Cronkoner of Leek

Born in a cave by horned Norse demons

It’s elemental whitefro maniac Richard “erotic glance” Simmons

Once saw him on a train platform (could be true, you don’t know). Oozes a raw animal magnetism that makes me want to sweat to his oldies by which I can only assume I meant something hilarious.

Chim chim chicken limbs! Another week of this crazy helter skelter (had to labor to convince my phone to not autocorrect that to “belted smelter”) gauntlet we call life. Life is calling will you accept the charges? The charge is MURDER! Murder most foul? Murder most fowl. Back to those chicken limbs.

And breathe.

As you might have gathered, I have nothing to say. Not a damn thing. You can show yourself out. Take a pocket full of jellybeans from the big bowl on your way. They’re there for visitors. I’m trying to watch my figure.

You’re still here?! I thought I told you to leave! Get out! I don’t care if the bus is on strike. Get out and walk, princess.

I’d call you a worm, but Terry here would get offended. And he’s already been pretty off with me since I told his kids about the Tooth Fairy. Now they feel like they’re missing out.

If you’re still reading, you passed the test and good on you. You will now receive your reward. With my writers wand I shall weave for you a tale that will let your emotions soar like the noble kestrel and bring to mind such sorrow and tragedy as hasn’t been seen since fair Juliet cleft her bosom in twain at the slumbering frame of her beloved Ro-ro. Which was her nickname for him.

Also I got a bunch of coupons for unlicensed beauty treatments down at my gym. They will wax anything no questions asked. They can do it so cheap because they hire all these young karate students as interns.

Wax on wax off. Proper belly laughs there. See? Aren’t you glad you kept reading.

Now to the meat of our tale. It’s veally good. Veal is a meat.

For this past Yuletide as well as dropping the routine of relaying Christmases between Ireland and Canada, we instead flew to France with a decent (and occasionally indecent) portion of my dear familia.

As well as eating our way towards having a story to tell every time we went to the terlet, we generally swanned about achieving little to nothing and standing out like a D minor 3rd in Mozarts Concerto number 7.

I listened to some classical music in the week and I’m getting ideas of my station. I don’t even know if any of that crap I said is real. What the hell’s a Mozart? Is it that little stick the fancy butler waves around in the music place? When he makes the guys with musical instruments make squeak boom swoosh noises?

Cronk no know name of thing good like you smart people. Cronk sorry. Teach Cronk to love. Cronk will cook you lima bean casserole. Cronk see on Jamie.

Cronk’s the best.

One of the most significant ways we stood out from the Frenchies was by taking part in a Christmas Day swim. Meters from the Croisette, the A1 promenade of the Cote D’Azur I and several of my kin disrobed and shuffled miserably into the grey surf like so many of our country(wo)men were doing at home and absolutely zero French. Shivering, lobster-pinkened gams are not the Cannes way of celebrating Christmas apparently.

To be fair there was one lad far over the way who got a bit nude, walked towards the water and then pissed off, but I think he was hoping the water contained someone else’s wife with whom he could adulterate. On discovering the smell was seaweed and the squawking was not female humans but vomity seagulls, he packed up right smart.

While unlike him, my folks and I shuffled around in the water for a good 20 minutes. Swim 5 strokes. Do a wee. 3 back in the other direction. Float. Spit. Check if nutcutlet number two has receded. Stub toe on rock. Little more wee. Swimming!

It was so pleasant in fact and the water so relatively warm I went back the second day for another awkward shuffle in the… spume (one of my top ten words there). On both occasions I was imbued post-float with a hearty satisfaction that I had ticked off a solid amount of accomplishment for the day, which left me the rest of my diurnal cycle for cheap rose, eating mustard flavor crisps (you haven’t been BORN until you’ve got into those bad boys) and collecting paper sweating bags of pain au chocolat from the bakery under our apartment.

There was also some spinning logs of heaven four doors down, including one which was stacked with veal. As you may have gathered from my earlier veal joke, I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

Unsustainably delicious geography.

After achieving quite the nothing for several days we returned to bleak old Blighty where Meg and I started the laborious task of forcing ourselves through the house repository of chocolate, macaroons and several things we had bought new forgetting that we were about to go on a diet. The cruelest bite. As they say.

Before that though we had then birthday girl (she is now furious with me), my dear mater on our doorstep for New Years. She was adamant that she would not spend New Years day, her birthday waking up on our couch after over indulging on my paint-thinner margheritas so I had to walk her back to the hotel in the first minutes of the new year while both of us struggled to digest a Patron’s ransom in tequila and lime.

In other news, Meg is convinced that I peeked at her wedding dress because I knew about some feature that she had previously told me about. Well if had ever considered taking a peek, I could never do it now. Smart money is she’s booby trapped the fecker and two teeth down on the zipper to the bag it’s in, I’d find myself covered in fire-ants soaked in cat piss. She has means that one.

Cronkoner of Leek

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Berliner of Leek

You never know if your baby will get a smackable face, that’s a cruel God’s trick

It’s Godzillas baby daddy, Matthew “Ugh really?” Broderick

Apparently he killed someone in Enniskillen in 1987. He got off by saying he didn’t remember. If you were gonna be famous and you missed out on the 80s you’d probably be pissed. Now all you get to do is have people on Twitter call you a “ginger pleb.” Extrapolaing out from my meagre experience.

