Daily Mile thinks I'm an athlete! Jokes on them...

Even my storage devices get abuse...

Snow no!

You are wrong, I am right: My stock response to other people

The twins come from a eleven-person household, and grew up in a house equipped with two bathrooms, and unfortunately situated in what even rural Waterfordians call 'Injun country': The outer limits of Fenor. It stands to reason that they fear catastrophic events more than the cushty townie that they now share a home with. 'What the fuck are you doing?' I asked from my Sunday evening nest of newspapers, toast rinds and blankets.

'DUH. Filling the bath with water in case of a blackout from the hurricane, stupid.' They chorused back. It took my thirty whole seconds to juggle around possible uses for a bathful of water during a hurricane. Sudden personal filth that required immediate washing? Re-homing of ducks from the boating lake?

'Well, what for, though?'
'DUH! To flush the toilet when the power goes! Are you naturally this dense or do you work at it?'
'It's as automatic to me as breathing,' I mumbled, my stock response whenever I am paid a compliment. Actually, I was concentrating very hard on figuring out a) why this could possibly be an issue at 11pm at night b) why I had never thought to wonder what powered toilets flushing and c) how to prove both twins wrong without having to leave my couch.
'You are wrong, you are terribly, terribly wrong. Firstly, I cannot recall ever losing power in my home for longer than three hours and sec- actually, lastly- I cannot ever remember a toilet not flushing. In conclusion, you are both wrong, good night.'

This perplexed them both, as instead of retiring to my bedroom upon saying goodnight, I put a newspaper over my face and feigned loud whistling snores. This is my stock response to any bewildering confrontation. They finished filling the bath, filled some 2l bottles of drinking water and went to bed. They'd have been exemplary during the Blitz, I don't doubt.

This morning, after the twins had gone to work, I stood in the bathroom and chuckled at the placid sunlight winking calmly off the water in the bathtub. 'Oh, foolish, cautious twins. How you delight! How much I must teach you of living in modern civilisation! I shall enjoy remarking on your premature bathtub filling with condescension and wit!'

Then I walked into the kitchen and realised that I had left the fridge door open for a hour, had left the empty coffee pot scalding on a hot plate and forgotten to put detergent in the washing machine.

There is no limit to the petty and unamusing ironies of my days.

Things I discussed with people at Library Council Conference

1. Books (obvs)

2. Wine (double obvs)

3. Irish Book Awards. Vote now!

4. Melanie's dress

5. How savage Claire Kilroy is

6. How savage Claire Keegan is

7. How hard it is to differentiate between the two, if you're a dope

8. What a knob (apparrently) Jonathan Franzen is, though great press

9. How savage Sinead O'Connor is

10. No, you pronounce it 'Gillian Welch'

11. How cool is this?

12. Oh really, what's your hotel room like?21

13. No seriously, my bed is massive: I'm considering soliciting for a threesome later on just to exploit the capacities of the bed

14. What? Well, no, I was only joking

15. It is a big bed though

16. Hey, you know what else is savage? Literacy initiatives!

17. How savage my friend, The Casanova Wave is.

18. Oh wait, you have a hot tub? LETS GO SEE! Everyone, LETS GO SEE!

19. ...

20. That was weird, yeah?

21. Hey, Melanie's got champagne- HEY MELANIE!!!

22. - 74. Zzzzzzzz

75. WHAT? Someone streaked through the bar at 5am??? Damn; missed it :(

Now that's unusual

I watched A League of Their Own last night and cried five times. I know it was five times because I noted each time I felt tears welling up, right before punching myself in the head for being such a fairy. In other news, I called up to my mother's house to borrow an alarm clock yesterday evening and something stupid she said made me laugh for two minutes solid. I laughed so hard that I had to lay on the floor to balast my shaking shoulders and my sister ran upstairs to find out what in God's name was so funny. I told her, chokingly, and she looked at me in annoyance and disgust: that isn't even funny, Lucy.

Alls I'm saying is that maybe my usually hypercritical filtering system is off it's game. Maybe A League of Their Own is not the superb paean to feminism, female solidarty, self-belief and personal redemption I took it for.

BOOM!

Instant net celebrity! Thanks to Mairead and the Irish Red Cross for their generosity and all-round excellence!

I am in awe

Who are these people? I want them as my friends.

Wunning straight into your heart

On this Bank Holiday Monday, June 7th, I am taking part in the Women's Mini Marathon in Dublin. Thanks to a rigorous exercise schedule over the past three months I am now able to run for a period of 3 & 1/2 minutes before having to collapse and die, so I am hoping to complete the mini-marathon with a combo of running/walking, in an ambitious time of 'under six hours'. I call what I do, 'wunning', reasons that would become clear to you if you ever happened to pass me when I embark on my evening's exercise, stumbling like an insanely uncoordinated seal, if seals could run and owned sassy-looking running pants.

