Improving your home

The housing market, they tell us, is depressed. Rumour has it that it has been seen bawling its eyes out in the bar of the Clonsilla Inn whenever a Dean Martin song comes on the jukebox.
As a result, people are understandably wary of committing large sums of money to property, in case they get into something called “negative equity,” which, according to my online dictionary is a black treacly substance akin to molasses. Unspent SSIA money lies in banks, earning anything up to 50c in interest every six months, and people naturally believe it should be working harder. As moving house or upgrading may represent a dodgy option, many people are looking to improving their existing home, figuring that any type of improvement will count towards increasing the price of the house, when the upswing comes skipping gaily around the corner.
In our house, this topic of conversation has come up more than once, though I have always tried to discourage it, as it combines my two pet hates – spending money and work. However, my wife’s determination to do something with our home is increasing daily and my attempts at prevarication are correspondingly weakening.
My cause has not been helped by the plethora of house hunting programmes on the television, all demonstrating what wonderful things can be done with a jack hammer and a bit of plasterboard. On every channel, enthusiastic amateurs are sawing and plastering their way to beautiful homes for very little outlay. My argument that these reality programmes are in fact, scripted soap operas performed by actors, lacking any basis in reality, is falling on deaf ears.
Many people, it seems from these frankly unbelievable programmes, have opted for converting their attics and my wife seems keen on this idea. I have argued that religious beliefs, even those of attics, should be respected and we should not approach the subject in an evangelical frame of mind but my wife merely gives me a withering stare. The fact that our attic contains a web of cross-beams like the security lasers used to protect the bank vault in Oceans Eleven does not lead me to believe that this is a job that can be completed before lunch. But I have to grudgingly admit that it could earn extra rental income for her when she finally kicks me out.
The subject of a conservatory is also one that is rearing its ugly head with increasing frequency. It would be a lovely place, I am told, to sit in on warm summer’s evenings and read. I have countered that anyone waiting on a warm summer’s evening in Dublin 15 would need the patience of a saint and she has reluctantly admitted there is some truth in this.
I have always maintained there are two types of people in this world – those that like to split the world up into two types of people and those that don’t. Or those that like conservatories and those that don’t. Personally I am in the latter camp. I think this stems from a traumatic occasion in my childhood when I was informed that a sinister figure called Colonel Mustard had once strangled somebody in a conservatory with an elastic band (we believe the rope ended up in the Hoover.) Besides I have always been doubtful that a wicker chair would be able to support my bulky frame.
How about decking, she asks? To be honest, I’ve never really understood decking. What is it supposed to do? Does it protect your concrete patio area in case you wear it out? Why do we need something perfectly flat to walk on? I think the thing that puzzles me the most is why anyone would feel the urge to woodstain it every summer, given the proviso that they found a dry day. If I got a fine day, I’d want to sit in the middle of my lawn in a patio chair with a crate of Stella Artois, not toil over a never-ending decking system with a brown brush.
With the new energy rating certificate for second hand homes coming in very shortly, it would be a good idea, in theory, to make our home more energy efficient. Solar panels in the roof would probably be a good investment, though I’d have to see figures to prove that the amount of sunlight we get in a year would be enough to boil a kettle of water. The addition of a porch would certainly stop the draught coming under the hall door but, to me, an old jacket, is a much cheaper, if slightly more awkward alternative. Trying to follow my wife’s example, I have tried to make the colour of the jacket match the colour of the walls of our hall.
But of course, the whole area of home improvements does not necessarily mean gangs of workmen in hard hats pointing to architects’ drawings and shaking their heads sadly. It can be simply redecorating or adding little accessories that can transform a room. And the easier and cheaper they are to do, I argue, the more satisfaction you derive from them.