So first of all I am a lazy slack-alley layabout. I took Christmas off from the blog without any announcement and I left you cold and alone. Shivering probably. Crying certainly.

Well I’m back… baby…? Never been able to deliver a convincing “baby.” Verbally or as an amateur midwife. The hospital staff are not good sports. I SAID it was a joke. And that I’d wear gloves next time. The court date is in April.

So what did I miss while I was away? Well I aged considerably, 30 years in fact. And no I didn’t age 30 years from babe to broken bottomfeeder in one night you crazy kook. It took about 7 minutes, commencing seconds after I had posted an instagram of me blowing a raspberry at a magazine cover of Putin. Someone accidentally dropped uranium in my tea and my fingernails fell out. It was real Raiders of the Lost Ark melty-faced Nazi stuff. Highly dramatic.

I had been hanging onto the line that I was in my mid-twenties as much to convey a very cultured and hilarious sense of faux insecurity at becoming a broken down old crust of a human as to distract people from the single tear hovering on my lash. It’s not crying unless the bugger gets out of the eye!

To commemorate my thirtieth orbit of the plughole, we went to gorge ourselves on hilariously shaped pork-portions (we call them por-pors, we’re disgustingly adorable) in Berlin. A really super city with as much serious pondery things to see as good wandery areas. In what ended being something we had to tell lots of people, we went to all the Christmas markets including one that had astounding levels of dickheadedness levelled upon by a weapons-grade prick.

The market in question surrounds the old bombed out church and is in the middle of the main shopping district. It’s the capital of German Christmas, making that guy the capital of arseholes.

Now that we’ve angered/saddened up our blood we deserve a peek at this guy. The world is a tough place. But look how sleepy and hairy his little face is?

Berlin was relatively quiet as the weather was quite bitter and most Berliners have the good sense to keep inside unless tempted out by hot Gluwein. First made in the 1800s by a horse farmer with an excess of stock and a dreadful Monday evening with his wife’s friends to struggle through, gluwein is a hot sugary treat adopted by the Germans in order to keep a baselevel of drunkeness throughout the cruel winter months.

It also serves a useful secondary purpose as a quick way to dissolve any troublesome teeth you might have into withered saccharine mush-stumps. Doctors orders and all that.

On one particular Berlin metro ride, one largely mad woman started screeching  and running up and down the carraige in a aggravated state. It’s always the same reaction I experience in this situation, empathy to someone in tought times followed by a sincere hope the person doesn’t vomit on me and then punch me in the dinger. She was yelling about something in German of which there was only one word I could gather  Weiß (=white). Given this, it was pretty likely her mutterage was focused on people who weren’t… weiß.

Whatever she was saying, it was making everyone deeply uncomfortable as evidenced by everyone squirming in their seats like eels in butter. As the old saying goes.

Later that same day we were on the far side of the city and needed to head back to the hotel. We went down to the metro and saw a familiar face.

Here’s a picture I took of the old woman on my smartphone before she got off the carraige. You can see the crazy in her eyes right?

We had about ten seconds as low-level clairvoyants as we alone knew the immediate future before she began treating us all to another choice example of why German is the only choice of language for the discerning maniac.

Later that evening we were searching for a restaurant of Turkey (the country not the bird, unless the country is the… TO THE LIBRARY!) As we rounded another corner onto another street of slowly spinning composite meat-sticks we walked past a pair of Germans and over-heard one say to the other conversationally “Das ist full-retard!”

Great lads I’m sure.

Our big night out was the final night when we decided to unleash the beast on an area we had decided was the main night-time hotspot of Berlin. I had decided we should come at it from the North (the last eight letters are sponsored by Sean Bean’s voice) as this was the sordid underbelly of 70s Berlin. Bowie’s Berlin. Naked butter-covered dwarf in a cage Berlin.

The evening was early so we were on the eye out for a place to stop and have a beverage. I saw an Indian restaurant with a happy hour at 6 so we pottered in

Time. Along with thirst and the brutal cruelty of the world we live in make up the triumverate of things that dictate when to consume fluids.

“Hi, is it happy hour?”

Waiter – “Happy hour is 6 and it’s ten past five.<we turn around back towards the door>”

Manager – “Ahhh… okay for you we can make it happy hour.”

We sat and drank ridiculous  cocktails while waiters shuffled unused crockery on our table and entreated us to look at the menu. Initially Meg was a bit self conscious as to be fair we were getting some serious looks from a table over my shoulder, but she relaxed when after a few minutes the old girls giving us the eyeball were delivered their own platter of umbrella-pronged goldfishbowls.

They just didn’t look as fab as I did

After 4 preposterously decorated and multicoloured drinks we decided to get some food so left the confused waiters to clean our table and gave them a blue-toothed smile (I had been drinking something called a swimming pool that was heavily soaked-through with chlorine and made my turds green.)

We walked for 15 minutes looking for something that tickled our fancy. After realising there were no reataurants or bars in the area, we found ourselves woozily standing in front of a familiar doorway.

“We’re back guys!” The waiter looked at us quizzically and apparently not recognising us or our aquamarine gumlines sat us down again to await our bowls of delicious spicy slop.

Messy Christmas everybody.

In other news Meg and I are hitting our pre-wedding diet hard and are currently hoovering our way through every sugary treat in the house so that we won’t be tempted a few weeks out.

So far so good.

