Dedicate them all to me

"Oh Daddy, you're such a cunt!"

These are perhaps not the words one would ideally like to hear from the mouth of one's eleven year old daughter. But why is that? What the fuck is it about swearing and children?

Personally, and you may be shocked to hear this, I was an early swearer. In much the same way as I do not remember not breathing or not reading, I do not remember a time when, having been once again fucked over by the world, I did not feel the need to turn the air blue. Where I learned all these wonderful words remains something of a mystery to. There was no profanity on telly when I was eight, not like today with your frackin' this and your frackin' that, and my raising grandmother's most filthy phrase was "Jesus, Mary and Joseph". Nobody at school spoke to me so it seems unlikely that I picked it up there. In truth, I believe I was born with a motherfucker already blossoming upon my lips.

Eldest daughter Riker, she be no Gimme. We watched 'Stand By Me' together recently so I do know that she's aware of "shit", "shut the fuck up" and 'suck my fat one". As to the Major's favourite swear, she has informed me that she knows the C word but it turns out, disappointingly enough, that she was referring to "crap". But not unlike her mother, Riker just doesn't seem like the cursing type. It's hard to imagine a scenario that would draw from her so much as a 'Fiddlesticks!'.

Data, on the other hand, has a lot more of the Gimme about her. She needs these words, my second born, and the sooner she is taught them and then uses them to dissipate some of her stored rage, the better for us all. It would be wrong, I suppose, to take her aside tomorrow morning as she rails and rages against the injustice of not being allowed to bring both her blanky and her duvet to the breakfast table, and explain that if she would only take the time to employ the phrase "motherfucking shitting cock cunt" right in her father's face, she would surely feel a whole lot better. It would be wrong in that Common Law would not be happy. In every other way, it would be so very, very right.

"You're all wrong", I said and they stared at the sand

I haven't done a long ride since getting sick on St Pukey's Day, and so, in a desperate attempt to htfu (ttfu? I can never remember...) I made the rather rash decision to do all today's commuting by bicycle. Two commutes, 10k each way. 40k total, first into sideways snow, then into a biting headwind with wet from the snow clothes, then into a directionally changed biting headwind, and finally into razor like rain. With another biting headwind. Fucker changed direction again. The snow hurt my eyes, the wind shrank my willy, the rain made me most miserable and cold. I don't fell any harder or tougher but I think I may have given myself new moan ee! ah!.

No, no point. Common Law is deep in a tech week and I just felt like complaining. Off about your business now. Into a biting headwind, for preference.

Do you want me to dial the number for you?

Friday afternoon, and both of the younger ladies were off at 12. Guilt ridden by having had my mother collect them due to an uncancellable stupid fucking yoga class, I decided on a trip to the cinema.

"Pick a friend, each of you, any friend you wish, as long as they're free and not too loud, and to Coolock we shall drive!"

"Huh?"

"We're going to the movies."

"What are we going to see?"

Jesus, always with the questions.

"I don't know, Nanny McPhee or that dog thing."

Data wanted to see the dog thing. Riker was in favour of Nanny McPhee. Not that the title or content of the potential filmic feast had a lick of fucking influence on their preferences. Data wanted x because Riker wanted y. And vice versa. And so it is and shall be. We ended up at the dog thing because Riker makes more noise when she loses. Not really. It was because of the time. Or something. Honest.

I thought we we're going, essentially, to Beethoven IV. I expected adventures, dogs knocking shit down for bad guys to fall over, lots of cute kids and stupid sexist stereotypes and Richard Gere blinking. Me and Riker and Riker's friend Ali and and Data and Data's friend Medb, whose name is pronounced May Ve and not Med uh buh, no, really, that's what we all expected. And then nothing happened for forty-five minutes. But it was an oddly enjoyable nothing.

But then there was death and loss and loyalty and then more death. And Riker wept and Ali giggled and Data shifted and Medb shouted and yes, Gimme also wept and cried and wept some more. I don't even fucking like dogs. It was the loyalty, you see. It's in short supply around here. Riker? She can take me or leave me. Data? She'd happily trade me for a Cornetto. Common Law? Certainly my best bet but if I were to die by motorist tomorrow (fingers crossed, right Steph? You and me both) I'd like to think that she'd find another grumpy insecure cunt to make her the odd latte. No, what I need, perhaps even more than a full carbon frame, is a nice big dog. A movie dog, that walks itself and never poops and waits for me by the train station even though I'm a bad, bad man, who if not yet dead is most certainly dead inside. That's what I need.

