2008: The Year of the Kennys

What in the name of all things holy are you doing on the internet superhighway, tonight of all nights?? Good God, have you no shame?! Do you not realise what tonight is? It's Jigs and Reels 07! The television show that celebrates the art of Irish dance and cretinism of Irish celebrities! What ARE you doing? Get thee to thy television and vote! Only for my uncle Jon obvs, or I'll move you to my naughty list. And tomorrow? Tomorrow, when you clutch your tummy and head and moan for relief? Why, you're watching Living the Dream, natch! What else?!

If you're reading this on Wednesday because you slept through the entire new year festivities, s'okay! There's still hope for you! I came up with that title you know. Where are my royalty cheques, you ask? Where indeed, friends.

Topless and ashamed

Today I had a driving lesson and a pre-employment medical examination. One of these occasioned the removal of my upper layers of clothing. GUESS WHICH ONE.

No, but seriously, besides the unexpected breast check, which was totally the most intimate I've ever been with another human being whilst sober, I managed to fuck things up on a whole other freakish level. Returning from the bathroom, tester pot of wee in hand, I noticed a stray hair on my left hand and went all frowny. What to do? I was holding the wee in that hand. Dial D for Dilemma! If only I could get that stray hair off my wrist without anyone seeing how messy and scruffy and covered with goddamned hairs I was... but how to do it? So I scuffed my hand angrily against the side of my cardigan and went 'ugh' loudly and stuck my hand out in front of me in disgust. And looked up to see the nurse staring at me.

So I handed her the wee and made a big deal of praising the liquid soap in the bathroom so she would not go home and tell her family and friends about the 'ugh' girl who went to get a urine sample and came back wiping her hands on her jumper. I am not that girl.

Lucy: Now with music!

I think we can all safely say that I am a musical person. I mean, I read Mojo, when I see it lying around in someones house or something, and I buy albums. Sometimes they're not even in the top 30! But that's me, I'm just very, very creative. And, um, into music. So when I got the opportunity to learn guitar, I jumped at it. Well, two weeks later I jumped at it, cos the first Tuesday I was working and the second Tuesday I was just really tired. Guitar playing is shit-easy, alls you need is a guitar and fingers. I broke into Marie's house* and stole her guitar, which has an interesting provenance you might want to hear about some day and then when you hear about it you will sigh and be sorry you cared enough to stay conscious long enough to hear about it.

Mainly, we learn the chords. I say mainly but that's a lie, because mainly we listen to my teacher, Pascal, bang on about how you have to want to learn guitar, and you can't learn it for anybody else you have to learn it for yourself. Whatevs, man, I just want to learn some riffs so I can impress at parties. Then Pascal knocks out some hip tunes just to show us all what we can learn, eventually. But no time soon, no no. Maybe next year. Maybe 2011. But the guitar is a lifelong thing. 'You never stop learning,' says Pascal, 'look at me, sixty in June and I'm still learning.'

Pascal took one look at Marie's guitar, which is streaked with wax thanks to her fondness for candles and lots of 'em, and said it had a crooked neck and needed to be restrung as the strings are black and dirty and inhibit my magical strumming. So I borrowed one off my Dad's girlfriend Bridget, and it turned out to be super-fantastic. A) because it's a Yamaha and is 'a very good guitar', according to Pascal, but more importantly I feel because b) it comes in one of those hard, black cases that gangsters carry their guns round in. Everyone else in the class has those crappy-looking padded-nylon cases which you could never ever carry a gun round in.

Pascal says we are a very advanced class, but Pascal is used to teaching ten year olds so what does he know. I'm a few weeks behind everyone else because I started late but I don't let that stop me. Nor do I let the strange buzzes my strings make when I touch them bother me. As Pascal says my fingering is excellent. Which, as far as I can make out, is kind of like saying 'well done on not dropping the guitar!' Unfortunately, Pascal also thinks I should slow down and just learn two chords a week to everyone else's three cos 'everyone's different. In every class in every school in the world there's the brainy girl or boy and the child that has to go a little slower. It doesn't mean anything; it just means everyone's different. But everyone's the same, Lucy. Do you get me?'

So, yeah. Looks like I'm the retard of the class.