Berliner of Leek

Gladstoner of Leek

He had the tie and was right time right place,

It’s  Chevy “was that what passed for handsome in 1982” Chase

Jeanie, look at that hole in his chin! Maybe it’s where he kept snacks. Bombay mix. A refreshing handful of grapes. You could really fight a hunger with the space in that pit.

Well hello fancy festive folk! The second week of December is upon us like someone standing too close to us on a train (it’s called foreshadowing) rummaging in his (because let’s be honest with ourselves, we’re picturing a guy here and with good reason, we’re gross) little pants. We hope counting his change for the parking lot. Ick.

December is a scumbag.

In honour of the crucifixion of Santa, Meg and I played hooky for a day and wandered into Londinium to squander some money on consumerist expressions of emotion. When will comrade Corbyn rid us of these capitalist shackles and let us gift homemade lengths of sackcloth as was surely Friedrich Engels’ dream?

Actually we like this tradition and do this every year. Take a weekday in December off from work, sleep in like we’re coming down from a glue-sniffing bender and kill off our Christmas shopping list in the overheated hallways of the humanity-clogged department stores.

London does do Christmas right, with baller light displays, the Trafalgar Square tree, small platoons of amateur choirs, 12 days of Christmas pubcrawlers and the tousled suits of office Christmas parties out too long and half thinking they should tell Shirley in accounts what they REALLY think of her.

“I love you, but we’re both dreadful.” – for instance. If they’re being honest.

Why am I only finding about this now… it is ON!

It’s due in part to one of the manias that tends to afflict London and that is Oxford Street in December.  The footpaths fill up with…. well bloody well everyone. Oxford Street is a bit of a weird one as on one side you have Selfridges (Jeremy Piven is suspended from the ceiling in a box filled with formaldehyde), House of Fraser, House of Niles (I’m hilarious) and several other super British sounding high street titans of retail.

Incidentally the row of department stores includes British Homestores which in classic British tradition was gutted for its pension fund by a guy with massive turkeytits that he likes to baste in butter and sun. The door is now closed on it which is for the best as it was a singularly depressing experience to pass its fetid threshold due to the whole place smelling like a old lady tights and looking like 1993.

God I’m such a pinko. Too much Corbyn on the radio that’s my problem.

I take it back dear leader. Lay your hands upon my evil head. Teach me the ways of tofu and repelling swing voters. And who did your “Corbyn” nametag? It’s so leadery.

After lunch in Ma Clucker (which I have called at various points Ma Plucker, Po Ducker and Chicken Bo) a fried chicken shack of some repute, we eventually called it a day just before a separate but similar mania took ahold of the city. Meg has never had to do the London to Weybridge battle that I suffer daily, but she did get a sense when after we got our seat and the aisles duly filled with professionally dressed cattle.

Then there was a clatter on the window like drunk pigeons bonking their heads on the glass. Bonk bonk bonk. BONK. MUCH MORE BONK!!

So started a rant for the ages. Some wienerless wonder had just realised that the train was full, as full as it was going to get in any case. This guy screamed at the windows, running up and down glowering at people and bellowing “MOVE DOWN! Make some room and move DOWN! Bonkbonkbonk. I am so bonk. Would you like a bonk? WHITHER SHALL WE BONK!?”

Did you know that William Ewart Gladstone’s father was also -BONK BONK

With every bonk he accessed all the terrible things that had happened in his life to make him the nightmare that he was. Maybe if Mommy hadn’t preferred BONK to me I wouldn’t be so BONK. That kind of thing. Eventually, it was like he was communing with the heavens with each BONK. Bonks themselves were proof of the divine and his way of joining, even making love to the whole universe and everything in it. BONK BONK BONK!

Now to be fair to the beleaguered Londoners who were not only looking at a standing room only journey in a roasting train but were being bellowed at for their trouble, they made a show of trying to shuffle even closer (they were already only two centimetres away from making babies) until he would realise this still meant he was missing his train and go for another round. Even the trainguard could see his Basil Fawlty incandescence on the platform and asked several times for people to move away from the doors.

You had to feel for the last guy whose little stink butt was hanging out the train door and was having to contemplate being pressed up against this feral poop-flinger.

Meg was agog.

Incidentally are you watching WestWorld? Jaysus now there’s a show. Anthony Hopkins acting like Grandpa Lecter and James Marsden gets murdered or cuckolded once an episode or you money back. Do yourself a favor, neglect your children and/or careers and pick up this show. I may be writing this while watching it. There is a distinct possiblity.

In other news myself and the boyos at 80DaysPodcast just finished off a Christmas podcast that will surely put you in the festive spirit. Though I do make a lot of racy jokes about Santa and his reindeer. The reindeer jokes are particularly racy. For example musing about the physiological reasons for Rudolphs red nose. The cold weather or an unwanted souvenir visit to a Thai brothel during the summer months? We can never really be sure. Anyway keep an eye on our feed for that and the first snibblings of season 2 which is also being recorded every time we can co-ordinate three schedules across a spread of continents. So fits and starts. Check the link below to find us!

80 Days Podcast

Gladstoner of Leek

DiCaproner of Leek

He kept on keeping on because his organs were built to last yo,

It’s pasty nasty Fidel “exploding conch shell” Castro

“And over there Commandante, you’ll see a to 20ft half-scale model of your massive balls.” Incidentally “exploding conch shell” in the above is a reference to one of the stupider ideas knocked about by RFK for killing Castro who really had more centimetres in his nut-circumference than you’ve had hot dinners.

