I love living in a country where people don't agree with their own answers!

Hoo yeh, the summer madness goes on and on, and I’m still hiding away from the crowds, exploiting the hell out of the builders’ holidays.
For the last 3 years I have tried to work each day through the brutal noise of the neighbouring hotel’s building site. Nothing affects me or my work like noise. Shreds me to bits.
Today there is peace, and I might work. Praise be for that.
Later, I jump into Shaaanny car and nip round to Angel’s for a cuppa. Out of my office cocoon for the first time today, I wonder what’s going on in the world, so I flip on the radio, expecting to hit NewsTalk, but the Snapper drove home last night, so it’s on Today FM.
Fine, who needs to know what’s going on in the world, when you can have a good old sing song? Ooh, even better, they’re doing a quiz.
Unfortunately, I missed the question, but evidently there’s a big weekend for two away in some posh resort spa (I think last year we just called them ‘hotels’) riding on the answer.
Yer man Gerry on the end of the phone sounds like he’s havin’ a right old blasht. Everything is just so funny to him, he can’t shtop wid da larfin and da larfin, so he can’t. In my mind I see Gerry as a spray of long curly balding hair, cascading over a ball-shaped head, his stubbly face stretched in ecstasy.
“Well, now, Gerry, you said 83, Maria, you guessed 189, and Sean, well you reckoned it was 458. The right answer was.... 112, so Gerry in Dublin, well done mate! You’ve won a weekend away for two!”
“Oh tanks! Tanks Tony, tanks tanks tanks! Wow, dat’s grea’, really grea’! Who’d-a tortit? Who’d-a tortit? Jaize, I tort I was way off!”
Driving along, I have a big smile on my face as I hear the harmless happiness of a winner. But soon enough my mind starts to spin around, and then the driver of car behind me is hooting his horn at me because, instead of noticing the traffic lights have gone green, I’m staring into space, lost in philosophical wonder.
Unless my ears deceived me, I just heard Gerry on the radio say he thought his winning answer was “way off”.
But hang on. If he thought his own answer was wrong, then why ...
Fantastic! Bloody marvellous! It couldn’t happen anywhere else. If I made it into an Oirish joke and told it at a dinner party at London’s poshest suburban table, I’d be considered vulgar and racist, but right here right now, I’m living in Galway and loving the fact that whenever I think I might be going loopy, the people of Ireland make me feel strangely sane.
Now before ye all get uppity and irascible and accuse me of accusing you all of being nothing more than a bunch of nutters, I would suggest that were I to do that, it would, from my perspective, be a compliment.
But anyway, I wasn’t calling you all a bunch of nutters: just some of you; well, quite a lot of you, but I reiterate, it’s only a form of praise, coming from me.
