maybe you could rub them in petroleum jelly and push them up the inside of armament casings to clean them. Again, a quick flip through the Golden Pages revealed a complete absence of munitions factories in Ireland and the plan was reluctantly discarded. A similar suggestion that maybe you could strap them to a pole and use them to clean first floor windows was dismissed when it was pointed out that a simple squeegee incurred far less running costs.
Nappy adverts appear to be almost the sole gainful employment of our country’s pre-schoolers and sadly there are far more applicants than jobs on offer. Unsuccessful auditioners, rejected by Pampers’ equivalent to Simon Cowell, have been known to hit the bottle in an alarming way, sometimes pouring the entire contents over the floor in a fit of temper. Many simply become demoralised and roam around the back streets disconsolately until Barney comes on.
One solution that the Government is seriously promoting is the notion of child farming. Farmers on the outskirts of the capital are frantically seeking profitable usage from their land after the latest round of subsidy cuts has seen them forced to keep their current BMW for more than six months. Some are opting for eco-tourism – hiring out the leaky barn to couples with zithers – though most have developed a sudden yen for growing apartments. Still, child farming is becoming quite a popular alternative.
Farmers drive down to the local market – normally Tesco or Dunnes – and round up all the stray youngsters sitting on the floor in a strop. These are then herded into a trailer by a sheepdog invariably called “Boy” and then the farmer drives them back and sets them loose on his land.
“You have to round them up in the evenings and bring ‘em into the barn,” says Vladimir Duffy of Whitechurch Farm, Kilbride, who wishes to remain anonymous. “The noise does get to you at times but once they get a handful of Hunky Doreys they’re generally quite docile until morning.”
The E.U. subsidy on child farming is still comparatively large compared to turnips or sugar beet and many farmers can have a quota of up to 300 toddlers an acre. On the better run estates, farmers employ local lads to go around pulling faces and blowing raspberry noises on their forearms to amuse the kiddies, thereby significantly increasing the tonnage.
Generally the farmers keep the livestock until they are ready to go to school and then send them back to shell-shocked parents, providing they haven’t moved in the meantime. As well as pocketing a sizable amount from Brussels, the farmer also receives the cost of comics and rusks from the parents.
But though the financial rewards are high, anybody venturing into a child farm enterprise should realise that it is not a big bowl of cherries, as Farmer Duffy, his face in silhouette, explains.
“Its hard work rearing childer,” he states, spitting on the palms of his hands and rubbing them on his trousers to emphasise the point. “They’re very dirty animals and mucking out is not a pleasant job at all at all, so it isn’t. I’ve heard some people actually let them into their houses but you couldn’t keep the house intact if you did that.
“Most of the time they’re quite content to wander around foraging for worms and the like, but sometimes you’ve got to sit down and read ‘em Goldilocks and the three bears or some other fanciful nonsense, just to stop ‘em hyperventilating. But no pain, no gain – isn’t that what they say?”
He is critical of human rights organisations who claim that the children are treated like cattle and forced to exist in barbaric conditions. “My childer are the happiest childer y’ever saw,” he claims. “We shear them three times a year and dip ‘em every week or so. They have all manner o’ biscuit tins and cardboard boxes to play with and sure they’re well used to the branding by now.”
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
The drive of death
Occasionally, just occasionally, and a lot more rarely as you get older, you experience something that thrills you and excites you to the very marrow of your being. Something that you know is a whirlwind knuckle-clenching ride to oblivion as you laugh in the face of danger and dribble in the face of certain death. For some people, it is parachute jumping, or white water rafting, or maybe the new series of Desperate Housewives.
I have just had one of those experiences. As I type this, my body is still shaking with the sheer excitement of it all. I am on a high and my body has not yet adjusted to the dull, maudlin reality to which it has returned. I need to tell the world about it.
Yes, I have just come down the New Ongar Road at 60kph.
For those of you who live in the south of Dublin 15 and have never had occasion to venture out into the sticks, the New Ongar Road is a brand spanking super highway that links the Power City Roundabout (not the official name!) on Blanchardstown Road South with, well, New Ongar. It has liberated a whole generation of Littlepacers and Ongarites from the horrors of the N3 and the Blanchardstown Centre slip-road and given them an alternative route to the holy shopping Mecca only two miles away.
In short it is a godsend and I always include the Roads Department of Fingal County Council in my nightly prayers by way of thanks for their divine and munificent intervention.
It is a wonderful road. It consists of a lane for ordinary traffic, a bus lane, a murderous and psychotic looking pink strip (commonly known as a “complete cycle path” – sorry, but the old jokes are always the best) and a pavement for pedestrians. And there’s another set of four travelling in the opposite direction too. It is an eight lane, straight as a dye, ultra highway that would have your average American drooling in envy.
There are no houses on the New Ongar Road. The good citizens of Mount Symon, Allendale, , Lohunda et al, whose estates border this infrastructural jewel in Dublin 15’s crown, may sleep soundly in their beds, protected by a long high wall that runs the length of the road in both directions. Just the kind of wall that the deafened citizens of Pheasant’s Run and Swallowbrook on the N3 would give their right ear for. As it is, nobody is inconvenienced by the high pitch scream of traffic tearing up and down the New Ongar Road at 50 kph.
I say 50 kph (that’s 31 mph for those of you still operating in pounds, shillings and pence) because up until this year, that was the speed that the Road Traffic Authority had deemed it unwise to surpass. And rightly so. A long, straight stretch of road with a bus lane to separate the cars from pedestrians and cyclists and no houses on it? Sure, you’d want to be as mad as a Lionel Ritchie fan to want to risk exceeding 50 kph.
However, and I know it is hard to believe, some drivers felt that tearing along at 50 kph was too slow. They had this reckless habit of overtaking on the inside – nipping into the bus lane to try and get past the car in front. No matter that a bus is very seldom seen on the New Ongar Road since its official opening – a bus lane is still a bus lane, whether any buses use it or not. Of course such despicable activity soon drew the attention of the local Gardaí whose radar gun soon put a temporary stop to this practice.
But the RTA, or some man in an office somewhere, acceded to the pressure to raise the speed limit and since the beginning of the year, the red bordered circle with the black six-oh in it was planted at either end of this Formula One track. Again for the benefit of English and American readers, I convert this as 37.2 mph, a speed, I’m sure you will agree, that is physically very difficult for the human body to endure.