What I need from you, oh people of inaction and atrophy, is dough. I am 'wunning' my Mini Marathon in aid of the Irish Red Cross and so far have a grand total of €30 sponsorship to my name, which is a bit shit.

My original plan was thus: I have been held hostage in the pub SO MANY TIMES by tipsy do-gooders who have waved sponsorship cards in my face and I have shelled out fivers just to make them go away. What is fair but to claim restitution for this? So, what I intended was that I should bring my sponsorship card to the pub and take advantage of the generosity of the drunk. Unfortunately I kept forgetting my goddamned card, and hardly NO ONE will give you money without any proof.

So here, I am five days before kick off with €30 crumby quid on my card. At this point I will be forced to carry it with me to Dee's wedding on Saturday and badger those wealthy newly-weds and their inebriated guests into donating. Which I think might be a bit of a bad show. Should you like to give me money, I am more than happy to accept it. Please contact me through the normal avenues of communication (except drunkenly serenading me outside my window at four in the morning. I'm so over that) and I will slap your name down on your card, and glory in the envying looks I receive from all other mini-marathon participants.

Thank you.

Another Goddamned Sporting Event Ruining Lucy's Summer

The FIFA World Cup 2010 is fast approachin', fella. Did you know? I did not, not until my good pal and work colleague Tommy rang hitting me up for cash. "So Lucy, you wanna get in on this pool? €20 and you get to back TWO teams. And there's sixteen going in the pool so you could win BIG. I mean, REAL BIG."

I sighed and rolled my eyes at the phone. "Tommy, Tommy, Tommy. Tommy! Lemme tell ya something about this "World Cup Pool" you're trying to get going," I said. Tommy sighed and rolled his eyes at the receiver down his end.

"Tomcat, Tomster, Tommy-Tommy-uh, something; this pool malarkey will not fly with me. First of all, €20 is waaay too much money for me to expend on something that doesn't come in a glass with ice-cubes. I mean, what do I get for my €20 bucks? Nothing! One chance in 32 is not my idea of safe odds, my friend."

"Well, it's not 'safe' of course, it's just fun and-"

"Tommy! Let me finish, Goddamn you! The other thing is the unfairness of it all. The last time I was in a World Cup pool I got shitting Togo. Togo my friend! I mean, Togo is probably a great little place and God knows but its a fun word to say, but when you're up against the Argentinas and the Brazils of this world, it makes you vomit a little inside."

"But that's the beauty of this system, Lucy! You won't know who you get it, it's a closed draw, we won't find out who got the winners until after the last match! We'll seal it in an envelope and open it after the final! It's FLAWLESS!"

"Oh, Tommy. You are only a young man[!], but you have so much to learn. What is the point of having a World Cup pool if I cannot paint my adopted nation's flag on my cheek and walk around pretending to be Togolese, adopting a faux Togolese and very possibly offensive accent? Like, get a grip, Tommy!"

"Maybe some people actually like to watch football...?"

"Oh puh-lease! Don't make me LAUGH! I am laughing though, at what I imagine your sad little face looks like all now, with me raining all over your parade, ha. No, Tommy, I am out of this one. You will just have to play on without me."

"Well, alright Lucy, but don't get all pissy when you're not involved."

"Unlikely, Tommy. I'm hanging up on you now."


Then this afternoon, into my inbox pings this group missive:

"Hello All,
Almost all of the library staff have signed up to take part in the draw for the forthcoming World Cup, I should have 24 names to be getting on with..."

Yeah, yeah whatever, get on with it, you emotionally blackmailing fink...

"...I had originally planned on keeping the envelopes here and distributing them at the end of the tournament, but the feedback I've got would suggest that this idea is not to everybody's liking. Accordingly, as soon as you get your envelopes it's entirely up to yourselves whether you open them or not."

And that, my friends, is how you shame someone into your way of thinking. As they say in TV land, boo-ya!

My two most prized possessions

Celebrity mates, man

I invented blogging, didn't I?

As far as I'm aware, before I entered the blogosphere, the internet was a vapid wasteland of porn and adverts. My arrival to the "internet superhighway" heralded a new age of eloquence, civility and sophistication, an era of intelligent discussion and debate, fairness, equality and mutual respect. ONE WOULD THINK.

I had a substantial bone to pick with my good pal Dave last night when I ran quite accidentally into him: 'DAVID' I growled across the bar when I saw his head. He didn't hear but those close to me shivered with fear. I strode across: "David," I whispered in his ear, "a word".

