Time gentlemen please

Head Rambles Posted on by 10

If the powers that be get their way, nipping down to the pub for a pint will be a little complicated.

For a start, I have to phone ahead and book my pint of stout. Do I have to give them a day’s notice or can I phone on my way down? They don’t seem to be very clear on that point.

Then when I arrive I have to have a “substantial” meal along with my pint. Now apparently a substantial meal either consists of what I would normally have for dinner, or failing that, any meal costing more than nine yoyos. Why nine is significant I don’t know but apparently it is. Pubs will probably just charge nine yoyos for a packet of crisps or a pack of peanuts. For years now they have been charging small fortunes for a glass of tap water so I suppose people just won’t notice.

Having arrived at my appointed time and received my pre-ordered pint of stout, along with my overcharged packet of crisps [or peanuts] I then have just ninety minutes before I am thrown out again. Again I am not sure of the significance of the ninety. Maybe they just have a thing for nines? They probably initially suggested nine minutes drinking time until a modicum of common sense prevailed.

I don’t know how they are going to time my visit. Will I have to clock in? Will I be given a ticket as if I were in a car park indicating my expiry time? Will all customers be issued with kitchen timers programmed to ping after ninety minutes?

I suppose some will say that it’s worth the hassle just to socialise with friends. But then the ubiquitous Unsocial Distancing will put paid to that idea

I’m beginning to see the attractions of just having a quiet whiskey at home.

It’s a lot less complicated.

The end of civilisation

Head Rambles Posted on by 10

There is a threat out there but few seem aware of it.

I speak of something far far worse that anything dreamed up in a laboratory in Wuhan in China or indeed in Porton Down. Bird flu is chicken feed and Corona is just watery beer by comparison.

I refer of course to the impending overthrow of humanity by the wheelie bin.

The invasion had humble starts. One by one they started appearing outside people’s houses. No one really took any notice of them. Then they started to multiply and are now reproducing at an alarming rate. I know I started with just one, yet somehow I now have four, lurking in the front garden by the gate watching. That’s what they do – they watch. They are waiting for their time to come.

It was our Penny who alerted me to this danger. She is a very friendly dog and will be all over any knacker who comes in the gate looking to fix my roof or tarmac my driveway. But if the pope himself walked up the lane dragging a wheelie bin behind him, well, the world would be on the lookout for a new pope. She is wise to the ways of the wheelie bin and had the great sense to alert me.

They seem to be programmed or given their orders or something by huge lorries that come thundering up the road. That lorry used to come just once a fortnight but now it is joined by others coming twice a week, which just goes to show the alarming growth of the menace.

They somehow seem to have hypnotised the population into feeding them. They always seem to be full of shit and once the lorries have visited they appear to be hungry again.

So next time you are around the side of your house, or wherever it is that they lurk on your property, just watch them.

Because damn sure they’re watching you.

And waiting.

Thinking outside the box

Head Rambles Posted on by 8

There is an aspect of disability I had never considered.

Having a disabled person in the house requires quite a lot of equipment. Most of it is a once-off thing but some items have to be bought on a regular basis.

There is one thing all these items seem to have in common though – there seems to be some kind of law that everything has to be packed in huge cardboard boxes. And I really mean huge. Even if the item is relatively small it comes in a huge box mainly full of scrumpled up paper to fill the cavernous empty spaces.

In the early days I used to cut them up. It was a tedious job, hacking at corrugated cardboard with a butcher’s knife and them ramming the bits into the recycle bin. I soon got tired of it. So now I just flatten them and stick ’em in the garage. There’s a mountain of them now.

One of these days I am going to tie them all up into a massive bundle and leave them out on recycle day. The problem is that I don’t have any string. I know that’s a small problem as all I have to do is to buy a ball of string down in the village. But I keep forgetting.

I’m just back from the village.

I forgot to buy string.

Catchup

Head Rambles Posted on by 3

This has been an amazingly exciting week.

Absolutely nothing has happened.

The week started with a nationwide hosepipe ban due to low reservoir levels, presumably because the sheeple are washing their hands every five minutes, and needless to say it has hardly stopped raining since.

The library was supposed to open but naturally didn’t. Our local library runs to a somewhat arbitrary calendar know only to itself.

Our Green Party leader got into major trouble. Presumably to be contemporary he commented in the Dáil on a newspaper article about some bloke who had been called a nigger at the age of six and wasn’t that absolutely disgusting in our wonderfully multicultural island? Naturally he had to apologise then for using the word nigger which goes to prove how our Politically Correct don’t even understand the concept of context.

We still haven’t got a gubmint after last February’s election. Apparently the stumbling block at the moment is a debate on how to stop cows farting.

I can’t wait to see what next week brings.

Do not touch

Head Rambles Posted on by 8

Just when you think it couldn’t get worse, it does.

I’m on about the terminology that we are having to suffer while the Virus Panic persists.

I’m sick of being told to “stay safe” or “stay at home”. I am sick of hearing about “our heroes” and “frontline workers”. Now all we hear about is the “roadmap to recovery” which is basically a sort of plan that seems to vary from day to day.

One of the worst is the all pervasive ubiquitous “social distancing”. What the fuck is social about it? Hugging, shaking hands, kissing and touching are all social activities practised since the dawn of time. Now they are outlawed and they call that ban “social”? It is about as anti-social as you can get.

I heard a bit of the news last night. There was an item on about hotels opening [as part of the fucking “roadmap to recovery”] and I heard some bloke saying he was leaving the hotel doors permanently open as part of a “touch avoidance policy”. What the fuck was that? Then I realised – he was leaving the doors open in case Precious should come along and wouldn’t have to touch a door handle in case the Virus was lurking on it waiting to pounce. How fucking neurotic can you get?

The world is becoming a very irritating place.