Living for the Weekend

Today is going TERRIBLY. I am the only one in the office today and the site keeps crashing. I know what youre thinking: Lucy Aughney- internet genuis, surely? Nope. My computer skills extend to frowning at them when they are playing up and then leaving the room until they cop on and start working again. This method is (curiously) not working today. The boss is extremely frantic and ringing me every second. 'Chillax [my new favourite stupid word]' I want to say, 'It's Friday! I will be drunk in nine hours! It's all good!' I do not say this to him, naturally. Also, I have new shoes. They are terrific, all tall and strappy and even a whore would think them too tacky to wear. I, on the other hand, adore them.

Christ. The sites gone again. Fuck that, I'm going for lunch early. WHO'S AROUND TO STOP ME, EH???

High Standards

Scene: Lucy's Mother's kitchen. Dinner is served. Lucy and Mother are seated at kitchen table eating. Bored looking cocker spaniel sleeps in the corner.

Lucy:...yeah, so, Jenny Len's young fella gave me a lift home last night-
Mother: Jenny has a boyfriend?
Lucy: Yeah, I told you that, I thought- Ross, he's LOVELY.
Mother: Hmmpfh.
L: What?
M: Nothing.
L: What was that noise for?
M: Nothing.
L: Right, so-
M: It's just that I was thinking about how neither you and Sally have boyfriends.
L: Neither do you, to be fair.

M: That's different.
L: How, exactly?
M: It just is. Why DON'T ye have boyfriends, though?
L: Hummpfh.
M: What?
L: I dunno, do I.
M: Too fussy, I expect. Too high standards.
L: Ha!
M: No, I meant with Sally. You're hardly beating them off, are you. Dunno what's wrong with you, actually.

Now. She would NEVER say this to Sally. Mainly because Sally spends more time on her appearance than the Egyptians did on the pyramids and to insult her would be to question the entire concept of hard work and perseverence paying off one day. Point is, I have to get cracking on this boyfriend thing before she writes me off as a dyke and leaves all her money to Sally's future children.

I recant

That's it. I am calling off all barbeques. Jenny has just alerted me to the fact that if I host a barbeque I am expected to a) buy food; b)pay for it myself; c)stay sober enough to cook it without setting fire to my hair. NO DEAL. I was envisioning a big soulful get-together with loads of good-looking people bringing their own tasty food and me break-dancing. Sort of like a KFC ad essentially. Not loads of dodgy looking people (AKA my social circle) sitting around my garden drinking cans of cider and me being stuck in the kitchen cooking charred burgers on the grill because I can't work the barbeque. So don't turn up at my gaff expecting this. It's not happening. Instead, I will buy one tube of pringles and get drunk on warm beer and lie on my back lawn. Like every other weekend. Party down!

Biggie speaks

My sister and I are so cute. On Saturday when we were working together we came up with these adorable nicknames for each other. I'm Biggie and she's Smalls. Using them involves a lot of shrieking 'High five, Biggie!' and 'Right on, Smalls!'. It's ADORABLE. Speaking of the blonde one, I cleverly got out of getting her a birthday present a few weeks back by promising a night out on the town for her and her mate, Jenny. I assumed they'd be too thick to manage to figure out the bus timetable. Do not second-guess determined teenagers when the promise of free alcohol is on the table, is what I've learned this week. They are coming up to visit with me next Friday, which, believe it or not is a special day in my house. Well, in my head, at least.

On August fifth, 2005, I will officially be celebrating the one year anniversary of my blog. It is very significant and noteworthy. So significant and noteworthy that I have decided to throw open the doors of my spacious and attractive home to all comers. Well, not all comers obviously. Only those who have received an invite may enter the hallowed portal of my chateau. So, if you haven't got an invite by now, you're out of the loop. GET OVER IT, LOSER. Please come bearing drink and gifts. I (may) prepare eats. Haven't decided yet. If I do, they will most likely be comprised of whatever I have in the cupboard. If you do not enjoy rice cakes with ketchup, scallions or cupasoup, bring a dish of something yourself.

