red mum

*warning big rant to follow*

I THOUGHT I would resurrect my Grumpy Old Woman series, it has been a while, June actually, and not because I haven’t had grumpy moments, oh I have, but I had an evening of it last night so no better excuse to pull out my gingerama pic.

Tetra and I had been looking forward to the Feist gig for ages, they were playing in the Tripod and have been sold out for a while.

The band themselves were brilliant, she is fantastic with such a beautiful voice, but the venue was absolutely awful, woeful.

We were crammed in like sardines, that surely must have been against fire regulations if anything had happened last night.

The evening itself started off well, Tetra and I went for pizza and then headed up to meet with Mr Mulley and Alexia before heading into the gig.

It was absolutely jammers, seriously packed, with ten-deep people at the bar though in fairness you expect that. Then the gig started and so did the people at the back, with their talking.

If you haven’t been to Tripod before there is the main hall, half of which is raised and is the bar area. There is another bar at the other side and it made sense, to me anyway, to keep the other side open and close the bar within the main venue itself.

But they didn’t and somehow people at the back thought their innane chatterings added to Leslie Feist’s amazing voice, they didn’t. At times Tetra was turning around and telling people to shush.

We managed to find a spot where we could just about see the stage, well just about, I spent most of the time looking at the backs of Mr Baldy, Mr Smelly and Mr Long Flipping Hair.

I was constantly pushing my hair off my face only to realise it was Mr Long Flipping Hair. I didn’t realise Mr Smelly was actually Mr Smelly until he high-crossed his arms right in front of my nose and Mr Baldy somehow managed to have so much more room than anyone cos he was moving all over the place.

Oh and here’s an open message to Little Miss Pushy, you nearly knocked me over not because as you said of my large bag, it was because you were a pushy shite. And yes I did notice that you managed again to shove me out of the way as you returned to your spot. I also noticed the parting of the sea of people as you made your way through. It’s funny how no one else managed to nearly knock me off my feet as you did despite my large bag.

And Little Miss beside me how on earth did you manage to shift me over from my vantage point where I could just about peer over the shoulders of Mr Long Flipping Hair and Mr Smelly. Being about six inches smaller than me I don’t see how my spot suited you better.

I found myself trying to deal with the moving crowd in the same manner than I do walking down Grafton or Henry Street. I try to walk in a straight line and not veer off from it. Course it doesn’t work I either end up being banged on the shoulder by a passerby or I end up walking along abandoning my straight line plans and dodging left and right out of people’s ways. How do those people seem to manage to walk in the straight line while no matter how I try I can never manage it.

So last night in the same ilk I tried to stand my spot and it didn’t work at all.

On top of all that the bar were running some crazy rules where drinks are served in plastic glasses while bottles are beer are served with glass bottles! Now this makes no sense whatsoever.

If I were so inclined I could do damage with the glass bottle. On top of all that I was drinking wine which was sold in the little bottles. Because I still had wine in my plastic glass I asked could they give me back the lid. Apparently it is house policy not too, which I questioned as being stupid and despite having been given the lid before. Incidentially the next drink had the lid on it, nothing like a bit of consistency.

So I was back in the hall, balancing a glass and an open small bottle of wine, a bottle of beer, my big bag and the non-budging people.

We were so far back that I only managed two shots of Feist, one of which I am kinda okay with and then we retreated to the other bar where we could hear them but not see them. Though seeing as how we couldn’t really see them anyway it seemed like the best plan.

All this had Tetra and I talking about how we are just getting old. Twenty years ago we would have been holding onto the bar at the front. Seeing as it is twenty years later that isn’t the bar we want to hold onto.

So we decided that we want to return to the Las Vegas type shows, where you buy tickets for a booth, with a lamp on it and waiting staff bring you drinks, hey even a supper. Once we eat we want to be entertained. Considering last night’s tickets were €25-ish, I’d pay €50 for a seat at a gig. Hey but then I’m just a grumpy old woman with sore feet.

WHY do taxi drivers balk at €50 notes? I cannot understand this at all, and I have had so many harrumph moments with them over the fact they

a. have no change
b. have just started
c. that’s the third/fourth €50 note they have had in a row

Which ever it is, I do not care. Their job involves the exchange of money, so have change and if you don’t, get some, it is very easy.

I got one taxi today after having lunch with Tetra to get back to work on time. As we drove around a very packed Stephen’s Green where the traffic wasn’t moving, I realised I only had a €50 and of course the driver had no change.

He wanted to bring me right around the block, the block being down Dawson Street, by Trinity and back up Merrion Square, did I mention the traffic wasn’t moving and I got the taxi so I could be back in work on time.

I had one suggestion where he could call to Tetra and get the tenner I owed him but he wasn’t having saying he couldn’t possibly drive back to Meath Street because he wanted to go on the rank at the Green.