Always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself

I am not a violent man, though I am a man who dreams of violence. That knitting circle shit last night though, that put me close. I was well tempted to follow that weasel faced fuck into the ladies and show him a little something about truth and directness, for it is truth and directness that this little man and his ilk so sorely lack. But happily some precognition of the night's possibilities had led me to taking the precaution of getting off my face on happy pills, so in reality the worst this little prick had to fear from me was a drug induced hug.

So, yes, truth. I do my best to speak my truth. Perhaps not as quietly as Mr Ehrmann would like, but most certainly as clearly. And these people do not. No, they speak crowd pleasing lies. I know that they cannot like everything, though they profess to, I know that they cannot find every experience 'brilliant' though this is what they would have me believe. And I know now, as I have always suspected, that they are as bitter and as insecure as Gimme himself. But nastier too, folks, more underhand, and shockingly, even more fucking pathetic.

A sunny Sunday afternoon, back in the big city.

"Did you win? Did you win?".

"Nah, the gay guy won, told he he would, it was a great post. But hey, look at this..."

And now a father shows to his daughter a blurred picture of his work projected on a big screen in a room filled with people. His daughter feigns the feigning of interest. Yet somewhere in her eyes he sees the flicker of a little girl who is proud of her daddy. That's what you took. And I may well be a cunt who had it coming, but I am a cunt who tells the truth.

And you, you are just a cunt.

Kill the headlights and put it in neutral

These blog awards are pretty fucking ruley, aren't they?

Congratulate your fellow nominees! Link to the sponsors! Don't take a shit, smear it on a postcard and send it to that mildly famous guy's ex-best friend's new boyfriend with a little note in the corner saying "Can you fucking believe that mildly famous guy turned anyone to cock, even indirectly?"!

And now the latest:

'Clap for everyone, please. We all deserve a clap for working hard on our blogs.'

I do not fucking see that. If, in the darkest of nights, you smashed all the eco friendly light bulbs in my house and used the shards to tattoo, in braille, the words 'Jesus but some lady must have really shat on a certain Limerick man from quite the fucking height' directly onto my corneas, I could not see it less. Lots of people work hard. Jeffrey Dahmer worked hard. Take it from me, dismembering is not an easy job. Do I, I mean does Jeffrey, deserve a clap? Do, oh let the nightmare not come true, culch.ie deserve a clap? The clap, to go for the cheapest available joke, sure. But a clap? No, I say, and again no.

And then there's the sheer volume of clapping required. There are 22 awards. Twenty fucking two. I assume one is required to slam the hams both when the winner is announced and after they have given their lengthy speech. Not being American, I will not be clapping myself or my speech, yet that still leaves 42 rounds of applause. There is no way my delicate fucking aristocratic palms can take that much pounding.

Decisions, then. Who to applaud? It seems so unfair to single anyone out that I believe I must settle for eating a whole lot of plant food and allowing the chemicals to decide. I really am looking forward to this. I hope to see you there, though I'd much rather you didn't see me.

My favourite inside source

Yer man was in the other night. Yer man. The push bike fella. Don't see as much of him now, do ye? Off the drink I think he is, or too fuckin poor, the gobshite. He was in his poofter get up, fuckin' tights on him, the scrawny cunt. Six corona he puts on the counter, the fuckin philistine, and hands me a tenner. Not fucking looking at me mind, watchin the telly. Primetime's on. Day of the reshuffle this is. I say "Howarye". He just fuckin sighs. "Putting out deck chairs, aren't they?" I look up at the telly. They're talkin about Mary Coughlan. "Wha?" I say. "Putting out deck chairs. On the Titanic." What a fuckin cunt. Another of them government knockers."Ah jaysus," I say, '"you're not another of them government knockers?" The look on his face is fuckin priceless. "You're kidding," he says in his faggy put on fuckin voice. "Wha?" I say. "You think the government are doing a good job?" he says. He's already fuckin close to chokin on his whatchcallit, his incredulity, chokin on it like it's a fat cock but I know I can get him fuckin closer. I can make the cunt gag. "At least they didn't move the main woman." More fuckin pricelessness. "You're not...tell me you don't mean Harney." He looks like he's going to fuckin shit himself the fuckin shirtlifter. "I do.""You think she's doing a good job?" I want him to get all fuckin emotional now, make the fucker feel like the twat that he is. "Don't get all emotional now," I say. He gets all fuckin emotional. Bangin on about trolleys, about how my Mary wants to fuck over the poor, about shite he knows fuckin nothin about. I let him run out of steam. And then I fuckin go for him. I give him all the shit about the HCP, all the made up trolley numbers, all the shit I practise on the wife, then I lean over the counter and fuckin point at him and fuckin tell the little fuckin faggot what's what. And he's about to start splutterin his response when Tony arrives, he wants a taste of that Rioja we just got in, so I dismiss the cunt. "I'll talk to you again,"I say. And he stands there for a second, his mouth hanging open like a fish, and then he turns and gets on his fuckin tricycle and fucks off. I pull down a glass for Tony and fill it up. And I feel fuckin deadly all night long.