It is a fact of life that zeal for doing home improvements declines in direct relation to the length of time you have occupied the house. When we moved into our house with millennial excitement all those years ago, I was up and down ladders, painting walls like a kangaroo on a trampoline. Nine years on and I grudgingly admit that it is time the walls were all done again but my enthusiasm for the task has waned ever so slightly. The fact that my wife keeps bringing home colour charts and asking me whether I think concubine honey would look good in the hall, stairs and landing does not give me any great hope that the work can be put off for much longer. Spraining an ankle or feeling a twinge in my back would really only be putting off the inevitable, so I suppose I’d better bite the bullet and get on with it.
I’ll start with the window sill in the downstairs toilet.

Still traumatised after all these years

There are pivotal points in every person’s life when you know that things will never be the same again. For some, it is the birth of a child or the death of a loved one or the release of a new Lionel Ritchie album. For some people, and my wife was probably one of them, it was the day they walked into the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre and saw that the name Debenhams had replaced their beloved Roches Stores.
To paraphrase The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, well I remember that terrible day when the tears drowned the seats round the fountain. Women sobbed uncontrollably and fumbled in their handbags for tissues, while helpless husbands, uncertain how to act in the face of such a cataclysmic trauma, murmured “There, there” and patted them ineffectually on the shoulder.
It was not as if we spent a lot of money in Roches. Being staunch green followers of St. Bernard, we never shopped for groceries there, although they saved my brother-in-law’s life one time, when they still had two jars of brandy butter on the shelves at 5pm on a Christmas Eve.
Rather it was a store where “the discerning shopper,” as my wife likes to describe herself, could browse happily for hours. “I’m just popping into Roches. See you on Friday,” she would call to me. There was a rumour that one enthusiastic shopper actually collapsed in a Roches one time through starvation and had to be weaned back to health on liquid foods, though this may be just an old discerning shopper’s tale.
Roches, you see, was pitched at just the right level for a department store. It wasn’t cheap and cheerful but it wasn’t exorbitantly expensive like some other shops where you need to take out a loan from the credit union to buy a colander. It was the best place for lampshades and gift items and vied with the also-now-departed All Rooms for household utensils. It had curtains and picture frames and vases and bathroom scales and toasters and whatever you’re having yourself.
Basically it was great for gifts that you didn’t want to spend a fortune on but wanted to make it look as though you had. “A little bit of luxury at affordable prices” is how I would have described it if I had been charged with coming up with an advertising slogan.
And when they had a Sale, my wife often asserted, (and who am I to argue?) it was a Real Sale. None of your €10.00 jumpers imported as a job lot from Indochina. They reduced everything in the store and brought nothing in on special. This was a genuine, no-holds barred, everything in the store sale.
The staff were obviously chosen for their customer skills, rather than for their ability to work a check-out. They didn’t tend to employ eighteen year old young wans who chewed gum and discussed last night’s sexual activity with their fellow members of staff as they served you. Granted, they weren’t always the quickest at taking the order and wrapping up your bathroom scales but you didn’t really mind because the salesperson was personable and attentive.
It was the kind of store where they called you Sir or Madame, the staff obviously undergoing training to differentiate between the two. And you felt that if you accidentally smashed a vase, the manager would apologise to you for displaying the item in such a position where you had no choice but to knock it over.
Roches was always the store that you looked in if they didn’t have it in Dunnes. I often think my wife was secretly glad when she couldn’t find a suitable winter jacket or potato peeler or pair of curtains in Dunnes because then she’d have to go into her belovéd Roches and spend blissful hours sauntering through the departments.
I have to admit I didn’t quite share her enthusiasm for Roches but then again I have an antipathy to most retail outlets. I go into a shop knowing what I want; I buy it and then leave. I don’t do ‘browsing,’ believing that shopping is a purely functional exercise like driving to work or brushing your teeth and is therefore a chore to be completed with as little fuss as possible. Nobody brings the wheelie bin out and meanders with it up and down the drive for an hour or more, I argue, to little avail.
Thus on that fateful day when the Roches sign was seen no more, I sat with her and made earnestly sympathetic, if totally insincere, noises of commiseration. It would have made little difference if I’d recited the Koran – she was inconsolable.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ll have a look around – it mightn’t be too bad.”