It was then I went ‘look I am not being arsey but money is a tool of your trade and you need to have change, I need to get back to work and driving all around the place in very slow moving traffic won’t help me’.

He eventually parked on one side of the Green while the Young Wan ran down Baggot Street to get change from one of the shops there.

But the onus is not on me to have change, not at all. I don’t arrange to take photographs of someone and ask them do they have a camera. A painter and decorator will not come to your house and be annoyed that you have no paint or tell you that this is the third job where people have had no paint. You do not expect to go into a shop and buy something for them to tell you they have no change so why is it any different for taxi drivers when they are being paid for a service they provide. They cannot come to work without their taxi so why would they come to work with no change or realise the last job has left them with no change without getting change. And why would they start a day without at least change of €50.

If they get three €50 notes in a row, tough, a pain in the arse it might be but hey we all have moments like that in our jobs, get change and give my head peace.

Besides which €50 might feel psychologically like a lot of money, we know it isn’t. It is only worth £35 odd in old money. It is not like I am handing them €100 which I might understand them being annoyed at, but €50, come on.

Just after the euro changeover I had an incident with a taxi driver whom I told when I got into the cab that I only had €50 (though in the spirit of what I am saying here, I shouldn’t have to even do that) and he told me I would need to stop in a shop and get change.

I told him ‘no I don’t need anything’ and he said I should get a paper. I waved my Irish Times at him and said ‘nope I don’t need anything’.

He must have thought by my Northern accent that I didn’t know the worth of the money and tried to tell me it was a big note. I wish it was it isn’t.

So taxi drivers get your act together and come prepared for work, like the rest of us.

Hope they had change

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs grumpy gingerama

I THOUGHT it would be overload to post this with my last post but it happened on the same day, only I had Tetra’s company to assure me that it wasn’t just me, though as you will see by the graphic I am adding to these posts tomorrow she has made up a redmum grumpy song and even drew pictures.

It goes something like ‘it’s not a drama – it’s a gingerama’.

Anyway we met after my journey on Friday for a sit-down, I couldn’t walk in my shoes by this stage at all, drink in her local pub aptly named grumpys, (no joking).

We took a booth and proceeded to have a laugh, with her singing my new theme tune among other frivolities then a guy came up and asked us did we know where there was a pool table nearby ‘really nearby’.

Initially we couldn’t work out where the guy was from but that wasn;t the most pressing question, the most pressing one was where was there a pool table nearby.

Our thought process wasn’t enabled at all by the fella’s stupid attempts at miming playing a shot and we hmmed and haaed trying to think as he tried even more unsuccessfully at showing us what pool is.

The fella didn’t like this delay at all but the last time I played pool in Dublin it was in the early 1990s and I couldn’t think of anywhere.

He was going ‘come on come on’ before saying ‘don’t kill yourselves’.

The only reply to that was (which we did in unison) ‘NO we DON’T’ before we turned back around to each other before going saying to each other ‘arse’.

We felt slightly guilty later when we talked to him again while outside having a ciggie. He was friendly, slightly mad and because he was French we reckoned there was a lost in translation moment, maybe that comment sounded funny to him, to us it was just plain rude.

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Hell is other people… on trains

I think I should be worried but I am finding it very easy to write my grumpy old women posts. And here is another.

Trains would be great without the people – I was up again on Friday at 5.45am to get the 7am train to Cork again and the next time I will definitely have to get to bed early, it ends up such a long and tiring day and bed time at 1.30am does not work.

As it was bank holiday weekend and although Jazz Festival goers would probably not be catching the 7am train in order to get to the venues early I thought it made sense to book my ticket online. That system is a joke.

No one pays any attention to it as far as I can see unless the train is packed to the gills and the people in the yellow coats who assist people on the train guide you to correct carriage it is impossible (or feels like it ) to comprehend.

But I managed somehow on Friday morning to find my seat and sat back to enjoy the sun coming up, camera ready just in case there was something that caught my eye, and off I travelled.

When the buffet car opened I thought breakfast in order and left my coat and a bag with non-valuables on my seat (I had a four seat bit to myself).

After breakfast I returned to my seat, only it wasn’t my seat anymore there was someone sitting at my seat and someone else opposite him.

‘Can I get my seat?’ I said.
He said yeah and didn’t move. Defeated I sat down in the seat beside him though I was seething inside.

I like the window seat so if see something I can try to capture it. I previously missed an amazing shot going by the Curragh. There was a beautiful morning mist with all sorts of muted browns and greens and as I sat down from having taking pics out the windows between the carriages I saw four people on horseback disappearing into the mist. I didn’t catch it before the train whizzed by.

So on Friday morning I just wasn’t happy at all.