"David! I thought we were pals!" I said smilingly. "We are pals, Lucy" Dave replied, staring blankly into his pint. "That's what I thought too, Dave, until somebody went about starting his own blog without telling me about it...!" "Right, what happened there was, I wanted to start one, as a New Year's type thing and-"

"Shhh, Dave, shhh." I said, placing a forefinger to his lips. "I forgive you. Just do me one favour, right?"

"Just link to me, alright? Good man. And remember: I'm Tramore's number one blogger. Me. This town ain't big enough for any more, ya dig?"

I Heart Facebook

I love Facebook. I'm not ashamed to say it. For example, I also love CJ Cregg, Jason Derulo, The Notebook and other lame things that you can't really tell people about. That's just me, I have no shame. I love that I get to read vacuous comments, group-joining, drunken declarations, pointless, almost-immediately outdated popculture references from piles of people who I hardly ever get to see or speak to, and that I like these very people all the more because they evidently have a deeper, more whimsical sense of humour than I ever thought they possessed.

Is this sounding very misanthropic of me? It's not, it's the opposite. I ADORE people; people, with all their mistakes and flaws and jokes and loves and hates. Facebook, I think, celebrates that. At least my Facebook does. I use Facebook and Twitter accounts for work and lord, the self-importance of the people who use these platforms for work, for networking. I mean, ugh. Talk about making a fun thing dull. It's like when Shane Hegarty starts talking about features of "modern culture" in his typical po-faced way and you just go 'Aw, crap, I know you're going to turn me off something".*

Facebook is fabulous and obviously you're going to sigh when I say this but I can't imagine my life without it. If someone does something funny I want to screech about it; if we're at a party and someone takes a picture of me I'm all up in the camera-owner's grill: "Can you tag me in that?". I have, literally, no problem with meeting a friend I haven't seen for a while and saying "I hear you're engaged/working someplace new/a fan of the Golden Girls! When I say 'hear it' I mean I saw it on Facebook." If I say anything amusing, anything at all, I'm glancing around the room, waiting for a thumbs-up: "I LIKE THIS". This is a bad place to be in, obviously, and we'll talk about how much of a knob I am at a later date (I'm sure), but right now I wanna talk about the other side: the Facebook deniers.

There are people in the world, hell, in my life, who don't accept that Facebook as their lord and master. These people, some of them sane and apparently perfectly functioning adults, only check in on their Facebook accounts once a month or even less (shiver). When I say "hells yeah, I heard about that billions of years ago, it was on Facebook" they will wave a hand dismissively and say "oh, well, I never look at that thing" and gently move the conversation away as if I have made a terrible faux pas bringing such a thing into conversation. Even more unsightly, there are people that simply do not have a Facebook account.

Who are these people, you say? Do others exist who are not visible on the web? I know, it's shocking that we live in such a world, but live in it we do. I had the joy/misfortune of travelling to Clonakilty last weekend for Dee's lovely Hen Party** with two and a half of these diaphanous craters, and semi-naturally, as many of my conversations tend to do, our chat drifted round to Facebook, it's evils and sins. Facebook is evil and insidious, did you know that? Of those present, Gráinne and Donna have deleted their accounts, set up in the early haze of Facebook's zeitgeist, due on Gra's part to pure laziness and extreme distaste for anything involving the Internet and because Donna thinks it is stupid and dumb.

Standing currently as a half measure on the Facebook user scale, Aoife remains a part of the Facebook family but she is trying to break her connections with it: "Dude, you can totally do it, there is life beyond Facebook, you should totally do it. I did it, you can too" said Donna from the front seat, blissfully straight-faced. I was driving and all but I found it ridiculously hard not to drive into a ditch, what with all the internal laughing I was doing at these three people's hatred of my favourite plaything. I mean, if you hate Facebook and you think it's stupid and dumb, that's great because essentially it is those things, but honestly, so much stuff is. Most of the things I like are constantly derided by almost everyone I know as am I for enjoying them, but I get by. You can too! You can enjoy stupid and dumb things and stand up in the street and not get hated on for it. YES. YOU. CAN.

*Yeah, I know he's Arts Editor now. I'm playing with fire, okay?
** OMG, so, so amazingly fun and lovely. For more see Facebook. Yow!

A Terrible Way to Spend an Evening

Mags has bought a terrible new invention, a video gaming console called the "PlayStation" and let me tell you something, it shatters dreams and destroys new musical talent.

