Happy Christmas.

(Reposted from my facebook.)

A picture of my home. Drew it there while supping Guinness watching the departure board. While you're here, let me tell you a story...
Last year I boarded a flight in Edinburgh on December 23rd. It was the last flight to leave before the airport closed due to the bad snow. Midair, somewhere over Dundalk, we were told Dublin Airport had closed. Again, snow. We pricked about a bit above Ireland, I joined to the sky high pub and eventually we landed in Cork, easily the furthest away from where I wanted to be possible. Hung about on the tarmac for a while, pilot had to figure out what to do. With every other airport in Ireland closed, they let us out. Said they (Ryanair) would organise buses to Dublin. Not instilled with confidence and fearing they'd charge me to board the bus (Ryanair), I went rogue. I phoned a friend from Cork, got my options. A quick taxi into Cork train station later, I'd a ticket to Dublin in my pocket and I was sprinting along the platform to get the last train to Dublin. Train was delayed several times. Ireland's countryside looked like Alaska as we crawled through Limerick. I got off the train five hours later, still not done. Made my way to Abbey Street and sat on my suitcase for an hour in the snow waiting for the last bus to Carrickmacross. Last plane. Last train. Last bus. I felt a bit like Indiana Jones, slowly getting home by dumb luck. Bus arrived. I stood up. A little old woman appeared out of nowhere and tried to get on the bus before me. Tried. She didn't. Two hours later I was home. Changed me socks, put on the telly.
Today's flight is actually ahead of schedule. It's almost... Too easy. Happy Christmas, facebook folk!

AWKWARD.

I'm an optometrist. I test people's eyes. I like to think I'm quite good at it. It's not like I can juggle lenses or do contact tonometry just using my thumbs (I'd like to see you try), but I reckon I'm good at making people enjoy their tests.
I take my time. I explain the red and green numbers (if they ask). I make jokes. I'll draw an astigmatic cornea on the back of an envelope. I start at the big letter E and say "Well if you can't see that one sur' we may both go home". Once a man didn't get it. But it's okay, he came in without wearing his contact lenses and didn't tell me. We didn't go home.

While it looks like I'm friendly, warm and informative, a lot of it is, for want of a better word, an act. They're hidden behind a big machine spinning lenses on front of them hearing me talk away, asking them to look at some dots while in reality I'm typing up notes about their grandfather going blind after getting hit by a combine harvester. I can do it automatically, ask questions, change the lenses without even thinking. They say the red numbers  look sharper? I twiddle the dial to the left. I take away the big lensey machine (it's an autophoroptor, if ye wanna google it), eye contact resumes and we have a bit more of a chat.

But sometimes I mess up. An example? Fine, keep reading.

Everytime I bring someone into my room I ask them how they are. I'm genuinely interested, I like to know if a person's going to be a pleasure to test or if they're about to explode with every gripe they've bottled up this past two years. I ask one of two questions usually.

(1)- And how're you?
I'm not sure why I start with an 'And'. It's probably grammatically incorrect but I've not been pulled up on it yet. With this question, I emphasise the 'you' part, almost like how Joey Tribbiani says "How you doin'?" Again, I like to show these people I give a fuck. Most of the time, I do.
(2)- And how're you today?
BIG DIFFERENCE. Putting 'today' in the mix is something I do for people I've seen before. It tells them that I know I've seen them before, that I remember them and how they were two weeks ago  and that I want to know how in God's name they are doing today. If Joey Tribbiani ever said "How you doin' today?", that's probably how I'd say it.

Anyway, people tend to answer in two ways. First one is a simple "Grand" or maybe a "Cold". I say "Good stuff" and on we go.
Some other people say their "Grand" or "Cold" and then ask how I am. I say, WITHOUT FAIL, "Not too bad" and, again, on we go. Clockwork.

But a wee while ago the clock broke. A wee while ago the clock went out the window.
Names have been changed to protect anonymity. Not mine, though. I'm an idiot and I can admit this.
Noel: Peter, is it? Peter come on in for your eye test.
(In room)
Noel: Peter, rest yourself on the big chair there a wee while. How're you?
Peter: Not too bad. Yourself?
Noel: Not too, eh, I mean, not too, eh, grand. I'm grand.

HE USED MY LINE AGAINST ME. Bastard.
Anyway, the rest of the test went well, he got his new glasses a while later and was over the moon with them. Saw stuff he hadn't seen in years. Shook my hand and all. I felt sorry for planning to call him a bastard in a blog post I'd soon write.
But the blog post I did indeed write. It's up there. See?

Some oxygen I could live without.

(I wrote earlier on facebook that this post would be in 3D. It's not. I just wrote that to rope you in. How can a blog post be in 3D anyway? Cop on. May as well keep reading while you're here, though, you'd look like an awful dope otherwise.)

So here I am. Home. Back in Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan. Just a quick visit, mind. I'm going back to Edinburgh tomorrow for a week and then coming back back here for Christmas on the 23rd. I've already spent a few days in Dublin, met some folk, bailed out a few pub landlords. The usual. But, while Dublin is where I find most of the people I know best, Dublin is not home.
This is home:

Long aul picture, I know. And you can barely see the house. But we'll plough on.
So this morning I woke up to find my mother clearing out the porch to make way for Christmas decorations. Once she knows I'll be home in the next month or two, she likes to leave all big jobs (cutting the hedge, moving cattle, setting up the wireless printer) until I get home. I'm a big strapping lad, there's not much I can't do. Next time she plans to come to Edinburgh I should stop washing the dishes and not iron for a month (not that I iron anyway, but she doesn't read this).
So aye, the porch, that bit of brick and glass that connects the front door and the hall is, 11 months a year, COLONISED by plants. And I hate every every fucking one of them. They're the ugliest, most horrible ways to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen I know of. And this post is dedicated to them.