Now if Debenhams had opened in some other part of the centre, it’s entirely possible that my wife might have liked it. To my untrained eye, it had similar sorts of things, if slightly more expensive than Roches, and might have served as a reasonable alternative. But the fact that it occupied the same unit as Roches – as of course, it had to, as it bought them out – meant that poor old Debenhams never stood a chance.
It was like your favourite football team going out of existence and another side coming in and playing on the same ground. She didn’t like the lay out, the uniforms, the stock, the tannoy – nothing was right, she said. Why couldn’t it just go back to the way it was?
I believe a lot of people feel the same way. The very sight of the Debenhams name conjures up memories of Roches. It is as if they are resentful towards the new for the demise of the old, as if the evil Mr. Debenham ousted the old and genial Mr. Roche in a vicious coup d’etat and they can’t find it in their heart to forgive him.
A major part of the problem is that there is nowhere for the grieving shopper to come and mourn. There is no headstone saying ‘Here lies Roches Stores – RIP,’ where one can come and lay flowers and say a decade of the rosary. There is no plaque on the wall or a shrine or a garden of remembrance. Shoppers like my wife received no counselling and have had to learn to live with the loss alone.
Feeling strongly that these poor forgotten members of society need a focal point for their grief, I wrote a letter to Cork County Council, asking them if it was in their estimates for 2009 to provide an interpretive centre where pilgrims could go and relive the halcyon days of Roches Stores. They could have video presentations and the girls could dress in that stripy green and navy uniform. I even went as far to suggest that the best place to stage this would be at Roches Point, next to the lighthouse.
I am still awaiting their reply.

Usurped

Pets, particularly those with legs, tend to run in families.
My father (and his father and his father’s father, yea verily back unto the time when the Gouldings first crawled out of the swamp four generations ago) took the view that pets a) cost money and b) take a bit of trouble looking after and were therefore to be discouraged at all costs.
This trait was inherited by myself and all through my children’s childhood I remained impervious to their teary-eyed pleadings for a puppy, knowing too well that the animal would be a one week wonder and that their promises to walk it in all weathers and clean up its pooh were not worth the breath they were uttered with.
Magnanimously, I allowed my son Neil to adopt a snail that appeared on our drainpipe one day. With a logic unique to six year olds, he named this gastropod Nibby and it even moved house with us, remaining a cherished, if exterior member of the family for nearly four months until it either crawled away or was nobbled by a starling.
It was with something of a sense of irony, then, that with the children grown, my son arrived into our house in July with his girlfriend Amy, a birdcage and with what looked like a shoebox with holes under his arm. (That’s just the shoebox that was under his arm – the other two were under no such constraints)
With unerring perception, I guessed that there was something inside the “shoebox” and I doubted it was a pair of shoes. Neither a shoebox nor its habitual contents is normally associated with a birdcage and, whereas the juxtaposition of the two might make an interesting concept of modern art, I doubted that my son recognised this.
“There you go, ma. Happy Birthday,” he said, releasing into the cage a tiny yellow canary that fluttered nervously between the two perches, regarding the four of us with obvious mistrust.
I eyed this unusual birthday present suspiciously. Maybe it wouldn’t be too expensive to keep, I reasoned, and it wouldn’t take that much looking after. It probably wouldn’t smell and I wouldn’t have to bring it for walks. Then again, I acknowledged, I had absolutely no say in the matter as this was a gift from Neil and Amy to my wife and my opinions on the new arrival were completely irrelevant.
The birthday girl was completely taken by this little creature, adding that the black spot beneath his wings added a touch of individuality to his persona and did not indicate, as I maintained, that he was destined for Davy Jones’ Locker. She named him JoJo, which was at least an improvement on Nibby, and whenever he approached the front of his cage, it gave me the opportunity to say “Get back, JoJo” until I was told to shut up.
