Pinchy Pinchy

‘Excuse me, do you have these in a size 6?’

‘Oh.. well, ok then, I’ll try the 5 if that’s all you have. I’ve a few pairs of shoes from this brand and a 5 was grand before.’

So starts My Summer Sandal Saga. I wanted needed a new pair of sandals a few months ago. I’m a bit of a hoarder in terms of clothes and shoes, once I find something I like I’ll wear it forever or until it literally falls apart. I have a certain style, a certain look and I really don’t find much in your average high street that I like, so I grab it with both hands when I do and then hang onto it! Having finally admitting defeat with a pair of fab wedge sandals with a row of black flowers as the single strap, I condemned them to the wardrobe in the sky and needed new ‘everyday’ sandals. You know, ones that would do for work and that I’d still get away with going out if the rest of me was a bit more dressed up.

By chance I happened upon a pair of such sandals in black patent with swishy crossover straps and they were even on sale at half price at a measly €35! What’s not to like about this? But they were the last pair left and they were officially a size smaller than what I normally take. Without so much as a second thought, I said to the sales assistant ‘I’ll take them!’ and next thing, me and my new purchase toddled off. Delighted with myself I was! So much so, I put them on and headed out again to meet friends 5 minutes after I got home. Now, these sandals don’t have much of a heel, maybe an inch and a half, practically flat for someone like me who loves how big, big  heels for the way they make me feel like a giant - I have 5inch Kurt Geigers that bring a tear to the eye. So they wouldn’t hurt, even though they’re brand new, right?

Face Value

You’re reading this because I like to write and so I started this blog. Most of it is of a kinda personal nature, other bits and pieces aren’t, they’re maybe news items or beauty product reviews etc. I’ve been very flattered by the amount of people that read this blog and for the many, many comments and I hope you continue to visit here. But and here’s the thing, you and I chat about lots of different things, my opinion, my relaying something that happened, you commenting in reply, it’s quite easy really so let’s stay friends cos I’d love if you kept visiting!

 So, it’s a nice little thing we have going, me and you. It works! I start a conversation, you chip in a few words if you’re so inclined and we wake up tomorrow and do it all again. When you’re not here you have your own life, that I know and that I get. I don’t demand when you visit, I just like when you do! And equally, if I don’t want to talk about something, I don’t, if I want your opinion, I’ll ask and I can happily rely on your support. If I felt like you absolutely needed to know what I’m up to every minute of every day, well, you’d be following me via Twitter. But the thing is, I’m not a Twitterer, I’ve never written a Tweet and I won’t be either. I just don’t see the point. And I don’t follow anyone else’s Tweets either. If I want to know what any of my friends are up to I’ll text or ring them and ask to meet for a drink. And as for following the Twitterings of whatever celebrity, hello? what is all that about – it’s almost like an acceptable form of stalkingand really, really, why would you bother? If you don’t know this person IRL so to speak, why would you want to know that it’s sunny where they are on the other side of the world? Or that they’ve just had great fish & chips? Or indeed anything to do with their bodily functions?

A while ago I succumbedto Facebook, after a number of people asking if I was on it and then a friend that’d moved back to New Zealand saying it’d be the best way [ie cheapest!] to keep in touch, I decided to sign up. I’ve a pic up, just the one, taken a few years ago and it’s more about the signpost in the background rather than being able to recognise me [I'm also wearing sunnies] and I filled in a bit of the profile-y type stuff. I requested to be friends with those that had been asking me to sign up and accepted more friend requests within a few weeks. I don’t find Facebookthe best thing since sliced bread. I find a lot of the ‘What are you doing’ type posts very mundane, cringe inducing and don’t bother clicking into music or group postings that other put up. The odd time I’ll do a quiz one of my ‘friends’ has done and compare results – if I really have nothing better to do. And what is it with people putting so many pix up on their profile? Really?! A few people I’m friends with literally have hundred’s of photos of themselves on view. Hundreds! Talk about vanity… Get over yourselves!!