Beware catchy riffs

Apparently, my new favourite song [The Kooks- Eddies Gun] is about premature ejaculation. Why did no one tell me this? I must have sounded an awful idiot singing it all weekend.

In which I have lived like a foot

If I don't watch out, I will have worked myself into something of an eccentric. Yesterday, while Tramore was being unceremoniously swallowed by the sea and spat at by gallons and gallons of rain, I belted myself into a huge turqoise raincoat and rolled up my trousers round my shins.

'Where are you going?' Asked Sally uncertainly.
'Work,' I said cheerfully, 'It's raining don't you know.'
'Yeeeess, but get a taxi or something, don't walk down town like that.'
'It's fifteen minutes down the road! I only get taxis when I am drunk and I can safely say that I am probably not drunk now.'

'But...' she paused and looked at me desperately, 'It's lashing out and you... have your trousers rolled up around your knees.'

'So they won't get wet, silly' I answered, slipping an apple into my pocket.

'Yeh, but...' She stared at me for a minute. Realisation dawned 'cross her pretty features. 'You actually don't care what you look like at all, do you?'

The fact that my sister is only realising this now shows she hasn't been paying attention to me for much of her life.

My lily feet are soiled with mud

For the past two hours I have been ringing estate agents in Galway city and county to find out the name of their senior negotiator in residential sales so we can send them on brochures. I know you may have formed the opinion that I, Lucy Aughney, am brilliant at everything. Not so, friends. The time has come for me to admit it: I am painfully, cripplingly, embarrassingly shy.

I know what you are thinking: What a surprise to find a socially inept person on the internet! And writing a blog, no less! But it's true.

Here's how it was supposed to go: I was supposed to ring the number of each agent, ask for the name of their residential sales representitive, they would give it to me and I would ring off. Easy. The first number I dialled was a fax machine. Grand, try again. The second time I accidentally dialled through to our reception. And the third. At this point my fingers were sweating and sliding off the buttons. CHILL. On my fourth go I got through to a surly girl who claimed they didn't accept direct mailings. On my fifth a woman asked could I hang on for a minute then proceeded to discuss her digestive problems with someone at her desk. On my sixth I rang a fax machine again. Then I hung up and hyperventilated for five minutes solid, pausing only to vomit into the pot plant by my desk.

I am cool now, though. First of all, I reduced the number of calls I had to make by discounting all agents with offices in Tuam because it is a well-known and widely acknowledged fact that all Tuam-dwellers are insane, monkey-featured idiots (It's alright! No one from Tuam will read this because Tuam doesn't get the internet!). I have managed to limit my anxious behaviour to compulsive head slapping and vague self-insults muttered under my breath. Yes, you would LOVE to share office space with me. Don't lie.

The downside of saving the human race

Some things they don't tell you till it's too late. Like, as you are sliding off the padded chair, clutching your wrist under your chin, delighted with yourself for giving blood and indescribably proud of the two inch plaster adorning the inside of your elbow, the nurse calls out: 'Now, no alcohol for 24 hours. And no smoking for two hours.'

Ahem? I didn't sign up for this.

Christ, I'm dull

Hard-Fi- Gotta Reason
Bloc Party- Pioneers
Sinead O'Connor- Emperors New Clothes
Maximo Park- Going Missing
Hot Hot Heat- Something to go on
We are Scientists- Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt
Nellie McKay- Really
White Stripes- My Doorbell

Straight out of nowhereness, like a fist

Hard-Fi have been nominated for this year's Mercury music prize!

We are all, naturally, delighted. The band have officially thanked me for being there from the start. Then lead singer Richard Archer asked me to marry him and write all the songs for his next album. How did I respond? I blushed girlishly as I am wont to do when I receive proposals from people I have never met before, then declined. I am NOT that easily persuaded. Whatever anyone else might have told you.

