Nativity Festivity

There are times when this cursed laptop really pisses me off. Sorry, not the most Christmassy of sentiments there, but that’s how I feel. I just typed up a huge blog and somehow wiped it due to the stupid touchpad. Damn.

Right. Before I get started, I should note that the Drunken Thesaurus has got completely out of hand. This evening at dinner my parents offered me the following terms, most of which I am fairly surprised I’d forgotten: ‘soused’, ‘merry’, ‘maggoty’, ‘mouldy’ – pronounced ‘mowldy’, ‘toasted’, and the only one I’d never heard, contributed by my sister, as it happens – ‘bollowed’. That brought the list up to 142. So far, so frighteningly affected by alcohol.

And then, while I was rooting around for something in an old jacket’s pocket, I found the drunken thesaurus I had attempted to compile last year. How could I have forgotten so many colourful words? Get this: ‘banjoed’, ‘buzzing’, ‘comatose’, ‘didn’t know your own name’, ‘disorientated’, ‘dizzy’, ‘frazzled’, ‘hazy’, ‘jam-jarred’, ‘leathered’, ‘levelled’, ‘lubricated’, ‘mashed’, ‘not in full possession of your faculties’, ‘obliterated’, ‘oodled’, ‘off your face’, ‘off your tits’, ‘pasted’, ‘pixilated’, ‘puddled’, ‘ratted’, ‘skinned’, ‘slammed’, ‘smashed’, ‘tanked up’, ‘twatted’, and ‘woozy’. And my sister Elaine has just offered, over my shoulder, ‘fuckered’ and ‘in a right jocker’.

Now I might have doubled up, or miscounted, and to be honest I think the best thing is to repost the whole list as one coherent and indeed alphabetical unit. But I reckon this whole shoddy litany to consist of a whopping 172 TERMS OF DRUNKENNESS! What the Hell is wrong with us people?

Anyway, so, after blogging yesterday I conducted a highly efficient shopping blitz, of which Rommel and Guderian would have been proud. Home then, to eat, sleep, conduct a monosyllabic phone conversation with Ruth, sleep again, book flights over the net, and go to bed to sleep properly.

I woke at ten, and then decided that rising would be possibly immoral, probably unhealthy, and definitely inadvisable. Since I had to do a little work, I lurched from the bed to the shower at half past two, and soon found myself being assaulted by the good people of Palmerstown, desperate to breach the walls of the local off-license and plunder the liquor within. Not merely did we have to deal with immense queues within, but there were so many people outside that Sean Bowe had to stand at the door and regulate the numbers coming in. I’d never seen anything like that before. I mean, come on! It’s only an off-license.

Ah, but what an off-license, you might say. If I may quote the Sunday Tribune from a few weeks back – or at least, I think it’s the Tribune; my Mam clipped the relevant piece:

On The Grapevine

It has just been announced that the winner of the Cheers Take Home / Edward Dillon Wine Shop of the Year award is The Silver Granite in Palmerstown – an outlet that crops up regularly in this column. The Cheers group as a whole is going from strength to strength, and Ciaran [sic] Towey of the Silver Granite deserves credit, not just for an excellent shop, but for nurturing wine knowledge among local enthusiasts.

Anyway, as it neared eight I headed off home for my break, hoping that I’d be needed around half ten; there was really no need for me to come back, as Kieran reckoned there’d be more than enough staff on, but since he knew I was desperate for work, or - more accurately - money, he said I could probably come back in for the last hour if I really wanted. As it turned out, things slackened down a lot, and I wasn’t needed at all. Instead I strolled back just after last orders, clutching a rake of cards for people. (What’s that about fearing Greg, even bearing gifts? Sorry, Classical joke. Not a good one, either. Boom boom.)

The Cheers gang were sitting around on Heineken cases, drinking very nice champagne and passing around chocolates, so I gladly joined them. After a while we headed back into the lounge, as the staff were finishing. Much drinking took place.

Unfortunately while there it turned out that due to a misunderstanding I wasn’t down to work on Saint Stephen’s Day after all, a anomalous state of affairs, since I’ve worked in the lounge on every Stephen’s Day since 1991. There were too many staff on as it stood, but I spoke to Kevin (former manager of the Granite, and now kind of a general group manager) who was fortuitously around, and he arranged it for me to work in the Foxhunter, our sister pub in Lucan, from four until close on Stephen’s Day. With a bit of luck I’ll be there for Sharon’s birthday party.

