Hooray for everything!

If misery is an art form, I know more than a few Da Vincis. Indeed, being Irish, gloom is part of our very fibre, a strange flipside to our reputation for being the life and soul of any party. Any party with alcohol. Recent economic and meteorological events have fuelled the perverse satisfaction we get when things actually are going wrong, probably because then we don’t have to invent things to moan about. In short, being unhappy is just too easy. And since I love a challenge, I’ve compiled a list of things that make life worth living. For me anyway, if you think I’ve missed out anything, throw a comment in, this is a list I hope to add to!

 

·      Radiator pants

Radiator pants is where this whole idea began. A delightful comedic fellow by the name of Russell Howard first put the idea of radiator pants forward as the best reason he could think of as to why a man shouldn’t throw himself off a building (it’s actually a great and poignant observational bit that I’ve just ruined but check it out). And I agree. If there’s anything guaranteed to get me out of bed on a winter’s morning or out of a lukewarm bath (or probably a rooftop, if it ever came to that), it’s the promise of a radiator-toasted garment. I take my hat off to you sir.

Toasty

 

·      A nice cup of tea

There are few things I enjoy more than a really good cuppa, yet it’s surprisingly elusive. That is because I suffer from a condition (possibly genetic as I share it with my dad) where I CANNOT make decent tea. Try as I might, with variations on teabags, milk brands and water boiling times, many cups of tea I make taste like dishwater. I’d say of my usual 3-a-day average, maybe 2 cups of tea a week will be drinkable, and the rest need to be forcibly choked down. 

There's only one way to find out...

So why do I persist? Well, like many things in life, it’s the really good cup-o-teas that keep you going back for more. Also I do not even remotely understand it. I have however, noted in my studies a few observations:

1. Tea made for you always tastes better than tea you make yourself.

2. Tea after any sort of stress/effort/deprivation is generally delicious, particularly if alcohol has been added “for medicinal reasons”. (Note: This recipe is not recommended for everyday use).

3. Tea can be successfully reheated in the microwave without losing its flavour, though you may suffer loss of social standing as others will judge you. But that’s just because they haven’t tried it.

4. Milk goes in LAST. Don’t mess with that, it’s like, science.

5. Best dunking biccies – Boasters chocolate and hazelnut. Amazilicious.

6. Along with toast, tea can cure most minor ailments and is the number one treatment for people undergoing traumatic events in tv soap operas.

First aid kit

 

·      Having a moment

I don’t know how else to describe this one, but it’s these moments in life, where the monotony of the norm is broken by some event, even for a second, and you find yourself unexpectedly connecting with another person, well, it’s a good feeling. It could be anything; a smile from a randomer on the bus, reliving some hilariously scarring childhood event with a old friend, or the first time you realise you love someone - these moments can encompass a wide range of pleasantly gut-wrenching situations. The thing I like best though, is that they’re difficult to fake. Having a moment is a fragile, practically indefinable process, and a pretty rare thing. Then you watch tv and realise some situation you thought was special has become a cliché overnight and is now being used to sell cheese.

The moment when I meet my future husband. He may not be much to look at, but he'll understand the comic genius of Bea Arthur. We will both claim to have met online.

·    Monkeys

Don’t think I need to explain this one; monkeys are clearly awesome. Next time you feel a bit rubbish, look at a monkey. Instant cheering up, every time. In fact, I’d say anti-depressants would be much more effective if they had pictures of monkeys on the bottle. I like to think that someone, somewhere, is working on this…

If you don't find this hilarious, there IS something seriously wrong with you

 

·      Music

Little explanation required – music is so innate to humanity that practically every culture has developed its own style. This can be seen on a stroll up Grafton Street, where on any given day you’re likely to encounter a diverse range of sounds, from the feathery pan-pipe dudes, the make-shift drummers, the bagpipe guy (avec kilt, for the pleasure of hen parties) all the way to “the junkie rapper”. Indeed music can range greatly, from the sublime to makes-me-want-to-somehow-vomit-into-my-own-ears, and can thus be powerfully divisive. And I’ll admit it, I’m musically prejudiced. For some reason punks are my mortal enemy. Don’t know why, just always have been. Any acquaintances of mine reading this who have a penchant for ugly safety-pinned hairdos tunelessly shouting out of time to terrible guitar backing, know that you must have some seriously over-powering alternate levels of cool to have survived in my social sphere. Either that or I hate you, why are you still here?

