James Galvin

I have a bone to pick with you. You’re losing me sleep. I’m holding you directly responsible for my current situation, one of domestic anguish. Because of the relentless gunshots and sirens, I stayed up until midnight frantically drilling rawlplugs, filling cracks, boarding up the back windows with sheet steel. I then lay awake stewing over the perfect Crown colour to hide the bloodstains in my living room, ruminating over where to place the mirror to give that perfect illusion of depth to make my 700sq. ft. flat seem large enough to house my 14 illegitimate children.

I think that painting my tiny hallway with a burgundy suede will match the listless colours of the rundown neighbourhood. Maybe I’ll add some uplighters. Back to Woodies tomorrow, I guess. Perhaps if I leave at 6am I will beat the traffic and be home by nightfall. Thats assuming my neighbours don’t decide start another riot or something.

YOU made me like this, Dublin. My television works, but I am huddled behind my comfortable couch waiting for the man in the Celtic jersey to arrive and take it all away.

But my little house has POTENTIAL. Potential that simply isn’t being realised when I’m sitting on my arse. One of these days I’m going to take that bus PAST Inchicore and find out what all the fuss is about. So now, instead of sitting comfortably, relaxing in my sitting room, I’m standing at the window, observing the heroin addicts in the gutter below, as my 35 year old son struggles to read the classifieds in The Sun to find some place to live that he and his pregnant 14-year-old girlfriend can afford.

With a paintbrush in hand the remote control is relegated to my arse pocket, because I still can’t figure out how to use it. Last night I watched The Matrix Reloaded. It was really good but I still don’t understand who those guys with the sunglasses were.

If only you were more like Cork. I’d be able to keep my paintbrushes in a shed where they belong. For my €330,000 I would be living in a bigger house, with a nice garden, in a safer area, without having to deal with the traffic and the living cost and the ignorant locals who think that Laois is something you hang your dog with. There’d be peeling paint and rising damp, because I’d be enjoying life with a can of Murphy’s, waiting for my rugby team to come on the telly and win the Heineken Cup. Instead, I spend my days painting the walls, because I have nothing else to look forward to this summer.

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 5th, 2006 at 0:15 am and is filed under Cork, Dublin, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.