Seriously, though- what were the lads making out the nominations thinking? Hard-fi are NOT that great. Some of their stuff is downright tosh. Like album tracks 6 and 8 through 11. Twos not too hot neither. And Burt has decided they are his new favourite band. This, more than anything, spells their downfall. From a review of Hard-Fi's Cash Machine at cdtimes.co.uk:

"In the suburban jungle, boys live a life of drunken binges, summer holidays for sun bathing, good times with mates, and occasional public urination."

They ARE Burt. The CD was practically made for him. Prepare thyself to witness the death of music, brothers.

I Think I Smell A Rat

I have just heard a rumour that Jack White married the red-headed model [Karen Elson is her name apparently. I doubt the veracity of this though. I mean, Karen! Who's called Karen nowadays?] from his Blue Orchid video in Brazil last week. A REDHEAD. I mean,...? I may have to recant all my previous pledges of love and devotion if he persists in acting in such a reckless and downright stupid manner. What WAS he thinking? Does he want to perpetuate the race or summat?

Good News!

I am now down to five cigarettes a day. This is fantastic. Of course, this number rises considerably if I am drinking, or if I am around my mother as it annoys her hugely and I love to do that. My other addictions are way up though. Checking of my Gmail account has risen to 400 times daily, even though I only receive about seven emails a day, including crappy newsletters I signed up to at one point because I thought they'd be interesting*. Sometimes, I am so desperate I am forced to read these. Desperate times. Also, because of my jam-packed hectic weekend and frantic Harry Potter consumption into the wee hours, I am extremely tired all the time and frequently doze off mid-conversation**. In response to this, my coffee consumption is up to five cups a day. Yikes. For someone who never drank coffee before a year ago, this is worrying. I also began full-time employment just over a year ago. Lesson: Working breeds dependencies on addictive substances. Word.


*These newsletters include Keane's fan listing, Hemscott stock market predictions, The Economist daily politics, business and telecommunications briefings, and MCD events updates. DON'T ASK.
**Blatant lie. I don't have conversations with anyone any more, not since my topics for discussion became strictly limited to 'I am so upset about the mysterious death in Harry Potter. Discuss' and 'I am so tired- did I tell you I slept in a car Saturday night?'

Lucy organises your evenings for you

Tomorrow you are watching The Restaurant on RTE 1 at 8.30pm. My uncle's on it. Apparently, he was pissed off cos he got given the same score as Enda Kenny. Dunno why. Enda is a great man, in my opinion.

You don't seem to come around, push your finger and make a sound

I am sick to death of this whole Harry Potter crap. So what if it's sold eight million books; the point surely is that I still don't have a copy. It's in stinkin' Annie's house. So I haven't read it yet. And yet I know how the crappy thing ends [mysterious death revealed to Lucy insensitively by mother on phone yesterday. Mysterious murderer discovered when Lucy ignores Linus' careful spoiler warnings on latest blog post].

In fact, I probably don't need to read it. I have guessed who that mysterious RAB is at the end [Gleaned when Lucy flicked to the last page of the book in Centra buying croissants yesterday morning]. In a hilarious twist, it is actually dishevelled Scotch drunk, Rab C Nesbitt!

...?

God, I'm good. Bet I'm right.

I WANT TO READ THE FUCKING BOOK! WHY THE FUCK DO I NOT HAVE IT YET? I WANT IT NOW!

My veracity is dearer to me than my life, said the peasant; nor would I purchase the one by forfeiting the other

Though it may seem that I am on a fierce mission to remove every suggestion of principled or ethical behaviour from my person, I must tell you that I occasionally give way and reveal my soft centre. I always cry at the Concern ads on the telly, for instance. Well, once. And I was slightly tipsy at the time. And I feel REALLY bad lying to winos when they ask me do I have a spare cigarette. Really. Today though I was stretched to the outer limits of my moral... well, limits. On my way out to buy my lunch I stumbled across a crisp orange fifty Euro note on the landing. Though I am almost always broke (and not infrequently drunk- the two are related only vaguely), I did not keep the booty* but instead handed it in to the surly receptionist at our front desk. 'Oh. Thanks.' she muttered, pocketing the note. The bitch probably kept it for herself. Slag.

