Come gather round children, it's high time ye learns

Someone quipped chucklefully on the Major (vote Twenty, twenty times) site yesterday that the teachers had stopped picketing three hours before everyone else. Well, let it be known that life imitates quip. Imitates the fuck out if it. And then takes it to a higher imitation plane.

I spun past the Bridge Crew's Catholic Madras at 9.15 yesterday expecting to get the free tingle that a wave of support to any kind of strikers never fails to provide. I'm not sure from where this tingle comes. I have no strong feelings on the various issues at stake, having aggressively adopted the "head in the sand, Common Law's got a steady gig, I'm alright Jacqueline" attitude right from the start of this delightful downturn. But I like strikes. I think they're cool. I dig the placards, the camaraderie, the fight against The Man, even when logic suggests that it's merely one The Man fighting against another.

And so it was with grave disappointment that I found the school gates chained yet unmanned or womanned, with nary a banner nor brazier in sight. A bit off, I thought, but perhaps they're having a quick pre-strike meeting, throwing together a few Jesus and Irish language tinged protest songs at the last minute. But when I returned at 12.30 there was still no sign nor signs. Those lazy, lazy fuckers.

Parent teacher meeting tomorrow and I hereby vow to spend our allotted thirty seconds discussing not the always perfect Riker, but my tragic lack of trade union tingle.

But I never got to Kiev

All the injustice. All the man-made misery. The Man made misery. Fat cat bankers, property wankers. So much to inspire my ire and yet nothing in my admittedly sozzled short-term memory has aroused in me such revulsion, such rage, such bitterness as the following two sentences:

'Jedward: they inspire some with revulsion, shame and hate on the one hand but I think it’s fair to say that the majority in Ireland admire and love them. I’m in this later camp and am very sad that they’re gone.'

Yes, yes, we all know that Gimme is the most boring of grammar Nazis, the most pedantic of syntax stormtroopers. You know this, I know this. And thus with this knowing, I want to wrench these forty-one words from their weeping. hysterical parents, as they crouch as a family, self-shitting on an overcrowded cattle train. I wish to wrench so that I might gas. Gas the fuck out of them, until with much eyeball gouging by filthy, ragged fingernails, with hearty heart-stopping howls, they die a slow, agonising, richly deserved death, These words, these words come from a post entitled 'The genius of Jedward'. The. Genius. Of. Jedward.

Dude, if a dude you are, and not some demon sent to fill my life with meaningless meaning, know that they do not inspire with revulsion, shame and hate. They inspire these emotions in the righteous, the brain-celled, the true. They inspire with banality, with a lack of even the most basic vocal or kinetic talent, with a summation of all that is wrong with our popular culture.

And know that you cannot have just one hand. Or perhaps you can, but you should then hack it off with a mouth-grasped rusty axe, before hurling your neck upon said axe so that this class of language sin may be committed no longer, no, not even with one of those Christopher Nolan head stick thingamajigs.

And know that it is not "fair to say that". It is, in fact, idiotic to say that. Not merely because were the sentiment itself to be true it would indicate that Ireland as a nation is truly beyond redemption, but also because you don't want to say "the majority in Ireland'" you want to say "the majority of people in Ireland". Or "the majority of Irish people". Or "fluffy pink newborn Koala bears". I pray to the God in whom I do not trust that you do not want to say something so offensive to eye and ear. And speaking of the go-to-guy with the beard,

Know that good fucking Jesus on a hideously ugly, offensively slow Yike, it's fucking latter. Latter. LATTER. Can you hear me Berlin? IT'S FUCKING LATTER!

Before I began, I mused that this measured monologue might make me feel better.

Nope.