Purely in the interests of research for this column, I have just driven down the New Ongar Road at a speed that approached this limit. (For the purposes of clarification, I always regard the journey from Ongar to Blanchardstown as ‘up’ and the reverse as ‘down.’ I realise it may well be an optical illusion but I fancy the latter run would make a damn fine ski slope, should our oil run out and global freezing make a comeback)
The G-forces as you approach 60 kph have to be felt to be believed. The loose skin on your cheeks is pulled back and it feels as though your hair is being pulled out by the roots. It was only with great difficulty that I managed to prevent my head from snapping back, knowing that to take my eyes from the road ahead would mean calamity. Now I know what those brave astronauts go through whenever the Space Shuttle is launched.
Despite this, and I cannot verify this for certain as I was struggling to maintain my grip on the wheel, I have the vague impression that I was still being passed on the inside by cars going even faster. Now, my knowledge of quantum physics is decidedly sketchy but I am sure that Einstein had a theory somewhere about what happens when speeds of 60 kph are exceeded. Time begins to warp and you actually reach the end of your journey ten minutes before you began, I think he said, which is great if you are late for an appointment at the hairdressers, but would have poor Gay Byrne turning over in his grave, if he were dead.
In his wisdom, the man in the office somewhere has placed three sets of traffic lights along the New Ongar Road, perfectly synchronised that, although you may get through one and possibly two of them, the third will always pull you up. The worst one is at the junction with Shelerin Road, obviously designed by the same man that designed the infamous Snugborough Road interchange. Each road gets a go in turn – and there’s about five of them, then the pedestrians. Just miss a green light and you have time to read another chapter of “PS I Love You” (why this work of art was not even shortlisted for the Booker Prize is one of the great travesties of modern literature) before the lights turn green again
Of course, as the traffic coming up the New Ongar Road builds up, waiting for the green light, some drivers at the back nip into the bus lane at the lights, afraid that they will not make the next green. Or maybe it is important to them to get three cars ahead, I don’t know. Whatever reason, not only is this practice extremely dangerous, as it runs a risk of colliding with the bus that has hardly ever been seen on the road, but it also infuriates the drivers in the proper lane.
The Rules of the Road state that the proper course of action in this situation for the law-abiding driver in the correct lane is to make sure the first car in line makes a smart getaway and is followed in close proximity by all the other cars in the line, thus preventing Mr. Impatient from getting back in line and keeping him in the bus-lane where he is summarily nabbed by a waiting traffic policeman thirty yards up the road.
In practice though, the first car normally makes an extremely slow getaway or the car ahead of yours obligingly leaves a large gap to allow him to come back in. And of course the traffic policeman has more important things to do than dealing with traffic.
I am calling on the Minister for Transport to step in here before somebody gets seriously annoyed.
I have just had one of those experiences. As I type this, my body is still shaking with the sheer excitement of it all. I am on a high and my body has not yet adjusted to the dull, maudlin reality to which it has returned. I need to tell the world about it.
Yes, I have just come down the New Ongar Road at 60kph.
For those of you who live in the south of Dublin 15 and have never had occasion to venture out into the sticks, the New Ongar Road is a brand spanking super highway that links the Power City Roundabout (not the official name!) on Blanchardstown Road South with, well, New Ongar. It has liberated a whole generation of Littlepacers and Ongarites from the horrors of the N3 and the Blanchardstown Centre slip-road and given them an alternative route to the holy shopping Mecca only two miles away.
In short it is a godsend and I always include the Roads Department of Fingal County Council in my nightly prayers by way of thanks for their divine and munificent intervention.
It is a wonderful road. It consists of a lane for ordinary traffic, a bus lane, a murderous and psychotic looking pink strip (commonly known as a “complete cycle path” – sorry, but the old jokes are always the best) and a pavement for pedestrians. And there’s another set of four travelling in the opposite direction too. It is an eight lane, straight as a dye, ultra highway that would have your average American drooling in envy.
There are no houses on the New Ongar Road. The good citizens of Mount Symon, Allendale, , Lohunda et al, whose estates border this infrastructural jewel in Dublin 15’s crown, may sleep soundly in their beds, protected by a long high wall that runs the length of the road in both directions. Just the kind of wall that the deafened citizens of Pheasant’s Run and Swallowbrook on the N3 would give their right ear for. As it is, nobody is inconvenienced by the high pitch scream of traffic tearing up and down the New Ongar Road at 50 kph.
I say 50 kph (that’s 31 mph for those of you still operating in pounds, shillings and pence) because up until this year, that was the speed that the Road Traffic Authority had deemed it unwise to surpass. And rightly so. A long, straight stretch of road with a bus lane to separate the cars from pedestrians and cyclists and no houses on it? Sure, you’d want to be as mad as a Lionel Ritchie fan to want to risk exceeding 50 kph.
However, and I know it is hard to believe, some drivers felt that tearing along at 50 kph was too slow. They had this reckless habit of overtaking on the inside – nipping into the bus lane to try and get past the car in front. No matter that a bus is very seldom seen on the New Ongar Road since its official opening – a bus lane is still a bus lane, whether any buses use it or not. Of course such despicable activity soon drew the attention of the local Gardaí whose radar gun soon put a temporary stop to this practice.
But the RTA, or some man in an office somewhere, acceded to the pressure to raise the speed limit and since the beginning of the year, the red bordered circle with the black six-oh in it was planted at either end of this Formula One track. Again for the benefit of English and American readers, I convert this as 37.2 mph, a speed, I’m sure you will agree, that is physically very difficult for the human body to endure.
Purely in the interests of research for this column, I have just driven down the New Ongar Road at a speed that approached this limit. (For the purposes of clarification, I always regard the journey from Ongar to Blanchardstown as ‘up’ and the reverse as ‘down.’ I realise it may well be an optical illusion but I fancy the latter run would make a damn fine ski slope, should our oil run out and global freezing make a comeback)
The G-forces as you approach 60 kph have to be felt to be believed. The loose skin on your cheeks is pulled back and it feels as though your hair is being pulled out by the roots. It was only with great difficulty that I managed to prevent my head from snapping back, knowing that to take my eyes from the road ahead would mean calamity. Now I know what those brave astronauts go through whenever the Space Shuttle is launched.
Despite this, and I cannot verify this for certain as I was struggling to maintain my grip on the wheel, I have the vague impression that I was still being passed on the inside by cars going even faster. Now, my knowledge of quantum physics is decidedly sketchy but I am sure that Einstein had a theory somewhere about what happens when speeds of 60 kph are exceeded. Time begins to warp and you actually reach the end of your journey ten minutes before you began, I think he said, which is great if you are late for an appointment at the hairdressers, but would have poor Gay Byrne turning over in his grave, if he were dead.