See? Incorruptible, so I am.

*Only after a lengthy struggle with my inner demons. 'Take it! they screamed, 'you can get druuuunk!' 'No!' squealed my conscience, 'it is wrong!' In the end I ignored them all and reasoned that it could be some kind of horrible Candid Camera prank and I would be shamed nationwide as a theiving pinchpenny. That, my friends, is called 'logical thinking'.

C3 in the Leaving Cert

Mon Dieu! Je oubliee la journee Bastille. Tres mauvais. J'adore le frenchies avec tout ma personne, vraiment. Aussi, j'adore parler le francais. La vacation. Sur la plage. Je voudrais une vacation sur la plage mais je travail dans une bureau tous les jours. Quel domage! Aussi, j'adore le cuisine de france. Les baguettes! Les gens de France sont tres gentile, je crois. La annee dernier, je... aller... a Paris...

[Oh fuck it. Fucking past tense got me in the Leaving Cert too.]

Vive le France!

Tenuous

According to Gunne Auctioneers' website:

"Like Paris before it, Irishtown is in a period of renaissance at the moment"

Irishtown. And Paris. Are similar. I shit you not.

You had a dirty look, you caught me on your hook

1: Lead singer in HARD-Fi
2: Mike Skinner (The Streets)
3: Jack White
4: Tim something-or-other, keyboard player from Keane
5: Pete Doherty

How girlish of me. Joanne and I spent yesterday afternoon exchanging angry emails over who the most fanciable men in music were. Oh God. I can't believe I just wrote the words 'most fanciable'. At least I didn't say 'most shaggable' or something vile like that. We'll move on.

Anyway, Joanne is with me on the Mike Skinner thing and the Tim from Keane thing but she has dismissed Jack White for being too high maintainence. We almost came to blows, or at least hissy fits, over Pete Doherty. While I find him enchanting in an utterly doomed and tragicly beautiful way, Joanne feels that 'that complete waste of human skin should be shot, not famous.'

But oh, I love the HARD-Fi. Please God let them not turn out to be this year's Athelete or I will weep pitiously and long. Whenever I hear Hard to Beat on the radio I have to lie down flat on the floor to control my breathing. Honestly. There isn't many pieces of music that affect me so drastically. I can actually feel my heart speed up.

Good grief. I disgust myself. I'm off to beat up a dog and/or practice spitting. I'm getting much too soft for my own good.

Maturity beckons (for some)

Because of the terrific response I got to my birthday declaration to Ashling last week*, I have decided in the interests of the already exhausted forests of the world to eschew all future card-sending and just give people a post-it on their birthday with my web address on. Here's another: Happy 22nd Donna (Sunday) and Joanne (yesterday)! I know, I'm brilliant. You're welcome!

*Actual conversation:
Lucy: Did you see your birthday present?
Ashling: Ooh, did you get me one then?
Lucy: Certainly did! A birthday announcement on my blog!
Ashling: Oh. Right. No gift tokens, no?

Judge Roy Beans: Big disappointment

Judge Roy Beans has gone way down hill. I know that now all the Trinity heads have headed off on J1s and on backpacking adventures round Thailand it is sadly depopulated by it loylest devotees (a circumstance I am well glad of, let me tell you) but it remains a sad shadow of it's former self.

It is now part of the Porterhouse chain from what I can make out and they have done away with all the cowboy decor, the American Indian accessories and the unhealthily expansive cocktail list. Vile sounding traditional pub grub is offered in place of the gooey Tex mex grub of happier days and the ugly stag head by the door is gone. Even the grimy black pine has been painted over with white gloss and the walls are covered in teeny Yeats prints. Utterly vague and insipid. I am gutted. The pints are rotten as well. I will stay well clear in future. Bah.