Not to push my venerable blog to degenerate into total a plug-fest (partial is okay), my knowledge of Castro comes in large part down to the fact that we recently profiled Cuba for season 2 of our totally balling podcast for maximum pimp-people.

Check out Season 1 of stuff on iTunes or if you’re the kind of degenerate who is not on an Apple device you can search it out however you get your podcasts e.g. Stitcher.

Well hello there me ole chickensalts. As the year chunders towards it’s inevitable gee-eyed conclusion, Christmas is finally being thrust at us like the dry heaves at the end of the vomit-binge that was 2016.

Peaceful and solemn seasons greetings you all.

You’re welcome. We need this this year of all years. Aw dang. I just found out the dog in the hat voted Brexit for president. Hope he chokes on a bauble.

Although the illnesses of last week that kept me out of the channel tunnel have since passed, I am still stuck with the remainders of a cough. Like a secret Soviet weapon, my cough is an immediate 1/10th of a second of ear bursting cacophony that actually heats nearby metal surfaces.

For her part, Meg too retains a fair degree of illness to the point that when she falls asleep she begins making mewing noises that approximate to sub-threshold cough-impulses until she hits the 3rd or 4th and wakes up like Leonardo DiCaprio spluttering up seawater after the lass who got her kit off in Titanic chucked him off that bit of driftwood.

I know what you did Rose. Billy Zane is a-coming for you and he ain’t bringin you lunch!

Our sicknesses were particularly poorly timed for the week we had.

The focus of our week was the wedding of Simon Greene and his now bride Shannon Coco. Like myself and Meg theres is a trans-Atlantic romance. Unlike Meg and myself they have now been unburdened of the million tiny agonies that come with wedding planning.

How many canapés per person? Well Bernie can really put away the cocktail wienies but girls are devils for leaving a plate pass them by. And how about the cake? How many tiers? Round? Square? Marizipan model of my face on top commanding the tides to turn their shameful faces and dampen my shores nevermore?

Some choices make themselves. My marzipan modellers are skilled but this one turned out a little less commanding and a little more like someone interrupted my number 2.

We did ourselves no favours by trying to get to this wedding the day of. We got up at the crack of nonsense and shovelled in caffeine and calories so we could get through the first half of the day without turning into crab-apples. There have been so many early morning flights from Gatwick to Ireland for us of late, I’m starting to recognise the dead-eyed drones that make up the Ryanair check-in counter. They hate me.

To be fair they also hate their jobs, themselves and the smell of freshly cut grass. The bastards.

Despite me suiting up from the morning, Meg had a much fancier sequined garment which would have gotten banjacksed by wearing it through the flight so she decided to change once we landed. Living with Mariah Carey like. Once she had glammed up we got our rental car. That is to say Meg did. I am too new and too testicled a driver to pay for a car rental without selling all my bone marrow and clean pee for the next 22 years.

Taking all reasonable bids.

We then picked up some boxed sandwiches (the lunch of the desperate and joyless alike) and scurried out to our sub-standard Nissan Micra (which given the relative pantheon of Micras is a crushing insult). After swerving through the now familiar succession of roundabouts and off ramps that bring you from the Budget carpark to the succession of refurbed houses and boutique hotels that make up the spidersweb of wedding venues across County Meath we headed off to another  wedding (bringing my life total to 3).

Apparently that’s the only thing bringing money into the county. That might sound harsh until you go to the main town – Navan. Ireland’s only palindromic town that doubles as a Sliding-Doors style warning of how your life could have turned out if you had made every decision in your life incorrectly.

Say hello to that stranger on the train? Bad luck, they murder you with a hammer.

Soup or sandwich? Bad luck, they’re both filled with mercury.

Lead a life devoid of meaning or satisfaction? Bad luck, you’re in Navan.

<swallows hard> Navan… BABY!! <shoulders slump>

As we revved up the motorway in our wedding gear we apportioned out the dining to make it work. I savaged my Christmas Turkey and Cranberry Sausage sandwich in record time in order to free up my hands. A sandwich which I referred to hilariously as my Turkey Bryan Cranwidge.

Then I had the free hand required to pass Meg her first sandwich which she ate from her sequined lap. Then the following happened-

“Okay what needs to happen is ONE I’m going to need a sip of Diet Coke, then TWO feed me the meat out of that sandwich, no not the bacon just the sausage and THREE you’re gonna have to find me some music I like.”

All she wants for Christmas, is to be hand-fed slices of sausage on the motorway.

Isn’t that all any of us want if we’re honest?

In other news, a very genuine congratulations to Shannon and Simon on their new matrimonification. Theirs is a love that in the pantheon of great loves will be eternally defined as… the opposite of Navan.

Hurrah that all the world is not (entirely) fucked!

DiCaproner of Leek

The Color of Leek

If we judged people on how they understand theatre, we’d judge him to be kinda dense

It’s Number Two-rump squinting-makes-me-hate-ovaries, Mike “sword of Damocles” Pence

Ahh, how refreshing. I took a little weekend off from the blog which mean I was able to finally squeeze in my normally customary monthly teeth cleaning. You should see these chompers. As yellow as a ripe banana playing centre-back for Borussia Dortmund.

