Thing 261 Give a Tour

Sometimes I wonder if I've missed my real calling in life... Tour Guide would suit me down to the ground. Someone pays me to talk, the same people who've just shelled out their cash, have paid that money to listen. I've got a captive audience for up to an hour and a half. I can talk shit for one entire hour and a half and someone will pay me for this... Honestly... Career change coming up.

I know most of my mates would pay me serious money to shut me up for a while.

Dr Frasier's been a tour guide in the Eternal City of Rome for the last six months. So he gave me some pointers. And by pointers I mean he planned the route, told me the information and gave guidelines on when to pause dramatically for effect. If we could have rigged an elaborate hoax, ala Weekend at Bernie's, he'd have hooked me up to a set of strings and run the tour for me...

I jest.
I love Limerick. Did I mention that fifty five hundred thousand times before? Very fond of my home city. So when Rizzla, Smiley and T-Field came to visit with Band Man, I decided that as well as partying, Christmas action and New Year's Eve, they should get some culture. You'll note I said; I decided. Poor pets didn't stand a chance. They were told that they were taking a walking tour for Project purposes and that was that. They're all too nice to object. Meanwhile, my boys would have cheerfully paid me not to force a tour on them. That is if they didn't just punch me in the head and leave me to sleep it off.

Charming chaps.

Seriously though. Right in the head. Slam.

It's funny how much you know about your city, and how you take it for granted. People visiting oooh and ahhh at stuff you've known forever. Stuff you've known so long that you're amazed someone else thinks it's noteworthy. Then they started ooohing and aaaahing, and suddenly I'm all about talking incessantly about William of Orange. Cos apparently foreigners think that's cool. Anyone else starting to think they may have been humouring me?

Honestly though. Limerick's got some cool history. It had a charter before London did. Before London people. Once upon a day, Limerick was a more important spot than Notting Hill, and Camden and all them other fancy places that Channel 4 tells us so much about.

It's also probably the only place (and this one needs referencing), where the name is translated into English from Irish, after the Irish had translated it from Norse. I've not bothered with the research to find out exactly how it was spelled, but the Norse founded Limerick at the Curragower Falls and called it Hylmerk, or possibly Hymlimeichakridcjkslkkllskskskkc. You'd never know with them.

Crazy vikings.

I'm not going to bore you to death with the full details of the tour (I can hear the echoes of cheers all around the blogosphere), but I was amazed with how well it went. Took in some of Limerick's great history and were in the pub in time for dinner/Guinness....

Anything that ends in Guinness has to be a success.

Thing 260 Buy Playboy, Read Articles

No one is ever, ever going to believe this. It's the classic line. "I only buy Playboy to read the articles". I might be the first person who was ever telling the truth.

The proof of this is that no one would ever subject themselves to having to read that much complete nonsense on a monthly basis. Mind you, you're reading this blog, so I guess some people will reading anything eh? I jest, thanks for visiting...

Honestly though, it's one of those lines you hear again and again on television. No one will admit to buying a magazine like Playboy just to look at naked women. It seems that there must be a justifiable intellectual reason to want to buy it. Mind you, considering the massive embarrassment of actually buying the thing...

What I should have done was gone to a shop that I never go to, as opposed to the shop where I regularly go to buy my newspaper. I haven't had the balls to go back in since I bought this stupid magazine. I went about seven shades of red, tried to pretend I was completely unbothered, and the girls behind the counter, who normally say hello and have a chat, they just avoided making eye contact and took my money. I felt dirty. I wanted to tell them it was just so I could read the articles, but who'd believe me?

Hell, even I wouldn't believe me, and I'm me.

So, the articles then...

An interview with Frank Gehry. He's an architect. It was five and a half million pages long. I've read interviews with geologists in National Geographic that were more interesting than this nonsense. The Playboy Advisor? Honestly, if I need to be taking advice from Playboy, then it's time to seriously look at my life and try to get some perspective. Notes on Jersey Shore? I'm starting to hate this magazine. An entire article on the style of UFC fighters. Not their fighting style, but the clothes they wear. I'll ultimate fight you in a minute... There was a decent piece on the Philosphy of Profanity that I found not unbearable, and the bit on the top cars of twenty eleven was okay too, but I'll be good and god-damned if I want to read the reviews of a decade of Playboy front covers...

Effectively, what we're talking about is a magazine that's one-hundred-seventy-six pages long, where roughly sixty five to seventy percent of content is filler, and the rest is naked ladies. Filler may as well have been photos of cats wearing hats.

You're getting the point here right? Anyone who tells you they buy Playboy to read the articles is a liar. Except me. I really did buy it to read the articles... Why are you looking at me like that...? Don't you dare judge me...