On the other hand Pamela C. from Tramore is working behind the bar. So I could wangle free drinks maybe! I can forget all my principles in the face of a free drink.

Lucy: Style Queen

What is going on? On my way in this morning I passed two Garda checkpoints on Thomas Street and Meath Street. I only barely avoided interrogation for my lack of a tax disc! Thank God I am not a car and therefore do not need motor tax. In other news, today I am wearing a navy waistcoat. I am the Irish Kate Moss! Obviously I am not wearing it with the bare bosom or the denim hotpants because I do not have the bodacious bod of Ms Moss. Neither am I an alleged crack addict. But what that has to do with Ms Moss I couldn't say.

Too Lazy to Post

6 songs:

Answering Bell- Ryan Adams
Train in Vain- The Clash
The Denial Twist- White Stripes
What Doesn't Belong to Me- Sinead O'Connor
July- Mundy [Apt, I feel]
Born to be a Dancer- Kaiser Chiefs

Worst Pun of the Week

Overheard by Aoife in the throng right before the Killers' set on Sunday:

'What's all the hot fuss about?'

Make no noise: no tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move

I texted C as soon as I heard, which was rather late as it happened as I wasn't listening to the radio yesterday morning. She rang me just before one to say she was heading home to sleep as she was being moved to the night shift to cope with the large numbers of casualties. C works as a radiographer in a hospital in central London. Last night she emailed me this:

'Completely anti-climactical though for all our preparation-its really quiet now not many patients. Just met the minister for state-she popped round to say thanks! Its all a bit surreal though -we ve ben realising how close we are to where the bombs went off. Also been updated about the patients we x-rayed this morning- there was some amputations and stuff so not v nice. No one died here though so that's good.

'I ve x-rayed one girl who got off the tube after one explosion - [she] got on a bus and it was the bus that exploded. She was sitting on the top deck but only had some glass in her hand. How amazingly lucky.'

Aoife texted her brother who works in London yesterday morning to check he was okay. He failed to text her back till late last night, when he was out in the pub, and making slightly premature jokes about bombs. 'Hyped up on the heady relief of being alive,' I suggested gravely. 'No', sighed Aoife, 'He's just locked.'

My father has refused to ring his sister and brother in law who live in East London because 'they never travel in the city centre' and he 'never normally rings them anyway'. One would have thought that their home city being bombed was impetus enough to review the traditional norms of communication with one's family, but what do I know. I realise, by the way, that all this meloncholia sounds overly dour and false coming out of my usually trite and flippant gob, so, following in the Aughney family tradition I think I'll call a halt to it now and stop because I never normally talk like this anyway. And I'm not one to change my ways just because of world events.

Humphna-huh!

On those rare occasions when I manage to make it to work not only on time but before time, I like to dash off a quick email to a few of my peeps to impress them with my work ethic at hitting the office at 8.30am. Nothing huge, often just a laid back 'Yo, 'zup, homie? Nothing new here, just checkin'. Peace out.' See? Really casual. Sometimes I ring my mother, even though she's not in work 'till ten, just to alert her to the fact that I, her daughter, am early for work. I see it as just return on her hounding me out the door for school at nine for fourteen years.

This morning, however, I just lay down on the floor and moaned softly for ten minutes. I am VERY tired. I stayed up late watching the concert at Murrayfield ("Humphna-huh! Ah-huh ah-huh Papa's gotta bran' new baaaag!" That was my James Brown impression.) and boy, was it great. That Jamie Callum guy I REALLY like. And hands up who hasn't been waiting for the Boomtown Rats to reform? Personally, I was moved to tears when McFly sang their breakout hit 'It's All About You'. If that doesn't help to end world poverty then I don't know what will.

By the way, I am aware that half-past one is not really late for genuine swingers like yourself, but it is for me. And that's really the only reason I need when it's my blog.