I am so scarlet for your ma right now

·      Getting to a bus stop just as a bus arrives

If, like me, you have a pathological hatred of being too early or late, there are few things better than catching an arbitrarily timed bus. Take that world, I WIN! Bonus points if your card won’t scan and you get a free journey. Super bonus if the driver sings to you (happened to me just last week). Basically, daily life could be greatly improved if it were somehow more like video games. Unless you had to fight your boss at the end of the day.

This princess had better be worth it...

 

And some other things, non-exhaustive and in no particular order:

·      Food

·      Sunny days

·      Kissing

·      The sea

·      Great books

·      Being safe somewhere dangerous

·      Laughing

·      Playing

·      Bill Murray

·      Good company

·      Inspiration

Dammit, none of these beats radiator pants!

Flypaper eyes

Until quite recently I thought, in my naivety, that people carried little compact mirrors about with them for the same reason I do – I was wrong. You see, apparently the average schmo just likes looking at their face now and again, to check it’s still there probably, or as a Sims-like confidence booster. I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care – I have actual problems people, for I MUST carry a mirror on my person at all times or risk BLINDNESS. (Also, I like to think that if ever I should find myself shipwrecked, it’d come in as a handy fire-starter/way of making planes crash so I’d have company).

Representative results of direct comparative tests - note control subjects not observed using mirrors for purposes of removing bonsai tree pieces from own face

You see, things end up in my eye most days. MOST DAYS. It could be an errant eyelash rebelling against its natural function, a bit of invisible dust, cigarette ash or even small insects (seriously, once I found an ANT in there) – these are all things that have somehow found their way into my eye. 

Non-exhaustive list of foreign bodies that have wound up in my eyeballs. It's all gone a bit Ren & Stimpy

At the risk of sounding like an eyeball hypochondriac, I wonder whether I have some kind of disorder where my eyes are somehow made of magnets (did my mother have a fling with an X-man? Probably not). Or maybe my tears are made of glue? Or, the worst scenario of all - maybe it’s not that there’s stuff going into my eyes so much as things coming OUT – suddenly Lil Bro’s childhood taunts of brainivorous earwigs become a chilling possibility. Alternatively I could just have over-sensitive eyeballs, an expected result of a teenage penchant for wearing glitter (essentially tiny razor blades) as eyeshadow. I wouldn’t be too surprised if I develop glittery cataracts in my old age too. Glitteracts, they’ll call them. And I probably won’t mind bumping into stuff so much, if it means the world looks like a brilliant kaleidoscopic dancefloor.

Glitteracts, coming soon to a retirement home near you.

So I’ve that to look forward to.

My hollow friendship with Terry the monkey

Maybe my best day of my childhood was the day my “uncle” gave me a monkey. The “uncle” in question was an “uncle” not ‘cos my moms be hookin’ or anything like that, but since he was a relative of a cousin of an uncle, twice removed, once adopted or something along those lines. For some reason my mother felt the need (and still does) to stress this every time he’s mentioned, as if a 5-year-old would be asking him for a kidney or something.

Anyway, he was delightful as far as I recall, but he could have been Charles Manson for all I cared, because the man always turned up with at least one big bag FULL of sweets – and not just any sweets - English sweets. They had the same look, smell and names as ours, but I liked to think they tasted different; more worldly somehow. The first time I saw a blue Smartie was the day I knew the world had more to offer than TK red lemonade and Tayto.