*Well, if you consider calling into her mother and asking her politely could I borrow Marie's guitar as stealing. Which I do. I'm hard!

Aaargh!

We booked our Christmas party! Pure craziness! I had nothing to do with it, I prefer pints and chips to roulade and jus and confit, thank you very much. Or 'culinary sparks', to give them their correct term. The words 'demure simplicity' and 'genuine and understated hospitality' should never be bandied about when recommending a venue for a party. If I had my way, all parties in the universe would involve karaoke, fancy dress, Rock the Boat, drinking games and bowls of crisps. And pinatas. And duvets to sit on. I don't know why, but duvets say fun to me. I am an acquired taste.

UPDATE: Just thought you should know that this is the library Christmas party. And when I say 'you should know' I mean you, Marie Connolly. And don't fucking ring me, all drunk, and question why you have to go to some big house in Lismore for your Christmas party. You're not invited to every fucking party going, Connolly. And also, maybe lay off the midweek boozing sessions. You alcos disgust me.

In which my area of expertise is pinned down

Joanne, our archivist, asked for my assistance on a query this afternoon. I know. Crazy, right? After I stilled my quivering nerves, I went into her office where she had this big old map pulled up on her screen. 'Right', she said, 'I need you to tell me where Doneraile Place is in Tramore.'
'Uh, is it not near, like, the Doneraile?'
'No, it isn't actually or I wouldn't be asking you. Come here and show me it here on the map.'

'Wow! Cool map!' I said. 'Where'd you get that?'
'... Lucy, it's the one of the nineteenth century OSI maps we have on our website. Please stop being an idiot.'
'Oh really? That is downright amazing, Joanne! So, when all those people come in looking for online maps this is what they mean?'
'Yes, I suppose so. Why, what did you think they meant? What do you show them?'
'Uh, Google Earth?'
'No. These would be what they are looking for.'
'Uh-huh. Great. I'll try and remember that.'

'Lucy? Will you show me Doneraile Place now please?'
'Well, Joanne, it's pretty hard. I mean, that there is just a load of boxes and some dead person's shaky hand-writing about farms. How can I figure that one out?'
'Well, can you make out where it would generally be so?'
'I dunno...'

'Look,' she said, 'here's a newer one, with water mains. How about now?'
'Uh-huh, I see what you're trying to get at here. But these are all just street names. I don't know Tramore by it's street names. No one knows Tramore by it's street names. No offence, but street names are for nerds.'
'Right.'
'I know! Have you got a map with all the pubs marked in? Then I could figure it out!'

Blogging the Radisson!

Maries asleep! Shhhh!

We are in the Radisson Limerick. I can't explain why; it's too complex and I'm waaaay too drunk. Apparently, I'm not too drunk to use semi-colons and sixteen vowels to emphasise a point. AMAZING. I always suspected I was a pretentious punctuator.

The big news here is, of course, that when you arrive home and your hotel has a room service menu that runs twenty-four hours, they don't actually serve you your savoury roast beef sandwich at 4am, cos the kitchen is closed. And then, when you put on a funny posh voice and ring down again to ask for the sandwich again ten minutes later they will say, 'no, the kitchen is closed. I told you that ten minutes ago.'

Also, if you stay in a posh hotel with a girl, taxi drivers will assume you are gay together and point out gay bars on the way into town. Just sayin'. For future reference, guys.

Look what I done!

Roaar, I'm a crazy bitch! Kilmacthomas is really dull, okay?

Schizo? Or...brilliant?

Ladies and gents, I would call your attention to these pictures you see before you, hereafter entered into evidence:

EXHIBIT A

X-ZIBIT B

You see before you, my friends, evidence that on the day of the nineteenth of June, 2007, the defendant did neglect to correctly close the front right window of her automobile and she did abandon her vehicle for over twenty-four hours, and upon that day, four thousand inches of rain did fall in the county of Waterford. I will draw your attention if I may, to the full inch of water collected in the little groove-thingy in the driver's door-handle, evident so clearly in exhibit A; also to the quite blatantly rain-flecked appearance of the car's interior. Not pictured is the extremely wet (I might go so far as to say saturated) driver's seat cushions, neither the curiously vile smell of wet foam mingling with the cola-scented Wallace and Gromit in-car air freshener. Available for your inspection upon application is the defendant's wet ass-

I object! The prosecution is inferring that I have a wet ass by rule, and that I did wet that ass in a manner unseemly to grown adults normally in full control of their bodily functions!