Sadly, we have no idea whether JoJo is male or female. We toyed with the idea of getting him / her a mate for a bit of company but we were warned that two birds of the same sex would knock the spots off each other, while if they were of different sex they would just squabble and bicker like a happily married couple. This knocked my wife’s idea of getting a second canary and calling him / her Loretta.
I have come to regard JoJo as male and refer to him as “he.” In the absence of any visual biological evidence, the only thing we have had to go on is the rather unscientific maxim that “if he sings a lot, he’s probably a male,” unlike humans, where men normally lead a downtrodden, miserable existence and singing is the furthest thing from their minds. I have pointed out that in JoJo’s case, it is more “whistling” than “singing” as no discernible words can be recognised when he’s in full throttle, but it’s still better than Lionel Ritchie.
The first decision to be made was where to put JoJo. In my very limited experience of pet birds, the cage either sits on a stand taking up half the space in the room or hangs from a rusty nail high up on the wall. However, Jojo’s mischievous habit of flinging his seeds all over the place, meant that neither option was viable. (Incidentally, the bird’s arrival coincided with our daughter Louise’s departure for Hawaii on a three month J1 visa – in effect we replaced one messy little article who throws her stuff all around the floor with another.)
Of course, if my DIY skills remotely touched mediocre, I would have put up a large square shelf in the kitchen on which the cage could repose, with an ample border to collect far flung seeds. As such an attempt would probably have brought down the connecting wall, not to mention hitting a water main, it was decided that the cage should reside on the kitchen table, with an old tablecloth under it to catch his detritus.
And there he remains, this scrawny little yellow grasshopper of a bird, who puffs himself up into a yellow tennis ball when he goes to sleep. He sits there, watching everything and ruling the roost so to speak. I am admonished if I come in from work and do not say hello to him, even though I maintain he never acknowledges me.
Naturally this new addition to the family lording it over the kitchen table has meant that our family habits have altered somewhat. You can’t eat your dinner with a canary lobbing caraway seeds onto your mashed potato at regular intervals and so we’ve gradually ceded the kitchen table to him for good.
This was never more apparent than at Christmas, when the kitchen table in years gone by always came in handy for mixing stuffing, carving turkeys, whipping cream and opening wine. This year the head chef and her helper competed, sometimes aggressively, for space on the worktops around the sink and at the cooker, while Little Lord Muck whistled at us disparagingly from his pride of place. In reply, I told him that we would be fattening him up for next Christmas and received a sharp rap over the knuckles with a wooden spoon for my troubles.
And naturally we’ve spent a fortune on him, getting him a bigger cage and mirrors and ladders and cuttlefish bones and all the other essential accoutrements. And yes, I have to clean out his cage and wash the pooh off his perches and step carefully around him as he struts about the kitchen floor on his temporary release. And it would seem that I have been totally usurped in the household pecking order.
But, even though I would never admit it, he’s starting to grow on me and it would be hard to imagine the house without him.

Newsflash!!

Just to let anybody know that the first five years of Musings, plus a few added extras have been collected together and are available to order in a 284pp book from amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones. Rough price is £6.99 Sterling plus p and p.

An unfortunate Christmas

“Ah-ah-ah-choo!”
It was Christmas Eve and Santa had come down with a heavy cold. He couldn’t believe it.
“I don’t believe it,” he said to himself. You see.
He picked up a passing elf and wiped his nose on him and then got back to packing the sleigh for his annual trip around the world.
As he loaded on the final present, his wife appeared in the doorway.
“Ho, ho, ho, Mrs. Claus,” he said, demonstrating his remarkable ability to remember names.
“Ho, ho, ho, dear,” his wife replied. “Have you seen the weather outside? It’s raining polar bears and penguins and you know that old sleigh doesn’t have a roof. And you seem to have come down with a very bad cold.”
“Ah, don’t worry, my love,” replied Santa, picking up a calculator for a good little boy in Castleknock called Brian. “It’ll take more than a few drops of rain to put Santa off!”