I did not believe the information

I really was ill, you know. I wasn't making it up just to get out of cycling to Galway. I really want to cycle to Galway, honest. No, I do.

I woke up on Patrick's Day feeling nauseous. A burpitudinal volley every ten seconds or so, each one bringing back the memory of the previous night's chicken and sweetcorn soup. I was weak, shaky. Standing was something of an issue. "I know," I thought,"I'll go and ride up a big fucking hill." And so I did. I mentioned to the cycling buddies that I was feeling a little unwell. They nodded sagely and thought "sandbagging pussy". I had done 20k by the time we hit the climb, feeling somewhat otherworldly, having taken only one unusually agonising pull into the wind. So then we hit the climb. Or Norman hit the climb. And Marcin hit the climb. I tried to hit the climb. Then I tried to bitch slap it. To give it a chinese burn. I finally settled for waving limp-wristedly in its direction. It probably wasn't that much more than 3k, this climb, and only very steep in brief sections, but it took me approximately fourteen years to complete. Fourteen years of trying not to vomit, of trying to remember to breathe, of remembering that breathing made it worse, of realising that you can't really ride up a hill without breathing. Norman, who has never reached the top of a climb before me, was a dot in the distance. Marcin, who I consistently drop when I'm not being an idiot smoker, was already home redecorating his kitchen. I got to the top, and that was pretty much it for the moving for the next five days.

Everyone else on the Enterprise got this bug too. Got the bug, threw up, and recovered fully by the next setting of the sun. Poor everyone, right? All I'm saying is, if they wanted five days off work or school then as soon as their tum-tums started to feel a little dicky, they should have made the logical decision to ride up a really big fucking hill.

The sound the streetcars make as they pass my window

Time was I would roll groggy out of bed at 7.25 and spend five minutes crawling into Data's bedroom so that I might gently coax her from sleep towards her full on, in your face morning whingey whiningness. Then I started smoking again, so I was forced to get up earlier, and stagger downstairs for morning coffee and morning coughing. And then I stopped smoking again and found myself AMly energised and up even earlier, having grown used to that me time where I got to do the things that I really, really wanted to do, like emptying the fucking dishwasher and preparing Common Law's latte. These days, still smoke free, I rise at 6.30 and have time for that emptying, but also eating, and sipping and reading Bike Snob and setting up the morning for the knocking down that the children will do. It's good, I like the time. The time is nice. But here's the thing. As the mornings grow brighter they're chasing me, all three. Common Law first, who also likes the time, coming downstairs, bustling about doing stuff that I feel like I should have done, that stuff being my gig, what with her and her full time job gig. Then Riker, sitting merely awake reading in her bed, which makes me want to hustle her, to grumble if you're awake then get up and eat your breakfast, brush your teeth, fuck it, empty the fucking dishwasher. And now even the not so little Data, up yesterday at 7, demanding to be fed, dressed, brushed.

So I will push back my rising time once more. And soon enough I'll be up at 11 o'clock the night before, knocking back that first espresso and preparing for the day ahead.

I’ve got me a date with Botticelli’s niece

Self-portrait by Gimme A. Minute

Gaze upon my visage attendees of meaningless awards ceremony and tremble. Fucking tremble I tell you. As you may be able to tell from the photo above, I have been somewhat unwell and therefore cannot guarantee that I will arrive by bicycle, but there I will be, Zoolandering it up, giving my victory speech whether I win, win or win.

I am so going to fucking win.