I merely stated that the defendant did, on the aforementioned evening, sit upon these rain-sodden car cushions, the cushions rain-soaked by her own negligence, and then did proceed to walk around in public view with a wet ass, with little thought to what innocent members of the public would think of seeing such an ass. I ask you here today, are these the actions of a sane, well-adjusted, competent individual? Are they? Are they?

...

Objection overruled.

Thank you, your Honour. I will proceed. I also suggest to you today that on the evening of the seventeenth of June, the defendant did leave her automobile overnight in the public car-park of a town notorious for drunken carousing from the some of the commonest, coarsest people in the island of Ireland. She left this poor car, my friends, with the doors unlocked. Not one door, but all four.

BurbleburbleburbleGoodGod!Burbleburbleburble

Quiet in the courtroom! Counsel, illuminate me on one fact: What is this town you speak of, this den of vice and sin and all things abhorrent to an honest man?

Tramore, your Honour.

BurbleburbleburbIIIIIEEEEEE!!-

Guards! Take that fainting woman away!

If I may continue-?

You may, but take heed not to speak such profane words in my courtroom again.

I apologise. It is fortunate, ladies and gentleman, that we live in a kinder, gentler world than the foul actions of this pitiful wretch might suggest. Because on this evening, when her automobile lay open to the four winds, open like the private diary of a young girl, plundered for it's tenderly-trusted secrets by her cruel and insensitive brother, open like a mysterious door at the end of a dark and gloomy corridor that you shouldn't be in, open like the 24 hour Tesco on the Ardkeen road, open like a-

You digress, oh-esteemed-member-of-the-legal-profession.

That I do, your Honour: such is the HEINOUSITY [newly invented word, as the English language does not possess words enough to suffice in this occasion] of this crime that I am forced by my own fragile and shocked mind to spout such ridiculous garbage. ... I can only thank God, and the good work of the much-praised and tireless Garda Siochana, that no petty thief expressed any interest in the twenty-six empty cigarette boxes, , the broken cassette tapes, the damp swimsuit and beach towel, the banana peels-

I OBJECT! There is only one banana peel in my car! Any extra banana peels found therein were planted by a malevolent person or persons unknown in an evil attempt to besmirch my character!

Young lady! I will not have such behaviour in my courtroom! Sit down and keep quiet! And put your top back on. That won't cut it, not this time.

May I continue, your Honour?

First, I would like to ask you a question regarding this hideous tale you recount to us today. Are you telling me that this individual, this feckless and moronic tool of Satan, this shifty character with a seemingly non-existent knowledge or regard for car maintenance or safety, has at some point operated an automobile on an open road? A road with people on it?!

Your Honour, she has operated this vehicle on the open road, and continues to do so to this day.

BurbleburbleburbleburbleOfAllTheNerve!Burbleburbleburbleburble

Silence! Silence in this courtroom, I say!

Out on the Wild Windy Moors

I have generally negative affection for children. Oh yes, they adore me and flock to my side, as does every human person equipped with a heart and the ability to appreciate pure loveliness, but on an individual basis I'm kinda shit. It's their soulless, dead eyes that get me most. I can't talk to things that won't talk back, and the under twos and the shy-feigning under fives get me most. 'How old are you, then?' I will say to a small person. Nothing. Maybe a bit of drool or something but for conversational purposes, zilch. 'Thirteen weeks' their proud parent will say which gives me even less because what serious person gauges age in weeks? For example, I am 1247 weeks old. What does this mean? Absolutely nothing. If I tell you I am getting drunk next Wednesday to celebrate the 24th anniversary of the conclusion of my mothers first pregnancy, what do you know now? EXACTLY.

A young man and his mother came into my place of work (a pharmacy, today. Tomorrow, who knows? I don't!) because she couldn't afford toys. Or a babysitter. Oh, yeah, she pretended it was to buy hydro cortisone cream for his eczema (btw, do all babies have eczema? Seems like it. Gross) but really it was because she is cheap and bored of watching him smash her house up. The tyke took off careening round the shop, grabbing at anything that was of interest to him (which, since he is about 18 months old is anything that is three dimensional or coloured). I turned a blind eye, because in my experience one is generally supposed to find other people's children delightful no matter what they do, so eyes must be turned blindly, even when they start shitting up everything they can reach.

