Hey Mr Tambourine Man...Fuck Off!

Much change has taken place in my small work unit in recent weeks. (Oh no! Change! The enemy of the cossetted civil servant!) Personally, I like a nice bit of change. Keeps me on my toes and offers me an opportunity to stimulate the dim recesses of the brain which the Electro-Convulsive Therapy rods can't reach.

My erstwhile colleague, Morticia, has left for pastures new. A career break of some sort I believe. I think there's a Mediterranean cruise in there somewhere, so that Morticia can avail of the opportunities to drop in on friends like Benny in Rome, Nicolas' and Carla's holiday home in the French Riviera, BenAli in Tunisia - oops, scratch that one. She took the Atropa belladonna I presented her with some months back, and a large tub of emollient. Good luck to her.

In her stead comes a whole nut EO... I mean, a whole NEW EO. He has been redeployed from some other area of the Department which was found to have surplus staff. I call him Mr Tambourine Man.

Why? Is it because he carries around a small percussion instrument which marks out the tempo of his stride as he arrives into work in his Birkenstocks and white socks? Is it because he is always whistling Bob Dylan tunes?

Nah. It would be OK if he did these things. I could even forgive the tambourine. Those things are easy to grab and throw at people if they piss me off.

Mr Tambourine Man is yet another of that strange band of brothers in my new Department, the unattached Oedipal male. The kind of chap whose only experience of women is (a) Mammy, (b) Sister Nunzilla, the principal of the primary school, (c) Bridie from the Post Office, (d) Yer wan off Winning Streak. But particularly Mammy, as she is still washing his clothes and cooking his dinner even though he is now turning grey at the temples, has a cholesterol problem and is developing a middle-age spread (although not quite yet a member of the Masonic Order of the Generous Waistband like Nosher). He has been a civil servant since time immemorial and got promoted to EO on seniority because he dribbled slightly less than the other COs in his unit.

As a woman who does not fall into (a-d) above, I'm something of a curiosity to him. He likes to sneak glances across the room whenever he gets a chance. I am not dressed provocatively; my low cut tops with neon flashing lights "Boobs in here!" are kept for the weekends.

He doesn't know the correct method of initiating a conversation with a member of the fairer sex. A simple "Did you get any bastards canvassing at your front door last night?" would work for me, as I could describe my "BIOHAZARD- PROPERTY QUARANTINED DUE TO EBOLA OUTBREAK" sign that I had made specially for the front door. And the Petri dishes with the actual virus in them that I've placed at regular intervals around the driveway (I'm not saying where I got those).

Nah, Mr Tambourine Man prefers to let the woman kick off the discussion. He returns from tea break and paces up and down in front of my desk for a few minutes, in the hope that I'll look up and say, "How were the scones today, Colin? How many teeth did you lose today?" A pointless gesture, because I don't look up and enquire about the fucking scones. This pacing is disturbing and is having the opposite effect to what was intended. His attention seeking does not stop there, however. He puts his hand in his pocket and proceeds to play with an unfeasibly large...

...penis?

...NO!

...an unfeasibly large amount of change. Jingle jangle. And more fucking jingle jangle. "Oh Colin, what an awful lot of money you must have," he seem to be willing me to say. Seriously. Is the sound of clinking monetary shrapnel the equivalent of the Sirens' song to Ulysses?

"In the jingle jangle morning, I'll come following you..."

I won't follow you, so fuck off, Tambourine Man, and put it in a pint glass on your bedside table like most normal people. I bet you pay for your scone in the canteen with 1c coins.

Earlier in this post I said I liked change.

Why do they punish me so?

Intrusion

You know how it is. You're fucking whacked as you arrive home from a pretty exhausting day at work. Deadlines to meet, meetings to attend, COs to beat (ha!). All you can think of is grabbing the remains of last night's curry out of the fridge, nuking it in the microwave for 5 minutes, scoffing it down and then collapsing in front of the telly for the rest of the evening.

I had one of those days today. I'm not complaining, being nicely busy makes the day go faster. Evenings at home on these days are usually a stark contrast to the day in work. I like to just do feck all. Grass needs cutting? Arse. Ironing? Pish. I'm going to watch The Simpsons.

So I was barely in the door and had just about left my handbag down along with the random assortment of stuff I've brought in, when the doorbell rang. "Ooh", I thought expectantly, "It must be that fit new neighbour with the nice tight jeans that show his nice muscly arse off to perfection coming round to introduce himself." And off I bounded to answer the door.

Yikes.

"Hello, my name is Lara and I am an art student from Israel. Would you like to see some of my paintings?"

"Eh. No."

"Oh just have a look."

"Er, no."

"Please?"

"I've just got in from work. I haven't even had a chance to take this ID badge off. I'm not interested."

I got the door closed before the girl had time to take another breath.

That's the third Israeli art student I've had ringing my Ballyfuck doorbell this year. The first one managed to keep me on the doorstep for twenty minutes in January while he proudly displayed "his" work. I didn't buy anything but did enjoy the puzzled look on his face while I compared one painting to the work of Jack Vettriano and another to that of Modigliani. Art student? My hole. And the hard sell techniques are spectacular. The second one came at a time when I was recovering from a chest infection and stood wheezing in the doorway. Incredibly this "art student" was also a "medical student" and offered a back massage to help clear the congestion! "Feck off", I told him.

I usually "answer" the door by sticking my head out of one of the upstairs windows and shouting down to the caller. It's great fun altogether.

"No, sorry, you can't come in. I'm imprisoned in this upstairs room but if you come back in five years I'll have grown my hair long enough to be able to let it down and then you can climb up and rescue me and maybe at that point I might buy something off you".

Or, alternatively, a stack of pre-prepared flour and water bombs by the window are another useful aid.

Forms downloaded from Revenue's website and left by the window are great too. "Are you paying income tax on these sales? If not you'd better fill this out!"

Bloody cold callers. Why can't they all just fuck off and let me eat my dinner in peace? The next one gets a fork in the eye.