Samhain?

Another weekend, and another load of even more miserable-fuckery on my part.

Halloween was a non starter. I don't rate this as a holiday and have steadfastly refused to garnish my house in plastic tat, pumpkins, and other tomfoolery, even if all my neighbours are buying into it. As a consequence, my house probably looks "scarier" than all the others. Having bought some sweets, I laced them carefully with chilli and Ex-Lax, and left them by the door, I waited for the sound of tentative steps to my door. None came. Bah. I like chilli anyway so everyone's a winner.

I'm in my town of origin, Kilshite, at the moment visiting the folks until tomorrow. It's a beautiful, tiny place about two hours' drive from Ballyfuck. It has lakes, mountains and old nineteenth-century buildings. It also has nineteenth-century ethos. It's full of begrudgers, backbiters and gossips. Brinsley McNamara could have written Valley of the Squinting Windows as an elegy to my home town. It gets claustrophobic if I spend more than three days here. Visits from the more annoying members of my extended family and nosey neighbours grate on my nerves, so I'm looking forward to going out on the piss with local mates later. . .

On a happy note, I saw the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace on Friday. With the delectable Daniel Craig. With a villain that looked a lot like Robert Carlyle (I couldn't take him seriously as a villain, as I kept thinking of that dancing Dole Queue scene in The Full Monty) - but it wasn't him, and not enough explosions or gadgets (where was Q?). Still, good entertainment and highly recommended.

Wind

It's been very windy of late. Stupid low pressure. Bloody irritating as I can't put one foot outside the door anymore without looking like something that's been dragged through a hedge backwards when I go back in.

It was wind of a different kind that was on my mind today, however.

I spent last night in the company of some friends who had produced the most wonderful curries for dinner. (Yes, this IS going where you think). Saag paneer, saag aloo and some chicken korma all washed down with cool bottles of Lidl's finest Perlenbacher beer. It was sumptuous.

I thought I was in the clear this morning having done the necessary "evacuations" well in advance of leaving the house for work. (I am one of these weirdos who is too embarrassed to do poos at work.)

During the morning I was doing fine. Nothing was amiss.

Midday, and some gurgling in my stomach was a warning sign. Bloody wind. Farting in an open-plan office is a serious no-no, so I held it in, until I could get to the safe blast zone of the toilets. I had to mince to the toilets. I shudder to think what anyone walking behind me made of this. And it was for their benefit. And, when I got there, I had to carefully synchronise the offending emission with a flush of the toilet - in case of noise - as, typically, there were six other women in the vicinity.

Having returned to the section and turning my attention back to more mundane things, I again felt some burbling in my stomach. And then, horror of horrors! My large intestine decided it wanted to join the fun and emitted a very loud borborygmus (pre-fart) which would reach 9.8 on the Richter Scale equivalent of colonic gas! At this point I grabbed my stomach and went, "urrggh my bloody stomach" for the benefit of anyone in the general vicinity, even though the real provenance of the noises had been further "south".

Two minutes later, the same thing happened. Only louder this time. "Brrrrrrrrble" went the air deep inside me. A couple of clerical officers looked up, thinking that (a) the EO had decided to forego any of the social niceties of shared office space, or (b) the EO was about to spontaneously combust. They secretly hoped (b). Because it was cold and some of them would have liked to warm their hands at the flames. And there would be a day or two off to go to the funeral.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon waddling to and from the bathrooms, and when four o'clock rolled around I was out the door like something propelled by wind.

The local chemist was very pleased when I bought out their entire stock of charcoal tablets.

Being anally retentive is such a pain in the fucking hole.

Sisters are doing it for themselves…

Having rented rooms in several shared houses in four different cities since the age of 18, I can really appreciate the merits of having a place all to myself. Not quite “Hell is other people”, rather “Hell is SOME other people”. I’ve had to put up with all kinds of stuff in the past. Smelly people. A religious nut. An alcoholic with lesbian tendencies (kept my door locked in that house). People with appalling table manners – a pet hate of mine. A girl who attempted to order me about like a strict parent. A girl who would stomp around in high heels in her wood floored bedroom next door to mine every morning and make a mess with makeup in the bathroom. It hasn’t been all bad, though; I have also made many friends from several countries.

