Scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by

Is it me, or has the official send-off of the dead gotten extremely lax nowadays? I don't know about you, but I want a proper funeral, all black armbands and tears and drooping lilies. And stuff. When I shuffle off this mortal coil I expect a massive turn out from all my friends and admirers, all dressed in glossy funereal black, top-hatted and black-gloved to see me off.

I want people up and down Ireland to watch my funeral procession on big screens in town squares and women to sniffle noisily into hankerchiefs as the echoing footstep of my mourning procession cleaves through the watching throngs. I want priests falling on their knees and shaking their fists in disillusioned anguish at a faithless God; beautiful damsels surveying my hearse with a type of fierce pride; angelic children sobbing uncontrollably at my coffin side. I want swarthy hunks to bear my wooden box to it's final resting place, their hands gripping the manly shoulders of the other pallbearers in quiet support for the other's loss.

I want meadows scoured to make the floral tributes for my coffin, which will be borne in on a carriage pulled by a team of black steeds. I want Aoife to sing 'You Were The Wind Beneath My Wings' at my graveside and Burt to beat his breast as my coffin is lowered down. I want aggrieved roars and noisy crying. Hordes of lingering mourners laying flowers on my grave. My dog to take up a pitiful vigil in the cemetery. And then I want everyone to get pissed afterwards. For a year and a day, as they did in proper, pre-Christian times.

What a self-centered brute I am. I went to a funeral this morning and now all I can think of is how I want mine done.

A shady friend for torrid days

From this Friday on Aoife is going on study leave from work for nine weeks. As her exams are extremely important and since spreading all one's notes on the sitting room floor and staring at them is apparently not the optimum knowledge-imbibing method, she has decided to spend these nine weeks at home in her parents' house. Bitch. If you are any good at absorbing information, you will easily recognise that I will be left in the house with the two boys. Alone. The idea shakes me to my very core.

I'm terribly worried. How will I cope without constant female companionship? Who will engage in ladylike chitchat and banter with me? At least I will have Burt's FHM girls to keep me company. They bring some much needed ladylike delicacy into the place. I dread the day when I am reduced to sitting on the landing outside his room, gazing adoringly up at the 5ft poster of Abi Titmuss wearing thigh-high boots and a smile he has sellotaped to his door.

'Abi,' I will say, 'What do you think of Kylie's new hairdo? Aren't periods awful, Abi? And bras- oh, I see you're not wearing one. Well done you! Abi, would you like to moisturise elbows with me later? No?'

As an aside, if you are a girl, would you like to hang around with me for the next nine weeks? I am very pleasant to be around and can do many funny impressions of characters from Eastenders. Alright, then, just Pauline Fowler. But I'll attempt Phil Mitchell if you'll take me shopping/have pillowfights with me.

Please?

Her Mind Lay Open Like A Drawer Full of Knives

I am sick of people who think my blog exists to make them famous. I have lost count of the amount of times people have said to me: 'Hmmm, Lucy- I found your blog the other day and I am sad to say I am not mentioned once. Not even a short poem. What is up with this?'

This is my blog! It is me who puts in all the long hours on it, primping and preening to make it perfect for you ungrateful oiks! It is me who came up with the brilliant name; It is me who woke up one morning and said 'Hmmm, I like orange...'; It is me who faithfully gets drunk at regular intervals to have something to write about. I think you mistake the purpose of all blogs everywhere, namely in assuming you should be mentioned in one. The only person a blogger likes to talk about is himself. The entire existence of blogs is based on the self-serving narcissistic principle that people you don't know want to read about your dull life. My dull life that is, not yours. Yours isn't worth reading about as it isn't on the internet. Mine is.

Empty Pockets Don't Ever Make The Grade

Look at this! £16.50 to join the Dorothy L. Sayers Society! What a con. This is the internet, for crying out loud, everything is free! Why, just the other day I recieved an email off a gentleman from Nairobi who offered to split $46,000,000 worth of gold bars with me if I would just send him my bank and credit card details. He is being cruelly persecuted by the government, you see, and needs to get cash for the gold so he can buy safe passage for his family. I was a little perturbed that he addressed me as 'Mr Aughney, Sir', but the point is he is giving me this money. For. Free. Eat that, DLS Society.