In his wisdom, the man in the office somewhere has placed three sets of traffic lights along the New Ongar Road, perfectly synchronised that, although you may get through one and possibly two of them, the third will always pull you up. The worst one is at the junction with Shelerin Road, obviously designed by the same man that designed the infamous Snugborough Road interchange. Each road gets a go in turn – and there’s about five of them, then the pedestrians. Just miss a green light and you have time to read another chapter of “PS I Love You” (why this work of art was not even shortlisted for the Booker Prize is one of the great travesties of modern literature) before the lights turn green again
Of course, as the traffic coming up the New Ongar Road builds up, waiting for the green light, some drivers at the back nip into the bus lane at the lights, afraid that they will not make the next green. Or maybe it is important to them to get three cars ahead, I don’t know. Whatever reason, not only is this practice extremely dangerous, as it runs a risk of colliding with the bus that has hardly ever been seen on the road, but it also infuriates the drivers in the proper lane.
The Rules of the Road state that the proper course of action in this situation for the law-abiding driver in the correct lane is to make sure the first car in line makes a smart getaway and is followed in close proximity by all the other cars in the line, thus preventing Mr. Impatient from getting back in line and keeping him in the bus-lane where he is summarily nabbed by a waiting traffic policeman thirty yards up the road.
In practice though, the first car normally makes an extremely slow getaway or the car ahead of yours obligingly leaves a large gap to allow him to come back in. And of course the traffic policeman has more important things to do than dealing with traffic.
I am calling on the Minister for Transport to step in here before somebody gets seriously annoyed.
A warning to all house buyers
The recent case of the Pigg brothers that made headlines across Ireland recently should serve as a salutary warning to all those first-time buyers who launch themselves into the property market without researching fully the implications of their actions. While putting money into real estate and property is generally regarded as a sound long-term investment, the tale of two of the Pigg brothers shows exactly what can happen if a few simple steps are not followed.
The three brothers grew up in the countryside ( a green place the other side of Clonee) and on reaching maturity were promptly handed a puckle of money and kicked out of the family home by their mother, who claimed they kept their rooms like a pigsty. Each of them caught the Expressway into Dublin, alighting in awe as the Q building came into sight on the N3.
On opening their puckles, each brother found they had enough money to invest in the property market and promptly set about securing lodgings in that mythical suburb known as Dublin 15.
The first Pigg brother entered a very dodgy estate agents and decided that a cheap house would be the best bet. That way, he would still have enough money left over to go and have a good time. Accordingly, he purchased an “idyllic rural retreat made from traditional materials – may need some renovating” up near Hollystown. With the money left over, he was able to go to Heaven every night with a Swedish flight attendant on either arm and life was great.
The precise events of the night in question are still sub judice but according to local sources, there was a sudden gust of wind and the whole house simply collapsed. Rumour has it that the traditional material used in the construction was in fact straw and not even good solid Irish straw at that but a substandard variety imported from Taiwan. It is believed that Mr. Pigg then absconded to the Costa del Sol after the house insurance company issued fraudulent proceedings against him, though the presence of a solitary pork chop in amongst the rubble has fuelled macabre speculation amongst local residents.
The second Pigg brother decided to go down the eco-friendly route. Convinced by another shyster estate-agent that chopping down 145 trees to construct a house was the only way to safeguard the planet, he opted for a wooden chalet built alongside the railway track on the far side of Clonsilla Railway Station. He bought the site and then drove up to Ikea in Belfast where he purchased a flat-pack house and garage.
He found that, after all this, he still had time to go to the Vortex in Dunshaughlin every Saturday night and sometimes managed to score with one of the young wans that had travelled up in the minibus from Dunboyne.
However, a similar tragedy befell this brother. One night towards the end of November, locals said they heard a strange huffing and puffing, which might well have been the last train out to Maynooth, but could equally have been something more sinister. When daylight dawned, as it is wont to do in Clonsilla at that time of year, the house lay in ruins and the eager locals took it away for firewood before somebody thought to call the police. With much of the forensic evidence crackling away in neighbouring fireplaces, whispers soon began to circulate about the sturdiness of flat-pack housing until Ikea threatened court action.
Again the second brother appeared to have vanished completely, though sightings of him in a Kibbutz outside Tel Aviv remain unconfirmed.
The third brother bought a lovely two bedroomed semi-detached house in Latchford from a reputable estate agent. Of course, he was fleeced by the bank whose interest rate charges bore no relation to the current economic situation and he was only able to get up to the Hartstown House for a solitary pint every month with his neighbour, Nigel, but he was pleased with his investment and felt very secure in his compact abode.
Latchford of course is built on the site of the Great Scaldwood, a huge forest that once spread from Cabra to the River Tolka and home to hoards of marauding bears, spiders and wolves. Having done his research and not entirely believing the history books that claimed that these wild beasts had all been eliminated, he purchased security chains and an alarm and a cowl for the top of his chimney.
One night, he wrote, in a letter to the Times, he fancied he heard a strange scraping on his roof and a mysterious panting noise. Having just watched a David Attenborough programme about how wolves had learned to remove cowls from the tops of chimneys, he boiled up a big pot of water in the microwave and placed it in the fireplace.
Sure enough, within a few seconds, a big hairy beast landed in the pot with a yelp and disappeared back up as quickly as he had come down. A photo fit description of the intruder closely resembled a wolf, though police still called at the home of Fingers “The Beard” McGee and questioned him closely about his whereabouts on the night in question.
The third Pigg brother naturally wrote a book about his experiences called “Huff and Puff” which topped the bestseller list for non-fiction over Christmas, following his appearance on the Late Late Show. Although the book reads well as an adventure story, Citizen Advice Centres have recommended it as essential reading for all first time house buyers as a guide to the pitfalls inherent in a foray into the property market.
The three brothers grew up in the countryside ( a green place the other side of Clonee) and on reaching maturity were promptly handed a puckle of money and kicked out of the family home by their mother, who claimed they kept their rooms like a pigsty. Each of them caught the Expressway into Dublin, alighting in awe as the Q building came into sight on the N3.
On opening their puckles, each brother found they had enough money to invest in the property market and promptly set about securing lodgings in that mythical suburb known as Dublin 15.
The first Pigg brother entered a very dodgy estate agents and decided that a cheap house would be the best bet. That way, he would still have enough money left over to go and have a good time. Accordingly, he purchased an “idyllic rural retreat made from traditional materials – may need some renovating” up near Hollystown. With the money left over, he was able to go to Heaven every night with a Swedish flight attendant on either arm and life was great.
The precise events of the night in question are still sub judice but according to local sources, there was a sudden gust of wind and the whole house simply collapsed. Rumour has it that the traditional material used in the construction was in fact straw and not even good solid Irish straw at that but a substandard variety imported from Taiwan. It is believed that Mr. Pigg then absconded to the Costa del Sol after the house insurance company issued fraudulent proceedings against him, though the presence of a solitary pork chop in amongst the rubble has fuelled macabre speculation amongst local residents.