We spent hours, literally HOURS, figuring out how the joystick-doohickey works, only to find that idiots are rewarded and musical genii like myself go unrecognised. What happens is, and I will try and cut down on the technical jargon to reduce discomfort for everyone reading, you turn on your telly and this floating stream of record covers appears, from which you choose a vaguely familiar song (Kate Nash's smash hit "Mouthwash" mar shampla, or the unforgettable "10,000 Nights Of Thunder" by edgy popsters, Alphabeat), scream "SELECT. SELECT!" into one of the microphones for fifteen minutes, then your song of choice is dashed onscreen, amongst a literal pukefest of red and blue spots and dashes. These, friends, are your singing instructions.

Lyrics flash by, terrible lyrics it must be said which make you wonder for the future of the pop genre. Did you know that the lyrics to "Here Come The Girls" by the Sugababes is ninety percent repetition of the word "girls" and no where do they mention amazing three for two offers at my local branch of my favourite chemist chain? Huh. If you try to interpret your tune creatively, as I like to do in all my musical performances, the telly shrieks "TERRIBLE!" or "BAD!" at you and your friends roar. If you are a tone deaf moron with the ability to complete the song at the tempo and pitch pre-proscribed by those Nazis of music, Sing Star, then you will win the game, gaining nothing but the hollow-sounding victory of brain-dead cretins over True Art. Then you will go to your local public house and claim glory, because, as I may have mentioned, you have the remarkable ability of singing dots and dashes.

I hope you're proud of yourself, Donna freaking Purcell.

Pteronophobia is what Wikipedia calls it: Who-gives-a-shit-giving-it-a-name is what I call it

Since we moved into our house earlier this year, with alarming frequency, I have been the fall guy, the butt of jokes, the much-maligned fool for all the household japes. This seems to happen in every sphere of my life so at some point I may have to accept it as my own doing. NOT TODAY. Although otherwise hardy and without flaw, I do have an unspeakable terror of tickling anywhere on the body but particularly on my feet.

Some time ago whilst discussing tattoos, I idly commented that I'd always fancied something small and vague on an ankle, a spot easily cloaked if needed. "Oh really?" Everyone said, with equal antipathy as I am always making such querulous pronouncements and ignoring them is almost essential for an easy life.

"I think I would get a small, trailing flower," I said. "Or is that too gay-looking? Maybe a word, in Latin, to increase it's enigmatic power! No, no, my first born's name! In Latin! With a flower!"

"Oh dear God." Said Kate. "Right, will we draw one on, just to see what it's like?" Dubiously I poked a pen nib into my delicate arch.
"Oooh, no, that's not nice. No thank you."
"Go on, give us a go." Kate said, grabbing the pen. Clodagh looked up; she loves a plan.

"No, I don't think so, I have extremely sensitive feet." I said apologetically.
"Look, how can you stick a tattoo artist if you can't cope with me and a pen? Cop the fuck on."

A short time later, Clodagh was sitting on my left arm and Kate on my right. As Kate began to draw on my right foot, the screams started. I don't know where they came from; as people involved in great trauma often say, it took me a moment to realise the screams came from my own mouth. All I knew was a terrifying, overwhelming panic and fear of I know not what of. Of course, my pain was everyone else's amusement. Laura jumped up to hold my flailing ankles and all three roared with unimagined joy.

"Kate!" I panted, "Please! I beg you! I'll give you everything I own! Please Kate! Friends down do this to friends, Kate!" She bore down with added glee. My mind sank beneath waves of terror and panic as the interminable prodding and scratching of my poor white foot went on, involving hundreds of pounds of females sitting on me and telling me to shut up between their laughter.

"Quieten down, Luce," Clo said, turning to me in a rare second she managed to stop laughing at my yelps of panic. "You're just making it harder on yourself you know."

Painful seconds later, it was over. I was released, and scuttled into a dark corner of the living room to hold my foot and mope. My heart was pounding, my breath was short, I'd walloped my head off something in my struggles. On my foot, extending from toe to the inside of my heel, was a mawkish flower, primitively drawn with rough, tremulous petals. Also the caption: "LUCY IS GAY HA HA HA".

My captors sat round and watched, grinning nervously, for fear I'd start crying I suppose. Hell no. I cry three times a year, tops, unless I get caught watching Trocaire ads. I wasn't wasting my water on these fools.

I steadied myself; looked up and squared my chin. "I hope you're fucking happy with yereselves. I'll have you know that that constitutes foot rape."

"HA!" They three roared.