I did ponder for a bit when I got requests to be friends with the brother of and the cousin of a girl I used to be very good friends with. Then I got a request from her as well.

Round ‘em Up

Part of my commute to work now includes walking from one end of O’Connell Street to the other. Thankfully and I mean thankfully, it’s only something I have do maybe 3 or so times a week, depending where I’m coming from and where I’m going to [I'm still 'between' 3 different places but let's not go there again!]. Anyway, I mean thankfully, as O’Connell Street is one of the last places I ever like to be and move along it as swiftly as possible. To put it in not uncertain terms, it’s a kip with scangers and junkies, weirdos and the plainly violent at every turn and I’m not going to apologise for hating the very sight of what’s considered the main street of our Nation’s capital.

I don’t open my bag while walking down O’Connell Street. I don’t use my phone. I step away from people when waiting to cross over the side streets. I hate being at the traffic lights right at the Bridge, there’s often people there acting weird, looking out of it, dressed weirdly, talking away to themselves trying to catch someone else’s eye to annoy them or distract them or pressurise them into handing over money to get away. And don’t get me started on the ‘boardwalk’ where you get groups of people of indeterminable age and sex shouting, scoring drugs and adding to the seediness of the area.

The way a lot of the width of the street is now paved over and tree lined only means that there’s more places for them to appear out from. To lean against while smirking and sleazily following girls as they walk by. I see it in the eyes of many others as they walk towards me, they too are hurrying to the other end of this disgusting street just as much as I am, eyes front and centre, reactions razor sharp though in case you accidentally bump into anyone that would put you in hospital rather than accept your apology. No amount of street cleaning will ever make this part of town anything but dirty and grimy, unsafe and dangerous.

Oh, every city has it’s dodgy areas, that I know and I’ve been in many, many cities. I just hate that O’Connell Street has become a cesspit for the dregs of Dublin life. What must the tourists think? Really! I see so many of them with their maps, trying to find someone that looks approachable to ask for directions, the look on their faces when another pajama zombie runs the wheels of the baby’s buggy over their toes while the tracksuited scumbag she’s with throws a bag of chips at their feet.

One example of a typical bolt down O’Connell Street for me happened last week. I became aware of ‘a gathering’ of some type, just at the corner of Talbot Street, where the Kylemore is. I moved to walk against the shop side of the path, just keeping my head down. People had stopped. I could see that people were trying to figure out what was going on while not engaging any of the ‘people’ involved. It was a whole group of them, maybe 6 or 7, males and females of various ages, a few buggies, low flying hoop earrings and ponytails and the girls had their jewellery on too. They were standing, shouting at one another, taking up most of the pavement, pointing at each other, walking away and then turning back to shout louder. God, they were one ugly bunch of scumbags now that I think of it. I definitely heard words I understand, so they were ’speaking’ some kind of English, but I was only able to get words here and there and it took a few minutes to get past the developing melee. I was just disgusted at the state of them. Acting like animals and looking like ones that hadn’t washed in days at that.

Say what you want, call me a snob. But quite simply, it’s not a crime to want to be able to walk down a main street in a capital city without feeling that you’ve just been through a complete haze of eau de scumbag. The irony being me actually glad to get on a Dublin Bus at the other end isn’t something I’ve forgotten either. I’d happily avoid both but unfortunately it isn’t possible. Excuse me while I go for a shower, the mere thoughts of being on that street in the not too distant future has me coming out in a sweat.

Still Incoming

It goes ‘on and on and on’ like the clichéd Journey song always meant it to but now I’m really wondering WTF is actually going on . You read about the ex below, who got in touch totally out of the blue. Well now I’m after getting a Facebook friend request from another ex from about 6? maybe 7 years ago. We went out a few times and I wasn’t that interested, nice enough guy but he had a canny knack of just ringing and saying he’d booked tickets for Film X that I’d mentioned or that he’d booked a table at Restaurant Y that he knew I liked. I actually got bored of trying to be nice, giving him a chance and just going with it. I answered his texts less and less, turned him down on numerous occasions and then after several ‘no’s’, he was bugging me so much that I ignored him altogether. This went on for about a year, i.e. him not getting the message and there’d still be intermittent texts over the months for quite some time.