It's a miracle I still have all my own teeth

But the year my uncle brought the monkey stands out as being particularly awesome. OK, he was made of chocolate (hadn’t I mentioned that?), but I was at the age where that didn’t really matter – I had MY OWN MONKEY! I named him Terry and swore never to eat him, since we’d quickly become best friends. I have several distinct memories of playing happily with Terry. He was a special guest on my “cookery programme”, wherein I’d make variations on the classic mud pie recipe (his favourite was a grassy mud pie with worm icing as I recall) and end the “show” by flinging the mud pies at the back wall. (Don’t judge - that’s how most shows I watched in the ‘80s ended). Each show was recorded on my Fisher Price recorder, for posterity.

Those tapes are still out there somewhere…

Terry also featured in my version of “mammies and daddies”, where I played the harassed battered wife of a drunken misogynistic jerk (played by kid down the road to much critical acclaim; particularly when our parents found out). My cabbage patch doll played the part of our often-neglected and sometimes abused child (I once tied her to the exhaust pipe of my mother’s Mini), while Terry played the part of a foreign businessman with whom I was having a torrid affair. (This was the ‘80s folks, The Simpsons hadn’t been invented yet, and Madonna was seen as the height of fashion. We had literally nothing better to do).

They just don't make toys like this any more

I don’t know exactly how long my relationship with Terry lasted, realistically it was probably only about a week max, but in kid years that’s a long time. My mother, who (perhaps not without reason) seemed to think I was a little slow, patiently explained to me that Terry “not real” and “you know he’s only chocolate, right?” Rather than being puzzled over this, I was outraged. Of COURSE I knew Terry was chocolate-based, and not an ACTUAL monkey! The foil-based nature of his skin had never bothered me, I could see past all that. Terry was the best friend I’d ever had, he was funny, smelled good and was a great listener. Plus, I reasoned, if my mother saw how good I was at taking care of a chocolate monkey, she might be more likely to one day consider expanding my monkey army. (That is the collective term for monkeys right?). Well, that was the theory anyway…

Until one day, disaster struck. My mother called us in for dinner, and as I ran through the door I fell, CRUSHING TERRY TO DEATH. There was foil and chocolate shards everywhere. My mother found her recently bereaved child hilarious. I still remember her making weak attempts to comfort me through her fits of hysterical laughter; by the end we were both crying, as usual for different reasons.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

I was inconsolable for days, so much so that I never touched a bite of Terry’s fragmented corpse. Not only had I lost my best friend, I moreover felt cheated. See, I’d thought Terry was completely SOLID chocolate. It was the main reason I hadn’t eaten him up until that point – I’d thought that, since we were friends, it’d be downright rude not to finish eating him in one go, so I’d been waiting for a day when I was sufficiently hungry (stew Tuesday for example) that I could give Terry the proper send-off he deserved, like some sort of delicious Viking burial.

Goodnight sweet prince...

Instead I was swindled by a funny-talking fake uncle.

So the lesson is kids, never take sweets from strangers. Or, take the sweets, but try not to bond with them. Toothache heals more easily than heartache.

Men's fashion as perceived by women...

If I were a more paranoid individual, or a washed-up popstar with nothing better to do, I might suggest that the phenomenon of skinny jeans on guys was instigated as some kind of government conspiracy to reduce the teenage birth rate. (Indeed, I’d have to be pretty assured of the competence of the government in the first place. But I live in Ireland). 

I’ve never liked skinny jeans on ANYONE, being a dedicated ‘90s grunge/scruff devotee, but how they became acceptable for guys to wear is something I’ll never understand, like the popularity of Twitter or suicide bombing. I digress. The contraceptive features of skinny jeans are twofold. First, there’s the gross unattractiveness of seeing all that lies below the belt uncomfortably showcased within the unforgiving media of denim. Secondly, there’s the physiological effect of packing one’s junk into such a restrictive and, I imagine, downright uncomfortable environment – surely that’s going to impede reproductive fitness? Only time will tell. It reminds me of how sheep are castrated – the testicles are tied up with string until they shrivel and drop off. May explain the recent increase falsetto music – that ain’t autotune.