The second Pigg brother decided to go down the eco-friendly route. Convinced by another shyster estate-agent that chopping down 145 trees to construct a house was the only way to safeguard the planet, he opted for a wooden chalet built alongside the railway track on the far side of Clonsilla Railway Station. He bought the site and then drove up to Ikea in Belfast where he purchased a flat-pack house and garage.
He found that, after all this, he still had time to go to the Vortex in Dunshaughlin every Saturday night and sometimes managed to score with one of the young wans that had travelled up in the minibus from Dunboyne.
However, a similar tragedy befell this brother. One night towards the end of November, locals said they heard a strange huffing and puffing, which might well have been the last train out to Maynooth, but could equally have been something more sinister. When daylight dawned, as it is wont to do in Clonsilla at that time of year, the house lay in ruins and the eager locals took it away for firewood before somebody thought to call the police. With much of the forensic evidence crackling away in neighbouring fireplaces, whispers soon began to circulate about the sturdiness of flat-pack housing until Ikea threatened court action.
Again the second brother appeared to have vanished completely, though sightings of him in a Kibbutz outside Tel Aviv remain unconfirmed.
The third brother bought a lovely two bedroomed semi-detached house in Latchford from a reputable estate agent. Of course, he was fleeced by the bank whose interest rate charges bore no relation to the current economic situation and he was only able to get up to the Hartstown House for a solitary pint every month with his neighbour, Nigel, but he was pleased with his investment and felt very secure in his compact abode.
Latchford of course is built on the site of the Great Scaldwood, a huge forest that once spread from Cabra to the River Tolka and home to hoards of marauding bears, spiders and wolves. Having done his research and not entirely believing the history books that claimed that these wild beasts had all been eliminated, he purchased security chains and an alarm and a cowl for the top of his chimney.
One night, he wrote, in a letter to the Times, he fancied he heard a strange scraping on his roof and a mysterious panting noise. Having just watched a David Attenborough programme about how wolves had learned to remove cowls from the tops of chimneys, he boiled up a big pot of water in the microwave and placed it in the fireplace.
Sure enough, within a few seconds, a big hairy beast landed in the pot with a yelp and disappeared back up as quickly as he had come down. A photo fit description of the intruder closely resembled a wolf, though police still called at the home of Fingers “The Beard” McGee and questioned him closely about his whereabouts on the night in question.
The third Pigg brother naturally wrote a book about his experiences called “Huff and Puff” which topped the bestseller list for non-fiction over Christmas, following his appearance on the Late Late Show. Although the book reads well as an adventure story, Citizen Advice Centres have recommended it as essential reading for all first time house buyers as a guide to the pitfalls inherent in a foray into the property market.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
In love with the library
I love the library, particularly on cold winter days when the rain slices down. It is a haven of calm and piece in a maelstrom of whirlwind shopping activity and if I had my way I would cheerfully spend three hours there while my wife tries on every jacket in the centre before deciding that there is nothing that she likes.
The best thing about the library, apart from the calm and relaxed atmosphere is the books. My Lord, have you ever seen so many books? Hundreds, nay, thousands of them, spines facing out, arranged on shelves as far as the eye can see.
The interesting thing about the books in the library – and I’m going on hearsay here, for I haven’t got around to reading them all – is that they all contain more or less the same words. If you open a book on quantum physics (the pop-up version) and compare it to Jordan’s autobiography, for example, you will be amazed to find that the same words appear in each. Of course, they are in a completely different order and, as such, totally alter the meaning of the text, which is a good thing, as it helps to maintain interest in literature.
You can find books on any subject under the sun and a few on subjects behind the sun and over its left shoulder too. And they are all arrayed with different covers, which is a great help in differentiating between them. Imagine if every book in the world had a plain brown cover, what confusion there would be!
Be warned though! If you go into the library looking for a book with a red cover, you will have to look long and carefully, for the books are not arranged by colour. There might be a couple in the poetry section, a few more in travel and maybe an oddball on the poets-who-died-of-consumption shelves.
So millions of books and you can borrow most of them (though not at the one time) and bring them home at no cost. Then when you are finished with them, simply bring them back. This is a concept unique in the retail world and it is surprising that it hasn’t caught on more. You could go into Penney’s, pick out a nice swimsuit for the summer holidays and then, when you come back, simply return the item to the store. Seems a good idea to me and would cut down on those endless queues at the tills, wondering why “yer woman” hasn’t got her purse ready if she’s been standing there for the past ten minutes.
Of course there are other things in the library apart from books. There is a music section too containing what I am told the young people of today call Compact Discs. These are a new-fangled invention, smaller in size than a 45 but capable of holding as many songs as a regular album. Be warned, though, you need a special contraption to play these Compact Discs and many don’t come cheap.
Again, the variety is breathtaking, anything from Mozart to 50 Cent (an American gentleman with a whimsical approach to lyric writing). It even contains that magical moment of music history when Lionel Ritchie broke into Bob Dylan’s set on Live Aid to announce that “Hey, America, have we got something special for you tonight?!” before launching into “We are the world.”
There are also DVDs but don’t bother with these unless you are very technically minded. They are so complicated that very few people even know what the initials stand for.
You can also take out paintings, which is another brilliant concept. Remember how that dappled picture of the whitewashed cottage on the Algarve looked so fresh and vibrant when you first hung it on the kitchen wall and now looks completely jaded? Well, the library has the answer. This week, a painting of a lake in Connemara, next week a basket of fruit with a dead pheasant by the side of it, the third week a horrendously ugly naked couple and an apple. Home decoration was never so easy. Forget those swanky and expensive home interior places – Blanchardstown Library has all the answers.
There are also computers in the library, ranged in circles and generally faced by dishevelled young people who know how to use them. Here, if you know what buttons to press, you can search the World Wide Web for any information that you require, though, if you don’t know what buttons to press, you get a paperclip man who tells you that it looks as though you are writing a letter.
A sign at the bottom of the stairs reads “Have you ventured upstairs yet?” Pretty spooky, eh? I prepared myself well. I stuffed a packed lunch, my Swiss army knife, several changes of clothing, a hairdryer and some Kendal mint cake into my haversack before slowly beginning the ascent, accompanied only by several Sherpas and a back-up team that waved me off from base camp. Slowly, I climbed, higher and higher, pausing every third step to reacclimatise myself to the more rarefied altitude. Soon my erstwhile companions were lost to view far below me and I pressed on alone. And then, suddenly, I was there, at the summit, with the broad sweeping panorama of Adult Fiction and European History spread out below me to the distant horizon.