“I know, but would you not consider taking the mini-bus? Or maybe the Jeep? I just don’t think you should go out in the rain, dear.” And she ran off giggling back into the house.
Santa sighed and loaded up the last of the presents, which just happened to be a batch of Lionel Ritchie CDs for some very naughty boys in Porterstown.
“Rudolf!” he called. “Get your nose over here! We’re just about ready to start.”
“He’s in The Jolly Igloo,” remarked Prancer moodily.
“Since November 12th,” added Dancer.
“Why do you think his nose is so red?” asked Chancer.
“Really?” said Santa, somewhat shocked. “I always thought it was an evolutionary illuminatory appendage designed to light my way around the world on foggy Christmas Eves.”
“You flatter yourself,” said Comet. “Nope, he’s in there telling all the elves how much he really loves them and buying them all pints.”
Santa thought for a while. “Okay,” he said. “Plan B. We’ll just have to use the eight of you and forget Rudolf.”
“You mean, go back to the way things were before the Great Nasal One barged in and took all the limelight?” said Blitzen. “You want us to dig you out of a hole after you’ve kept us as bit-part actors all these years? Dream on, buddy. Pints, lads?”
And with a roar of high spirits, the eight reindeer trouped out to The Jolly Igloo.
“What would three gardeners do if they came across a patch of weeds?” asked Mrs. Claus, popping her head around the workshop door.
“Hoe, hoe, hoe,” answered Santa but he didn’t feel particularly jovial at that moment.
In the end, there was nothing for it but to hitch the sleigh up to the minibus. He had tried contacting the local employment agency but the answer-phone informed him that it was Christmas Eve and they were all in The Igloo.
“You’ll have to drive,” Santa told his wife. “I’m still on a provisional. If I’m caught, I’m really for it.”
“Of course, dear,” answered Mrs. Claus. “We can’t let all the boys and girls down, can we?”
Santa sprinkled the minibus with his magic powder and off they set to Norway and the Philippines and down to Australia and Venezuela and all across the world. Mrs. Claus turned out to be quite a good driver – “I should be,” she said, “considering all the endorsements I’ve got” – and managed to land on all the rooftops without careering over the gable wall. While Santa baled down the chimney, she’d check her SatNav and punch in the coordinates for the next good boy or girl on the list.
All was going well. They’d done every country in the world bar one and were just coming to the end of Ireland. There was only Dublin 15 left to do and the sun was starting to come up on Christmas Day, when all of a sudden nine reindeer landed on the roof they were currently delivering to.
“Santa!” yelled a particularly vocal reindeer as a soot-encrusted figure emerged from the top of the chimney.
“Ssssssshhhhhh!” whispered the other eight quadrupeds at the tops of their voices.
“I love you, Santa,” sobbed Rudolf, throwing two hooves around the portly gentleman’s neck.
“Shanta, we were...hic!..bang out of order,” said Donner, wobbling unsteadily on the rooftop. “And we’ve come to help.”
“Ah, lads, I’m very grateful, so I am, but sure we’ve only Dublin 15 left. Mrs. Claus and I will have it finished in a jiffy,” said Santa nervously.
“No, Shanta, we inshisht,” spluttered Rudolf, starting to unhook the sleigh from the minibus.
“Three cheers for Santa!” roared Vixen, hoisting a bottle of Paddy’s to the sky.
“Ssssssssshhhhhhhh!” shouted everyone.
“Watch out for the sleigh!” called Mrs. Claus but it was too late. Still laden with several hundred presents, the sleigh slid noiselessly down the roof and disappeared over the edge.
There was silence for what seemed like a minute but was in fact only sixty seconds and then eleven heads peered soberly down into the yard below.
There were presents everywhere, scattered far and wide, in hedges, in ponds, in flower beds. Most had become detached from their labels and had become unwrapped. A Tibetan terrier scurried down the road clutching an X Box.