Until the fucker ran right into the shop window and started stomping on the Berocca display. Hell no. Do you know how long it took me to get those posters hanging straight? 'Shaaaaane' sighed his mother as he started to scream, having discovered that a)the shop window is ten inches wide and impossible to turn around in, b)THERE IS NO WAY OUT and OMG, cars rushing past outside the glass! You, the average, sane individual may be perturbed by the shrill cries of a toddler stuck in a glass corridor, but she, inexplicably, was not.

So it was up to your hero to rescue the little rascal. I thrust aside the Max Factor stand and elbowed my way through last month's Nicorette display, hitting my head on a glass shelf in the process. What I don't do...

'Shane' I said softly to the grubby-cheeked ball of chub sitting on a busted Vichy posterboard, who was working hard to scrub snotty tears deeper into his blotchy red cheeks. 'Maaaaa!' he whimpered back, and threw his filthy claws up to me, greyish tears tracking cleanly down his three chins. 'Maaaaa!' was the cry that went directly to Lucy's empty uterus. But, yeah, I didn't do biology in school so it was probably just my stomach grumbling.

...

Dude, I melted.

I lured him out by shaking a bottle of Looney Tunes bubble bath in front of him then soothed him and petted his scabby little brow until he could draw a deep, grief-stricken breath. 'Good boy!' I exclaimed. 'Who's a good boy? Shane's a good boy!' Then I patted his head. Dogs and children are pretty much the same in my book.

By the time I handed the young vandal back to his indifferent mother, he had cried a thousand years of snotty woe on to my shirt. Heaving the wordless hulk under her arm, she left. I watched them go and my ovaries pinged into overdrive. I wanted me a Shane! I wanted a grimy lump of baby to wipe goo off and snuggle! Just as I was headed off to pick up an ovulation kit and find me some manseed, I spotted the Cortopin sitting on the counter. 'Martina, that woman forgot her cream!' I said to my boss.

'Oh no,' said she, 'it wasn't eczema at all. They're headed to the doctors now; I think his scabby things are chicken pox.

'By the way, you have phlegm on your shoulder.'

'Isn't it so me? Isn't it more me than it's ever been?'

I wanted:


Crossed with:

I got:
Blame my horrendous forlocked brow if you will; I'll continue to shake my fist at the heavens and curse the day I offended the Gods by murdering Alison Moyet's Weak in the Presence of Beauty at Christmas Kareoke. Or something. The list is getting a bit long for me to carry around by now.

Why isn't everything the way it is on MTV?

-is the title of my debut album. Visceral and challenging, it raises pertinant questions concerning modern life, pop culture and humanity's obsession with the commercial in, uh, modern life. Tentative release date May 2008, depending on my recording commitments.

OMG, so much happened! Ultimately, I can't share with you these happenings because on closer inspection, they proved to be of the mundane and joy-killing type. And in case this is your first visit to a blog, mundane joy-kills are soooo not what blogs are about. They're all about the sexy, fierce, MEGA stuff. Like 'Now, I am a man' or 'Lately, I've been experimenting with bisexuality. Alone'. Not 'Recently, I got a totally fugly haircut. That hairdresser is so dead. But I won't actually do anything about it cos I think she may be mad at me for getting off with her brother, like, hello! years ago!' or 'Have I told you yet about the mildly amusing anecdote regarding a briefly mislaid wallet? No?! Sit down, pull up a bean-bag! The ending is vaugely anti-climactical but you won't even notice because you'll have drifted off!'.

Stay tuned for multi-various incidents of fun, recounted here as soon as I can fabricate them!

Where is the Love? Here is the love! Show me the love!

Get your own valentinr

Was the five o'clock shadow there before?

I honestly don't know where I find the time to do things like this, what with the three jobs and the hectic social life and all (Social life? Where? Catch it!), but somehow I managed to squeeze it in between cleaning my laptop keys and de-linting the washing machine. I give you this. And these, the results. Or, as I like to call it, 'Lucy, if...'. You may call it Ugly-Picture-Post, I don't care. But know that if you do, I won't love you quite as much as I do the other kids.