I looked around at this brave new world. Here too were books but strangely different books to the ones I had left downstairs. These were “Reference books” and quite frankly, I wouldn’t really recommend them to those people who like a good yarn with a clever twist at the end. One book I picked up was a Government report on something, which was written in a language that seemed familiar but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
There were also magazines, though not many with “Britney reveals all!!!!” splashed over the front and newspapers and periodicals, which I had previously thought was some kind of flying dinosaur. Loads of luvverly things and I feasted my eyes on them like a child in a sweetshop before taking a few photographs for the scrapbook and abseiling back down the stairs.
In fact the only fault I can find with the Library is that it doesn’t stay open 24 / 7 like Tesco’s in Clearwater. How good would that be, spending an hour or two reading the latest Patricia Cornwell before heading into work or swatting up on the archaeology of the ancient Incas at three o’clock in the morning? Throw in a hammock or two and some futons and coffee and ginger nuts and it would be my idea of heaven.
Yes the library is a wondrous place and if my wife ever throws me out in favour of a toy boy, I think I could cheerfully move in. The chairs are very comfortable and they even provide you with a variety of newspapers to start your day, though the staff looks dimly upon you when you look for more toast to dip into your egg.
The best thing about the library, apart from the calm and relaxed atmosphere is the books. My Lord, have you ever seen so many books? Hundreds, nay, thousands of them, spines facing out, arranged on shelves as far as the eye can see.
The interesting thing about the books in the library – and I’m going on hearsay here, for I haven’t got around to reading them all – is that they all contain more or less the same words. If you open a book on quantum physics (the pop-up version) and compare it to Jordan’s autobiography, for example, you will be amazed to find that the same words appear in each. Of course, they are in a completely different order and, as such, totally alter the meaning of the text, which is a good thing, as it helps to maintain interest in literature.
You can find books on any subject under the sun and a few on subjects behind the sun and over its left shoulder too. And they are all arrayed with different covers, which is a great help in differentiating between them. Imagine if every book in the world had a plain brown cover, what confusion there would be!
Be warned though! If you go into the library looking for a book with a red cover, you will have to look long and carefully, for the books are not arranged by colour. There might be a couple in the poetry section, a few more in travel and maybe an oddball on the poets-who-died-of-consumption shelves.
So millions of books and you can borrow most of them (though not at the one time) and bring them home at no cost. Then when you are finished with them, simply bring them back. This is a concept unique in the retail world and it is surprising that it hasn’t caught on more. You could go into Penney’s, pick out a nice swimsuit for the summer holidays and then, when you come back, simply return the item to the store. Seems a good idea to me and would cut down on those endless queues at the tills, wondering why “yer woman” hasn’t got her purse ready if she’s been standing there for the past ten minutes.
Of course there are other things in the library apart from books. There is a music section too containing what I am told the young people of today call Compact Discs. These are a new-fangled invention, smaller in size than a 45 but capable of holding as many songs as a regular album. Be warned, though, you need a special contraption to play these Compact Discs and many don’t come cheap.
Again, the variety is breathtaking, anything from Mozart to 50 Cent (an American gentleman with a whimsical approach to lyric writing). It even contains that magical moment of music history when Lionel Ritchie broke into Bob Dylan’s set on Live Aid to announce that “Hey, America, have we got something special for you tonight?!” before launching into “We are the world.”
There are also DVDs but don’t bother with these unless you are very technically minded. They are so complicated that very few people even know what the initials stand for.
You can also take out paintings, which is another brilliant concept. Remember how that dappled picture of the whitewashed cottage on the Algarve looked so fresh and vibrant when you first hung it on the kitchen wall and now looks completely jaded? Well, the library has the answer. This week, a painting of a lake in Connemara, next week a basket of fruit with a dead pheasant by the side of it, the third week a horrendously ugly naked couple and an apple. Home decoration was never so easy. Forget those swanky and expensive home interior places – Blanchardstown Library has all the answers.
There are also computers in the library, ranged in circles and generally faced by dishevelled young people who know how to use them. Here, if you know what buttons to press, you can search the World Wide Web for any information that you require, though, if you don’t know what buttons to press, you get a paperclip man who tells you that it looks as though you are writing a letter.
A sign at the bottom of the stairs reads “Have you ventured upstairs yet?” Pretty spooky, eh? I prepared myself well. I stuffed a packed lunch, my Swiss army knife, several changes of clothing, a hairdryer and some Kendal mint cake into my haversack before slowly beginning the ascent, accompanied only by several Sherpas and a back-up team that waved me off from base camp. Slowly, I climbed, higher and higher, pausing every third step to reacclimatise myself to the more rarefied altitude. Soon my erstwhile companions were lost to view far below me and I pressed on alone. And then, suddenly, I was there, at the summit, with the broad sweeping panorama of Adult Fiction and European History spread out below me to the distant horizon.
I looked around at this brave new world. Here too were books but strangely different books to the ones I had left downstairs. These were “Reference books” and quite frankly, I wouldn’t really recommend them to those people who like a good yarn with a clever twist at the end. One book I picked up was a Government report on something, which was written in a language that seemed familiar but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
There were also magazines, though not many with “Britney reveals all!!!!” splashed over the front and newspapers and periodicals, which I had previously thought was some kind of flying dinosaur. Loads of luvverly things and I feasted my eyes on them like a child in a sweetshop before taking a few photographs for the scrapbook and abseiling back down the stairs.
In fact the only fault I can find with the Library is that it doesn’t stay open 24 / 7 like Tesco’s in Clearwater. How good would that be, spending an hour or two reading the latest Patricia Cornwell before heading into work or swatting up on the archaeology of the ancient Incas at three o’clock in the morning? Throw in a hammock or two and some futons and coffee and ginger nuts and it would be my idea of heaven.
Yes the library is a wondrous place and if my wife ever throws me out in favour of a toy boy, I think I could cheerfully move in. The chairs are very comfortable and they even provide you with a variety of newspapers to start your day, though the staff looks dimly upon you when you look for more toast to dip into your egg.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Biscuitgate
A recent, if somewhat unreliable, poll of Dublin 15 residents threw up the rather startling fact that most people were less concerned by transport and education issues than the parlous state of the Rich Tea biscuit. In fact the recent “Prime Time” special on the subject, using actors in graphic reconstructions, only served to underline just how bad the situation has become.
Years ago, the odd one or two biscuits at the end of a packet were occasionally found to be broken. The old joke was that manufacturers should therefore leave the end one out. No, not very funny but neither were a lot of comedians back then.
A much better joke is - who sang lead vocals on “You’re once, twice, three times a biscuit?” Lionel Rich Tea.
To get back to the main point of this mini rant, however, for the past year or so, it is quite rare to get even one unbroken biscuit in a packet, as most Rich Tea aficionados will attest. In fact the common practice has become to end up with 600 pieces all the size of an old sixpence – little bigger than crumbs.