Thing 259 Scalextrics

I've lived a deprived and unhappy, neglected and unfulfilled life... When I was small, I never even had a scalextric set. Sure I had clothes and toys, a roof over my head and loving, caring parents... but what good is any of that when you don't own a scalextric set?

I jest... I jest... We had it good when I was small, we just didn't have Scalextrics. I always preferred lego anyway...

Our neighbours had one. But Thorny Wire and I weren't allowed to play with it. The other kids on our street had cottoned on pretty quick that we couldn't really be trusted with toys. We broke things. Not maliciously or intentionally. We just had the habit of being near stuff when it broke: toys; household items, furniture (once it was because The Undertaker had a new move in wrestling, a kind of a power bomb, so we decided to try that out on the coffee table); bones (Thorny Wire has broken both legs and both arms, I've broken my right arm, left scaphoid and my left leg in two places resulting in surgery and three months in a cast).

It only makes sense not to let us play with Scalextric. Or anything really.

The fun part about being a grown up, particularly a grown up living in this house is that Pony Boy, The Frenchman and Token Northy are, just like me, eternal children. I bought a Lego castle for fun about six months ago. I thought they were going to lose their lives.

So when Secret Santa's were opened up, and Pony Boy had picked up a Scalextric set... It was like being transported back to my childhood. All those missed opportunities for racing, all those lonely minutes when I briefly wanted to play with cars that had remote controls.

So we sat, for the best part of the evening, Pony Boy and I, with our heads down living out our youths all over again... except, that, like so many other Project Things that I try for the first time... I was useless. Utterly useless.

Remember when I told you about Pony Boy's competitive streak? And how much he loves winning? Well, I was so bad that he started feeling sorry for me. A man who lives and breathes to win things, was actually trying to let me beat him, because I was that pathetic.

I don't know how long we spent in the small room (which was now completely covered in Scalextric tracks - how many houses with four grown men in their late twenties have rooms dedicated to Scalextric sets?), playing the game and I completed just one lap.

One lousy lap.

Screw you Scalextrics... Where'd I leave my lego castle??

Thing 258 Pee in the Ladies

One of my many, many pet hates in this world is being inside a gents' toilet when a woman walks in and heads for one of the cubicles. It happens ALL the time. Apparently there are ridiculous queues for the Ladies' in any busy pub, and after a while, it becomes okay to stroll into the gents' to use the bathroom.

In the event that there was a queue for the gents' that stretched out the door and 'round the corner, and I found myself bursting for a toilet, do you think it would be okay for me to head for the Ladies'? We both know the answer to that question is: "Sorry Judge. I won't do it again".

But not this night... This night, I was striking a blow for men everywhere who had to cover their junk quickly when a lady walked into the gents'. On this night, I was boldly going where I'd never gone before...

Alright, I may have to level with you. I've been in a ladies' toilet before. I used to work in bars and clubs, and clean up time meant mopping floors and stuff, so when I say I've never gone there before, what I actually meant was, I'd never gone there during opening hours before...

Funny Story:

Heh is man. A very fine man. The Poet is also a man. A very fine, if slightly strange man (I know what you're thinking, glass houses, no stone throwing and all that). Once we all decided to play pants-chicken. Don't ask me why, we were eighteen and more than a little stupid, also, excessively drunk. Pants-chicken involves dropping your pants down by your ankles (leave the jocks on, no one wants to see that), and seeing who's going to chicken out and pull them up first. No one lost (except society). So it was decided to push the boat out a little....

Heh won the game. You could tell he won the game because the bouncers were dragging him from the ladies' toilets while he tried to pull the pants back up. The Poet and I lost the game. We stayed in the club and had a few more drinks. With our pants on.

Sorry, that was a major digression there, just felt it was relevant to the whole, ladies' toilets Thing.

Where was I? Oh yes...

I was still unwell, but New Yank was heading back to the US of A with his better half and I wanted to say goodbye and stuff. So we popped into Thorny Wire's place on Shannon Street and watched the United match. I knew what my Thing was going to be since earlier on that day. The problem with that is, that if you give me all day to think about it, I'll build it up in my head, and then I'll start getting nervous.

I must have looked at the door to the Ladies for about fifteen minutes. I started trying to mentally time the gap between women going in and out. There was no way I was strutting in there with the shoulders back. If I was doing this, it was going to be in and out.

Gap... go for it. Dodged in. Heard a noise behind me. Went completely silent. Lifted my feet up off the floor, because, you know, women investigate individual cubicles all the time right? There's a mental picture for you. Me, sitting on a toilet (pants still all the way on, since I'm painting a picture), with my feet raised as high as I can get them, looking panicked...

She left. I bolted.

Once I'd reached the safety of the hall main door you should have seen the change that came over me.

I strutted back to my seat. You'd swear I'd just conquered Everest. Smug isn't even close to the word. Now I think I don't care if ladies' use the gents' anymore. Tit for tat and all that.

