Halloween

I quite like Halloween. I think it's a fun sort of a festival. Small children trying to creep us all out with their cute little costumes, bonfires all over the place as I drive home from work, and all it costs me is some jellies and lollipops to throw at the neighbours kids.

I felt a bit left out of Halloween when we lived in Dublin.  We always lived in upstairs flats, and the trick or treaters either didn’t bother, or couldn’t get through the security gates.

The first Halloween we lived in our estate was an experience. I was so harmless I just put all the sweets in a big bowl and when the first group of kids arrived I was moronic enough to offer them the bowl.  They cleared it in seconds.  I had to spend the rest of the night with the lights off, pretending not to be in. 
It was that or give them dog biscuits, there’s never anything nice in our house.

Then I got into the swing of it.  The night of the 30^th October is spent distributing lollipops and Haribo jellies into tiny bags.  I like to have at least thirty little bags ready.  By the time they’re all gone, it’s usually just the teenagers that are left, completely hanging the dog, well past the dignified time in their lives to be trick or treating. 

A couple of years ago a girl of about sixteen turned up, at about half nine at night, with no attempt at a costume other than purple lipstick, and a small torch she shone under her chin. 

“Trick or treat” she said, cheerfully, when I opened the door.

“Don’t you think you’re a bit old for this?”

“No, not really.  Don’t be so miserable, it’s Halloween”

“Fair enough, here’s a packet of Chewits.”  (The good stuff was well gone by this time).

“Actually, I’m looking for money more than sweets.  Two euro will do.”

“Feck off.  It’s the Chewits or  nothing.” 

I know that sounds mean, but in all fairness, she hadn’t made any effort at all. She hadn’t even drawn a bad spider’s web on her face with a pencil eyeliner.

“Fine” she replied, in a gloriously sulky teenager type tone, snatching the sweets (strawberry, my favourite, I'd been hoping she’d be too proud to take them) and turning away.  I presume she intended me to hear her say “mean oul bitch” as she got to our garden gate.

For years, His Nibs used to work late and didn’t arrive home until about 9pm, when all decent trick or treaters are finished their rounds.  He never really got the hang of the thing.

“What are you doing?” he asked me last night, when I took down the roll of plastic bags I keep specifically for Halloween.

I told him I was getting the trick or treat bags ready for tonight. 

“Tell them to feck off” he advised me.  “I was never allowed trick or treat when I was a child.”

I absolutely do not want to be the horrible neighbour who greets small children by shouting “Feck off” at them. 

“That’s because you and I are from the heart of the country” I told him.  “We’d have been run over by a tractor if we’d wandered around the neighbourhood in the dark.”

“Well I’m not having anything to do with it” he replied, with his usual festive cheer. 

We have two dogs.  They don’t like the doorbell.  They go mental, to be honest.  So the trick or treaters are far more afraid of us than we are of them.  It’s like the Hounds of the Baskervilles are foaming at the mouth to get at them when the door opens.

Like just about everyone else, I’m spending the evening running in and out to the door, but our trick or treaters are terrified by the time I’ve got there.

They ring the doorbell, the two dogs go completely bonkers, His Nibs starts shouting “tell them to get lost” and I’m roaring at all three of them to shut up.

Then I open the door.

There’s fireworks going off,  so the sheepdog is having a bit of a nervous breakdown, caught between barking and whining at all times, and running around in hysterical circles.

His Nibs, or Old Misery Arse as I like to call him on high days and holidays, is refusing to answer the door at all, because of his convenient opinions.

But soon all the trick or treaters will go home to count their takings, and I’ll be able to start on the leftover jellies.

Not a bad night, all in all.

Personally Training

I used to have a personal trainer. 

Stop laughing, I did. 

I knew it wasn't going to work.  I'm not deluded.  I've never been the type of person who gets a personal trainer and finds herself losing half her body weight and getting addicted to the treadmill.  Or even worse the fecking cross trainer.

No, this was a medical thing.  I'd been "like the handle of a bucket" as my Dad said, with back pain for months.  Literally, doubled over.  And I'm not a particularly graceful specimen standing upright, never mind going around like a troll.

Anyway, after numerous sessions with the physio, this particular personal trainer was recommended to me.
By recommended, obviously I mean I was ordered to go, with threats of never walking straight again if I resisted.

In fairness the trainer was the physio's son, and I knew I was being made a fool of, but I was desperate.

Down a narrow and twisting road I drove, one dark and windy evening. There was grass growing in the middle of the road, with bits of snow still stuck to it.  It was the kind of road you'd expect to drive down to find a fortune teller, or the ruins of your ancestor's homestead, but not a personal trainer.

I persevered, and found myself at the door of a very fancy bungalow.  I wasn't allowed in, as soon as I explained my business there, I was directed to the shed, and was told my trainer would be out to me in a few minutes.
I'd come straight from work, and the smell of proper Mammy made dinners wafting out at me was almost too much to bear.

