Windswept and Interesting

I feel a sense of duty, like the light hand of friendship resting gently on my shoulder, suggesting to me it was high time I added a few words to my online whatever-this-is. November has come and gone and the winter is truly with us. My noisy central heating is my background music and my constant companion during these nights. I see Christmas trees line the one main street of Maynooth and have a sort of pining (get it!) for a Sally to help my Harry drag home a Christmas tree and watch it molt. But living alone, it doesn't seen quite right to go to the expense of killing and buying a tree just for one's own aesthetic pleasure. And as I won't be here for Christmas, there'd be something unusual in me taking the time to dress it. So I pick up on the yuletide what-nots by popping in and out of a shop every now and then, hearing the odd Christmas song. They have enough festivity to go around.

The last time I blogged I was just beginning to come down from the stress of preparing for my evaluation, all creativity being choked out of me by the weight of demand. Now the creative juices are flowing again and hopefully by the end of January I'll have the ideas graciously received and skillfully knocked into shape. What they want to see essentially is evidence that you can research. I just need to give them some.

Today, I just wanted to relate something that I find funny and to share it with you in the hope that you might as well. I think those who know the gentlemen I'm going to speak about, namely our friends Fionnuala and Cliona, may see the humour even more. It involves Peter and Liam.

For the uninitiated Peter and Liam are my brother and good friend respectively, not that my brother isn't also my good friend - well, I don't know, I did beat him up quite badly in my dream last night, as is occasionally necessary from the therapeutic perspective. Anyway, cutting a long story short, they are the Butch Cassidy and Sundance kid of Ballymena, the Morecambe and Wise, the Tom and Jerry, the Bonnie and Clyde, the Dick Dastardly and Muttley, the veritable Laurel and Hardy, of the northern sector of town. Peter comes up with the places to go and the people to see all bright and busytailed, and Liam drives him with the laconic humour of the hen-pecked, long suffering husband. Inevitably about halfway through the night the wheels come off and Peter is seen in headlong search after thrills, spills and those romantic hills, while Liam is playing the wallflower trying to play it cool while unruffling the tie he is wearing which Peter has just scrunched up. Either that or he will be off employing the subtle means of meeting women known as Salsa dancing, which Peter rightly spurns as so much white meat thrown to the naturally bloodthirsty Lion. Neither techniques being successful, the heros return home at the end of their night; Peter dead drunk, Liam dead sober. Liam, thinking that at the very least life owes him some laughs at the end of the hard working week, work-crazed librarian that he is, invokes his standard ruse.
'Peter, is my passport still in the glove compartment, check will you?'
And when Peter approaches just about to the right place, thwack - Liam puts on the hotblower full blast into Peter's face. 'Ah ha, very funny Liam.'
'Peter, is my phone still in the glove compartment, check will you?'
And Peter's face approaches the danger zone once more, to twack - 'Ah ha, very funny Liam.'
'Peter, is there a chocolate bar underneath the glove compartment there?'
'Where?' 'There?' 'Where, Liam?' 'There, look, just there?'
And Peter's head comes in between the crosshairs, and twack! - 'Ah ha, very funny. Right, goodnight.'
So scientific is the study into this phenomenon that third parties can often join in from the back whenever the approach to home is almost complete.'
'Liam, do you know where your passport is at the minute, just in case we do go on that trip?'
'I'm not sure, Stephen, I think it might be in the glove compartment but I'm not too sure; check will you, Peter?' - Twack, blast, very funny, (sometimes curse) and then goodnight.

I suppose sobriety has to have some benefits, Liam, especially if all that Salsa stuff of yours was gone through to no avail. But hopefully, it will pay off before too long for all of us, before Peter begins to develop that Billy Connolly-style 'windswept and interesting' look. Whoever that girl may be for you ... what patience she will need and what pain she will have to endure! But at least if she ever comes to read this she will be able to take comfort in the fact that she is sparing Peter a few humiliating blasts in the face. Then the immediate pleasure of a few discreet slaps and tickles can replace the vicarious pleasure presently derived at at poor Peter's expense. The sooner your Salsa stuff starts paying dividends the better. Are you sure you are doing it right? Check the box.