Thing 257 Scopa

Now that there is a photo of a very, very sick man. Note the dressing gown (or gressy grouw as I was once known to call it in my youth), the circles under the eyes, and the do not disturb eye mask for sleeping. I spent all day in bed, leaving only to get sick, except for Scopa. See the stupid Project must go on, and new stuff must be done. So I hauled my sick ass out of the leaba for a game of cards.

That's what Scopa is. Dr Frasier's spent the last six months in Italy, strutting around Rome as a tour-guide telling people in German and English all about the fancy buildings and the history of Rome. Like I said before, he's smarter than us. One of the bad habits he brought back from Rome, aside from gesticulating madly when he speaks, was Scopa.

It's an Italian card game. Here's how it works...

Four suits, containing ten cards each: Clubs, coins, cups and swords. Each suit has three picture cards: The Knave, The Knight and The King. Three cards are placed face up and three cards are dealt into the hands of each player. Maximum four players. The player left of the dealer starts and plays one card out of his or her hand which is equal to one or more of the cards facing up. After he or she's done that, the cards collected are put to one side. The next player takes a turn. If you can't play a card which is equal to one or more of the cards facing up, you place your card facing up for someone else to play it. Cards are dealt to each player till there's no cards left to deal.

Confused yet? I was too. You'd want a Masters in something fancy from Trinity College to get this shaggin game.... curse you Dr Frasier.

When all the cards have been played you count up how many cards you played. The player with the most cards gets a point. The player who has the most coin cards gets a point. The player with the most sevens gets a point and the player who has the seven of coins gets a point too.

The Seven of Coins is called "siete bello" which is Italian for beautiful seven. Dr Frasier says "siete bello" like he's doing a bad impression of Super Mario. It's hilarious.

The only other way to score is by "scopa". If you play a card which takes the last card facing up, then you've a scopa, and the next player can only place a card face up and can't score. You can, and Pony Boy proved it, get four or five of these in a game.

So when you've learned all the rules, now you just have to sit back and allow fun to commence. My idea of fun is watching Pony Boy lose. My God that man is competitive. He hates losing. Even more fun than watching him lose is watching him being beaten by his girlfriend. Little Flower is a sweet natured woman who happens to also be as cunning as a fox. She caned him. Several times. And while he doesn't object to screaming and roaring at me and Dr Frasier when he loses, you could see he was trying not to shout at her. Trying not to - but failing.

Sorry again big lad. But it was funny.

He got his revenge mind. After she'd kicked his ass, we played another hand, because this might actually be the world's most addictive game, once you get over the rules like, and he conquered all around him.

What's not my idea of fun is putting up with Pony Boy when he's winning.

Technically you could play with a normal deck, taking aces as having a value of one, and removing the eights, nines and tens from each suit. The jack becomes the knave, the queen becomes the knight, and the king can still be king. Because of the way the game is played, it's really about screwing over the player next to you. Since this is the way it goes there's lots of banter and plenty of giving out. Which just adds to the fun.

Give it a shot. Or find some actual scopa cards online.

Like I say, it's a bloody addictive game.

Thing 256 Say Yes to Food

So there's no questions or accusations after; that's not my Christmas Dinner up there. My mam cooked a way better dinner than that nonsense. That's a stock photo. Secondly; remember when I told you that I was sick at Christmas? It all starts here...

I wanted to do a Christmas Day swim. Never done one before, wanted to make it my Thing. I pride myself on my swimming. I've swam in Kilkee trying to use an ironing board to surf at one in the morning in January. I've swam in November in Galway and had American tourists taking photos of me. I've been swimming in a storm. No fooling. A storm. I didn't realise that I have a line of reasonability. That line is chunks of frozen water sitting on the surface after a night of minus eight degrees. Who'd have guessed it? I have limits...

So I opted for a different tack. Christmas Day is all about food right? Well then; let's make the Thing all about the food as well. Everyone over eats on Christmas Day, it's the done Thing. But like me with swimming, most people have a reasonable line at which they stop. Namely just before they get sick. I decided to remove that line.

For Christmas Day I said only yes to food. If anyone offered me grub. It was my duty to say yes. Importantly, I couldn't tell them what was going on.

Mam: Daniel, are you having breakfast?

Me: Yes ma.

Mam: Make yourself a couple of bacon sandwiches there...

Me: Sure thing ma...

Easy. Couple of rasher sandwiches on Christmas Day. Nothing wrong with that.

Up with Puc It Out and Ci-Ci Do

Puc it Out: Well Maurice. Are you hungry?

Me: Not really. And it's only an hour to dinner...

PIO: Will you have a ham sandwich. That ham is mighty stuff...

Me: Sure. Sure. Where's the bread...