NUMBER ONE:

Look at this anaemic looking thing. It's barely trying. We' good people that we are, have given it a whole pot to play about in and it does sweet fuck all. It grows four or five flowers, most of which look to be trying to escape the pot and even less leaves. You couldn't even make a salad of that thing. Hold on until we look at another angle:

Still not much, is it? And the stalks are weird. They look like spaghetti. I don't like this plant.

NUMBER TWO:

This looks a bit like the pot threw up. It seems to be some kind of leafy mould that, given time, would creep across the floorboards and cover the entire ground floor of the house. It's the most sickly colour of green ever too, like what you'd get if the accounting department of evolution got to design a plant. Efficient, but about as boring as Tuesday evening telly.

NUMBER THREE:

Like number one, this plant is just plain lazy. It's looked this way for year, not bothering to add on an extra inch up top or maybe get all leafy for the boy plants who live nearby. It just sits there, not really doing anything. Might tie a bow around it for Christmas. That'd piss it off something serious, like when the lesbian girl in the movies gets all dolled up by the cheerleaders. I'm not thinking of any specific film here, but I think it happened in The Mighty Ducks or maybe Little Giants. I don't know, I wasn't paying much attention, I got a Gameboy that Christmas.

NUMBER FOUR:

Fuck, I'm regretting taking so many pictures of plants earlier on. This one, in hindsight, doesn't look so bad. Hold on until I go up the stairs and try to remember what made me hate it so bad.
Oh yes, THE SMELL. This is some kind of lemon plant. May as well call it a marshmallow plant because it doesn't smell like that either. It smells, instead, like death. And I don't use italics lightly. It smells like piney disinfectant. My mother says it keeps flies away. It keeps me away too, I would've moved home years ago if it wasn't for this gypsy of a plant. Burn in hell, lemon plant.


NUMBER FIVE:

I feel a bit bad slating this plant, because it was in my granny's house and we took it after she died. So I won't get personal with this one, and slate the fact that it can't speak English or that it has no job. Instead I'll keep it simple. I hate this cactus. Every time I've came within a foot of this cactus I've gotten ten or twelve wee pricks in my fingertips. And it's ugly. Moving on.

NUMBER SIX:

Oh, here's a favourite. In that it's one of my favourite plants to hate. It looks dopey. No two ways about it. Its leaves are big and chunky and waxy and the whole thing looks like it was made with lego.

LEGO. I was never given Lego as a child, so I hate Lego. I had K'nex. Was still good, like, got to make lots of big things. Once made a helicopter. But K'nex couldn't make houses. It's overcoming such adversities like that that made me who I am today.

NUMBER SEVEN:

Ah, I've lost inspiration now. As much as I hate these plants, they've brought back a lot of memories. In the past half hour, I've been taken back to Christmas Eves in my granny's house, to building a (quite excellent) K'nex helicopter (with missiles) and some film I didn't bother paying attention to. So what if this wee chap couldn't be bothered growing over the rim of the pot. This rant has to end. And it will.

Right after...

NUMBER EIGHT:

SPIDER PLANT? SPIDER PLANT! I fucking ABHOR spider-plant. In fact, it was spider-plant that spurred me to write this whole thing. Spider-plant would, if left to it's own devices, take over the planet. If number two was some slow moving moss, spider-plant is like the xenomorphs from Alien. Sending off wee baby spider-plants to grow elsewhere, continuously growing, feeding. All those bits hanging down off it on the front are new spider-plants hanging by their horrible spider-plant umbilical cords to their bitch of a spider-plant mother.
I've a fire lit right now, if I could throw spider-plant in it right now (without consequences), I would (I don't think the mother has me Christmas present bought yet, have to keep her sweet).

Anyway, that's me for this evening. Good to get that off my chest. Flying back to Edinburgh tomorrow, and I'm back home here on the night of the 23rd. If I don't post before the big day, have yourselves a very fine Christmas. Toodles.

ABORT MISSION.

Went for a wee run, there. I've been working on my running for a while now. I'm new to it, but getting some good runs under my belt. Tonight won't be going under the belt. Tonight will be forgotten about (unless you count the internet as a place where people regularly go to read stuff, which it isn't).

So anyway, a quick introduction. I was off today. Woke up early, about half eight. Watched a little TV, drank coffee, ate breakfast. Went into the bank to talk about my current account.*
Came home, ate something, went back into town and did a little shopping.** On my way home I was a little hungry. Swung by Subway. Not the healthiest option EVER but I live in Scotland, at least it wasn't deep fried. Figured I'd get myself a six inch something or other. Turns out I've not asked for a six inch in so long that I forgot how to and ordered a footlong Tuna.*** Fuck it. I've eaten more. Wolfed it down in less than five minutes. Beat my chest with my right fist and burped involuntarily.
So I made my way home, put on a wash and went out for my run. After eight or nine minutes I got a bit of a pain underneath my ribs. "Stitch", I thought. So I slowed down for a while and changed the foot I exhaled on. It worked before. It didn't work today. I sped up. It hurt more. I slowed down. It hurt less. But the pain didn't go.
And then it hit me. I knew what was wrong. It was that fucking Subway I inhaled earlier.

I needed to be burped.
But 25 (nearly 26) years of being reared properly had me way too polite to be able to burp on cue. So I limped home and told myself that noone would have to know about the time I had to cut a run short because I had gas.

Whoops.



* "Doin' fine"- Woman in bank.
** "And there's your receipt"- Girl in HMV
*** "You sure? It's actually 29p cheaper if you get a drink with it?"- Chap in Subway