See This Crooked Finger?

I am just back from stepping outside for a quick cigarette (on my break, naturally; I would never abscond on company time), where I was fortunate enough to overhear the angry rumblings of a shaggy-haired young man. First and foremost in his grumbles was the fact that his friend was over-charging him for for two ounces of some illicit substance. I am not the most careful of citizens but I would consider discussing this on a busy street corner with various dubious student-types milling idly around rather risky. I mean, I could be an undercover cop.

Next he gave out about the Irish healthcare system. The state of old-age homes in Ireland. Irish schools. Irish roads. Irish weather. Prison sentences not being hefty enough. The Taoiseach. The President. Bono. The pope's funeral. Car-clamping in the city. The price of pints. Then his complaints gave way to a more pressing issue; DIT library. Apparently, earlier today, some 'bitch librarian' charged him a €5 fine for using his mobile in the library. And then had the cheek to say his books were overdue and would he pay a €2.60 fine on them. What a poor, long-suffering young man! I almost feel sorry for him. The world is so against him and his carefree, fun-loving ways.

Bred to A Harder Thing than Triumph

I've been thinking lately about getting a few hobbies. At the moment I have very few things with which to fill my free time. Not that I have much free time of course- barely am I free from the yoke of work when I have to knuckle down to my nightly six hours of TV watching and elbow-moisturising. It is hell trying to squeeze in enough time to eat dinner or go to the bathroom, and many's the time I have been forced to scoff dinner while watching telly and not paid enough attention to the plotlines of the soaps, resulting in my completely losing focus and coming to a week later with 'Why is she crying? Is he going out with her now? What do you mean he's her long-lost son?' Pure hell.

All the same, I feel I should line up a hobby or interest to cultivate if the telly were ever to break. I only have two hobbies on the go on the moment and they are reading and drinking. Reading is great because it means you can ignore people who try to talk to you on buses. And drinking is really really great, a fact I'm sure you're aware of. You can't put it as your hobby on your CV though. You have to put 'socialising'. Drinking is not supposed to be very good for your health but you can get around this by asking a few of your friends along and calling it 'socialising'. If you're being extremely pretentious, you can call it 'networking' or 'relationship building'. Other hobbies that look good on your CV are 'languages', 'theatre', 'fine art' and 'unpaid overtime'. Hobbies that do not look good on your CV are 'petty thievery', 'Dutch erotica' and 'cleaning fingernails with keys'. Those are best kept under your hat for a while.

The problem with my hobbies lies mainly in my inability to multi-task. When your schedule is as packed as mine you have to master the art of multitasking to get things done. Often, when I am making my bed in the morning I take the opportunity to rumple the sheets and roll around in it, just because I know I may not have time to mess it up properly the next night. See? Two jobs in one. Excellent work.

When you have two hobbies like me and are dedicated to both with equal ferocity, you often can't find enough hours in the day to devote to them. Often- stupidly, dangerously- you will try to do both at once with messy results. Most of my books are horribly stained from being dropped in pints and I cannot count how many times I have fallen asleep on the bus and missed my stop because of combining reading and drinking. Reading is, on the whole, a very dull occupation and when you have had a few drinks your mind needs extremely exciting pastimes to stimulate it, like dancing like a wild stupid person or getting into fights. Reading will just not do it and you end up falling asleep, drooling and snoring all over your book. Terribly messy.

Not that how I read sober is altogether tidy. I choose a book on the basis of it's cover, flying brazenly in the face of conventional wisdom, and on how ugly the author is. I don't trust attractive people. Then I read the first few pages, get bored, skip to the ending then skim the rest of the book for rude bits. Don't even get me started on the quality of erotica you find in your modern novels! There is better stuff being written on toilet walls. Occasionally I mark parts I like with ripped up post-its. If I have no post-its I turn down page-corners. I like to write my name on the book's endpiece also, if it's a library book. I am no fool though. I write my name in Elvish so it can't be traced. During college I went through a sad Tolkien obsession and learned how to write in runic, and one of the Elvish alphabets. Every book I borrowed from UCD library I inscribed with the Elvish letter for 'L'. If I was feeling particularly idle, I wrote my full name in runic also. Before you ask, no, I didn't do exceptionally well in college.