As defined by the cold harsh steel of Northern European Protestantism, ‘Sanity’ is a fearfully boring and staid state in which to exist.
I love living in a country where people don’t even agree with their own answers!

****

And here is the news:
Residents all over Galway City were dismayed to wake up this morning to find that Galway City Council had overnight painted white squares around every single car, and installed Pay and Display meters in everyone’s driveway.
A spokesperson for the Council made a lengthy statement:
“I think we would all agree that everyone who works and lives in or visits Galway City is fed up with the constant traffic congestion. So last night an action was taken which we consider to be the logical conclusion to our very successful existing parking policy. Everybody knows that if you build more roads, such as the major Galway City outer by-pass and fifth bridge that we are planning to start any decade now, you just end up with more cars.
After an extensive ten-year study costing several million euro, funded at a local level, our report has been released today showing that not only do more roads mean more cars, but more roads also mean less parking and more jams too.
“Oh yeh. That’s you impressed now, I shouldn’t wonder, eh? Never say we waste your Tax euros!
“As a Council, we clearly had to act to rid ourselves of the extra traffic that building all these new roads will produce, and failing that, try our best to keep it off the roads. With the extras revenue accrued from all recently installed Domestic Pay and Display appliances, we will be able to move forward with our plans to completely pave over Galway Bay, and turn it into the largest and most impressive Car Park the world has ever seen. Ahar. Ahar har har.
“The Council plans to call it Car ParkLand, and tell the tourists it’s really a Theme Park. That way, they’ll even pay us to go in and have a look! A hah har a-har.
“Of course we do understand that due to the Two Hour limit we have imposed on all Galway’s parking machines, people will only have just enough time to walk into and then straight out of Galway City, in order to top up their Domestic Parking Appliances.
”Naturally, we are aware of the implications for our city’s shops and restaurants, in that nobody will be able to visit them or spend money with them any more, but we are sure that our loyal and hard-working traders will take this bitter financial blow on their collective chins, happy in the knowledge that the traffic on Galway’s roads is flowing freely at last!
“Now don’t forget, if you fail to renew your car parking fee every two hours, we’ll come to your house and take your car away. How green is that, eh eh eh? Living without a car! First we gave you three wheelie bins, and now we’re taking away your car! We are making you all so green, you lucky lucky people. You’ll thank us in the end, ahar aha aha har.”