Joe Blogs versus Joe Momma

One of the worst offenses to female eyeballs however, has to be the male wristband. This is a relatively new and disturbingly widespread phenomenon to me. On the plus side, it can be used as a rough indicator of age (if not actual than mental), useful for any ladies considering mating potential. Worse still, there seems to be some sort of hierarchy about this fad – a single wristband will act as an effective woman-repellent, particularly if plastic and neon. Wearing more than one will have a cumulative effect, repulsing even women in different time zones in some instances. However, like all rules arbitrarily invented by yours truly, there are the odd exceptions. For example – black, usually leather, wrist-support-type things that dudes in bands sometimes wear are inexplicably attractive. Combined with the bizarrely appealing Mars-bar arms phenomenon (wherein a guys arms are veiny, but “in a good way”, reminiscent of the top of a Mars bar), this can be the difference between “let’s just be friends” and “let’s just be naked friends”. I also feel obliged to include in the exceptions list wrist things worn for medical alert purposes. These are practical, and therefore perfectly acceptable on males. Plus, my dad’s silver one makes him look pretty damn pimp and, for some reason, that’s a good thing.

The hierarchical appeal of male wristbands

Oh fashion.

Several things you probably didn't know about chickens...

Since becoming a chicken momma (Farmer? Handler? Breeder? Afficionado? They just sound wrong) earlier this year, I’ve learned a few things about the feathery critters that I thought I’d share. I’m good like that. I’m not sure if these factoids apply to all hens, or just the 4 crazy mothercluckers I ended up with, but hey, you never know when it might come in handy…

The chicken is a devious, cunning creature 

One of the first things I learned – NEVER trust a chicken. They fooled me at the start, with a convincing display of shyness and reluctance to explore their new home. I gave them loads of food, space and made them chicken toys (usually vegetables on a string). Before I knew it they owned the whole backyard, I’m feeding them nicer muesli than I’d eat myself and giving them hourly feather rubs.

The greatest trick the chicken ever pulled was looking a bit dim...

That’s the scariest thing about chickens– you have no idea what they want until they have it. With a dog, it’s generally food or a walk, with cats, meh, who cares about cats? But chickens never reveal just what it is they’re after. Yet they never leave you alone. Every time I go near the back of the house I can hear them scramble to the back door, and I know when I open it I’ll see 4 pairs of crazy-ass dinosaur eyes staring back at me. “What are you doing?” “Where are you going?” “What’s that?” “Can I eat this?”

Don't you open that back door...

They also take any opportunity they get for entering the house. Seriously, if they had opposable thumbs, I worry what they’d get up to… It’d certainly speed up their eventual take-over of the house and my retreat to the relative safety of the coop, where I’d have to forage daily for bugs and worms for sustanance (because chicken food pellets taste terrible). I’d like to think they’d clean out my poop tray now and again, if only for old times sake.

Chickens will kill you and everyone you love for a slice of bread 

Although initially uninterested in most foodstuffs, chickens will go berserk if they so much as glimpse a slice of bread, or, as I’ve started referring to it “the white stuff”. I’m still not sure if it’s the delicious mix of preservatives and emulsifiers, or the novelty of eating food that’s not in pellet-form, but they just can’t get enough of it. I'm not even going to mention how they react to "the brown stuff".