Glorious.

Though I partially jest, life admin does take a hammering when you have back to back (to back to back) weekends of wandering this scorched earth.

Last weekend I returned to the mütterland to both see Munster play some hardcore oval-ball and generally irritate my family with my presence. It might have been the hours spent outside or that toilet seat I licked, but as the weekend whiled on I could feel a familiar swelling in my throat.

And not like what I felt when I tried to complete the Chiquita “no-chew” challenge.

I was getting sick. Despite being in my youth a wheezy sickly little Tsar-child (great Rasputin reference there for the Russian history buffs <punches chest> I got you…) I haven’t been particularly sick over the past few years. Since once catching light hypothermia on a PARTICULARLY terrible date and almost losing my leg in India after getting human poop in my mosquito bites (not even my own poop, how embarassing) I have been pretty much illness free.

That said, with almost perverse regularity I get a 36 hours flu, complete with bone-aches and flopsweats once a year. I have missed one day of work for sickness in my life. This one occasion was because in the same job I had come in sick to work previously. This work was with autistic kids who in response to my sneezes and lack of ability to respond, would then go spare and start punching me.

They were pretty clear about me staying home.

Another choice flu workday was when I was in Japan and I fell asleep on a piano. It doesn’t make me a better worker, but it does not necessarily make me an absent one. This last week was no different, with one full day of me sweating through my thick sky blue sweater and at one point accidentally slapping my computer screen.

I have a good track record with Apple products. I genuinely just had this photo from my life.

I later found out that no one had realised that I was ill, which either speaks lengths of my ability to hide my suffering from a cold and indifferent world (also works for hiding more murderous impulses towards my fellow commuters on the 08:11 for Waterloo) or betrays much about my day to day levels of sweatiness.

The real low point of this bout of November speed-flu, came the night after a day of explaining away splotches on my sweater as careless beverage consumption rather than excess man-tit moisture. I set myself up on the couch and cooked up a bellyful full of fajitas… and maybe washed it down with an inebriating beverage that was not a what you use to whip eggs, but was like it.

Whisk-y. It’s my little reward for when I am totally banjacksed with illness. It did make me real emotional and this threatened to spill over into a full blown meltdown when I ate a particularly good chocolate cookie and felt overly grateful for the sweet ennervating sugar crust. It wasn’t a tear. It was like 1/4 of a tear.

God I want a cookie.

What’s that universe, I deserve 2? You generous F you.

The future travel itinerary is thick enough, with a commute to Brussels this Tuesday and a wedding in Ireland on Thursday.

The challenges of work travel are myriad but the baseline is getting up very early indeed and then sitting still while getting dehydrated and holding in a number 2 that you ran out the door without addressing because you wasted loads of time trying to find the tie with the fewest mayo stains. This much can be assumed.

We had a weekend visitor in the form of fellow #TraleeBoy Colin, who both gave us an excuse to shovel pizza into our gizzards and keep me company through the trying time of a latenight boozy movie doubleheader of Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot and and The Color of Night a piece of Bruce Willis erotica. Which I think we can all agree is the only genuine type of erotica.

Interesting thing about him, as well as an erotic artiste, he is also an accomplished dendrologist. Indeed Bruce Willis is the only former members of the Planet Hollywood ownership crew to have a tree named after him.

I give you- Spruce Willis. Are your legs sore? I had to bring you a long way for that joke.

The rest of the weekend was very grown up, including getting through a lot of life admin. I even drove us to the HomeBase. Like a baby deer that had cocaine injected into the base of its spine. But I did drive us.

As a little reward for doing something I’m less than keen on, we decided to basically empty Aldi out of their range of delicious boozes now that we had the boot to get it home. Note how I didn’t say “buy.” They will remember the day we darkened their door for some time. Even used their own off-brand Black and Deckers against them.

I wonder what the headline will be? “Budget Alcohol-Crazed Powertools Massacre Aldi Staff in Surrey (We Can Only Assume).”

Print it.

In other news, Meg had some interesting thoughts on the rugby recently. We were watching the lead into the Ireland vs All Blacks game, when she seemed uncharacteristically interested in the Haka.

After finishing, she was silent for a moment, taking in the aftermath of the ancient and even mystic ritual she remarked “Wouldn’t it be awkward if you forgot the moves? <waggling her index finger>  HOOKI HOOKI!”

Wouldn’t it be awkward indeed…

Oh and in a final punchline after writing a bunch on how I don’t take sick days, I ended up taking Tuesday off after being struck down with stomach cramps and vomming up a shepherds pie so hard that is splashed back up in my face and when I blew my nose after a chunk of potato came out.

Time doth make fools of us all. And shepherds pie.

Shepherd pie doth makes fools of us all.

The Color of Leek

Maccaroner of Leek

On the offchance the US is freaking you out then,

Consider how every bloody country has their arseholes e.g. Marine “plus mauvais que Papa” Le Pen.

As fun as it is to draw the correlation curve between the invention of baconaise and the rise of fascism in the land of the free(-dom fries), pretty much every country is one lunatic away from getting flushed into flag humping immigrant-bashing frenzy. The U.K., my adopted home is genuinely fomenting panic about STD-riddled foreign ladybugs, which I really thought would’ve only been an issue if you were trying to crack into an arthropod in the Biblical sense. So now we know.