The worst eyes in the Opticians are the ones that chisel upon your soul!

Thanks to crazed greed of our city's parking policy, I'm only allowed two hours to do all the things I need to do this morning. Number one on the list is to head down to the Opticians and finally sort out the business with my new frames; that business with them plunging into the flesh of my temples, so that when I take them off I feel relief, and there for all to see and point and wonder at are the still intact deep-impacted canals.
I'm dreading this, because the place is always packed, and this is my third visit. The first fitting had gone well, I thought, having completely trusted the young lass in the smart coat and name badge.
Possibly I was a little bedazzled by her presence; maybe my paternal side came out, admiring how she was doing a very good job, in a second language and all. Whatever the reason, I discounted 39 years' experience of wearing glasses and knowing that they really shouldn't sit on your nose like that, no no they shouldn't.
So I returned a couple of weeks later and had them fitted again, and a slightly more experienced woman fitted the little plastic nose pads and pointed out that I hadn't been able to see, which I knew, because let's face it, you know when you can't see.
While my frames had been sitting on my nose, a metal line ran through the clear-focused universe below and the blurry one above, and yet I said nothing. They seemed to be better now, and she had been so nice and what was the point in being a smart-lipped arsehole a long distance from wit?
Much better they were, sitting now comfortably atop my shnozz, but within hours I noticed the developing tranches along my temples. You don't have to be all Ginseng and Tai Chi to know that these bits of our glorious bodies are pretty important. Visualise somebody under pressure trying to think fast important thoughts, and more than likely they'll be rubbing their temples round and round with their fingertips.
So cutting off the blood to precisely those bits can't be a good idea, and I really should have gone down and dealt with such a vital thing as this a long long time ago.
But what with life in the shape of burying my father and getting married, finding a job and losing a job, well, it's taken until now to arrive at a place where I can start to look after my own needs a tad.
Hallelujah for that.
For weeks everything has been on the run, making it up as I go along within blurry exhausting exercises at being there for everybody else whilst trying to accept the love and support coming my way, which has been in no short supply.
Unfortunately, for myself and for those loved ones, their nurturing has appeared in front of me a little like traffic passing as you drive at speed the wrong way up a motorway.
Recently, whilst visiting my Mum in London, I took professional advice about my frames, and was told that they didn't fit me.
Genius. Glad I asked.
No, there was more, They could never fit me, because the frames were just too small. No amount of adjusting would make any difference.
So today I'm going to the Opticians to see the Manager. No more fitting fiddly nosey bits and dazzling assistants; no more vanity or paternity: just be able to see.
Stick to the plan Chas. Don't deal with anyone else. And if there's a long queue, explain you're on a time limit.
Wow! The place is completely empty. What a relief! Maybe this is all going to go swimmingly after all.
A little too excited by the absence of any other punters in the place, I approach the lass at the counter, and splutter:
"I've never seen the place look so empty!"
"Sorry?"
"I said I've never seen the place look so empty!"
"Sorry?"
"Oh, it really doesn't matter. I was just saying how quiet the place is, but really it doesn't matter."
"Sorry?"
Hmmm. This was not going well. Clearly my opening remark was not worthy of repeating once, and already I had said it three times, the last of which I had really tried to bail out, what with all that 'it really doesn't matter' stuff, but she'd just thrown it right back at me again with that bleedin' "Sorry?" of hers.
It's not that she doesn't speak English. She is as Irish as I am not, and in this instance it is my accent that is funny to her, rather than the other way around.
Refusing to persist with what I had said, and therefore explain myself to her, might make her think I'm being hostile, excluding her in some way, which I'm not. But oh, oh dear, when I ask to see the Manager, she'll probably think I'm asking to see the Manager because she has failed to understand me, or because she thinks I am mightily pissed off or angry with her for some reason.
Worse, if she really pushes me to say it until she understands it, I will doubtless be faced with that look people give you when these misunderstandings happen; when they finally understand you and stare at you with utter contempt.
No, please Momma. Please don't make me see those eyes.
Hard to try and guess what to do really. I'll try it once more, and then we can move on.
"I was just saying that it was very quiet in here, but really, let's leave it now and move on."
"Sorry?"
Oh fuck this.
Unable to conceal a wobbling tone of impatience beefed up by a soupçon of anger at the absurdity of it all.
"NEVER ..... SEEN...... IT .... SO .... QUIET.... IN ..... HERE."
"Oh."
And there were the eyes! Those blasted damnable eyes that I knew I'd get, but fortunately there also was the Supervisor, and from that moment on, everything went so well I would almost have forgotten the whole episode, were it not for those eyes, those eyes, chiselling upon my very soul the words:
'Was that it? Was that all you wanted to say? Was it worth it? Was it really worth it? Was it worth all that bloody bother, just to say those pathetic useless irrelevant words?'