They don’t need no rooster to lay eggs 

Mmm-hmm, it’s true girlfriend! This phenomenon appears to bamboozle most folks, but suffice to say, chickens produce eggs much in the same way as human females, except that their eggs are obviously considerably larger and their cycle occurs once a DAY. However it is unknown (even by keen chicken scientists such as myself) whether chicks living together synchronise cycles, cry for no reason, feel fat or mill into chocolate and bad ‘80s movies before laying. The research continues…

Chicks night in

Like humans, the name you give your chicks can affect their social standing 

Despite the current popularity of this hypothesis, I didn’t think it was true until I got my chickens. Boo is (sometimes literally) a chickenshit, terrified of pretty much anything – food, doors, sunlight. Stringer Bell is quite dark and broody and is never anywhere to be found when the egg laying goes down. Furious Styles pretty much IS her name – the most aggressive yet elegant of the four (I also considered calling her Crouching Chicken, Hidden Dragon), while Whitey… I feel I made a grave error naming Whitey as I did, based solely on her difference in colour to the others. Little did I know that, despite only comprising a quarter of the chicken population, she’d manage an insidious reign of terror over the others, constantly invading their space, taking their stuff and sometimes making them nest only down at the back of the coop. If she doesn’t calm down pretty soon I may have to get another chicken and call it Malcolm Eggs.

I have failed as a mother

Chickens trends evolve so quickly they like bands you’ve never even heard of 

On opening the coop one morning I discovered Stringer Bell had gone skinhead (or, more accurately, skin-neck, as she’d apparently had difficulty reaching her actual head area). Immediately assuming this was some kind of neo-supremacist show of solidarity with Whitey, I considered whether or not to bring them on a Jeremy Kyle-type show, not so much to resolve the issues as to air them in public, aided by the constant unhelpful patronising commentary from some ignorant orange moron. You have to admit, it’d make good tv – “Chicks gone wild – Nazi hens” or “Concentration coop” or "Why did the chicken cross the road? To go back to her own country". Then I realised that would probably set chicken rights back about a century, and that, although I think they’d all do well in Hollywood, it’d probably be a nightmare for any makeup department. My dilemma was resolved later that week when String emerged with an even newer ‘do, with just enough feathers left on her head to create a look reminiscent of a Mr. T mohawk. Turns out the reality is even worse than my original suspicions - my chicken is a hipster. Or she's just moulting in a really ironic way.

I have SERIOUSLY failed as a mother

Green is the enemy of chickens and must be destroyed 

It took me a while to notice a correlation between letting the chickens out and the destruction of all things green in the backyard, since (see point 1) they never did it when I was looking. At one time my backyard was a verdant utopia of numerous chlorophyll-filled treats; rhubarb leaves, ivy, grass, various weeds, wretched-looking vegetables I was trying to grow, and I’m pretty sure there used to be a tree. Two months later it looks like a post-apocalytic wasteland. It’s not that they’re eating the green stuff either, they just like pecking it to death and leaving fragments of plants strewn all around the yard. Note to self, avoid green clothing. 

BEFORE

AFTER

 

Contrary to popular belief, chickens probably don’t enjoy dressing as humans 

Part of my enthusiasm for keeping chickens was sparked by a ‘90s cartoon, wherein a giant chicken called Boo would dress up and be treated as a human, often gaining positions of power such as sheriff, until one person (generally a hysterical woman no one listened to) realised Boo was no more than a giant chicken. Oh the hilarity. Thus assuming my hens would like the opportunity to similarly advance their careers, I offered them several ensembles I thought fitting of todays modern chick. For one brief moment I felt like the Gok Wan of the chicken world. Then the pecking began.

Chicks and the City. Adapted from my imagination.

In conclusion, NEVER UNDERESTIMATE A CHICKEN.

 

 

In the beginning there was De Bob...

So this blogging malarky is my newest crazy whim - I'm interested to see if it'll last longer than the previous notions of daily workouts, world travels or my band having a no.1 hit (reminder to self - learn to play guitar, or at least get more tattoos), all of which fall into my extensive lists of "ongoing projects". Has to be better than whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing right?

