Red Leeroy - The Struggle For Power

After all my posturing and trying to be clever, all my aloofness and mockery of the underwater shopping expeditions down in Cork, I got up on this morning and began my Christmas shopping. I can hear Radge now, head in hands, bemoaning the fact that I have turned on him and let him down in his pseudo Christmassy type male bonding moment of need. Sorry old chap, but the 23rd was far too late for me. So I set my alarm for 4am and sat in my kitchen drinking whiskey and listening to Fairytale of New York and waiting for 9am to arrive.

My Christmas shopping very much resembles a Phil Collins record. It starts out with little or no thought to the actual result, solidly promises to be completely and utterly shit (and then promptly delivers exactly that). In short, it doesn’t even make the top forty. Enough with the Phil Collins metaphors I hear you say, but I think by now you have got the idea on what level of awful, hideous, and talentless idiocy my shopping skills fall into.

The list had been made. It was a start. A start made while drunkenly mistaking a tube of super glue for my missing optrex. So, with one eye glued half shut and the onset of a raging hangover, I headed into Hoggis Figgis. I was buoyed with the hope that for the first time in years I would not being careering around Grafton St at 6pm on Christmas eve, desperately hoping for inspiration in the basement of a Hardware Store. This didn’t last long.

Less than ten minutes later I was being hurriedly escorted out of the store by a large heavily built and heavily accented gentleman. My off the cuff quip to nearby priest regarding ‘paedophilia for dummies’ had not endeared me to staff or customer, and so with my copy of the Manga Kama Sutra stripped from my hands (no pressie for Auntie Amelia this year) I was tossed out into the street. I thought for a moment about going across the street to Waterstones, but I gave into the fact that any shopping prior to the 23rd is just not going to be allowed to happen. And so with a heavy disposition I gathered my thoughts and headed for the eye and ear hospital.

Now before I head into this post I will just out place a caveat firmly into place. I do care about the people under 6 feet of water in the “People’s Republic”, and if it was me I too would be in curled up on top of my wardrobe wailing and blaming Brian Cowen.

But you know what gets me most about the floods, it’s not the suffering on a grand scale, it’s not paltry 14 quid stolen from the dole funds to fight the problem, it’s not even the hilarious adverts on Newstalk telling people to head to to Caaaaark on the train for a rare old time.

No. What gets me most about this whole scenario are the flood victims on RTE news that come on and tell the world that their Christmas presents are now drifting somewhere off the Dingle peninsula, I mean who the hell does their Christmas shopping in November?

In January 2002 I returned home from Amsterdam to Dublin in a haze, well a fog, or a maybe a fuzz, I was fuzzy, or slightly hairy mouthed. I was also rich, not Bill Gates rich but I had ten grand not burning a whole in my pocket, the rent had been cheap, the salary had been good, and the weed had been free in Amsterdam.

I returned to my mothers door to be met with a look that seemed to me to be relief, I had left home a slightly unstable 23 year old and had returned a capricious 25 year old. As I mentioned I had money to spare and perhaps it may have been a good idea to head out into the real world and get a job straight away, but I had other plans.

Off on the horizon I saw the 2002 World Cup Finals, the competition glittered like a footballers giant diamond ear ring on a BBC post match interview. Ten grand, a roof over my head, and the possible fulfilling of my ambition to watch very single one of the televised matches of a World Cup. I managed to accomplish my dream. I awoke at 7am every morning, watched 90 minutes, then went back to bed and arose again at midday to watch a second game. The previous two years of white widow and sticky green don’t allow me to remember any of those footballing gods and their trickery, but rest assured I enjoyed every second of them.

Now my life has come full circle, redundancy beckons and a large last pay packet is coming in January, and low and behold a world cup not 5 months off in the distance. There has been a few small changes though, I no longer live with my mother, I have a mortgage and bills to pay, oh and I have a wife too. All these things apart I feel it might be possible to relive my 2002 dream in the year of our lord 2010, and once more see every wonderful free kick, last minute handball, and nose pukingly hilarious England semi final exit.

Can I dare to dream?

I don’t know if you all remember (or care for that matter) but a few weeks ago I managed to rise to the top and keep my job. A new found security, the same salary and more hard work washed over me. The idea of not being sealed in a barrel and thrown over a waterfall was also a bonus.

Well, you know that sound in family fortunes - well play it in your head…………….Now.

It’s all over. The glorious cuntbags closed the whole Dublin office in one fell swoop. They inflated a giant yellow slide our the second floor window and handed us our p45’s and a handful of sticky change from under the coke machine as we flew down it screaming “please my children need dental work doooooooone“.

So I join the great unwashed and head for the dole queue with my cap in hand. I hope to make some new friends down there, Johan the IT specialist, Gervan the dentist, Nuala who has a degree in project management and Russian.

“But I am an essential worker”

“Blauschein”

Life keeps on trucking day by day, sometimes it is filled with fun and laughter, sometimes though one must struggle to get by, this is how it is.

The daily struggle usually comes in the form of your job. Redundancies, pay cuts, colleagues being set on fire and thrown out the window onto the scrap heap in some form of sick employment death lottery. This is what employers do, (unless you are lucky enough to live in the suit of armour that is the public sector - but that is another post).

So I survived the cull as you all know, and I and my remaining work hounds and I sat back safe in the knowledge that they could not hurt us anymore, all that was left to do was to bed down, put up more pictures of Hulk Hogan, Chelsea Clinton and Gus Cesar in my cubicle and wait for the Christmas party.

The xmas party, this night that would cure all ills, we could put aside our petty fears, our mistrust and hatred of middle management and head out into a Dublin watering hole and drink until we spilled out onto the street and vomited all over Molly Malone melons. It would be cathartic in the extreme, we would return in January ready to do battle with the world and win, but alas it was not to be. For this year our festive fun will be………………………………………………wait for it………………………………………………..drumroll……………………

A hands on cookery course.

A fucking hands on cookery course. Firstly let me just say this, when I head out with my work colleagues I want to get so drunk that I say things I don’t mean, mean things I don’t say and generally want to forget the whole booze laden, guilt making, abuse filled sickmaking affair. How on Gordon Ramsey’s green earth am I going to do that by cooking a bastard chicken fricassee in an apron that says “kiss the prickbag who talks about you behind your back”?

Well, in short it’s impossible. It is also even more impossible because we are not allowed to drink until after we have eaten the food we have so lovingly prepared through gritted teeth, and to add to that safety regulations also do not allow high heeled shoes, and I’ll be half a cup of egg whites and a kilo of caster sugar if I am not allowed to wear my xmas pumps while telling the HR director that he is a “furrgggin pileees oshhh steaaamering cccrantts”.

So in short they have broken me, I am not attending the party, I am not getting my glad rags on, I won’t be getting drunk, I shall be at home watching some hardcore food porn with Nigella and a Teflon handkerchief.

This picture sums up my brain panel in the weekly team meetings (sorry, meatings) I attend.

I look out the window, I go on wonderful adventures in my mind, but mostly I doodle.

Click Right Here.