The sun is the same, in a relative way, but you're older

There is a temporal disturbance in the corner of my kitchen. In the little alcove above the dysfunctional dishwasher sits Microwave II. Microwave I, fatally wounded by my nine minute reheating of a plate of pasta for nine minutes, died one sad day six months later with a weak flash. I was not all that unhappy about this. Its digital clock had always been fast, inching ahead of real time by about 10 seconds a day. I got used to performing the necessary mental arithmetic and when I forgot, or the arithmetic was too hard, I was ahead of schedule. early. And I like to be early. But every six weeks or so, Common Law would correct it and I would become horribly confused. And late. And I don't like to be late. So I made Microwave I break. Enter Microwave II, a microwave too. And guess what? Microwave II has started running fast.

It's more subtle this time. 5 seconds a week? Something like that. But it's definitely happening. Coincidence? I think not. I believe in this digital age with all its wondrous rectangles, and digital clocks don't run fast. I am left with only one sketchable conclusion: temporal anomaly.

I'm going to remove Microwave II and climb in there, into the vortex. It shouldn't be more than a couple of months before I'm far enough ahead. The loss of income and necessity of hiring of a staff to both tend to me and do all the shit I do for the children, will be more than made up for when I call out the winning lotto numbers to Common Law.

I'm going to do some yoga now. It's a pretty small alcove.

Oh, come take my hand

This is, without doubt, the most lucid of dreams. Here I crouch typing, having done with many of the morning's banalities, folded, shopped, tidied and all with an almost unbelievable whiff of reality. Sure, a sky bluer than I've seen it for many a day and the vaguely off-putting beauty of everyone that I have encountered since half-past ten point to the illusionary nature of what appears before me, but in almost every other aspect the day seems just like any other. And yet it cannot be. Momentarily I will awake, drenched in pre-performance sweat, nauseated by the instant revelation that was has gone before is naught but the workings of my sleeping, shiny happy people addled brain.

Two years and five attempts later, my having passed my driving test can only be a dream.

Clouds that pierce the illusion that tomorrow would be as yesterday

Common Law has just walked out the door, using that hoary old "work" excuse, leaving me with Data, Riker and two of Riker's friends. How the good fuck did this come about? It's a Girl Guide, having a car, being a good neighbour thing and may well become a regular event. Four children and me at the dinner table. The noise, oh mother of fuck, the noise. One of them, known to regular readers as Olivia who says "crap" all the time, is perhaps the loudest person ever in the history of the world. Every word is a shout, whenever it is not a shriek. There is no statement, question or imperative that is unworthy of a hollered "Oh my God!" preface. And the other three, newly grown up Data in particular, feel the need to compete enthusiastically yet unsuccessfully, with this tornado of tone. Two more hours before I can drop them off and go to work. They finish and drift to another room, Olivia's dinner untouched as she is "allergic to potatoes", as well as, one assumes, chicken, spinach, cannellini beans and cherry tomatoes. I crank up the Rodriguez as I clear the table, but to no avail. Every exclamation drills through my frontal lobe, the usual comfort of hot water plate rinsing easing my tension not a jot. Worst of all though is the realisation that this is just the beginning, cut to one, two, three, four five years from now, and there's two sets of friends and they're louder and brasher and even more in my fucking face.

I believe I may have some kind of nervous condition. Most likely a touch of the vapours.

Such a cost

I had my heart broken when I was a child, multiple times, in quick succession. So I thought, fuck this, and decided not to do that any more. I cry when I'm bad, I cry out of anger, I cry at weddings. People don't make me cry any more. I just turn that shit off.

So it's hard to know how adults deal with these dealings. Lost love. Love lost. It's hard to know what they need from me at these times. These loved ones, these cherished ones. Because all I ever have to offer is rage. Data falls over on the way home. I feel rage. I snuggle her and try to make her laugh but all that I feel is rage. Rage at myself because I wasn't close enough to make the catch. Rage at the ground for daring to strike my daughter. Rage, most of all, at my endless impotency in the face of this world. But I know what Data needs. She needs the stuff that I'm giving, the hugging, the hilarity. I don't know what grown-ups need.

Perhaps, like me, they just need Snickereses.

I never thought that I would find myself in bed amongst the stones

I've had a little work done. Kept the hair though.