Here I am, the original hottie. Yes, yes, I know; my beauty has sent you into a tailspin of depression. I get that a lot. There's a reason I'm known around these parts as 'Tramore's resident Goddess'. Also 'Tramore's favourite whory daughter' but that's only in certain very distasteful circles.

Now: Baby Lucy!


Zoinks!, as everyone's favourite dog-detective would say. The cuteness is giving your cavities cavities.

Lucy the younger:


Oh yes. What an adorable (if oversized) brow! Those fabulous blue eyes, how they sparkle with intellect and charm! I can see this child lolling on piano stools with black velvet bows in her hair in some novel. Someone once told me I had an historic countenance, actually. Whether that meant consumptive or just merely 'before the age of cosmetic surgery', I never got to find out.

Lucy the teenager:


Woah. Back, hormones. What's with the ears? Do teenager's ears pop out like that, like Dumbo's? Yeeesh. Stop scowling like that, young wan. Up to your room and read some more Sylvia Plath with ya.

And, brace thy loins, Lucy the Elder:


I can't say this in a nice way so I'll just say it: this looks scarily like my mother.

Now for the nice part: Artists impressions. First, Mucha:


I think I can safely say that Mucha is pretty much my favourite person right now. So pretty! Can I have this one for my driver's licence? Dependent on me actually getting one, obvs.

Botticelli:


Dude. I hate that guy.

Modigliani:


That guy is so never painting my portrait.

Now the funness. East-Asian:


West-Asian:


Afro-Caribbean:


God, I'm lucky I was born white.

And finally, the one all you ladies have been waiting for, Lucy as a boy:



Wow. I would totally fancy myself if I were a boy. Maybe not in the girly blouse and with all the hair though. Seriously, put your hands up to your monitor and cover up the hair. And, um, the ears. Hubba-hubba. Male-Lucy, I adore you.

CAUTION: Fuck-ups and unabashed pleading contained herein

I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but somehow my laptops gone horizontal on me. And I can't switch it back. And before you ask, no, turning it off and on again didn't work. Nor did blinking hard and saying 'ta-da!'. So you could say I've exhausted all reasonable avenues. What to do, what to do. Come on nerds, muster your wisdom and advise me! You've got to be of some use to me, otherwise what am I keeping ye on the books for? Please? I'm developing an aggressive crick in my neck.

And no snotty remarks about my wallpaper, k? I mean it, shitheads. No, you grow up. No, you. Stop calling me pretentious or I'll tell Mom.

Everyday I learn something new

Note to self: when one complains for hours about excessive heat and stiffling conditions in work environment, do not go on to claim one closed fire-escape door because of excessive chill, thus locking lovely and entertaining new co-worker engaged in breaktime cigarette outside in drafty alley for fifteen minutes and forcing aforementioned lovely co-worker to climb wall and knock on canteen window for assistance. Such behaviour might be considered contradictory and one could be mistakenely thought to be possessing malicious intent towards lovely co-worker. Such behaviour might, possibly, inspire lovely co-worker to put horrible things in one's possibly pretentious herbal tea. Possibly.

What's it even there for?

Sheeesh. You drive onto the kerb a few times and you get this! Talk about your shoddy car manufacturers! Now people stare at me as I rattle round town. And not in a good way. Get over it, people! I'm not staring at your big, ugly-ass head, am I?! No, I'm not. Some of us have manners. And problems gauging distance.

We've all been so blind

Yeah, yeah, I know all you internet nerds have seen this already but believe it or believe it not, there are some people in the universe who haven't. And they all live in Tramore. I don't see what the big deal is. So she wears a wig, so what. So do most lustrous-locked black lady-singers. Though Jamelia might want to lay off the extensions a bit. But what do I know about looking good?

...

Ha, sorry, it's just that I'm so fucking funny some times. So Beyonces human, big deal. This is like that time when someone walked in on me putting on lipgloss in the Vic bathrooms and fainted from the shock. I was all, 'like, hello! So I wear make-up, big deal! I don't wake up looking this good! Jeez!'

Me and B, we're human, just like you. Only a better-looking human.

PS: Also she's thirty-two, which I most patently am not. So I win this round, Knowles.