When you’re five years old, a gentle canter feels like a mad stampede!

Race Week is around the corner, and our city’s raison d’être is about to kick in once more, in the shape of a few handsome thoroughbreds and 250,000 drunken punters.
I cannot admit to loving horses. Unlike those many who can think of nothing more wonderful than to own, ride and care for the beasts, they are to me gracious, alien, intriguing and occasionally just downright scary.
My first and definitely most influential encounter with a gee-gee was at the age of five, when for some completely misguided reason my parents thought I needed to learn how to ride.
Nurturing a dream of some kind of high-falluting romantic lifestyle for their youngest child, while drowning in bourgeois ambition, they probably thought I’d need a good steed in the stables of the mansion I would most certainly own when I became the Managing Director of the country’s foremost advertising agency.
How wrong they were. Mind you, these were the very same parents who insisted upon dressing me in a sailor’s outfit before taking me to the very suspect local photographer.
So off I went with my Mum to a riding school out in Berkshire, where I found myself trussed up aloft what felt like a massive and powerful wild animal over which I had no control whatsoever.
As an adult looking back, I can now see that I was well-equipped, and that my horse was being held on a tight line, or whatever you call it. We were standing motionless in a circle, nose to tail, with five other horses, bearing what I knew even at that tender age were insufferably precocious little brats with names like Tristan, Horatio, Christabelle and Alexandria.
Then I saw my Mum walk off. How could the woman who had slapped me (gently) on the back of my hand for standing too close to the kerb leave me here?
If it was dangerous to stand with your toes on the bloomin’ kerb, and very very bad to run into the road, how come it was alright to leave me alone, sitting high up on something that might run all the way to Africa?
Then I realised that my horse was the only one being held on a line. All these other posh kids seemed to know what they were doing, and pretty soon our tight motionless circle turned into a line, and we were walking out of the indoor ring, into a field.
The children on the other horses suddenly tucked their feet into the little metal rings, and were bouncing up and down like very silly-looking little people as their horses spread out.
My horse was evidently unused to being kept behind the group, and decided the time had come to join his mates. With one flick of his head he pulled the line from the stable lass holding him, and headed off at a gentle canter.
At least, from what I know now, I’d say it was a gentle canter. Several members of staff seemed suddenly agitated, running at speed towards me and my apparently insane animal.
As somebody whose entire experience of moving horses up to that point had been riding the wooden rocking horse in Lilly and Skinner’s shoe shop, this gentle canter appeared like a crazed and frantic stampede.
Pooping my poor little five year-old self from toe to tippy-tip-top, sure that my life was about to come to a brutal and tragically premature end, I did what any completely untrained and inexperienced person would do: aiming for the horse’s neck, I grabbed the reins and pulled like the crazy terrified little boy I was.
Now I know that horses don’t like that very much. He reared up and threw me backwards, and then I was on the ground with people crowding around me.
That was the first and last time I sat on a real horse.
Having got past the need to ride, my relationship with horses improved by leaps and bounds. As a teenager, I sat watching the racing on tele with my Dad, who impressed me no end by placing his bets on the phone, way back in the 1970’s.
Whilst in hospital after breaking my leg on a motorbike (the adolescent male version of its female horse equivalent), myself and the other biker casualties passed many afternoons with the ITV 7, a guaranteed plethora of racing, fluttering and much craic.
At 19 I worked in a big truck garage under the Kings Cross Arches, and became completely obsessed with the complex bets on offer at the local bookies. Each day, I spread my tiny stake into grids of combinations of nine races, thereby giving myself reason to spend all afternoon checking the results.
In the 80’s, my mate Chris and I went to meetings, armed with overflowing hip flasks and an absence of equine knowledge that might fill a black hole.
But the great thing about gambling is that you do win occasionally, as I did at Epsom, with Dr. Devious, in the Derby.
What a splendid memory that is! Standing under blue skies, on the inside rail just by the final furlong, cheering and roaring as the horses thundered past, shaking the ground beneath our feet.
My Mum told me long ago that the only dangerous thing about gambling is winning, and that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,. She was right on both counts, so I’ve played it safe over the years, keeping my losses to such a vast proportion of my total betting that there has never been any danger of winning too much.
As far as a little knowledge goes, well, here’s my telepathetic and multi-sensory gambling method.
First, I stare at the little form numbers (they look like this: 13324-1) that precede the horse’s name in the newspaper listings.
Then I relax my eyesight; my mind glazes over, and I try to envision which runner’s list of numbers will soon end in a ‘1’. Like, if I can see that 13324-1 will become 13324-11, I’ll put my money on it.
But beware! If there are letters in there with the numbers, ignore the horse. If it looks like this: 231-FU2P, give it a miss!
My tip for Race Week? Take to Ballybrit only what you can afford to lose. Gambling is much more fun when you realise you pay to play.

Am I on Candid Camera, or just living in Ireland?

