(If regular online colyoomistas are wondering what I'm on about, this is the first of the weekly print colyooms, back in the City Tribune every Friday and here each Monday...)
It’s
all gone horribly wrong. The day started with the Snapper redoubtably heading
off to her job in Galway, leaving me to a long country day in our new home,
beautifully rural yet less than half an hour from the buzz of the city.
A bit
of strimming to be done and then I'll write the first Double Vision colyoom to
appear in this noble rag since 2009.
Perfect.
Planting
my voluptuous arse on my rowing machine, I spend 25 minutes trying to
concentrate on breathing and posture while instead my brain wanders off to
gordknowswhere, only dragged back to reality by the clunking sound of the
rowing machine hitting the plant pot on the far side of my bedroom. Seems I've
rowed across the laminate flooring at the dazzling rate of a yard every ten
minutes.
Today
it is sunny. Bees are frolicking, cows are farting in the field over the stone
wall and this scribbler is on a mission to strim.
The
Snapper’s face appears in my mind.
No
dear, I won’t overdo it. I know, my back, yes I know ...
But
the mypex sheet that’s going to cover the strimmed remains of this overgrown
jungle should have been down a month ago. The sooner the sheet’s down the
better, so I attack the task.
On the
third of the thirty three million stumpy lumps of mutated grass I need to cut,
the strimming line breaks.
I
change it.
The
line breaks again.
Alarm
klaxons start to howl inside my head: Jewish person with power tool! Alert!
Jewish person with power tool! Danger! Bwaa-aah! Bwaa-aah!
Okay
Adley, so ease up with the brutal stuff. Gently does it now.
I sway
back and forth, just like real gardeners I've seen strimming. Three and a half
hours later it's all gone, but I really should have stopped when I topped up
with petrol two hours ago.
Stumbling
over to the garden table, I take off my headphone sound-inhibitor thingies, ear
plugs, protection goggles, radiation suit and body armour.
Every
movement hurts, as if I'm built of brick.
Don’t
overdo it. That’s what I’d told myself.
The
shower is ohhhh that feels soooo good, but then my entire body starts trembling.
The muscles in my lower back gather closer together, as if they’re at a rave
and the DJ's building up the crowd for the grand finale.
Before
I start scribbling I have to drive down to the village, send a letter to an
agent, go to the butchers and do the weekly shop at the supermarket.
Quite
a lot really. Better get it done then, before I seize up completely.
Over
the weekend we had a freezer meltdown, so along with the regular bags, there
are bags and bags of freezer essentials, and that’s a lot of heavy bags for my
now bent double frame to carry out of the shop, load into and out of the car
and haul up onto the kitchen counter.
Ohh.
Pain.
I
know! I’ll make a slap-up lunch of eggs and bacon and then take a valium, to
relax the muscles in my back. That’s what I’ve got the little divils for, as
well as the now happily-distant panic attack.
Lovely.
Lunch
munched, dishes done, I sit down here in my office chair to muse upon what's
happened to you, me, Ireland and the world since last we met on these pages,
but my mind is a woolly boolly blank …dum dum dooby doo ...
Ah,
that’d be the valium, Ted.
Maybe
not such a great idea after all.
Ah but
then again, just sitting in this chair right now is hurting me quite a lot -
yes, I suffer for you, my colyoomistas - and that’s with the valium relaxing
those knotted scrunched-up muscles.
So if
I hadn't taken it I’d be in utter agony, incapable of writing a single word,
whereas now I'm only in mild pain, my thoughts scratching patterns around my
brain akin to those of a bumble bee trapped in a packet of marshmallows.
Occasional heart-stopping ideas light up my cerebellum, only to simper and die
a gentle drug-infused death.
So
what’s happened since 2009? Oh lordy, do we have to? I'm driving this colyoom
so we'll live in the present. Ireland is behaving itself, doing whatever Angela
M and Christine LG tell it to, which feels to this Englishman crushingly sad,
because after centuries of resisting occupation, you are now being led placidly
and obediently by the nose back to a loss of sovereignty and the end of Irish
democracy.
When
the Euro finally does goes belly up, having been bled to death by medieval
methods of economic surgery, the dreadful irony will be that all these years of
Ireland’s suffering, through taking the ECB/ IMF/IVF/Dutch Cap/Contraceptive
Bailout route, will prove to have been a complete and utter waste of time.
Isn’t
it good to have me back.
***
If
you’re under 25 years of age, chances are you didn’t buy this newspaper. Just
as the entire music industry was revolutionised by digital, print as a medium
is under threat.
Being
a successful freelance writer these days requires luck. I know there are other
columnists walking the streets of Galway who feel they deserved this spot, just
as I know that there are loyal and hard-working people employed by this
newspaper group who have suffered financially in recent years.
To
both groups I plead that along with you and everybody else in Ireland, I too
have recently been through hard times, yet never want my good fortune to come
at others’ expense.
Having
said that, it’s great to have Double Vision back in print, exactly 20 years
after this colyoom first appeared in this noble rag. I’d like to thank all
those who followed Double Vision online over the past few years. If you want to
read that archive just Google my name and hit the first link. If
you have opinions you want to vent, vomit, grumble or mumble, email me at cadley1@eircom.net.
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