There is of course a finger Rich Tea biscuit but these are rarer and don’t have quite such a malty taste. For the purposes of this discussion the Rich Tea is circular, designed to fit precisely into the average mug, unlike the much sweeter digestive which you can only dip an end in before turning it round to fit in the mug.
The Rich Tea has always been my favourite biscuit. Of course, there are others like Hobnobs and Jaffa Cakes which are much tastier but they are more expensive and we’re only allowed to have them on special occasions like Christmas and St. Swithin’s Day. The RT, as it is affectionately known, is only 31c in Dunnes for 300g – by far the best value of all the appetising bickies in that aisle.
Naturally we buy others from time to time. Ginger nuts are great for dunking and you can only eat about two or three at a time. Bourbons and custard creams (the biscuit equivalent of ‘ebony and ivory’ living in perfect harmony) are also good value. I like Malted Milk too, mainly because of the fine bovine artwork involved, but find the Mariettas a bit bland.
So we always buy RT, though we always have to have a packet of chocolate digestives at the ready in case of visitors. Visitors would evidently be very offended to be offered a Rich Tea and it is not the biscuit of choice in social circles, though it is rumoured that the Duke of Edinburgh keeps a packet or two in the shed at Balmoral. The Rich Tea is rich in name only and should really be called a “Poor Tea,” due to its social standing.
The RT is a “base” biscuit, which doesn’t mean it has low moral values but, together with Digestives and Nice are one of the primary colours of the biscuit world. It has guided many a recuperating child back to health and, together with toast, is one of the few foodstuffs recommended by the World Health Organisation to be eaten after a stomach upset.
Peter Kay derides the Rich Tea mercilessly for its lack of dunkability but generations of Irish people have had years of pleasure dipping them in and out a “nice cup of tea.” There is an art to this of course. One dip, hold for about a half a second and retrieve. Eat immediately. If you don’t leave it in for long enough, the inside is still crunchy. If you leave it in too long it ends up as a soggy mass at the bottom of your cup and is actually quite tasty to scoop out with a teaspoon. If you don’t eat immediately, it slowly bends over on itself before dropping with a giggle into your lap.
As I mentioned though about a year ago, something happened in the manufacture of what Terry Wogan calls “The Lord of All Biscuits.” Perhaps they decided to cut down on the glue that holds the mixture together. Perhaps the man who carves the letters “Rich Tea” on each biscuit started going a bit heavy handed on the chisel. Whatever the reason, these biscuits now end up in the biscuit tub in thousands of small pieces and, despite the opinions of a certain person not a million miles away, this is not down to the way that I open the packet.
I am fully aware that there is a blue strip that you’re supposed to pull to release the wrapper but everybody knows you use the carving knife and slice through the diameter two biscuits from the top. Even if the first one seems intact, you only have to look at it sideways and it goes to pieces. It would have been no good if it had fallen into the hands of the Gestapo as it would have been broken before they even turned on the spotlight.
Perhaps, my wife goes on to suggest, it is that particular brand. Not so. I tried another brand (who shall be nameless but who bear a Scottish name that rhymes with ‘pity’) and the very same thing happened. This is not an isolated case – this is a Rich Tea pandemic which is threatening the enjoyment of the tea-dunking public on this island and as far as I can see, the Government are showing little enthusiasm in resolving the situation. Sadly there is no election coming up in the foreseeable future, so we have little leverage with the politicians at this moment in time, but in four years time I expect they’ll all be clamouring to condemn Biscuitgate, as I expect it will come to be known.
I knew a man once who used to spread butter on the backs of two Rich Teas and then stick them together like a Custard Cream. In fact it formed part of his thesis at UCD. Obviously he can’t do that now unless he has plenty of time to spare trying to reconstruct the biscuits from the myriad of pieces, like archaeologists trying to piece together a Grecian urn. His fun is gone and it is only a small crumb of comfort to him that he has been forced to take up the social art of dunking, though with pieces the size of your fingernail.
Years ago, the odd one or two biscuits at the end of a packet were occasionally found to be broken. The old joke was that manufacturers should therefore leave the end one out. No, not very funny but neither were a lot of comedians back then.
A much better joke is - who sang lead vocals on “You’re once, twice, three times a biscuit?” Lionel Rich Tea.
To get back to the main point of this mini rant, however, for the past year or so, it is quite rare to get even one unbroken biscuit in a packet, as most Rich Tea aficionados will attest. In fact the common practice has become to end up with 600 pieces all the size of an old sixpence – little bigger than crumbs.
There is of course a finger Rich Tea biscuit but these are rarer and don’t have quite such a malty taste. For the purposes of this discussion the Rich Tea is circular, designed to fit precisely into the average mug, unlike the much sweeter digestive which you can only dip an end in before turning it round to fit in the mug.
The Rich Tea has always been my favourite biscuit. Of course, there are others like Hobnobs and Jaffa Cakes which are much tastier but they are more expensive and we’re only allowed to have them on special occasions like Christmas and St. Swithin’s Day. The RT, as it is affectionately known, is only 31c in Dunnes for 300g – by far the best value of all the appetising bickies in that aisle.
Naturally we buy others from time to time. Ginger nuts are great for dunking and you can only eat about two or three at a time. Bourbons and custard creams (the biscuit equivalent of ‘ebony and ivory’ living in perfect harmony) are also good value. I like Malted Milk too, mainly because of the fine bovine artwork involved, but find the Mariettas a bit bland.
So we always buy RT, though we always have to have a packet of chocolate digestives at the ready in case of visitors. Visitors would evidently be very offended to be offered a Rich Tea and it is not the biscuit of choice in social circles, though it is rumoured that the Duke of Edinburgh keeps a packet or two in the shed at Balmoral. The Rich Tea is rich in name only and should really be called a “Poor Tea,” due to its social standing.
The RT is a “base” biscuit, which doesn’t mean it has low moral values but, together with Digestives and Nice are one of the primary colours of the biscuit world. It has guided many a recuperating child back to health and, together with toast, is one of the few foodstuffs recommended by the World Health Organisation to be eaten after a stomach upset.
Peter Kay derides the Rich Tea mercilessly for its lack of dunkability but generations of Irish people have had years of pleasure dipping them in and out a “nice cup of tea.” There is an art to this of course. One dip, hold for about a half a second and retrieve. Eat immediately. If you don’t leave it in for long enough, the inside is still crunchy. If you leave it in too long it ends up as a soggy mass at the bottom of your cup and is actually quite tasty to scoop out with a teaspoon. If you don’t eat immediately, it slowly bends over on itself before dropping with a giggle into your lap.