A church bell sounded. Then another. The sun poked its nose above the horizon, sniffed and then went back down again for another five minutes.
“Come on!” yelled Santa. “The children will be waking up soon. We’ve got to get this last lot delivered!”
“But we don’t know who owns what!” wailed Dasher.
“Never mind,” said Cupid. “The important thing is that the children get some sort of present, so they know that Santa hasn’t forgotten about them.”
“Gosh yes!” agreed Santa. “Do you remember that time we forgot that little boy and Nat King Cole had a field day?”
And so they all set to work to gather up what presents they could find and tore around, delivering them at random. In some houses the children were already up and searching for their presents and they had to pretend to be a hat stand to prevent discovery.
It was touch and go but they did it! Every child got a present and the magic of Christmas still remained for all the girls and boys throughout the world. It was nearly noon by the time the party arrived back at the North Pole and, while Mrs. Claus cooked the turkey, Santa and the reindeer celebrated Christmas in The Jolly Igloo.
And that, dear children, is how you came to get a clockwork mouse from Santa this Christmas and not that WII Fit that you had been asking for. It was simply an unfortunate accident.
Nothing to do with the recession at all.

Doing it with tiles

As I have said many times before in this column, DIY is not my forte. I have no idea what my forte is (and whatever it is, it’s nearer fifte anyway) so by choice I am more a GSETDI man myself. (Get somebody else to do it)
Things simply don’t get fixed in our house. The towel rail has been hanging off the wall in the downstairs loo for the best part of a year now and the extra shelves I promised to put in the corner kitchen unit when we moved in eight years ago still haven’t materialised.
Its not that I am lazy. The spirit is strong but the know-how is lacking. My father hadn’t a clue about how to fix things about the house and so I never learnt anything. I blithely blame him for my lack of knowledge of all things practical.
About two years ago, on holidays in Roussillon, my wife put her eye on these enamel house number tiles which were going for a veritable chanson, she claimed. “That’s fair enough,” I said, “but where are you going to put them?”
She gave me a withering stare. “I was maybe going to stick them up on the landing, next to the picture of the men carrying a boat on their heads,” she declared.
So we bought the tiles and even before we flew home I was starting to get palpitations about putting them up. Such a simple thing, lots of people have them. But what do you use to stick them up?
“You’re the man. You should know these things,” my wife said, when I idly pondered the conundrum out loud. Obviously she hadn’t a clue either.
At home, in post-holiday mode, the tiles of course got put away in a drawer for safekeeping. After about three weeks, I was reminded “not to forget the tiles.”
Now for me, DIY is a pastime best practised on your own. Not being terribly sure of anything I’m doing, I prefer making a hames of the job on my own, so I can tidy it up before she gets home and then pretend I hadn’t got around to it in the first place.
One Saturday she decided to go to the Blanchardstown Centre to buy a pair of boots, which I knew from experience could easily take up to eight hours. With a hammer, I delicately removed the old number plaque adorning our front wall.
I then took down my Rovers biscuit tin, which I laughingly call my tool-box, and emptied it out on the kitchen table to see what “things-for-sticking-up-tiles” I had. Well, it was a toss up between a well-worn tube of superglue – how come it doesn’t stick to the inside of the tube? – and something called No More Nails, which I had bought once for some long-forgotten and probably fruitless purpose.
I plumped at first for the superglue which, in my experience is great for gluing up the sole of your slippers when it comes loose. Sadly though, such was the accumulation of dried glue in the nozzle that the remaining glue was trapped inside forever.
I checked the instructions on the tube of No More Nails. Apparently this was brilliant stuff and stuck everything from custard to Uranium 238, apparently rendering the manufacture of nails quite superfluous. The fact that it failed to mention either tile or brick among its lengthy list didn’t deter me and I applied a healthy coat of the white toothpaste-like goo to both tile and wall.