I put on my ipod, took out my notebook and started writing. Then the fella proceeded to try and read what I was writing.

Another thing that bugs me about travelling on the train is when people are walking by and nearly take your shoulder and continue on by without so much as a glance over their shoulder.
I know this happens, you are on a moving train, but come on when did sorry be dropped from everyday use.

Once in Cork I went to a colleague’s house where his massive, friendly and frisky Labrador wanted to play fisty-cuffs with me and somehow managed to open the top button of my blouse.

Normally I’d wear a vest top underneath because when I bend over I can reveal more of Tipperary than I’d like due to the top button being lower than I’d like.

When I went to bed last night the black vest I thought was sitting on the dresser actually turned out to be something else entirely at 5.45am. I thought frig it, put on a cardigan – a move I would later regret.

Particularly seeing as how my colleague’s dog completely exposed me and I spent a frantic two minutes (it was surely longer) trying not to draw attention to my exposure by discreetly buttoning up my blouse.

The dog, it was a he, was having none of it and keep punching me with his paws starting off a series of at least three exposures.

At one stage I nearly greeted my boss in a very novel way when I say nearly there is a very large chance that he was greeted in more ways than one, two actually and he was too polite to pay notice. I am hoping of course that is not the case.

Somehow to my relief, the buttons started behaving themselves at lunchtime, thank God. The only flashing I wanted to do was with my camera.

On the way home on the 7.30pm train I tried to catch 40 winks. I slooped down in the chair with my coat over me and managed to snooze, until a fella banged into my legs so he could sit down. Cheers for that again excuse me has been dropped without my knowledge.

He sat opposite me so I could no longer stretch out, I think he had an aversion to sitting at the window. I didn’t sit at the window cos it was dark and there was nothing to see.

Even if I was able to snooze again I couldn’t because he started to tunelessly hum, whistle, and make other noises as he did a su-doku puzzle.

Seeing as how I couldn’t sleep I thought I would get a glass of wine from the bar, only they had sold out and I didn’t fancy anything else.

It was all a conspiracy I tell you, all because I insist that Belfast is the second city not Cork, cos it is not. *Preparing for a deluge of annoyed Cork bloggers he he*

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs grumpy travelling Dublin to Cork

BELIEVE it or not but there is an unspoken etiquette in launderettes, though you wouldn’t have known it today in my local.

I went down with the week’s washing and was lucky to get two machines at once so I loaded up the washing before going to get dinner in the supermarket.

This is a weekly routine which I have off to a tee, I put in the washing and by the time I am done in the supermarket, the washing is also nearly done and ready to go into the spinner which takes off the excess water before going into the tumble dryer.

When I got back after the supermarket I had a couple of minutes before the next stage so I sat down and started to read one of the Sunday tabloids which are bought by the launderette.

The washing finished so I put it into the spinner, as I was taking it out an older man came in with a wash he obviously did at home which he then proceeded to load into the only free dryer.

Rule number one broken, you cannot come in with wet washing and take a dryer which is about to be used by someone who has spent the afternoon washing in the place. I learnt this many years ago in the same place by one of the women who worked there.

He then proceeded to sit where I was sitting and read the paper, despite my coffee sitting on the table, my cardigan over the back of the chair and being surrounded by my shopping and the suitcase which I carted the washing down in.

I told him ‘I’m sitting there reading that’ and he looked straight through me. I wasn’t trying to be rude I was sitting there reading. He thought I was mad and continued to flick through the paper.

So I stood waiting on a dryer and picked up the Indo. Not content with having usurped me from the window seat where I was, he would flick through the paper and look up at me every now and again. He then came up to me and said with serious attitude ‘are those your newspapers, or do they belong to the shop’. And he was certainly being far from nice he was being narky and trying to make some point that I was mad to expect to sit where I was sitting and continue to read the paper I was reading.

Incrediously I replied ‘catch yerself on’ and went back to the Indo. He went back to his/my seat and glanced at the ads you get at the back of the tabloids for adult dances at Barry’s Hotel.

I ended up going over, lifting my coffee and left him to it.

Then another cardinal launderette rule was broken, he proceeded to watch as I folded up the clothes which I wasn’t putting into the dryer. Ehm STOP. Specifically men should not watch women fold up their clothes, it is a private moment in a public place and it is regarded as pervy. Nick Camen and I heard it through the grapevine it is not.

His final blow against the mad woman (me) in the launderette was when he returned the newspapers to me with a flourish. Ah gee tanks!

I finally got a machine, got my clothes dried and got out of there.

Other cardinal rules while doing laundry include not touching others’ washing unless you absolutely have to, coming in the door and taking a machine before paying for it (when busy those people at the counter are actually paying to use the machine you have just taken). There are more but I can’t think of them just now.

Or maybe I am becoming even more grumpy!

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