Then I was out of the country for a while and I got a text from him about a week after I came back, this is now approx 4 years ago. He asked how I was, what I’d been up to and I answered as I was still all upbeat from my time away. A few days later I turned him down to meet for a drink later that week, 5 minutes later my phone rang, I absentmindedly answered it he was on the other end of the line – ‘Where are you? Sure I can be there in half an hour!’ Damn and blast! Cue very uncomfortable catch up drink, I brought him to a bar I knew he’d hate, there was no kissing and while he still kept on texting, I kept ignoring. Then finally approx a year after this second bout of contact, I told him to give the rugby ticket to someone else and praise the Lord, he stopped contacting me. Until last weekend when he sent the Facebook request.

I have no intention of dragging all that up again but I was curious to see his pic – show me someone that wouldn’t be?! I clicked into his profile page and there he was, looking just the same, which is actually quite good looking in a bit of a nerdy way. And how does he describe his relationship status? Married. Married, that’s what! So why oh why oh why did he look me up again? That ship has long sailed buddy. 

Back to the email out of the blue a few weeks back. I was kinda seeing this guy for a small while but knowing I was going away on said foreign trip and would be gone for some months, I wasn’t pushed to keep it going while I was away. There were a couple of emails exchanged recently but as I was never that interested and all this originally happened 4 years ago, suffice to say that my 2nd email was very much straight answers to the questions he asked and I had no desire to keep the chat going so I didn’t ask any in reply. Even my first reply literally just had a ‘How are you’ politely placed at the end of the email with no other questions inbetween.

I also got a Facebook request from this guy over the weekend! Now, as I’d surmised, he had been due to get married about 2 years ago so I didn’t know if he’d actually gotten married, got married and had already split up etc. So, again I click into his Facebook pic and what does his relationship status say? Single, Single is what! So, now he’s single I’m sure I’m part of a chain of ‘used to knows’ that he’s trying to unsingle his life with. Am I going to confirm this request either? No way hose! I’ve absolutely no desire to rake this up again and even less desire to compete with all the saddos that base life achievements on the number of Facebook friends they have.

God! Is it the weather? It is that I give off this impression that I will always be single and therefore a refuge for any of my exes finding themselves suddenly single or living in the middle of nowhere that now-married ex seems to be. Am I destined to be the party girl that never settles down until one day I wake up and realise I’ve just tried to chat up a friend’s son or worse that every one forgets my name and I just become the ‘lady who likes a sherry but watch out for all the cats she has’.

*Sigh* I don’t mind being ‘the lady who likes a sherry’, I don’t even mind being the ‘lady who likes sherry that has loads of cats’, I just don’t want to be the the type of person thought of as remaining on the shelf for my entire life.

Time Warp

‘What time is it?’

‘Seven’.

‘Seven? Oh that’s fine then, I’ve to get up soon.. I’ve my alarm set for a quarter past’.

So, I got up a few mins later when my alarm went off and my phone read 7.15, jumped into the shower, got ready and left. Walked to the bus and realised I was a little bit early, but only by a few minutes. There was a small number of people waiting for the same bus, or so I thought. I got a little worried as the bus was late – it didn’t arrive as normal around 8.20 for the 8.30 service and these buses are never late or at least the once or twice they have been it was due to horrific weather conditions. I looked at my phone and the time said 8.36. then it crept up to 8.43 and still no sign of the bus. A bus arrived and a number of people got on, but it wasn’t my bus, it was going somewhere else. This was getting stranger and stranger. I asked the bus driver if there was a problem with the 8.30 bus and he thought there was, but wasn’t sure what.