Solitary runner; Pterodactyl-spotter

Just seen strange bird-like creature fishing in the channel by the Back Strand! From my own admittedly rudimentary investigations this creature appears to be either a pterodactyl or harpie-type monster from Philip Pullman books. Unfortunately I had neither independent witnesses nor recording devices at hand so I am attempting an artist's reproduction to illustrate what I saw. Since the artist is me, I drew a stick man, added wings and a beak and then screamed 'fuck you, ART!' at the page and walked away.

If you were interested, I completed my round of the Back Strand in 66 minutes flat today. Nothing seems to be able to top my unprecedented 64 minutes of last week. I can only settle on last Thursday being a particularly cold day with few other pedestrians, so I was able to run for a longer portion of it. I am physically unable to run in the presence of others due in part to my ignorance of any official running technique and my non-possession of an exercise bra. According to my lovely and complementary sister, when I run I look like, ahem: "a spa". To save the mortification of others, I run alone. That's fine with me. I'd rather not have anyone present when I asphyxiate myself on my hoodie (again) or scream and fall over when a seagull startles me (for the fourth time in an hour). Those occasions are best saved for alone-time, thank you very much.

Bangerhead Fest '09

Banner by Roisin, accompanying laundry by KC

Cake by Superquinn, accompanying mirth by Lucy screaming obscenities

Housewifery

On Sunday morning I texted my good friend Donna, the obsessive clean freak, the following: 'Can I put any of the following in the dishwasher: Toilet brush, plastic dustpan, non-slip rubbery shower thingy. If not, how does one wash these things?'



Donna promptly rang me back, mainly because she was too hungover to text, and told me that no, noooo, I could not put any of these things in the dishwasher. They would melt, and cause grievous damage to the dishwasher, she said. "Things have to be dishwasher safe to go in the dishwasher," she pointed out, "hence the existence of the phrase 'dishwasher safe'."



"But the scrubbing brushes never melt when I put them in!" I complained. "Similarly, squeegee things are grand, as are flip-flops!"

"... Lucy, don't put any of those things in the dishwasher again" she told me. "Toilet brushes in the dishwasher? With dishes? That is seriously gross."

"Where should one wash one's shoes then, huh? You tell me that, Mrs smart arse!"
"Why do you need to wash your shoes? Shouldn't they, uh, just wipe clean?"
"Well, you tell me how I should get cow shit out of three-year old sandals then!"
With that zinger I hung up on the negative bitch. I don't need nobody telling me how to run my house.



I weighed things up for a little bit, realised I was running late, and fucked the dustpan in the dishwasher along with my scrubbing brushes and portable washing basin, which is handy for a range of things such as cleaning floors, washing me feets, sticking under the chins of inebriated house guests when they look a bit green, and sluicing away dog mess from the front lawn. I fucked the nasty, non-slip, rubbery shower mat in the wheelie bin and put the toilet brush where I couldn't see it, behind the toilet. Then I put three pairs of shoes in the washing machine and got the hell outta the house. If anyone asks, you know nothing about how those things got there, right? JOB DONE.

Something you won't care about

I'm writing something at the moment. Who knows what it is. Us artists don't concern ourselves with labels like you little people do. Currently it's held up in a mire of plotting difficulties. Bearing close attention to a quote I read from Joseph O'Neill, I am taking care to 'lie as little as possible, tell as close to the truth as you can'. Why? Because I liked the sentiment. Didn't like Netherland though, unlike Obama. Needless to say, consciously not lying is one of the hardest things I've ever done. Lying, or 'revisionism' as I like to call it, is as necessary to my daily life as breathing. Even recounting anecdotes to friends I find myself, almost unconsciously, sexing things up: flat-sounding dialogue is brought to fruity succinctness, dull circumstances glossed over. It's my hunger for narrative, I tell myself and don't get too concerned.

So I don't lie. Or I try not to. Apparently I don't plot anything I write either as everything frequently takes wild swings away from their starting point without my permission. I like to sketch things out in my head while driving 'round town in the evenings but instead I flash past familiar places and people and they remind me of past events and a new insight occurs to me: I'll use that, I think: that's genuine therefore good. Consequentially my cast change personalities almost daily, my hero's motives alter with my own capriciousness. One day I am forgiving towards all men: relationships prosper, goodness is rewarded, and my heroine gets invited to a party. The next I want them to suffer. Stupidity abounds; all humankind is selfish and cruel; unkind wives leave their pathetic husbands. My comic relief gets more and more violent as my mood gets worse, and I'm finding laughs in pushing people over, having them bump their shins, stub toes, lose wallets. I am honest, burningly honest, letting my temper and occasional torments play with my storyboard, rearrange my written world.

This can't continue. This is how children write, it's immature and inconsistent and pointless. Eventually you're not writing fiction, you're just keeping a diary and changing the names.