As I mentioned though about a year ago, something happened in the manufacture of what Terry Wogan calls “The Lord of All Biscuits.” Perhaps they decided to cut down on the glue that holds the mixture together. Perhaps the man who carves the letters “Rich Tea” on each biscuit started going a bit heavy handed on the chisel. Whatever the reason, these biscuits now end up in the biscuit tub in thousands of small pieces and, despite the opinions of a certain person not a million miles away, this is not down to the way that I open the packet.
I am fully aware that there is a blue strip that you’re supposed to pull to release the wrapper but everybody knows you use the carving knife and slice through the diameter two biscuits from the top. Even if the first one seems intact, you only have to look at it sideways and it goes to pieces. It would have been no good if it had fallen into the hands of the Gestapo as it would have been broken before they even turned on the spotlight.
Perhaps, my wife goes on to suggest, it is that particular brand. Not so. I tried another brand (who shall be nameless but who bear a Scottish name that rhymes with ‘pity’) and the very same thing happened. This is not an isolated case – this is a Rich Tea pandemic which is threatening the enjoyment of the tea-dunking public on this island and as far as I can see, the Government are showing little enthusiasm in resolving the situation. Sadly there is no election coming up in the foreseeable future, so we have little leverage with the politicians at this moment in time, but in four years time I expect they’ll all be clamouring to condemn Biscuitgate, as I expect it will come to be known.
I knew a man once who used to spread butter on the backs of two Rich Teas and then stick them together like a Custard Cream. In fact it formed part of his thesis at UCD. Obviously he can’t do that now unless he has plenty of time to spare trying to reconstruct the biscuits from the myriad of pieces, like archaeologists trying to piece together a Grecian urn. His fun is gone and it is only a small crumb of comfort to him that he has been forced to take up the social art of dunking, though with pieces the size of your fingernail.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
A Christmas altercation
If Blanchardstown City were the Rolls Royce of European Football, then Roy Neake was the engine. Or maybe the glove compartment. Suffice to say he was a vital cog in the machine that had purred to the European Cup Final the previous year, scoring the goal that had knocked out arch-rivals Sporting Fingal FC in the semi-finals.
They said Roy was the complete footballer, having all the attributes that a top class footballer needs, namely good vision, a full complement of legs and the ability to cram at least four clichés into every interview.
However, like every tragic hero of history, he had one fault in his character that was liable to be his undoing. In his case, it was anger. With the other six deadly sins, he held no truck. He wasn’t avaricious, although he had no idea what the word meant. Sloth he associated with a tree-hugging mammal from South America. Even lust never crossed his mind, which gave rise to the sarcastic nickname “Stud” amongst his team-mates.
But the red mist had always been his bugbear. He had missed the FAI Cup Final of 2019 when he decapitated an opponent for looking at him sideways. He had been suspended for one match by UEFA for taking a hatchet to a Romanian opponent who had been smirking at him. And even this season, a match against Tralee FC had to be abandoned when Roy kicked down a goalpost when a penalty decision didn’t go for him.
It didn’t help that the team had not been firing on all cylinders since their European exploits. Their form had slumped and manager Lee Sammy was not a happy bunny.
Not that Lee was the master of jollity at the best of times. He was a big, brooding Sligo man with a face that seemed to have been carved out of Ben Bulben itself and then gone to work on by a drunken builder with a Kango hammer.
They said the only time Lee was happy was at his recently purchased farm in Kildare. Despite his rural upbringing, he knew little about farming but had found a certain happiness whilst shearing his cows and leaving his fields fallow.
That happiness was little in evidence after Blanchardstown City’s home game against Shannonside Invincibles at the end of November. As the team trooped off dejectedly after a 2-0 defeat (Richie L, 47, and Neake, 89 (o.g)), Lee Sammy was already waiting for them in the dressing room.
“Ye bunch of useless pansies!” he yelled furiously, turning the key in the lock as the last mud-bespattered player trooped in. “Ye couldn’t get stuck in to a bowl of porridge! I’ve seen more grit and determination at the local apathetic society!”
After these sympathetic words of welcome, he then went through the team individually, singling out each player for individual censure in a hairdryer of a rant that lasted ninety minutes.
“Safe Hands” Molloy, the keeper, was like Dracula – he was afraid of crosses. Gary Byrne, the right back, had as much timing as a broken Rolex, Gary O’Brien, the left back, should apply for a monthly ticket on the 39 bus, he was that much of a passenger. And so it went on. And on.
Observers said later that Roy was not particularly singled out for special blame, despite his thunderbolt back pass to the keeper from thirty yards in the last minute of the match. However, he did not escape the manager’s ire either, with Lee accusing him of both greed and sloth, which left the midfielder scratching his head in puzzlement. His team-mates looked on aghast, as they all knew that Roy’s only sin was anger.
Roy however did not react in his normal Tasmanian-Devil way to the insults. Slowly and calmly and still wearing his football kit, he walked over to the dressing room door, unlocked it and went out. A few people who noticed him climbing into his Porsche in the car park of the Lenihan Stadium (named after Dublin 15’s most generous benefactor, Lenihan Stadium) described his face as “steely and determined” and his legs as “muddy.”
Roy drove down the back roads to Leixlip and then on to the outskirts of Celbridge. He pulled in to Lee Sammy’s farm, waved genially to Lee Sammy’s wife who was watering the chickens, and climbed on to a tractor that was conveniently parked next to an outhouse. Slamming the tractor in gear, he performed a 180 degree handbrake turn and roared forward to the nearest barn.
Lee Sammy’s wife looked on in horror as the tractor ploughed through the gable-end wall of the barn, sending newly-sheared and shivering Jersey cows running for cover. The structure came crashing down, a mass of twisted aluminium, but the tractor didn’t stop. It continued on its destructive odyssey, gathering hay bales and a rather sleepy-eyed Friesian before exiting the far end of the barn in similar fashion.
Then Roy calmly stepped down from the vehicle, surveyed the carnage with a satisfied grin, stepped back into his Porsche and drove off.
Of course, when the press got a hold of the story, news of Roy’s retribution was spread across the world, with many papers making much of Lee Sammy’s sarcastic jibe that Roy couldn’t hit a barn door with a tractor. It seemed that Roy’s days at City were not only numbered but lettered too and many fans were found disconsolately wandering around the Shopping Centre after dark bemoaning the impending transfer of their star player.
Lee Sammy however knew which side his bread was buttered on as he had once worked in O’Brien’s sandwich emporium. Though furious about the destruction of his barn, he told the Board that he would not insist on Roy’s transfer. If some sort of agreement, some sort of compensation, could be reached, Roy could remain at City.