Sometimes ye lads completely confuse and flummox me.
After 16 years, there are moments when a long-term blow-in such as myself, who loves Ireland and the Irish, can feel very definitely a part of it all. Then there are times when none of it makes sense at all, and I couldn't feel more foreign if I tried.
A couple of weeks ago I sat watching RTE TV news, my jaw dropping in disbelief at the attitudes of the general public, industrialists and politicians as they added to the kerfuffle and general national disgruntification over the change in the Provisional Driving Licence law.
Did somebody slip a tab of Acid into my tea? They must have, because all these so-called responsible law-abiding people were protesting in the strongest terms about how it was downright criminal that people who had not yet passed their Driving Tests would no longer be allowed to drive alone on Irish roads.
Paranoia, my old friend, crept into my brain. This was all so nuts that maybe it really was all nuts. Perchance I was an Adley-type Truman in a secret Reality Show, and the Director was cranking up the boundaries of perceived reality, to see how much bizarre behaviour I could swallow.
Maybe I was on Candid Camera, and they were just about to knock on my front door and tell me it had all been part of a big jovial wind-up, aha aha.
No, I just live in Ireland.
This is not a complex issue. It is simple and cold-bloodedly correct.
No matter how many exhausted and beleaguered mothers of ten from the sink estates of Cork you get on the tele news giving out about 'how isn't this change in the law going to 'make her life impossible, like, and sure isn't it brutal, like, and terrible, like, and cruel, terrible and cruel'.
Er, duh. Like like like I think you'll find that in the majority of other nations, the sole and singularly most vital reason to pass your Driving Test is that you are then able, for the first time, to drive alone.
Point is, it's all very well for me to come on all Mister High and Mighty about stuff like this, but it serves no useful purpose. If I wanted everything the same here as in other places, I wouldn't choose to live in Ireland.
The effect of all my bluster would be no greater than that of a fart in a colander. What might seem blindingly and even bleeding obvious to me clearly does not appear that way to you: the collective psyche of my adopted country; and, to be honest, that makes me rather happy.
You see, despite Colyoomistic appearances to the contrary, I'm not a fan of pompous outrage. Over the last 3 decades I've found that it's not smart to move to a place and then stick out your finger and shout:
"But look you eedjits, can't you see how stupid and wrong you are!"
If I wasn't Jewish, I might well call my indignation and shock a Protestant feeling; but we'll settle for English, which I most certainly am. England is a country where the letter of the law is sacrosanct, and the laws themselves are all pervading and ever more intrusive
The looser, generally more humane and user-friendly attitude the Irish have to the letter of the law suits me well.
Indeed, it was one of the very first discoveries I made when, 16 years ago next week, I walked off the boat from Roscoff and into Cork City.
Arriving in Ireland was my long journey's end. I had been around the world twice but never visited the country next door, and I somehow knew that it would be perfect.
It was a wet Saturday morning, and I dived into a big shop called Dunnes, and purchased a set of cheap waterproofs, all the time brazenly looking into the faces of the women in my new home, curious to see if they might be a bevy of beauties.
Next, I made for the pub, and sitting at a bar with my first pint of Irish Guinness, I immediately became engaged in conversation with the giant of a man on the barstool next to me. He shook my hand, with fingers the size of redwood trees gripping me like a boa constrictor, and announced his name was Con.
Having neither met nor ever heard of anybody called Con, I wondered whether the man might be taking the piss, but no. He was genuinely concerned I find a Bed & Breakfast that night, and while buying me another pint, he instructed the bar maid to make phone calls.
By the time our second pints were drained, the barmaid told me I had a room in a nice wee place up by the station.
"Now, you can relax, and have another drink!" smiled Con, as I started to think I might like Ireland.
Several hours later I dragged my drunken shabby arse over the river and up a long steep hill to the B &B, where sweaty and dishevelled I flopped onto the bed, and shook out a Marlboro Light from the packet in my pocket.
But hang on, was I allowed to smoke in here?
Oh man, not now. I really needed to chill and just have a quiet fag.
And then I noticed it, on the shelf by the bed. A great bit chunky glass ashtray.
Hoorah. Yippetty dippetty zip zip.
As I sat up to reach the ashtray, I noticed that behind it there was a sign stuck onto the wall.
'No Smoking' it declared, in bold white letters on a red background.
Ashtray. Sign.
Sign. Ashtray.
And then in my first display of what I now know might reasonably be considered Irish behaviour and thought, I spluttered aloud:
"Ahhsurefuckit.!" and lit up.
If I tried to reason rationally whether the sign negated the ashtray or the ashtray negated the sign, my brain might have blown up, like a confused Star Trek computer, shooting sparks into the room out of my eye sockets.
But the simpler reaction, the Irish one, was just to relax, do what suited me, and appreciate the ashtray.
Refusing the tyranny of stupid laws whilst obeying at least the spirit of others is admirable, and I have grown to love the Irish attitude. But passing your Driving Test is a pretty damn good idea too.

Do I really need my mobile to go to the shop?