Yielding to Popular Pressure

Right. Jenny's brother has had a baby boy. Not him personally, but Christine, his girlfriend. Apparantly, it is stunningly gorgeous and irresisistably charismatic. Like all the Kielys. Also, despite being unable to speak or move much, a nurse present at the birth has said that something in the way he looked at her seemed to imply a mighty intelligence and potential for awesome power. Sources close to the Vatican are said to be considering him for the next pope. He is also tipped to be involved in the upcoming Backstreet Boys reunion tour, so whatever he fancies really. Christine and Damien are said to be considering 'Evan'. Tuesday April 5th, if you must know; my correspondents aren't as prompt as they used be.

Pure Wrongheadedness

All is chaos and strife at my house. Last night, after Marie and Claire headed home and we all settled down to a pleasant evening watching golf with the sound turned down while Aoife played all her favourite CDs and roared at me whenever I ventured near the stereo, trouble broke out in our quiet Santry home. Burt decided (on his sixth bottle of Stella) that Aoife was no friend of his. Aoife decided (on her fourth half-pint of vodka) that Burt was no friend of hers. Burt stubbornly ignored Aoife for three more bottles then took to saying loudly 'Oh, you want to know what my problem is! What! My! Problem! Is! Ha! That's a good one!'. He commandeered the stereo and put Mario's Let me Love you (his current favourite song) on repeat, while Aoife chain-smoked and glared. David tried nervously to concentrate on the golf and Sharon wisely fell asleep. So the crisis had to be handled by Lucy. Excellent.

Burt tried a different tack; namely, patting me kindly on the knee and whispering in my ear. Trying to make Aoife jealous, you see.
'You're my real friend, aren't you, Lucy?'
'Yes, Burt.'
'Loooo-seeeeee-'
'Yes, Burt?'
'-is your name.'
'Yes.'
'Lucy, put on a song you like!'
'Aoife won't let me.'
'Lucy, d'ya know what: fuck Aoife.'

So I got to put on my current favourite song which is track one from Bloc Party's Silent Alarm, an album title that describes Burt's perturbed young face fittingly on hearing the song. Unfortunately he had to stick by me, now that he had firmly opposed Aoife in putting it on.
'This is your favourite song?' scoffed Aoife. 'This tosh?'
'I think it's brilliant.' Burt choked out, meeting Aoife's gaze defiantly.

Aoife, reduced by now from a sudden scarcity of vodka to swigging from a mug of Dutch Gold, responded in kind. She found Burt's SuperValu short break tokens, which he was stockpiling to pay for a piss-up in the summer and stuck them all over the stereo, table-cloth and dining chairs. Two hundred of them. On me too, when I went over to try and persuade her to give it up. 'I am teaching him a lesson' she ground out.

The funny thing is, neither could remember what they were arguing about. Neither can today either. Burt started it, Aoife thinks, but Burt maintains Aoife did. It is all very traumatic for me. I feel like the kid in Kramer vs Kramer. Except not so cute or blonde.

You say tomato...

Well. The rift has passed. Aoife and I have finally agreed to disagree on the meaning of 'zucchini'. I said it was the American for courgette, she said it was a type of nut. When I took the plunge and printed off the definition from the internet, she changed her tack, saying that I had claimed it was American for eggplant, so I was still wrong (In Aoife's mind, it is not that she is right, but that Lucy is perpetually wrong). This is ridiculous! I would never confuse zucchini with eggplant, mainly because I know they are both American for something. I can't rightly say what eggplant is American for but I'll venture it is not a nut. Nor 'courgette'. Is it that bulbous purple vegetable? I don't know anything anymore. I am starting to doubt my knowledge of even the simplest vegetables, which is a sad way to be.