Above: an image that would give the Daily Mail writing staff a ferocious pant-corn. As they say.

No more on that guff festival. Now to matters of substance. Matters like cake.

Meg and I were in the aul sod this weekend to get down to some of the more enjoyable parts of wedding planning. Wedding trivia- this my AND Megs first wedding. Hashtag meant-to-be right?

And no, no one uses # to mean hashtag anymore. I read it in Coolguy Weekly. There was also a useful guide to help your tailor hide your pant-corn with strategic deployment of a belt and handkerchief. Confession time, I’m the editor, graphic designer and target market for Coolguy Weekly. Mommy said it would make people be my friend.

Why did you lie to me Mommy?!

We got up on Saturday morning and hauled our sleepy bones to Gatwick (of Londons five international airports, it is by some margin the one that is most in Gatwick). As we shuffled along like cattle with coffee breath we noticed some auld lass who was chatting up these 5 surfer brahs on the moving walkway.

From the looks of things it was a heartwarming scene where some golden locked young bucks showed a little bit of chivalric attention to a lady who was getting on in years but was entertained by their youthful japery and even perhaps flirtatious tone. Hey. You know how on every one of those moving walkways there’s a recorded voice saying something like “hey, watch out turkeys, in 3 feet this thing turns into normal stationary ground so keep your head on a swivel.”

You can see where this is going.

As I looked at the lady’s face and wondered about the passing of time and how it changes us as people her face suddenly dropped out of view behind the shoulder of surfer brah number 3.

Cue pandemonium and exclamations more akin to the sinking of some ocean-going vessel “SHES GOING DOWN!” and the like. After it was clear she wasn’t going to leap up like some 11 year old Olympic gymnast (probably fed up on… monkey glands and midget pills) someone at the front screamed “push the button, where’s the button!” I stabbed at the emergency stop panel to stop any more holiday goers from stomping on her like wet boots on a welcome mat. I know guys, I’m a hero.

Hey Gandhi, ever stop a moving walkway to save a clumsy old woman? Course not. What an arsehole.

He was a saucy looking fecker though

She survived, with a mere grating of red scratches down her face and with a retinue of gawkers and well wishers providing her such vital advice as “I saw you fall” Meg and sidestepped the crowd and went for our plane.

We had cakes to taste.

After arriving and checking in we boarded the red line of the LUAS and headed for the appointment. For background, the LUAS is the tram system in Dublin and is divided into the green and red lines and because we are a sham of a country, these lines do not intersect at all. As the red line takes in a few of the more salty areas of the city (and I’m talking bacon in brine salty) it is known uncharitably as the “Bread Line.”

After wandering about a little we were ushered into an apartment on the outer edges of the city where for twenty minutes we proceeded to eat about three birthdays worth of cake. With each gooey morsel more intoxicating than the last we struggled to keep it together in at least moderating our critiques to nonsense like “maybe it’s too… obvious as a cake.” The winner was never a doubt as once I took my first bite my expression changed and I immediately looked over at Meg with sugar-fueled intensity.

Her expression was neutral like some kind of confectionary-obsessed assassin and I decided she must not share my burgeoning pant-corn that was forming for the cake in question. Indeed she simply hadn’t gotten to it yet, as when she took a bite she immediately looked at me, pant-corn in situ and decision made.

We had our cake, ate it, had your cake and ate that too. We also ate some macaroons that could have been anyone’s.

In other news the other big wedding move was our meal tasting at the venue, where we sat down and drank every single wine that we could choose for the menu and tasted every single option available for the food.

This was the starter. It was almost the bloody finisher too.

The night was very pleasant as we had all our positive memories of the venue and staff affirmed and massaged by a free wine list 16 bottles deep. We stayed nearby in Slane in the only hotel in that insanely small village and decided to taxi over and back so we could really cut loose. Two small issues emerged from this.

One was we realized we were slightly tight on cash as there is no ATM in Slane. Barely any frigging people either. 2 butcher shops. Weird place.

The second was we got utterly gouged by our taxi driver on the way to the venue. The git charged us for his journey from his house and kept rabbiting on about how he was “doing a favor” for the hotel.

These two issues meant we were slightly tight on cash for our taxi from the venue back to the hotel. I mentioned this to the co-ordinator who had agreed to call us a cab that we only had so much in Merkel-bucks on us.

Meg left for the toilet and she came up to me again just to reconfirm our limitation and then walked off to sort our transport.

Meg sat back down and we were approached a third time. “So if you just wait a few minutes, John (the general manager) will drive you home, you’re on his way.”

Megs mouth dropped open like an overhead luggage bin full of rocks. “Mark! What did you say! <grabs the co-ordinator> We’re not poor, we can afford it!”

She apologized for the suggestion and assured us it was an easy fix and not trouble for us to take the lift. Meg was, to use a Dublin phrasing – “scarleh” like a bride-to-be shaped raspberry.

All I know is I saved myself a sum in the low 10’s of Merkel-bucks. In other words… result.

Maccaroner of Leek

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Belly Buttoner Of Leek

He’s doing it voluntarily he’s not getting paid,

It’s Goggle-eyed robot maniac Randy “on Dennis’s couch” Quaid

So I almost welched on this weeks blog, but you know I had a long look in the mirror, took a gaze at the guy on the other side. Kissed him on the mouth. Took a nap.