Heading out of the door to go to the shop, I stop in my tracks.
Forgot my phone.
Do I really need my phone to go to the bloody shop?
Motionless, with one leg out of the front door and one leg in the house, I lose a minute or two debating the issue.
All I want to do is nip down to the Maxol in Lower Salthill and pick up the newspapers. What’s likely to happen on this trip that might require a mobile phone? It’s 9 o’clock on a Sunday morning, so nothing at all.
Mind you, of course, the car might break down, and then I’d be stuck on the roadside wishing to hell and back that I’d bought my phone. Or some as yet unknown incompetent eedjit might decide to drive straight out of Monksfield and slam bang into the side of Shaaanny Car. You just never know what might happen, so I might as well be prepared. Go get my phone, and stop with all this procrastinating.
Clearly unconvinced by this line of argument, my legs still remain rigid, frozen in indecision.
Yes, alright, okay, I am fully aware that anything might and probably will happen, but that was always and is always and will be forever the case. Does that mean, ergo, that I really need my mobile phone by my side at all times, ad infinitum?
Closing the door behind me I climb into the car, phoneless and vexed. Here I am, worrying whether I need my mobile to go down to the shops for fear of a car crash, or for a walk on the Prom, for fear of cardiac arrest or spontaneous human combustion, Alien invasion or gord knows what.
Alongside their obvious benefits, mobile phones bring a huge chunk of fear into our lives; fears that have always existed in the background, now suddenly becoming immediate and demanding, sitting on our shoulders as invisibly, silently and powerfully as the radiation from the mobile in my pocket is frying my goolies; as the microwaves from our mobiles parental phone masts which have wiped out the sparrows of London, and are causing mayhem in migratory bird patterns; and while we’re spreading conspiracy theory-level fear about with mobile abandon - what about the bees? Maybe our mobiles and their microwaves are the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, the enigmatic disaster that has trashed the bee population of North America and threatens to change the face of the natural world.
Blimey. See how scary it gets inside your colyoomist’s head, and all this just because I wondered whether I should take my mobile down to the shops.
I have my phone with me all the time, but I wish I didn’t. With or without mobile phones, I would be concerned about her Snappership late at night, and the fact that I can ascertain her safety is a great boon, but beyond that, I don’t really buy into a lot of the other supposed so-called benefits of total communication.
Galway City, of all places, was and is always driven by the bumping into of other people, the chance encounters and grabbed cuppas that lead to sessions. This city doesn’t need mobile phones, and neither does the rural West of Ireland, where you go round to see people, and if they are in then grand, put the kettle on, and if not, well grand, we’ll try another day.
Mind you, if I had children I’d be singing a different tune.
And then again, maybe (especially in England) the veil of security afforded by the mobile phone, the idea that as long as you can talk to your kids all will be fine, has allowed the bond between parents and their children to stretch and fray further than ever before.
If I hadn’t had my mobile on holiday with me in years gone by, I would not have found out whilst in Spain that my four year-old friend had died, and I would not have known last March that my Dad was in Intensive Care.
But equally, the panic, worry, sadness and fear that ensued having received those particular pieces of news served absolutely no purpose. Dad survived long after that scare, and as far as my lovely little friend was concerned, the rushing was over: amen.
Managing to find the comical within the intrinsically tragic, the wonderful Dom Joly forever destroyed those who use their mobiles at ill-judged times and in inappropriate places with his huge mock phone and his raucous yell:
“Hello! I’m on the beach/bus/toilet/.”
But the dangers of our widespread use of mobiles goes beyond the natural world, the lives of the birds and bees and our own gonads. We all passively and stoically accept that while we have our phones switched on, anyone - all governments, some corporate forces and any individual with the requisite technology - can find out what we are doing and where.
How many times will we hear the reactionary cry: ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong then you have nothing to fear’? Maybe they’ll only stop when we’ve completely lost our privacy and liberty.
All this in mobile phones? Who knew?
Meanwhile, I’m finally considering giving up on predictive texting. I came to mobiles late, and was instructed by all those whom I love and trust that predictive is the only way to go, but I am so very very tired of finishing writing a long text message, only to find that, instead of arranging a drive to the country, followed by a picnic and a few pints in the pub, I’ve actually invited myself to cycle over and screw my friends goat, set fire to her pubic hair and sell her mother to a nun at the whorehouse.
And this is meant to be helpful? Consider slowly and carefully just how many people you might deeply upset by failing to spot every vital predictive text anomaly:
‘I love you. We have Aids’ (ages).
Somehow, the ‘Happy/Gassy’ mix-up feels a lot less frightening, but is still very capable of being wonderfully misunderstood.
Meanwhile, somewhere on the internet:
“My friend Steve texted me when we were planning a trip to Alton Towers:
“I can't wait to have a go on all the sheep!” (rides)