Living in Ballyfuck and having the place all to myself means I can have friends over to stay any time I want, I can have a whole shelf in the fridge reserved for BEER, and I don’t have to put up with other people’s bathroom habits, noisy shoes or stinking dinners made from dead sheep. It hasn’t been possible to rent a room out in such a remote place, so I’ve resigned myself happily to managing the fixed-rate mortgage on my own.

The new living arrangements have brought new challenges into my life. DIY. Yes, I can enlist the help of friends living close by or my dad when my parents come for a visit, but I like to try things for myself when I can. I have become adept at gluing bits of plywood together to make a crappy bookshelf or end table. My nails are permanently short to avoid dirt and breakages when working. I don’t think a “Dowel” is the father of a Minister for Justice we once had. However when a flat-pack says “two people needed to assemble” I don’t divide myself in two by a process of mitosis; I seek help.

Recently I needed to do some more heavy duty work and decided that I should invest in the tools to do the job. So I took myself off to my nearest Argos (because I get to fill in a little form at the start – woohoo! Form!), chose a decent electric drill from the laminated catalogue with a lollipop sticking page 236 and 237 together, paid for it and waited for it to come out on the conveyor belt while studying the people around me. A tracksuited bleached-blond teenager of uncertain sex was intently studying the range of Elizabeth Duke products on offer. A man had bought up all the batteries in the store and was waddling to the door with them. A stray dog had entered the store and peed on the faux leather display sofa near the door (why do they hunt these fauxes?). A cheerful Polish girl was marking dockets and handing customers their purchases over the counter.

When Order number 534390924.222∞ was called, I stood up, ready to claim the device that would symbolise my initial foray into the wonderful world of power tools. The Polish girl glanced around and, noting the corresponding number on my docket, looked at me, gave a nervous laugh and said “Oh you don’t need THIS; you are a WOMAN!”.

I couldn’t help but laugh and say “Shit! I forgot to hide my boobs!”

She did have lovely nails though.

The Laying on of Hands (another random annoyance)

I may have mentioned before that I work with a variety of personalities; some of them strange, and the vast majority of them completely normal. One of the more normal folk is a rather religious lady who sits fairly close who has to put up with my swearing, saying "Jaysis" a lot and general gesticulating and sighing.

I am not a religious person, in spite of the frequency with which I roll my eyes to heaven and take the Lord's name in vain. I am not a churchgoer, although I like to visit old churches when there's no religious service on. I'm not keen on organised religion at all, however I am not a devotee of Richard Dawkins either. (My cynicism towards organised religion mainly stems from studying the stranglehold the Catholic Church had over the affairs of the nation throughout the twentieth century. I wrote a postgraduate thesis on it and related matters a few years back. Where once we were a nation blighted by priests, we are now a nation suffused with retail parks and SUVs.) But, I digress.

This religious colleague is a lovely person, always helpful and with a beatific smile. Even on the more stressful days, the unpleasantness is "offered up". She remembers us all in her prayers. And that's a nice, well-meaning sort of thing.

Here's what gets me though; when talking to me, she has a habit of touching my arm, and sometimes even my shoulders. I'm not happy with that. I'm not very tactile. You could say that my family motto is "noli me tangere" which literally translates from the Latin as "don't touch me" or, in my own parlance, "FUCK OFF". However, reacting like this in front of the rest of the section would be unprofessional. Telling a colleague to fuck off while jumping around dusting myself down, that is. Not random fucking swearing about "where did I put that fucking form" or "there's no fucking paper in the fucking printer again".

There's no other solution for it other than to have a quiet word. And the word won't be "Fuck" either. Shite.

What the hell is it with me lately that attracts them? Is it my new deodorant? Or is my black, sin-stained soul showing?

Funny that it should be, because I sold it for this job.