I rang the bus office, it’s a private coach service and you can actually get through to a helpful person, unlike trying to get info from your normal public transport  system. Anyway, I asked the girl if there was a problem, she said that a large maybe 6 car pile up on the motorway had caused a section of it to be closed the night before and it was only cleared this morning, so there was a slight delay with some of the very early buses. I asked her if she wouldn’t mind checking where the bus was. She rang me back and told me that the 8.30 bus had left on time! Huh? Yeah, left on time! But I’d been standing there and definitely, definitely the bus hadn’t arrived at 8.20 and waited for any passengers until 8.30 and then left on time like she was insisting. All the buses have GPRS, so she apologised that I was obviously standing at the wrong stop or something but that the bus left on time with passengers and it’d been at the right bus stop for 10 minutes. I really couldn’t get my head around this.

The next bus after the 8.30 was the 9.30, it was just my luck that buses go every half hour before that. Sure, it was now just after 9am, so waiting another while for the next one wasn’t going to kill me and I didn’t have much of a choice anyway…

But a bus came along just 2 or 3 minutes later! Hurrah! The driver ran into the shop to pick up a newspaper and cigarettes and I stopped him as he was getting onto the bus again.

‘Excuse me, but by any chance are you late arriving this morning? Someone said earlier that there was a crash that closed part of the motorway until recently’

‘Well, yeah, the motorway is still a bit slow and I’m here a bit later than normal but I’m leaving now… ‘.

Grand so and I got on the bus. I rang work to say that the 8.30 bus was late but seeing as it was just gone 9, I wouldn’t be too late after all, that I’d be in the office before 9.45. And that was that, no problem.

I arrived into work, turned on my PC, started to watch as emails came in. The postman came in the door and left stuff on my desk. The phone rang for me, chat chat. I replied to an email. All perfectly normal. Then I got a text message on my phone, read it and threw my phone back into my bag. Turned back to my screen and something caught my eye.

‘What time is it?, ‘ I asked, ‘is it half ten? Already? ‘

‘Yeah.. why?’

‘No, really, is it half ten?!’

‘Yeah, GK, it is, what’s wrong?’

‘It can’t be half ten, it’s not even ten past ten on my phone but it does.. actually.. say half ten on your machine as well. That’s weird. No, seriously weird.’

I spent the next couple of hours really freaked out. I had lost approx 26 minutes of time. Really! I had spent Sunday on time. I had gone to the pub to watch the footie, left to watch it by my reckoning on time and when I arrived, sure enough, the game was just starting. I had been on my phone a couple of times and come off to watch a particular programme on telly, my phone reading the same time as the time the programme was due to start and lo and behold, I didn’t miss any of it. I was seriously wondering WTF had gone on! It was just bizarre! I’d somehow lost nearly half an hour in time! The clock on my phone read the right time all throughout Sunday. The battery wasn’t low and I haven’t had any problem with the phone recently. I got up on Monday and somehow I was 26 minutes behind the rest of the world.. well, this time zone anyway.

I had in fact got the 9.30 bus to work, that left on time, the 8.30 bus hadn’t been late. I had been on bed over 20 minutes longer than I would’ve normally and my whole morning went askew, but I didn’t realise it until I was in work and the clock on the wall and the clocks on colleagues monitors all read the same time, 26 minutes ahead of what it was saying on my phone. Where did those 26 minutes go?

Suit Yourself and I’ll Do The Same

So, you all know I’m feeling a bit ‘meh’ about Christmas – or rather the whole having to  buy presents thing. I made a decision and my credit card sat on my desk in work for about 3 hours because I ended up being so busy that I didn’t even get to order stuff from the ISPCA yesterday. And because it ended up being so busy, the atmosphere in the office became a ‘Lookit! This has to be done and done now!’ type thing. To clarify, going from having a few to absolutely loads of things to do at the same time doesn’t phase me, I’m well used to that. Throw in a couple of narky so and so’s that aren’t doing their jobs, 2 people constantly on hold for me to add fat to the fire, a lazy and oversensitive colleague and the fact that I’ve just started a new job and well, I just wanted some peace and quiet  after having to throw a bit of weight around all afternoon, a bit of EastEnders and nods of sympathy from Molly & Fizzy.