I must have held the four tiles pressed solidly to the wall for around thirty minutes, (though in all probability it was more likely nearer two) before I nervously released some of the pressure. The first one dropped immediately and as I stooped to catch it, the second one dropped. And then the third. And the fourth. Somehow, none of them smashed as they hit the ground but lay there mocking me. From around the world, I could hear a large collective sigh of relief from nail manufacturers.
I had plenty of time to tidy everything away before my wife arrived back from the shops with a handbag and jacket but no boots, though of course she immediately noticed the missing number plaque from the front wall.
Naturally I told her that I’d taken it down only to find that I had no suitable adhesive to stick up the new tiles.
“What about the cement and sand in the shed?” she asked.
I’d forgotten about those– they were the remnants of when I’d laid an unintentionally rustic path up to the garden shed years ago and I’d hung onto them in case they might come in useful.
Of course, time passed. Without a house number, our poor postman was totally confused, being unable to figure out that our number must lie somewhere between the numbers on the houses either side. We got a spate of wrong deliveries and god knows where half our post ended up.
Eventually my wife again went shopping for a pair of boots and I proceeded to the shed. Now it is about 25 years since I’ve worked as a labourer for a couple of plasterers but 4:1 resonates somewhere in the recesses of my brain as being a good ratio of sand to cement. So I grabbed an old paint pot and measured out three trowelfuls of sand, figuring the more cement there was, the stickier it would be, and one trowelful of cement and then slowly added water from my Rice Krispies mug.
To be fair, it looked like concrete. Only problem was, not only would it not stick to the wall, it wouldn’t stick to the tiles either. Another disaster, though it did leave a nice pale rectangle on my brickwork.
After that episode, the tiles again were forgotten about for months, until my wife came across them one day, even though I thought I’d hidden them quite well.
“What are we going to do about these tiles?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what to stick them up with. Sellotape? Back to back stickers?”
She picked up the phone and speed dialled her brother-in-law. “He says to cover the wall and tiles with PVA glue and then use tile grout to stick them up,” she said. “Think you can do that?”
We bought the PVA glue and a small tub of tile grout, despite the fact that we searched Atlantic high and low and there was no tile grout for outdoor use to be found.
Naturally I had to wait until my wife once again went up to the Centre to buy a pair of boots before I could tackle this mammoth feat of DIY. Sure enough, two weeks ago, off she went and I set to work.
Of course it took me 45 minutes to figure out how to open the PVA glue (pierce the cap with the prong of a fork) and having negotiated that little technicality it was plain sailing except for the PVA glue running down the wall like spiders abseiling down a cliff face.
When she came home, clutching two tops and a pair of trousers, the tiles were up and pretty solid they seemed too, even though I say so myself. Now I was a handyman, a genuine DIYer, though I resisted the temptation to ask if there were any other little jobs she wanted doing around the house, just in case she took me up on the offer.
Strangely, my wife seemed unimpressed by my handiwork.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Have I put them too high or too low? They seem solid enough. It’ll take a jack hammer to shift them now.”
“Oh, they’re solid enough,” she said, with one of her famous looks that can kill a man dead at forty paces. “Trouble is, we live at number 89, not number 98.”

In the money

Recession? What recession?
Like everybody else in Dublin 15, the R word had invoked a sea change in my attitudes. Instead of refusing my children’s requests through sheer laziness or miserliness, there was no need for me to choose my words carefully.
“Sorry, I can’t give you a hug. There’s a recession on.”
“Sorry, I can’t give you a hand doing the washing-up. Haven’t you heard about the recession?”
In addition to this, it also provided me with the perfect opportunity to bore the pants off them with lurid tales of how we survived the last recession “way back in the eighties,” informing them in a superior and patronising way that they didn’t know that they were born. Of course, my wife raised an eyebrow when I regaled them with stories of barefooted urchins queuing outside soup kitchens on street corners, whilst portly bankers twirled their gold pocket watches and strolled merrily by, but I think they got the gist.
However, I have just received some exciting news that has totally banished the R word from the Goulding household. While the origins of the email that I received are very much shrouded in tragedy, it appears that there is a silver lining to events that will safeguard our future during the austere fiscal times ahead.