Do not read while eating raisins

I am desperately unhappy. While wandering aimlessly round the internet in the manner of a drunk whory girl in a nightclub who has lost all her friends, I discovered a whispering about a special Josh Ritter gig to be played in Whelans of Wexford Street on Friday, prior to his set at Oxegen on the weekend. Naturally, I reacted violently and immediately, namely by screeching 'Whaaaaaaaat?' and dropping the raisins I had been eating down my top. Said gig is sold out anyway, and my entire chest area smells like dried fruit. How blue- making.

Joanne digs a hole for herself

'Oh my god,

'Your blog now makes me sound like a complete looser. Ah well. There ghosts wont catch themselves. Really though, you should see the size and speed of the orb.

'Just incase you dont know, an orb is a light anomalie which cannot be explaned. Eg: Its not a reflection from the torch, its not an insect scuttering by and its not a particle of dust. This is proven by a series of high tech camera close ups and stills. I dont have that facility but I KNOW in my HEART that I caught an orb.'

Ghostbusters

Inspired by overdosing on episodes of Most Haunted, Joanne and the A-Man went on a ghost hunting mission around the backroads of Meath with her parents' camcorder. Here's the lowdown:

'Hi Lucy!!

'You missed the action last night. Ooooh, very spooky indeed.

'We actually couldn't find the haunted well, but we drove down a very spooky lane. Caught nothin there. Then we went to the Esso cos the A-man wanted smokes. Then we went down the notorious Bush Lane. Popular with randy couples the county over.

'So we parked up at the old graveyard and pointed the camera in at the headstones. The only vaguely spooky thing about this is that if you squinted, the headstones looked like menacing figures. But they werent menacing figures, they were lumps of stone. So we got out of the car. I went first with the camera, very blair witch actually. Then for the craic I did the snottery thing into it. A-Man told me to shut up cos I was killing the mood.

'So then we thought we heard something so we ran to the car. THEN I caught an orb!!!! I swear to god! So cool I have to show it to you!'

An Aside

8 songs:

For Lovers- Pete Doherty
Oh My God- Kaiser Chiefs
Hard to Beat- Hard-Fi
Fix You- Coldplay
No Brakes- Declan O'Rourke
Miss Ohio- Gillian Welch
Bedshaped- Keane
The Good Old Days- The Libertines

Where will YOU be this weekend?

Care to venture a guess about what will be Ireland's musical highlight of the summer? U2 last weekend? Oxegen? Bud Rising? Slane (Oh, please)? You'd be wrong, friend! In actual fact, the most hotly anticipated musical event of this year will be taking place THIS weekend in the South East, in the picturesque seaside town of Tramore, County Waterford. That's right, it's the Trafest time of year!

A major date on any music lover's calender, this year is shaping up to be the best yet!* The full line-up for Trafest 2005 is available at musiklab.net and let me tell you, it is thrilling. I swear, I have literally never heard of ANY of them. Except the Saw Doctors, who are Ireland's best loved Western rednecks.

Some advice for Trafest virgins: It really doesn't matter where you go this weekend, you WILL end up in the Baldy Man by the end of the night. C'est inévitable. You will also almost definitely end up eating a kebab on a dirty street corner and singing Beyonce songs. (Or is that just me...) So you should just choose a music venue near it. Because Tramore is pretty much one square mile in it's entirety, proximity to other places is pretty much a given, wherever you are. C'est tres logical. Also, Tramore has almost no street names, at least none that anyone uses so you should just refer to different parts of it by mentioning a pub nearby.

Tonight I am going to Murphs to see Kyzer Soze, but this is just because they don't mind me roaring along to all the Chilli Pepper covers they do. If I had any sense I would go to see Robert O’Connor and The Bearded Ladies in the Shanty. Mainly because I am a huge fan of facial hair on women but also because local rag the Munster Express said that they:

'are forging an upward path in the Irish music industry with a sound that is uniquely their own.'

Mega.


*Blatant lie.