I walked in the door to 100 questions, I got annoyed all over again at some people not doing their job, questioning my judgement and generally being a pain in the ass about having  to actually work for a living.. and I also ended up with a totally burnt pizza and only seeing about 5 minutes of EastEnders.

I’m jumping subject slightly, but bare with me  – last Sunday, in HQ, ok? I came back from having a lovely fag and The Glamorous Blonde asked me to name a Transvision Vamp song. ‘Yeah, Glitter, you generally know this stuff’, echoed My Other Dad, her husband.

With barely a shrug of my shoulders the words ‘Baby, I Don’t Care’ flowed out of my mouth, ‘Wendy James?’. ‘How does it go?’ asked My Other Dad. Now, I did pause here cos, well, I’m no singer. No way will you get me volunteering for the SingStar at an impromptu after pub session! And then one of the guys came racing over to us, mic/lighter in his hand, ‘BABY, I DON’T CARE! Told you I’d remember in the end!’ And away with him, delighted with himself.

The Glamorous Blonde asked what Wendy James looked like,

‘Platinum blonde hair, into guitar’ [Slight raising of the eyebrows]

‘Heavy black eye make up’ ['Oh really Glitter?]

‘Quite blingy.. pale pink lippy.. bit of leather..’ ['God! Ye could be describing someone else, Glitter!]

I ‘Whatever’ed’ them, smiled and took a gulp of bourbon, that song went on loop in my head for ages and I realised that I need to go dancing very soon!

Christmas Blank

I haven’t really started my Christmas shopping yet and what’s more, I truly can’t muster the energy to. Now, before you think I’m going all Bah! Humbug on ye – I’m not! It’s just that I hate shopping at the best of times so it’s particularly difficult for me to get enthused about battling my way into town, trying to make enough space for myself to walk from A to B, without having to tense every muscle I have in order to prevent being knocked over by some aul wan determined to get to the shop till before me!

Now, I love Christmas and we’ve always had great times with family, laughing, singing, drinking, chatting around various tables and in various rooms of various houses, catching up and making merry like the real spirit of Christmas should be – it’s just the thought of having to seek out, choose, buy and then transport a rake of presents by the 25th of December that sends shivers of dread down my spine.

I was in town about a fortnight ago and after my specific mission to go into shops A, B and C to get the specific things I was out of, I surprised myself by deciding to actually go into a shop that I didn’t need to. In there I saw something I thought my sister would like, picked it up and bought it, only a small token type thing. Then it dawned on me that I shouldn’t just give it to her when I next see her as I remembered that Christmas was indeed just around the corner and so I’ve kept it to give to her on Christmas Eve at our traditional family exchange of pressies. Result! Mind you, I’ve yet to get her main pressie and she hasn’t helped at all by constantly responding, ‘I don’t know Glitter.. sure just get me anything.. I don’t know what I want this year..’ Gah!

Mom has been more forthcoming with telling me what she wants but I still have to go get it and it’s kind of the same with Dad. But she wasn’t impressed earlier when I bemoaned the fact that I didn’t even want to go pressie shopping and truth be known, I couldn’t care less about scraping the whole giving and receiving thing altogether. I was told I had ‘All weekend! Even just all day Saturday would do it, get everything at once etc’. Balls to that – I had to bite my tongue really hard and not remind her that on my Saturdays I stay in bed late getting over the night before, go watch rugby or football, come home to a warm up glass of vino and then get ready to go out all over again. Eh hello? Give up all that for most of the day getting battered and bruised in shops with snippy SA’s and only the crap or highly expensive things left? No way, Hose.