The solicitors and agents got to work but it was a long, slow job, as they were working on an hourly wage. December came and with it the first cries of a disorientated cuckoo. Santa’s elves grumbled constantly about their hours. The gridlock around Blanchardstown Centre grew steadily worse and two emaciated bodies were found in a Corolla on the Snugborough Road junction.
But still no news of a breakthrough in “Roy-gate” as the papers unimaginatively called it. City fans were glued to Blanch TV, hoping for breaking news but none came. They feared the worst and many had already called the Joe Duffy Show to voice their despair at the situation. It was the Saipan of their generation and divided whole communities.
But at last on Christmas morning itself, the news broke. Not, as it happened, through the usual media of television or radio, but by carol singers. A compromise had been reached and the club, in recognisance of the day that was in it, sent out teams of woolly-scarved carol singers to the furthest reaches of Hansfield, Porterstown and Tyrrelstown to convey the good news to the citizens of Dublin 15.
Thus it was that many people awoke that bright and sunny morning to the sound of angelic voices proclaiming the good news outside their windows:
“One-sin Roy’ll stay with City –
Stud’ll owe Lee cattle-shed.”
They said Roy was the complete footballer, having all the attributes that a top class footballer needs, namely good vision, a full complement of legs and the ability to cram at least four clichés into every interview.
However, like every tragic hero of history, he had one fault in his character that was liable to be his undoing. In his case, it was anger. With the other six deadly sins, he held no truck. He wasn’t avaricious, although he had no idea what the word meant. Sloth he associated with a tree-hugging mammal from South America. Even lust never crossed his mind, which gave rise to the sarcastic nickname “Stud” amongst his team-mates.
But the red mist had always been his bugbear. He had missed the FAI Cup Final of 2019 when he decapitated an opponent for looking at him sideways. He had been suspended for one match by UEFA for taking a hatchet to a Romanian opponent who had been smirking at him. And even this season, a match against Tralee FC had to be abandoned when Roy kicked down a goalpost when a penalty decision didn’t go for him.
It didn’t help that the team had not been firing on all cylinders since their European exploits. Their form had slumped and manager Lee Sammy was not a happy bunny.
Not that Lee was the master of jollity at the best of times. He was a big, brooding Sligo man with a face that seemed to have been carved out of Ben Bulben itself and then gone to work on by a drunken builder with a Kango hammer.
They said the only time Lee was happy was at his recently purchased farm in Kildare. Despite his rural upbringing, he knew little about farming but had found a certain happiness whilst shearing his cows and leaving his fields fallow.
That happiness was little in evidence after Blanchardstown City’s home game against Shannonside Invincibles at the end of November. As the team trooped off dejectedly after a 2-0 defeat (Richie L, 47, and Neake, 89 (o.g)), Lee Sammy was already waiting for them in the dressing room.
“Ye bunch of useless pansies!” he yelled furiously, turning the key in the lock as the last mud-bespattered player trooped in. “Ye couldn’t get stuck in to a bowl of porridge! I’ve seen more grit and determination at the local apathetic society!”
After these sympathetic words of welcome, he then went through the team individually, singling out each player for individual censure in a hairdryer of a rant that lasted ninety minutes.
“Safe Hands” Molloy, the keeper, was like Dracula – he was afraid of crosses. Gary Byrne, the right back, had as much timing as a broken Rolex, Gary O’Brien, the left back, should apply for a monthly ticket on the 39 bus, he was that much of a passenger. And so it went on. And on.
Observers said later that Roy was not particularly singled out for special blame, despite his thunderbolt back pass to the keeper from thirty yards in the last minute of the match. However, he did not escape the manager’s ire either, with Lee accusing him of both greed and sloth, which left the midfielder scratching his head in puzzlement. His team-mates looked on aghast, as they all knew that Roy’s only sin was anger.
Roy however did not react in his normal Tasmanian-Devil way to the insults. Slowly and calmly and still wearing his football kit, he walked over to the dressing room door, unlocked it and went out. A few people who noticed him climbing into his Porsche in the car park of the Lenihan Stadium (named after Dublin 15’s most generous benefactor, Lenihan Stadium) described his face as “steely and determined” and his legs as “muddy.”
Roy drove down the back roads to Leixlip and then on to the outskirts of Celbridge. He pulled in to Lee Sammy’s farm, waved genially to Lee Sammy’s wife who was watering the chickens, and climbed on to a tractor that was conveniently parked next to an outhouse. Slamming the tractor in gear, he performed a 180 degree handbrake turn and roared forward to the nearest barn.
Lee Sammy’s wife looked on in horror as the tractor ploughed through the gable-end wall of the barn, sending newly-sheared and shivering Jersey cows running for cover. The structure came crashing down, a mass of twisted aluminium, but the tractor didn’t stop. It continued on its destructive odyssey, gathering hay bales and a rather sleepy-eyed Friesian before exiting the far end of the barn in similar fashion.
Then Roy calmly stepped down from the vehicle, surveyed the carnage with a satisfied grin, stepped back into his Porsche and drove off.
Of course, when the press got a hold of the story, news of Roy’s retribution was spread across the world, with many papers making much of Lee Sammy’s sarcastic jibe that Roy couldn’t hit a barn door with a tractor. It seemed that Roy’s days at City were not only numbered but lettered too and many fans were found disconsolately wandering around the Shopping Centre after dark bemoaning the impending transfer of their star player.
Lee Sammy however knew which side his bread was buttered on as he had once worked in O’Brien’s sandwich emporium. Though furious about the destruction of his barn, he told the Board that he would not insist on Roy’s transfer. If some sort of agreement, some sort of compensation, could be reached, Roy could remain at City.
The solicitors and agents got to work but it was a long, slow job, as they were working on an hourly wage. December came and with it the first cries of a disorientated cuckoo. Santa’s elves grumbled constantly about their hours. The gridlock around Blanchardstown Centre grew steadily worse and two emaciated bodies were found in a Corolla on the Snugborough Road junction.
But still no news of a breakthrough in “Roy-gate” as the papers unimaginatively called it. City fans were glued to Blanch TV, hoping for breaking news but none came. They feared the worst and many had already called the Joe Duffy Show to voice their despair at the situation. It was the Saipan of their generation and divided whole communities.
But at last on Christmas morning itself, the news broke. Not, as it happened, through the usual media of television or radio, but by carol singers. A compromise had been reached and the club, in recognisance of the day that was in it, sent out teams of woolly-scarved carol singers to the furthest reaches of Hansfield, Porterstown and Tyrrelstown to convey the good news to the citizens of Dublin 15.
Thus it was that many people awoke that bright and sunny morning to the sound of angelic voices proclaiming the good news outside their windows:
“One-sin Roy’ll stay with City –
Stud’ll owe Lee cattle-shed.”
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