I got back into the car to wait, and eventually my trainer arrived out to get me.

If I was ten years younger, I definitely would have fancied him.  For all the good it would have done me.  He couldn't have made it more obvious that I repulsed him.
I don't know why he looked so surprised.  I'd told him on the phone to think of Roseanne Barr on twenty Benson and Hedges a day and he'd have some idea what to expect.

He still looked at me as though I'd just walked dog mess into his surprisingly nice, blonde wood lined gym.  It was much bigger than it had appeared on the outside, and for a minute I was delighted.

Just a minute though.  Shane, for that was his name, made it perfectly obvious that in his opinion fat, unfit people just weren't trying hard enough.  He was right, in my case, but that wasn't the point.

He was one of the GAA people.  His father, the physio, worked with the County football team, and Shane trained them.  GAA people aren't like ordinary fit people, in my opinion.  They are aggressively, competitively fit, and he decided that there was no reason that I shouldn't be the same.

He set me to doing three full minutes on some machine the like of which I've never seen before, and told me that I'd be doing four minutes each on about five different machines after that.

I told him that this wasn't going to be possible, that I would simply have a coronary and I was afraid an ambulance wouldn't be able to find the house, but he insisted that I was wrong. 
Then he started on about working through pain barriers, and feeling the burn, so I decided it would probably hurt less to do the bloody exercise than to listen to him, and got started.

It really really hurt.  At least my hearing kind of went fuzzy, so I couldn't hear him shouting orders at me anymore.
My breathing became so ragged that I honestly started worrying about that coronary.  I couldn't see because of the salty and scaldy sweat dripping into my eyes, from my eyebrows.  Sorry if that's too much information, I'm just trying to create an accurate picture here.

He had absolutely no sympathy for me.  When I almost fell off the machine, and begged for thirty seconds to recoup, he refused, saying that it would make things even worse.

After half an hour, all I could think about was surviving to the end of the hour.  But I needn't have worried.

He announced that that was probably enough for today, he didn't want to kill me.  Then he saw me out, it turns out there wasn't even shower facilities, for all his blonde wood and fanciness.

I'd paid for the full hour.  But I was so relieved to get out I honestly didn't give a shite.  I'd say I was home an hour before I started breathing normally.

The next time I went, it was the same caper.  I'd run the legs off myself for thirty minutes, pay for an hour, then he'd throw me out and go off and watch Top Gear or something.

I only went about three times.  He rang me in the end, to ask when I was going back, and I didn't even bother to lie.  I just told him I'd rather eat my own head than keep up with his regime.  I was full of brazenness and wouldn't listen to a word he said.  I actually laughed when he told me that if I kept up with him for six months I'd be like a different person.

I haven't lost an ounce since.  In fact, I've put more weight on.  So who's laughing now?

Carlsberg don't do book clubs...

Ladies, as a group you are the worst influence I've ever met in my whole life.  I think that's why I love you.

I remember, oh so well, the day we met.  Which is more than I can say for many of the times we've met since.
There was an educational, cultural sort of day planned for people who like to write, paint, take photographs or otherwise indulge their creative side, and I'd decided to be a grown up, and attend.

I was delighted to meet a group of intelligent and entertaining women, and saddened that you were mainly made up of the painters, and that, alas, we were unlikely to meet again.

I can't remember whose idea it was to bridge the divide with a book club, but I was delighted.  You can never have too many friends, as my Dad used to say, and I thought, in my innocence, that it would be a good way to keep up with new books as they came out.

We decided that we'd have the first meeting in my house.  We hadn't chosen a book, but that's because it was the first meeting, more of a get to know you type thing.

I told His Nibs that it was a women only book club - I don't know when we came up with that idea, in fairness maybe I made it up.

He was an excellent host, mind you.  Welcomed you all in, showed you around the garden, made the dogs do the only trick they have (sit) for your entertainment, and left us to it.
I had asked him if he'd drive you all home afterward.  It would only be a couple of hours, I told him.  Just so we could all have a glass of wine, get to know each other better, and choose a book.

He waited about an hour before braving the kitchen, where we were all gathered, to make himself a coffee.  I think the poor soul thought that because I was the youngest of the group (sorry girls, but I am) that maybe you'd be a good influence on me.
That little illusion came to a crashing halt when he walked into the kitchen to be asked, by a woman he'd met an hour before, to please guess her bra size, because he would not be able to believe how big it was.

He fled.  As you do.

A while later, he took his courage in his hands and re-joined us.  He opened the door, and asked for silence.  He was going to the shop, he informed us.  Then he would be going to bed for a couple of hours, he had work the following morning.  But he was more than willing to get up and drop people home when the time was right.
Did anybody want anything from the shop?

Cigarettes! we shouted.  And Pringles!  And (and this is where it all went badly wrong) Mixers, so we could move onto the hard stuff!

Empty bottles lay on their sides on the surfaces.  The terrified dogs didn't look left or right when galloping out for their pee. The room was full of the blue fuzz of cigarette smoke, and the laughing could be heard two houses away.