I was contacted by a Reeter Khobe from Sierra Leone, who is obviously still very distraught at the death of her husband General Khobe during the civil disturbances there. Quite how Reeter got my email address is unclear, though possibly she saw the online version of this paper and recognised me for the fine, upstanding gentleman that I am.
Apparently, the late General managed to deposit US$15.7 million with a securities company before he died. Obviously the military in Sierra Leone are paid much more than our poor impoverished soldiers, though it appears that our’s tend to survive civil disturbances better.
Anyway, poor Reeter just needed a foreign bank account to transfer these hard-earned funds into, as domestic legislation presumably precludes her from waltzing out of the country with it in a bum bag. She therefore contacted me in her hour of need, simply requesting my bank account details, pin number etc, which of course I was happy to provide. In return, she has promised me 20% of the account, which my calculator informs me works out at a cool US$3.1 million.
US$3.1 million. Yes, read it and weep, suckers. I have already put my eye on a lovely six bedroom Georgian villa in old Castleknock and am just waiting for poor Reeter to get back onto me with final details of the transfer of funds.
And if you are currently turning green with envy, you will doubtless turn bright puce on hearing that the following day, apparently, my email address was electronically selected out of more than 250,000 addresses worldwide in the Coca Cola grand lottery in conjunction with the British American Tobacco Worldwide Promotion. Yes, more than a quarter of a million email addresses from “every continent” – presumably including Antarctica – and I just happened to be one of the ten lucky ones to scoop GB£2 million.
Apparently there are a few legal niceties that have to be gone through first before my prize can be claimed. Naturally I must reply to Mrs. Joy McKenzie at her Zambian email address with details of my bank account, pin number etc, which I am only too happy to do. I have heard of Coca Cola, so I am satisfied that this is a genuine communication.
Armed with this further increase to the Goulding bank balance, I am considering buying the four bedroomed Georgian villa next door to my six bedroomed house and converting it into a kennels for the Labradors that we intend to breed.
And of course, when you’re on a roll…
Today I received notification from a Dr James Ubani of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation that a special account had been set up in my name under the instruction of the International Court of Justice in the Hague. The fact that such an important letter was entrusted to someone who cannot find the lower case on a computer worried me slightly but Dr Urbani’s urgent entreaties that I only had two days to verify my account with my own bank account details, pin number etc meant I had to act quickly to safeguard the fortune contained within.
To be honest, I’ve been racking my brains trying to figure out why the International Court of Justice should be favouring me in this way. The only thing I can think of is that perhaps it has something to do with Slobodan Milošević, whom I interviewed once about the shortfall of funding for the Mulhuddart CDP. Maybe he remembered me in his little cell in the Hague and willed me most of his estate before he died?
I am now thinking of buying up the rest of the street and flattening it for croquet practice. I have also contact Boeing about the provision of a private jet.
My only concern is in the ability of the banks to cope with such straightforward transfers of funds. I mean, they really seem to be a stupid lot. Why, only last week, I got notification by email from both Abbey Bank and Lloyds Bank that they feared that my account may have been accessed by an unauthorised third party.
In order to protect the security of my funds, they asked me to verify my bank account details, pin number etc, as they felt there may be some unscrupulous people out there who would actually try and defraud me. Laughable, I know, but with my new-found fortune, I can’t afford to take any chances.
The ironic thing was that I do not have an account with either of these two financial institutions and quite thankful I am too, what with all those breaches in their security. Naturally, I replied to them both to inform them of this and also furnished details of my actual bank account, pin number etc, so they could see exactly where their error had occurred.
I fear though that I am doing some disservice to Lloyds and Abbey though, for disappointingly my own bank appears to be experiencing some logistical difficulties of its own. Obviously the system cannot cope with all this money flowing in because my bank manager keeps phoning me and claiming I am overdrawn.
No wonder the banking industry is in the state its in.