Hmmm. Filling up a little. It's only an hour and a half since the two rasher sandwiches. But wait, there's more. Five minutes later...

PIO: Dan, there's Taytos there if you fancy a Tayto sandwich..

Me: Hmmm.... ugh... sure. Sure. Pass the bread.

Good lord I'm full. Please let dinner not be done when I get home.

Less than an hour later, at dinner...

Mam: Daniel, you look like you're enjoying that, will you have a little more?

Me: Sure (eugh mam, why... I could burst...)

Mam: You'll have a bit of everything will you....

Me: Yes. Yes I will.

Ten minutes later, I'm pushing food around my plate, but determined to eat every morsel. Silently cursing the Project in my head. I'll never look at Christmas dinner the same again.

Mam: Wow. You're really enjoying that turkey. Another little bit.

Me: Sure ma. I'll have some more turkey.

Mam: And some stuffing and potatoes?

Me. Yep. Yep. A little more stuffing and potatoes.

I ate it all, sweating like a pig. My Da was looking at me like I'd gone out of my bosca altogether.

Me: I'm stuffed...

Mam: You've room for some trifle though, don't you?

Me: (Gags) Yes. I've room for trifle.

I thought I was going to die. So then there's the annual Christmas tradition of meeting up with Dr Frasier and The Canuck on Christmas Day. What I'd forgotten is that The Canuck and I invented the Christmas Sandwich the year before. And he was keen to go again...

Canuck: Christmas sandwich time?

Me: Hell yes (inside my head, a tiny voice begged for forgiveness...)

Five minutes later:

Dr Frasier: Are you going to eat those peanut M&M's?

Me: Yes. I am.

I fell asleep shortly afterwards. On the couch. Doctors will in years to come name this "Food Coma" and it'll be retrospectively named after me. I woke up on the couch in the early hours of the morning. Ran for the bathroom and I got to see dinners, and lunches and breakfasts and Christmas Sandwiches and trifle all over again. Awesome.

I think a little bit of me died that day. Stupid Project...

Still though. Awesome Christmas.

Thing 255 The Angry Parking Letter

Alright, I won't lie to you, this one did not get done without some reservations, and just a teeny bit of guilt afterwards. Aside from anything else, it was done on Christmas Eve - hardly what you'd call festive now is it? In case you hadn't noticed, by this stage, some of the festive spirit was waning just a tad. After the Eve of Christmas Eve debacle, and another night shift, I was facing into a last minute rush to get the last of my shopping done... Look, no more excuses, I was just feeling like a dick-head. In my defence; I couldn't get into my car. I'll get back to that...

Here's what the letter says (because my handwriting is just awful):

Sir/Madam,

Congratulations, that is a truly magnificent job you've done on parking.

You've defied the laws of physics to make that car take up more space than it actually occupies.

In case you're unaware, I'm being sarcastic, you park like a blind monkey.

Merry Christmas

It was the second edition. The first had more swear words in it.

I'd come back to my car all ready to go home and do something festive for the Project, but I wasn't feeling it. And I mean, I really wasn't feeling it. Scrooge himself was merrier than me. I could hear Dean Martin singing Silver Bells in my head, and I felt like telling my head where it could shove Deano's Silver Bells. Except you know, that's a little insane.

So I was at my car, ready to head for home, then out to my Mam and Dad's for a sneaky one with Thorny Wire. I couldn't get into my car though. There wasn't the space. The car next to mine was literally inches away from the driver door. Rage building...

I shook my head and considered slashing the tyres... I jest!!! Come on, you don't think I'm that crazy do you? I was livid though, until I realised it wasn't the car next to mine that was the problem. It was the next one over, who'd parked arse-ways in their spot, forcing the car next to mine to squeeze into a disproportionately small space. Right. That's it. I'm writing an angry letter... again!

I'd seen it a week or two before, in The Crescent Shopping Centre. Token Northy spotted a horrendously parked car, which someone had left an angry note on. I was inspired. Seriously though, if you're driving a car then you have the mechanical skills to park it. If you're a considerate human being you've got the character to NOT take up two spaces... It drives me insane. Wow, lots of references to insanity in here eh?

So after the deed was done I drive off. And then the guilt kicked in...

What if it was a sick person, I mean dying sick, and this was there last day to live. They don't have time to park up properly, and you've ruined their last day. What if it was a doctor rushing to the aid of someone ill. That man or woman is a hero, and I'm some tired clown bag who thinks he can mock them. What if it actually was a blind monkey, then I've mocked an incredible achievement that he was able to drive the car in the first place.

I felt bad for about ten minutes.

Ultimately, I take the time to park appropriately and conveniently for other road users. Most people do. So... you know...

Don't you look at me with those judging eyes.... You've thought about doing it, I know you have. You just won't admit it.