Tuesday 16 December 2008

My granny died last night. Which means I won't be able to have a wank till Friday at the latest. Reason being that I believe when a person dies they remain on this plane for a few days to pay a final visit to their loved ones before their spirit emigrates to the next place. And to be caught mid-wank by the spirit of my recently deceased granny would be an episode constantly revisited in years to come, usually while in the grip of some black downer.
Turns out I am 700bigones (this dirty laptop has no pound button) in the hole. I was supposed to receive 3/4s of it on Sunday by a wee cunt I have running for me in Comber, but he's bailed and cut off all communication. So now I got the frosted tipped creep above me in the food chain breathing down my neck for his end. Meaning I've cut off all communication with him, resulting in his mobile being turned off as well no doubt, dodging those above him, and on it goes.
My teeth have started playing up again. Right at the back. They start with this throbbing dull constant ache and moves up a gear after a couple of days like this. Today is usually about the time the pain becomes completely satanic. Last time it happened I couldn't sleep and I couldn't open my eyes. Inside my head all I saw was a black snow of dots against white like a Frank Miller winter scene. 72 hours like this, eating was out of the question as well. By the third day I made a jagged slouching crawl to the City for their tooth clinic. I was given some very strong type of codeine and a weeks course of anti-biotics. I didn't bother with the anti-biotics as you can't drink on them without boking, anyway the codeine sorted the pain after a day.
Things have taken a downturn as they always will - personally, do without fail - this time of year. I think I'll start on a Jimmy Stewart triple bill this morning. It's A Wonderful Life, Harvey and Winchester '73 - to keep things in perspective. But my life is going to change. I can feel it.

Monday 15 December 2008

Went to see my folks over the weekend for the first time in ages. They're both getting worse. He was standing at the window that looks out onto the back garden staring at the pond he built himself over a period of months. He was drinking his weekend gin and tonic and watching the rain pimple the surface of his pond and all the big goldfish darting here and there in fright of the rain.
She was sitting in her rocking chair writing her own obituary to be used in the paper on the occasion of her death.
"Very morbid," said my father. After a couple more very silent minutes underscored only with the heavy strong rain hitting he flung his head back and looked ceilingward exclaiming "oh Jesus help me."
She tells me on the telephone that he's starting to lose his mind.
"How so," I ask.
"He put his shoes in the freezer the other night in a bid to convince himself he'd Alzimer's. And he's taken to starting that auld 'Oh Jesus Help Me' routine. I think its comical he's trying to convince himself he's Alzimer's. It's sort of like a cod trying to convince itself its a fisherman.
He talks about her as well. He takes me out for a drive and lets me in on a secret that he's been seeing a woman they both knew years ago before mother fell out with her. On a purely platonic level he reiterates every couple of minutes.
"I can't talk with your mother," he tells me. "Not anymore," he says. He says she's become obsessed with death and believes her car is haunted.
"Her car?" I ask.
"Her car," he says. "Oh Jesus in heaven will you help me?" He says clicking his head back again.
"Keep your eyes on the road," I insist.

Friday 12 December 2008

My shite to bog-roll ratio is phenomenal. You would think then that one of the most pertinent elements of my shitting ritual is checking for toilet paper; especially in a public lav. Well, not so. When I was a boy I had a great deal of issues with taking a shite; started from one of the cruel and imaginative stories my cousin told me regarding my bodily functions and the over exertion thereof. Like, "You will get lukemia before you are 10 if you go for a number 1 more than once a week!"
So Wednesday was the day I would go to the toilet. The rest of the week I would hold it in. I had a special place for this. In the back garden behind the shed there was a little dark nook where the sun couldn't get to any time of the day. I would go there, after my lunch or my dinner, and sit hugging my legs, my knees bunched up at either side of my head and my heels dug into my hole.
Like I said, this went on for a month. After three and a half weeks my ma said I'd turned a sort of diahorrea colour. We were out in Austin's department store in Derry when she made this observation.
"You're a funny colour," she narked.
"His breath smells like a dogs arse," added my da.
My brother, who knew my secret, said, "He hasn't done a squeezy (eccentric family word for shite) in three days."
"Oh my god," said ma. "That's what's wrong with him."
I listened patiently to all of this. So patient in fact it bordered on the anaezthesitized, even for a gentle child like me. I was on an orange club biscuit. I liked to finish them in two bites, but that day, after a big plate of chips, my stomach did feel like a bucket of wet cement had been poured down my throat.
"What's the matter with you?" Asked my ma.
I looked at her, my head jerking forward in hardly perceptible little jerks. Then I gagged. Then I boked all over the table. My da scooped me up and threw me over his shoulder. He bolted down the escalator making apologies to all the old ducks scared out of their wits. I hung over his back, upside down, the diahorrea boke running down his legs. We got out onto the street and he held me over a bin and let me finish. Shoppers slowed to look and some even gagged themselves.
Later when I told my ma why I was holding my shite in for a week she rang my aunt and told her what had happened and that she should smack Claire, my cousin. After that I went regularly and I didn't soil my knickers quite so deeply or often.
So I have an issue with shitting. And therefore you'd think bog-roll played a pretty important part of my toilet experience. Not the other day, but. In a Mcdonald's lavvy, a putrified cheeseburger-boke aroma clung to the glacier tiles, I emit a watery one (you gotta in Micky D's) and in light of some short stop premonition go to check for bog-roll that I know won't be there and am proved right. I ended up using the Daily Mail.

Thursday 11 December 2008

Mocking The Mentally Incapable

They sat by me on the sofa, him on her knee. Talking baby talk to one another - acting the eejits. Had this sort of behavior occurred in any other context other than love they would have been accused of mocking the mentally incapable.
Friday nights are busy. Trip over to Holywood on a late afternoon train, zipping along in one of the increasingly stained 'new' NI Rail carriages. When I've got the gear back to Belfast via Sydenham, where one of the creatures will usually offer a lift back, I divide my money up into what I owe and what I've got left over. Then I divvy up the block into half O's and quarters. When all my work is done I sit down and take a hog on a nice big bong.
I mostly make some coin when I'm up for collecting a big consignment that week. It used to be you put it in the microwave and it would expand, some say by 10%, thus increasing your profit margin. Other people said the found bits of bin liner right in the middle of their deal like a h'penny in the Christmas cake. They'd ask me what my game was and I'd tell 'em it was the same as their's: You're glad you got something when all and everyone else looked like they were going to bail, and current manufacturing techniques should be viewed with the utmost faithfulness - they put emulsifier in your biscuits don't they? --- Well you pays your money you take the ride.......
But there they where. Talking at each other in some ghastly slobberful take on infant speak and I was getting ready to boke. When I'm dealing people mostly come to me. The exceptions are Peg-Leg, who's only got one leg from stepping on a landmine in the war, and sometimes my sister if her wombat of a boyfriend isn't there. It is not easy making me feel uncomfortable. A thick skin, resilient as alligator hide, protects me from the clawing vagaries of the world. Sometimes the setbacks in this game come at the end of a claw hammer, sometimes they begin with a knock at your door. Other times they take on a slow boil and chip away at the edges - like an overdone marble statue.