Rambles around the head of an Irish Grandad

Dustin for Taoiseach

Grandad November 15th, 2010

I am heartily sick of hearing about our Gubmint and the IMF.

Every day there are rumours and counter-rumours, and quite frankly I don’t believe any of it. Leastwise, anything our Gubmint says, I automatically believe the opposite. They are such accomplished liars, and they genuinely seem to think that people believe the shite they come up with.

They say the Gubmint isn’t thinking of a default on debts. This actually means that the Gubmint is thinking of defaulting.

They say they haven’t approached the IMF. This means they have.

They honestly think that they can con the financial markets by saying that everything here is rosy, and they express utter amazement that the markets don’t believe them. Why the fuck should the markets believe them when the dogs in the street know that they are a pathetic bunch of culchie arseholes who will spin any fucking yarn to save their own skins?

There is only one thing that will calm the markets and that is a change of government.

Just look at the logic. Why the fuck should the market trust a government that is the very same government that got the country into a mess in the first place and who have done nothing since except run around in circles protesting that the sky isn’t going to fall on us? I know i personally wouldn’t invest a red cent in Ireland at the moment all the time those incompetent fuckers are in charge.

We need a new government. It doesn’t matter a damn who that government is. It could be an opposition party or it could be the Irish Countrywoman’s Association. All that matters is that it isn’t the same shower of shites that got us into the mess in the first place.

It has reached the stage that the current crop are destroying the country by their very presence. Every day they stay in power is another act of treason.

In all seriousness, even Dustin would be fine by me.

He couldn’t be any worse

Grandfather’s clock

Grandad November 14th, 2010

There is an old clock in the kitchen here.

When I say ‘old’, I confess I don’t know its exact age but it is somewhere in the region of sixty to seventy years old.

It’s one of those office type clocks that you see on office walls – large, round and with numerals to match. It’s the kind of clock that office workers throughout the world keep an eye on to check if it’s coffee break time, and how long they have to slave before going home.

Someone once pointed out that the clock is unusual, in that the big red second hand doesn’t clunk around like modern clocks, but glides smoothly and silently as if it has all the time in the world, which I suppose it has.

It’s mains driven and extremely accurate….. Except when it stops of course.

I dropped it a couple of years ago. I thought that was the end of it, but I only knocked a chunk out of the casing, and smashed the glass. I kept the bits of casing ‘just in case’.

Last week the clock stopped. Normally it needs a bit of a kick if there has been an interruption of power, but this time it stopped for no reason at all. “Aha!” I says to myself. “The old man has died”.

Since it stopped, it has been hanging there, quietly saying it’s a quarter to five. I never realised how much I look at that clock, as I am reminded many times during the day that it is deceased. The only reason I left it hanging there is that the last time I painted the walls, I didn’t bother painting behind the clock, so there is a dirty great circle of grey up there.

Today, I decided to do something about it. I’m not quite sure what I intended to do with it, but I carefully removed it from the wall. I dismantled it and plunged up to my elbows into its innards. The motor is tiny compared to the clock itself, and it’s full of those fiddly little screws. I stripped it down and found that the oil from the last splurge of maintenance has viscified. Is there any such word as viscified? There should be. The act of becoming more viscous? Anyhow, I cleaned it up and applied fresh oil. Seeing as I had it off the wall I also glued back the bits of casing that have been at the back of the cupboard for the last couple of years.

It’s back on the wall now. It is silently and accurately telling me the time of day.

The old man ain’t dead yet.

The wisdom of the owl

Grandad November 12th, 2010

Good morning.

Yup. Half four and I’m not long out of bed.

Back in the sixties, when I was a student, I first started experimenting with my biological clock. I came to the incontrovertible conclusion that I am a night-time person. My natural time for getting up was around three in the afternoon. Night-time was for the serious matters in life like carousing and drinking. Sleep was for wimps.

Now that I am released from the dictatorship of the alarm clock, I have let my biological clock have its way with me. Life has somewhat turned upside down and has reverted to the natural way of things.

My cycle is now dictated by my needs, and not by the needs of others. When I am tired, I go to bed. When I am rested, I get up. At first, I just found my self going to bed later and later. I wondered if it just carry on regressing but it didn’t. My natural bedtime seems to be around four in the morning. It hasn’t budged from that for quite a while now. It means I don’t wake up until midday at the earliest, and more often than not, a good deal later. If anyone wants me in the morning, they can go fuck themselves. It may be their morning, but it’s my night.

It does have one or two snags though.

If the postman is delivering something that won’t fit through the letterbox, he rings the bell. It’s all very well for him, but the inconsiderate fucker is waking me up at midnight.

The main problem though is dinner time.

Those bastards in the takeaway insist on closing their doors when it is only mid morning for me.

Rats.

The Field is my field

Grandad November 11th, 2010

I see they are banging on about property tax again.

Eighty yoyos a month? A fucking month? That’s a thousand a year! They can go and kiss my sweet hairy arse.

Will someone give me one – just one – good reason why I should pay it? Everything that shower of wankers in the Gubmint have done to date has made things worse. They are patently being played for fools by that shower over in Brussels. So long as the Euro is stable, and the Germans can get their money back from the Irish banks, then the plain people in Ireland can go to hell. We are being played for fools, and ignorant bollix that he is, Biffo is lapping up every drop of shite they feed him.

I own my property. I have slaved for the best part of forty years to earn it. I don’t owe a red cent on a single blade of grass, and I intend to remain that way. I am certainly not going to fork out a thousand a year to finance some German gambler. I swear to God that any fucking gubmint inspector who tries to cross my threshold is going to receive the business end of a bill-hook. After all, the law states that I can use any force I feel reasonable if I feel threatened on my own land, and gubmint inspectors are a threat in my book.

Talking of books, I would suggest to our illustrious gubmint that they go read John B Keane’s book “The Field”.

And if they still don’t get the hint, they had better be prepared for all out war.