I thought I'd start with a little history lesson, which is, like all history lessons, intended as a cautionary tale, lest we forget. Back in a time I like to call "The Unpleasantness", aka the 80's, my home was a cold, smoggy corporation (council was slightly posher) estate, strangely Dickensian in spite of being composed of 95% thin plywood, 5% "itchy candyfloss" in the attic. Yes, nostalgia hasn't softened my memories of those days, awesome as Fat Frog icepops were. Being the endlessly practical Irish mother she is, my mother managed to churn out 4 kids in 6 years, and, so as not to give us "ideas above our station", dressed us all pretty uniformly in whatever hideous garb was at hand - wooly bobbly jumpers (regardless of weather), duffel coats, dungarees (the woman was obsessed with dungarees), elasticated waistband jeans, and shiny hot pink shell suits. All except my brother, the youngest, who was generally to be found looking like an extra from The Lil' Rascals - side-parted hair, vest, shirt, shorts (shorts!), needlessly held up with BRACES. Where my mother was able to source red Tom & Jerry braces remains to this day an eternal mystery to me, like the universe, or people who like The Corrs.

Lil bro' lookin all '30s. Which is all very well...

...Except when your contemporaries look like this

Ok, I MAY have exaggerated the bowtie, but I vividly remember the rest as being wholey accurate, down to the highly polished shoes. I also remember Lil Bro's stoic lack of resistance to his wardrobe - not that he had much say in the matter, but he never complained about being sent to school every morning looking like Alfalfa. It's a wonder the child survived playschool. Us girls were a different matter however. I reckon my mother was the sort who'd dreamed of having perfectly turned-out little girls, who liked skipping and unicorns and hated getting their dresses dirty.

Instead she got us - me, whose only career aspiration ever was to be a stunt woman, thus I could rarely be put in dresses for fear of showcasing my extensive scrapes and bruises to the world; Sister 1 who liked to eat flowers and play with reluctant animals who'd "followed" her home, and Sister 2, who was constantly and inexplicably covered in mud. (At least, we assumed it was mud). What was a mother to do with such misfits, so as to make them fit for decent society? Well, I'll tell you what my mother did - three identical BOWL HAIRCUTS. Every couple of months we'd be trooped off to sit on a bunch of phonebooks and get a sore neck while a hairdresser (a TRAINED PROFESSIONAL hairdresser) surely broke some hairdressing oath if not a couple of human rights violations by giving us the most hideous haircuts known to humankind...

That's right - I was THAT kid. Thinking back now, I think my mother thought that if we all looked the same, the weirdness of one child could be absorbed or at least overlooked by the collective cuteness of the trio. That might just have worked, except for the fact we were ALL little oddballs. Perhaps we were art, a crazy post-modern concept I wasn't then intelligent enough to grasp (and doubt I ever will be). I vaguely remember a time when looking like The Beatles didn't bother me, when our names were used interchangeably (even by our own parents) and constant queries as to whether we were triplets were patiently explained away; that, no, we're not triplets, mother waited the minimum-required 9 months between each of our births. But then, one day, it DID bother me. Majorly. The main turning point for me was Lil Bro realising that we resembled Lego people with the clip-on hair.

Back then, Lil Bro liked to name things, sometimes using words of his own invention. For some reason all his Lego men, women and children were called Bob thus, somehow, the offending hairdo came to be known as DeBob. This later evolved into a mortal insult we'd hurl at each other in moments of fury, such was the negative connotations it carried; coupled with the fear that our mother would catch us "swearing", it proved quite useful.

So I did the only thing any self-respecting 8-year-old could do, and found a better use for my Crayola bunny scissors. Tough work it was, but I was never brought to the hairdresser again, and I was free, free, FREE! No one ever confused me with my sisters again, life was good, Fat Frogs tasted better, I WON. It was, and still is, my greatest triumph.

Twenty years on, oh how we have evolved! If this were back in the days of spandex, where every Irish person looked like an extra from The Snapper, I'd probably be telling this tale in a smoky pub or around an open fire... (then again, perhaps not, since I reckon the internet age has raised our collective threshold for boredom - I doubt this tale would survive a non-internet setting. You suckers!). But then, last week, I visited a hairdresser on a whim, parted with 80 euro, and left looking like this...

Ah humanity, will we ever learn?

Next time - My hollow friendship with Terry the monkey