I’ve had a chat with Molly and Fizzy though. Fizzy’s 4 month old collar is in perfect condition. She told me that I could get her a new one if I wanted but that she likes her current blue one and doesn’t want to put me under any pressure. Molly got a new collar at the same time and what with all the jumping into everything, climbing trees and bushes etc that she does, her’s is all raggy but I’ve assured her that her new one will be just as cute as the daisy one she has on now. Is it really any wonder that I’m thinking of making a little hidey hole just for the 3 of us under the Christmas Tree and not coming out until dinner is ready?

Sounds Great! Good For You!

So, there we were, in HQ, discussing what we could remember from the previous weekend, when Limerick Girl starts telling me about meeting up with a crowd that she was in college with. She stopped to sigh and roll her eyes and said how it was ‘one of those type of evenings’. Ah yes! the ‘I don’t give a fiddler’s about what’s going on with you, I just want everyone to know that I’m married with kids, living in a huge house, just got promoted and am living the kind of life you could only dream about’ type evenings. Or as us single [oh the shame!] people refer to as ‘Evenings with the Bitches’. So, Limerick girl went from conversation to conversation, shrugging her shoulders saying ‘Ah! Things are grand with me, I’m working in a different part of the company, still living in the same place I was in a few years back, still single yeah, but sure things are grand, I’m happy enough, well sure I’m single yeah, but sure no big deal. Really. You seem more worried about it than I am right now! Sure lookit! I’m fine! Things are fine. I just don’t have a lot of news’.
Then in return, or perhaps in addition to that she had to endure the ‘Oh, well moving is such a pain, but we had to really, two kids take up a lot of space and so do the cars and the snooker table and sure the garden in the last place would never fit a pool, let alone a pony! Oh! We’ve another wedding next weekend! And we were in John and Claire’s cottage in Achill last weekend, Sean and Clodagh’s the weekend before that. Lord! When you’ve his friends and family to fit in aswell as your own it’s just a nightmare! And we were at little Sorcha’s First Communion ‘do’ before that – great excuse for a glass of Chardonnay in the afternoon!’
Continuing on with, ‘Do y’know, between the kids and then my Stephen’s work ‘do’s’, I haven’t a minute to myself! But that’s what it’s all about, settling down and having kids! Haven’t a minute to myself anymore! I’d love to be single again, able to go out whenever I wanted, the thrill of meeting a new man – are ye sure you’re still single? I just don’t understand why! Anyway! Oh don’t mind me, I’m only joking! I love my Stephen, he’s great with the kids and he’s a Senior Partner now, did I tell you that? Wouldn’t swap him for the world! And there’s only four Senior Partners in the company and my Stephen is one of them.’
So, after all the head tilting and sighing and hands of sympathy on her shoulders and pep talks of ‘Don’t worry, you’ll meet someone great. Any day now. Aaannnnyyy day now’, Limerick Girl noticed that the conversation started to change a bit. Each time someone would sit back down at the table, there’d been another crisis with the babysitter taking ages to answer the phone or wondering where her husband was, when it was plain to see that he was last seen having a great time with some young wan near the bar. There were a few bitchy comments exchanged. Eyes hit the floor when questions were asked about so-and-so. The girl who had had a few more drinks than everyone else looked decidely upset and ran off to the Ladies at one point. One of the others whispered into Limerick girl’s ear that herself and her husband don’t sleep in the same room any more. Another broke down and announced to everyone that her husband was having an affair but is sticking with her for the sake of the kids. Another announced that her husband’s business was in trouble but both families think everything is fine.
Oh how alcohol lubricates the lips! Not one person in the group seemed to be genuinely happy with their nuclear family and astronomically sized houses. Except Limerick Girl, who, not having either, at least had her dignity and hadn’t lied through her teeth to keep up with the Jones’ and the Murphy’s and went home happy!
She just told it like it is.