Today followed much the same pattern as usual. I got up round half eleven and went to half twelve mass in Ballyfermot with Mam and Dad; it lasted for ages, and involved some rather peculiar mummery involving a giant candle which the priest needed help to carry. Home then for dinner preparations. At one point I got rather stressed out and had to retreat to my room, reading Lone Wolf and Cub and playing Spider Solitaire until I’d calmed down – I had felt ready to explode. Back downstairs then for the slightly less enormous than usual Christmas dinner.

Hmmm…. two main Christmas dinner observations. The first one concerns dessert. My Mam used always to make three desserts at Christmas, which we would have a choice of. Usually they would be a trifle, a pavlova, and a cheesecake, a flan, or occasionally a black forest. The same thing happened every year. Offered a dessert, most sane people, somewhat rested after a post-main course pause, would go for the trifle, being light, and slightly sharp; it cleanses the palate. If people felt greedy, a second dessert might be taken (this was a once yearly experience, I should note), which was invariably the cheesecake or flan. Everything would then be put into the fridge for the following day. And the following day we would go to the fridge to find that the pavlova had turned to a cracked and mushy wreck. What a waste. God knows how many years we did that for. But then, he would, since he knows everything. Holly’s sister would probably consider the casting out of the pavlova to be a tradition…

Um, yes, the other point about Christmas dinner occurred to me last year. Aren’t Christmas dinners, in some weird way, like computer games. Consider an insanely large Christmas dinner, bigger than we’d have. Wouldn’t it work in terms of levels, each of which you have to beat? The aperitif, the starter, the soup, the main course, the dessert, the cheeseboard, and finally, for the real experts… the mint! Points would be awarded for whatever you consume on each level, especially on the main course… roast and boiled potatoes, carrots, sprouts, peas, broccoli, whatever you care to mention… there’d be points for each vegetable, with specially high points for every sprout you manage to swallow. A real challenge would be avoiding the particularly emetic parsnips, cunningly disguised as potatoes, since nobody eats them when they know what they are. Marks could also be awarded for the number of sauces added to the pile. Liquid intake would have to be very carefully judged, both in terms of wine and water during the meal and coffee afterwards. Rests must also be allowed for, and sometimes you win a bonus notch on your belt. Um, cracker pulling could be a whole special bonus round: sometimes you win, and sometimes you don’t. And even when you win, what do you get? There’s a game there somewhere.

(For the record I got a pack of cards, a silver paper crown, and a small piece of paper bearing the words:

'What do you say to a camel when you give him a cup of tea?' 'One hump or two.')

We did the presents thing between levels, and then after dinner I strolled up the road to Delaneys to see whoever was about. Stayed there a while chatting to Maurice, Mina, and Grainne, and then sat drinking wine in the kitchen with Dave, admiring a remarkably good poem written by Grainne’s eight-year-old son Ben. Then round to mine, where we played Trivial Pursuit with Mam, Dad, Elaine, and Adam. Adam and I were a team, and lost. I am doomed in that game; I’m always the first to six pieces of pie, but can never get into the middle for the master question. And on those rare occasions when I do make it I get thrown a fiendishly difficult entertainment question, the answer to which is usually, though not today, oddly enough, Adam Faith.

Mam and Dad won, despite (or perhaps because of)the fact that they played as they always do, Dad answering other people’s questions in an absent-minded way, and Mam just generally being amusing. Today when asked the title of Don McLean’s song lamenting the death of Buddy Holly, she was trying to think of the title and momentarily considered ‘This American Guy.’ I mean, really. Apparently the other day she said to Elaine that my Dad’s back hadn’t been so bad since Elaine had had foot and mouth disease. Yes, take a look at that. Foot and mouth disease. Elaine, obviously, had never had foot and mouth disease. What she had had, as I realised once they got to this point in the narrative, was Whooping Cough. I mean, HELLO?

My Mam always says things like this. She calls The Seven Samurai, my favourite film, The Gemini Men. ‘Groncho’ or even ‘Moncho’ is how she refers to Groucho Marx. She once said that my Dad had comfortable shoes like Morris Gump’s. She wanted me to get out The Whispering Horse from the video library at one stage, while on another particularly memorable occasion she asked me to hire Not the Glen of the Downs. Scarily, I realised that she meant Dancing at Lughnasa. Her favourite Beatles song is ‘Hello Dude’.

Are all mothers like this?