After all my troubling tribulations  (one for the Star Trek fans there) I decided in the end, YOU the reader deserve a new dollop of creamy nonsense, dribbling over the edge of the bowl because you overfilled it you greedy galoot. You deserve it

You might have a bit of buyers remorse at this stage. That’d be fair.

The past week has been busy but fairly regulation. Meg and I are bighting the biker (I drafted this on my phone and autocorrect chose the image for me, highly appropriate) and finally decided to buy a car. Over the past two years Meg has been getting to work in a rickshaw pulled by a man who’s actual name is Richard Shaw.

No word of a lie, but read together as a sentence…

“I never killed your daughter. The rebels turned themselves into the military re-education council. A salad would be just as good.” Pinocchio = lying bollocks.

So we went to the local car buying house (I’m a total natural as you can tell) and blitzed about 8 different dealerships including somewhat foolishly some swish German ones. “No we will not accept a baggy full of belly button lint and a horsechestnut for this S-Class. Acorn or better Sir, otherwise you waste both our time!”

Considering how we’re so obviously a pair of rubes, it was hard to believe how resolutely ignored by everyone we were in the dealerships, like the shy little girl at the prom sitting on her own, eating oily, stinking mackerel from the tin that she brought from her home in the sulfur mine.

Sidebar, my girlfriend at the prom (called a debs in Ireland) didn’t eat mackerel from the tin however she did lock herself in the toilet, possibly because it was such a magical night (more likely because I went with someone else). Almost entirely her idea.

We were so desperately trying to get attention out of these car jerks, I was one frustrated moment away from taking my top off and bouncing around a little. Like they like.

And I thought I had the whole attention-seeking thing down pat.

Eventually after I had alienated the staff at the second to last dealership pointing at a mahogany jeep (actual quote) “who chose shit-brown for the for the floor model eh?” we got serious. Had to, my charm wasn’t really winning them over. Surprisingly.

“We don’t arrange the colors sir. Now here is a picture of a wreck in another dealership filled with garbage, richer than Christmas pudding and smaller than a seahorses danglers. You don’t want it. Leave.”

Larks. Eventually we sat down with a chap in Toyota and after entertaining buying a different car that one could accidentally inhale should one gasp with surprise next to it we eventually settled on a hoor-red Yaris with enough space for a talented blogger to have a tantrum in and still not break any windows. Before deciding to purchase we had a bit of a testdrive to make sure we weren’t purchasing a puce lemon. It was my first time driving automatic and indeed my first time driving since finally driving safely for 25 consecutive minutes and passing my test 6 or so months ago.

There’s no way for you to know I didn’t pass my test by just teaching Herman my tester how to kiss properly. Lots of teeth, that’s the key.

Okay Herman, you and I are about to break down some boundaries.

Joking aside I am still haunted (not to mention Meg loves bringing it up) how my first instructor Zsolt would in a panic grab my hands and swerve us away from traffic and after the emergency subsided he would lean back over to his side of the car and mutter “…sorry to…touch you.” Yeesh.

I hopped into the business end of the first automatic car I was ever to drive and as it was a new-fangled button-start car to boot (the boot was regular-fangled mind), I was instructed to just put my foot on the brake and press the button to start.

Then I planked my hoof squarely on top of the accelerator and kept prodding the button until the salesman’s embarassment was outweighed by his desire to get going and the error was pointed out to me. As I struggled further he had to advise me to take my left foot off the brake as it’s apparently not the done thing. More bloody rules and etiquette than a hot-tub party with the Queen of England!

Rule 1 – there are no rules

Rule 2 – Prince Philip gets to watch.

Okay Prince Philip is all done. Send in the corgis…

Ever the canny businessboys, we decided to head home to pretend-think about the purchase in case he threw in a punnet of goose-eggs extra to sweeten the deal. Meg’s Canadian. She thinks all eggs are goose eggs.

As the salesman stewed like a bag of sweaty giblets in a roast chicken (it’s called foreshadowing) Meg and I got to prepping for Canadian Thanksgiving as we do most every year.

Regular readers will know Meg was recently flummoxed into some purchases by a wandering meat man (apparently she produces the readies to any stranger willing to give her a flash of beef) and most went straight into the freezer. Among these items was an organic chicken we decided would be the flagship meat pile of this year’s calorie-drive.

After struggling to defrost the sucker in time I was gratified to see it good and floppy as I banged it into the oven. Oh and should you have missed it, there was an opportunity for a crude intercourse joke there, but I dunno, Trump has kinda ruined genitals for me for the foreseeable. Yours. Mine. Burn it all down and start over.

Anyway, I assumed the extra blood and general oily gore was down to the organic-ness of the chicken. Indeed it was because I had left a plastic bag of frozen guts inside the offending fowl and had roasted that bird all the same. I’d be lying if I said the next morning wasn’t a bit touch and go belly-wise but that’s why they put windows in toilets.

In other news I have recently been told I am going to Iran. On Sunday.

I have nothing controversial to say on that issue and I for one am welcoming this opporuntity to shut my dirty mouth.

Silencio!

Belly Buttoner Of Leek

Morroconer of Leek

Being married to the man is apparently not “the shit”

It’s admittedly gar-geous but probs a ‘mare Brad “The Sweaty Arm” Pitt.

So I know I’ve been slacking on the blog a bit lately, but I’ve actually been really busy mainly with work.