His Nibs looked around suspiciously.
"This isn't a book club at all, is it?  This is just a piss up club."

We howled in protest.  We had even picked our book for next month, we protested (the slimmest volume we could think of, outside the children's section of the book shop).  We might be going a bit overboard tonight, just to loosen our tongues and get to know each other better, but this was a serious undertaking.

He didn't believe us.  I don't think anyone would have.  And he was right.  These days, book club nights are booked weeks in advance, wine is bought by the half dozen bottles, vodka and gin must be accompanied by the appropriate mixers.

I should have known, that night, when I crawled up the stairs on all fours to wake him and bring you all home, at five in the morning, that this book club wasn't like others.

An average of one member per meeting has read the book.  In fact, that's become one of the two unspoken rules, that you don't have to read the book. 
The other is that teetotallers aren't encouraged.

I don't know why I thought I wanted intellectual stimulation - sure can't I read on my own?  But do you think it's time we started taking His Nibs' advice, being more honest, and just referring to the thing as what it is, a piss up club?

An Evening in A&E

I had reason to visit A&E today, not a happy place.  Nobody’s there for fun.  I was visiting my much loved niece, who had taken a weakness, the asthma that has plagued her life came back with great gusto and she was ambulanced in.

I was afraid, when I heard this, that she was sitting in a waiting room with an oxygen mask on her poor pale little face, waiting for hours to see a doctor.

That wasn’t the case.  I walked into the surprisingly tiny waiting area, and she was nowhere to be seen.  I went to the desk, passing the sign that said there was a 6 hour waiting time this evening, and longer for minor injuries.

At reception I asked for our little warrior, and obviously was immediately asked whether I was a relative.  I just said yes.  I decided not to elaborate, which is always a struggle for me.  At hospital waiting desks, when talking to priests, or in business meetings with strangers, I try my best to answer the questions asked and then stop talking.  It doesn’t always work, but it’s a good policy, I think.

“What kind of relative?” she asked me.

I resisted the urge to say “a blood one” and told her I was the patient’s aunt.

“Her aunt?” the woman sounded as if she’d never heard of such a relative before.

“Yes, I’m representing her hysterical mother, who’s in Wexford.”

See what I mean? I can’t stop blathering on.

The woman seemed completely baffled, and had to check the patient’s date of birth.  I confirmed that the person I was there to see is, indeed, almost twenty five years old.  But I don’t think that’s the point.  It’s completely miserable being in hospital, we all know that.  And sitting there, with nobody to talk to, or listen to, unable to catch your breath and exhausted from the effort of trying, is more miserable still.  She just needed a bit of company.

The receptionist told me how to get through the locked door to the part of A&E where the trolleys and the suffering patients are.  I had to knock on the door, wait for a security man to open it from the inside, and confirm whether I had permission from the reception desk to come through.  I confirmed, and he looked at the receptionist.  They nodded at each other, and I was admitted.

I found Herself without much work, and was alarmed and worried by her condition.  She insisted she was okay though, and asked whether I’d thought to bring her any magazines.  I had, luckily.  It would have been a lot of effort to get past security again.

We were chatting away, waiting for her to get the bed she so desperately needed, in order that she could be set up with a nebuliser and whatever else was necessary, when the trouble started.

A man in one of the little cubicles started shouting at the nurses.

“Don’t worry” niece told me.  “He’s been at that for the last six hours, he’s driving the poor staff demented.”

She must have been right, because he wasn’t getting much attention from the nurses.

Up he got, and started barging around the room, shouting and roaring at everyone.  A kindly nurse, instead of tripping him up as she should have, asked him how she could help him.

He was looking for somebody called Sam, and nobody knew who he was on about. 

“Where’s Sam?  Where the f**k is Sam?”

They did their best to calm him down, send him back to his bed, and reassure him.  But he was having none of it. He started roundly abusing these poor nurses, swearing at them and threatening them.

Then he shouted about f**king killing someone, so they had to call security.

Five security men and porters came along to help.  This man continued screaming, and roaring that if anyone laid a hand on him, he’d f**king brain them. 

I thought it was an unusual demand enough, in a hospital.

Eventually, as he was being forcibly dragged away from the nurse’s station, still throwing abuse and threats around, one of the large security men said loudly

“Will you behave yourself, for Christ’s sake?  You’re in a hospital.  These people are really sick.”

The beauty who was now under his bed swinging kicks out ignored him of course.  But I wanted to join in and shout

“Good man yourself, you’re right.  Give him a good kick back for himself.”

I have no reason to think this man had any kind of mental health issues.  He was just drunk and aggressive.

What are we coming to?  At six in the evening, someone who’s already had time to sleep off his excesses, wakes up to terrorise overworked caregivers and frightened, sick people.

Maybe we should bring in a new law.  If you can’t behave yourself in a hospital, feck off out and take your chances without medical care.