Enough With The Mo, Already

Lookit, I feel I have to first point out that charitable donations are the way to go, including that all those rollercoaster ‘I’ve jumped off a cliff’ or ‘treked through several continents’ type efforts and are extremely admirable ways to spend your time while collecting for the greater good. However, I’m only feeling pain right now due to the absolute onslaught of facial hair coming in my direction. I feel totally attacked by ‘overfriendly’ follicles and eager to please pustules of keratin sprouting out from, well, Jesus, Lads, from all around me! I can’t help thinking that those Munster guys have a lot to answer for – sure how many impressionable males were watching the mighty game last Tuesday and felt that the only way to express their testosterone was to simply stop shaving? Even though they were due in work the following day. And the day after that. And the day after that got their supervisor to supposedly donate to the cause, no more questions asked. Ah lads, please! No girl, NO GIRL, let me tell you, likes to kiss a ‘tache.. there’s maybe a bit of leeway given to a ‘bordering on’ sexy goatee, but there’s nothing attractive about sucking on coarse hair dangling from an upper lip. And, at some point, most likely at 3.30am in your place, just after remembering that we bought pizza on the way home, that, well, having to actually point out you’ve a slice of pepperoni and a green pepper sitting somewhere between your nose and your mouth really doesn’t make us want to kiss you again. In fact, it might just make us Girls want to retreat into our fleecey pajamas, switch on more reruns of ‘Sex and the City’ and eat peanut butter straight from the jar. Wha? If you lot are going to do your thing, we’ll do ours.

Drop. Spill. Break. Mess.

There is always one. I’m talking about the messiest person you’ve ever met, everyone knows someone that creates a big pile of mess everywhere they go.
It’s as though this person simply can’t get from A to B without dropping something, spilling something or breaking something. You’re in a restaurant and they pull their chair back too far and bump off the person at the next table before knocking against the table as they sit down which causes the little vase with the single flower to fall over, water flows all over the table, the vase rolls onto the floor and breaks and as this person turns to look for a waiter to get a cloth, the waiter has seen all this happen, gets to the table too quickly and he gets an elbow in the ribs for being efficient. And all this happens as you’re still standing beside the table, mortification spreading throughout your entire body and after a sharp intake of breath you realise that it’s now a few minutes later, you haven’t breathed since and you’re just wondering if it’s safe to sit down yet.
A simple trip to the Spar for late night supplies gives the guy behind the counter his only bit of entertainment of his entire shift as Mr or Miss Messy leave a trail of destruction throughout the shop; picking up a newspaper by just one corner results in a page in his hand and the rest of it on the floor, all he does is ask if you want an apple and it seems like an entire orchard rolls down the aisle, this person always picks up a can from the bottom of the pile and tins of beans compete with the apples for floor space. The frightened looking girl behind the hot food counter literally just finishes saying how hot the aluminium tray is when it bounces off one hand, a second and then results in a pile of barbeque sauce and chicken wings on the floor. At the till you just stand back hoping he’ll just pay, which means you can leave and you hope the security camera footage appear in a You Tube Top Ten.
You often wonder how the person hasn’t killed himself yet in some kind of freak accident that could only happen to someone like Mr Messy.
You know that you risk everything you own when you allow Mr Messy into your house. And you never mean to invite him over; he just appears at the door or trails after you and a few mates when you’re leaving the pub at closing time. I couldn’t believe just how much damage a friend of a friend did in my place once. Spilt wine, broken glasses, knocked ashtrays, kicked over bin, books knocked off shelves, biscuits trampled into the carpet. Every time he moved I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable sound of something else breaking. He was telling a story and with one sweep of his arm he knocked everything off a nearby coffee table. I asked him to leave before I lost the will to live. He somehow ended up in my place again some months later. I warned him not to touch anything, not to move and only breathe when I said it was ok. He promised he wouldn’t even pick up anything, would just sit with no sudden movements. I watched him like a hawk. Yet he still managed to knock everything off the same coffee table when all I think he meant to do was scratch his head. He’s not allowed come back to my place ever again now.