The memoir will be called “Fur-tive Glances” if I ever move into a less controversial industry. Actually I might save that for my soul album. I’ll be holding a sax with a grapefruit on the end of it. No reason.

This weekend just past, Meg and I went on a mini-holiday to Windsor. The town where the Queen keeps all her ceremonial knickers and residents live in fear of being savaged by ferocious over-sized corgis.

We had been talking about going there for so long, my dear Mater got sick of hearing us yak about it so she got Meg a Christmas present of a night in a Windsor hotel. And guess who tagged along, ruining the luxury getaway vibe with trivia about the British Navy’s embarassing (but oh so invigorating) hazing rituals and constant references to the Queen Mother’s gusset?

This putz.

This is the kind of classic crotch gag you can enjoy by following my Instagram feed. There’s also the odd photo of stuff I eat. Mainly pencaps and Tictacs. I understand trendy things.  

So a bunch of little incidents to report from this.

On the way into Windsor, I looked up something on my phone. On a bit of a whim I had liked Cliff Richard’s Facebook page (also liked Daniel O’Donnell’s in the same session but Daniel has decided that his fanbase are a bit more analog than digital) but hadn’t really  delved into his depths. Now the first photo I saw set me laughing, but as I kept swiping through it unveiled a whole series of bizzare mini-dramas that left me panting, weeping and indeed dribbling as Meg apologised to the others on the train for ruining the library in a vacuum ambience of the quiet-car. A big deal for the limeys.

Firstly Cliff has apparently bought shares in a vineyard in Portugal and is lacadaisically flogging his very orange brew to elderly women via his photo feed. In one amazingly restrictive promotional event, he was turning up for a tight two hours, where if you bought three bottles of his grog (€20, a total shteal) he’d write his name on a piece of card. Also a lot of the people who were commenting on Cliff’s inane updates had profile pictures commemorating the man himself and urging him NEVER to retire. And there’s a hell of a lot of saucy promotional images of Clifford himself for his albums (Just… Terrific Rock and Roll is on pre-order now) and his calendars.

Mister February 2015 here. His page is full of horrifying dream-invaders like this image. No way to know he’s wearing underpants here guys. No. Way. To. Know.

Just an idea for anyone looking for Christmas ideas for me, those calendars are in shops NOW.

As Meg and I walked down the main street of Windsor, we could see what in the distance and poor light looked like a group of men spread out across the otherwise deserted high street. Owing perhaps to our days in Manchester where stuff like this can go sideways fast and our own upbringings proximal to Limerick and Detroit we have a sensitivity to diceyness. Probably a good thing.

As it turned out, the large group of men was two small separate groups. One was a group of rotund midgets drunk off their arses and crammed to their tiny gills with Windsor fudge (probably a metaphor) and the other was waiters clearing the tables at an establishment called Madame Posh. Not the first or last time since moving down to the Thames Valley that we were the scum to be viewed suspiciously.

There was this flabby 7 year old lad in the station sucking on a Bounty bar (coconut is a fruit) and eyeballing all the other candybars in the vending machine in what could only have been a threat.

Our hotel in Windsor was lovely, but there was obviously something going on at breakfast as the staff were disorganised like 4 year olds at a birthday party. At one point a lady in denims stormed up to our table and dropped a bunch of brown bread toast on our table and quickly before she ran off I blurted “This isn’t ours <no response> um I don’t want this toast.” The penny dropped and she realied it wasn’t ours and her eyes darted around the room.

“Good morning. <no response from the guests>… GOOD MORNING!!!”

Some people actually awkwardly chorused “good… morning?” and one guy got his toast. A tale as old as time.

There was a lady on the train wearing shorts in 15 degrees to show off her varicose veins the size of tiny knuckles poking out of her calf and brown curled toenails like she had been trying to use her feet to find a penny in a pile of her own fecality.

What I did trying to avoid looking at those uncharitably uncovered hooves

Other tidbits from the weekend, I stole 11 soaps from the housecleaner’s cart, the hotel totally nailed the angle of the toilet mirror (100% view of the TV while sitting on the toilet) and Meg and I got smashed on Moroccan wine.

Also apparently there is such a thing as Moroccan wine.

We watched a TV show where obese people were literally publically weighed in front of their peers which included such gems as “I had a tough childhood, my sister was hit by a truck” and “your husband lost twice as much weight as you did and HE’S not even following my program!”

It was a rich full weekend.

In other news Meg called me excitedly with news from her work-at-home day. There had been one of those door to door meat salesman that we’ve all heard of arrive onto our road like a bacony Willie Lomond and Meg obliged him by signed us up to an £80 a month meat club.

When I heard that some travelling flesh-peddler had been taking the fancy of the local women with his fantastic line of thick juicy sausage, I was about fit to round up the village men and hang him from a tree like Mussolini. Then bang on time we got a box of admittedly high quality meat (the % of which orginating from the local morgue being undeclared) which has meant the whole thing has turned into a draw, but we decided to cancel anyway as we can’t have the neighbours knowing we have meat notions.

Still think I’d rather this cuckhold squadron didn’t know our address. I won’t be able to get to work in the morning with shady spivs plying me with pockets full of ground beef and their drawers full of tripe.

“Hallow me owld Choina salt, whadoowehav heeyah then, a lovely bit of kidnay foh da misses.”

Gotta go, I hear someone’s at the door.

Morroconer of Leek