Got stuck talking to Old Charlie down the end of the bar last night. I had to venture down there to get something to read. Ron has a collection of annuals and I was searching through the Roy of the Rovers to find one I hadn’t read dozens of times when he started talking.
He was waiting for Paddy to come in so they could sup Guinness with a Jamey chaser and both talk at the same time. I feel bad for old people that don’t have anyone to talk at so I sat and listened to his stories about life in the tenements and what he and his pals used to do to the swans on the canal at Suir Bridge.
Eventually Paddy came in.
“Where have you been?”, asked Charlie. “You were supposed to be here ages ago”.
“I would have been only I had a little hassle doing the shopping”, he said.
“What happened?”, I asked.
“Ahh, you know yourself. A little misunderstanding is all”.
“What kind of misunderstanding?”, said Charlie.
“Well”, he said, “I was in Superquinn and going around the place quite happily with my price gun, bleeping and putting stuff in my bags. Bleeping and putting stuff in. Bleeping and putting stuff in. I was as content as a sheared sheep, the shopping was a pleasure”.
“And?”
“I went to the checkout and she said the two words you never want to hear in those circumstances”.
“Oh-oh”, I said.
“Yeah. Re. Scan”.
“Bollix”, said Charlie.
“Bollix is right”, said Paddy. “They took the gun, bleeped it, then re-scanned all the stuff in the bags”.
“Much?”
“Well, there was the odd leg of lamb that I simply forgot to bleep. And how those king prawns didn’t cross my mind I’ll never know. It’s a mystery to me why I didn’t remember the packets of batteries, the bottle of Vat 69 or the double pack of Fig Rolls and quite how I failed to recall to bleep the sausages, the brown bread and giant box of teabags will forever haunt me”.
“Yikes. So what did they do?”
“Ahh, the manager came over and we had a bit of a chat and the security man came over and then the assistant manager and we went to the office and in the end, after I’d told them I was very old and forgetful but not on purpose or anything, I paid for what I’d somehow forgotten to put through myself”.
“Sounds like an awkward situation”, I said.
“That it was”, he said, “but at my age it’s about as much excitement as I get”.
That sounds suspiciously like Willie O’Dea’s defence for lying in his affidavit. He’s started a trend.
Oh dear. Shades of ellicit Ben and Jerries. Shoplifted calories don’t count, right?
illicit! feck!
Never, ever, talk to old people.
Shoplifted calories don’t count, right?
heh, not if you don’t want them to.
maggot – you’re nearly old.
But I’m not 63 old man!
Nor playing much football?
I’m gutted somebody revealed my real age, maggot. I really am.
Christy – maggot playing football?
We didn’t do soccer at my school. Rugby and Cricket. Useless at both – though I was the team scorer for cricket matches. Rugby – I was sent to join the smokers at the weight training hut.
Well, if not playing football, what with you being so young an’ all
Maggot, you should try aussie rules. They’ve already named the referees after you.
There’s an old man, can’t be far off 80, comes into our local pub quite often. He also sits at the end of the bar. He sits quietly by himself. But the teenagers go over and talk to him and he always ends up sitting with them in their little crowd, chatting and laughing away together. It’s great to see.
Once in Tesco and once in Superquinn I watched old ladies “overlook” that they left something in the cart during checkout. In both cases, it was overpriced skin creams.
I think that’s fair enough, Medbh. Overpriced skin creams deserve robbing. Evens things out.
A friend of mine worked in a tattoo shop. A sweet old lady used to come in looking for lavender essence. He started keeping some there for her. It took a while to realise she had alzheimer’s, but he found out she lived in the old people’s home near by and he adopted her. Said after a while she didn’t realise he wasn’t actually her family. Sweet.
I’m impressed by your friend Jo.
I think that’s a wonderful thing to do, adopt an old person.
I wouldn’t go for one with Alzheimer’s though.
Somehow I don’t expect them to be as hard-working as a ‘normal’ one. Harder to instill fear into as well, I believe.
And I wouldn’t be able to put up with a pissy-smelling one either.
All good points, Git.
Sure I lost my memory when questioned about the Phillipino housekeeper incident. Blessins o` God on ya.
I will admit that I too am guilty of misappropriating the odd steak or bottle of wine from Superquinn using their guns. I don’t feel guilty though.
In the interests of balance I shoplift goods from Tesco of a greater value than whatever I take from Superquinn so as to not damage our already delicate economy.
I’m not happy with this arrangement.
Every time I set foot in a shop all the security guards and cameras are focused on me. They follow me and watch every move I make.
Meanwhile you fuckers are getting away with murder!
It’s not on.
I end up with nothing.
Send me stuff or I’m ratting.
Paddy’s Day Exodus – there’s lots of jome material here; Crazyhorse Kebabman Conor Lenehin going to Vietnam….Mary Harney going to New Zealand …carbon footprint will be fucking colossal there; watch your sheep too *chomp*….another FF’er going to the most corrupt city in the USA, Chicago, so they’ll be right at home there
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0305/1224265630342.html
Just once I’d like to see RTE following these Paddy’s Day junketeers around to see exactly what they do to promote the country when they’re away.
If by “promoting the country” they mean eating their own weight in free food and drinking bovine quantities of alcohol while having their knobs tweaked by the sychophantic diaspora, I suppose it counts.
The bit I really object to is that the fuckers always come back. Arse.
I always thought those beeper guns were just so you could keep tally of your bill as you went around the shop. Didn’t realise people were actually doing their own billing. That’s wide open for abuse. Can I do it too or do you have to qualify somehow?
My only supermarket theft is the occasional roll of wee plastic bags from the fruit and veg section. Handy little divils altogether.
Just pop a roll into the bottom of your trolley and if anyone asks, say you didn’t notice, must have been there all along.
No-one ever asks.
Those wee bags are great for poop-scooping SG!
I hate all the St Patrick Day crap.
well you would maggot no surprise there. do all orange men go into hiding and refuse to leave their houses for paddys weekend must be very traumatic for them
Jesus. Sounds like you’d be a great supercriminal SG, setting your sights high and all that…….
Jember those over-the-shoulder, sort of hanging to one side, single strap rucksacks that were popular in the nineties? The greatest shoplifting device ever made those were. A Polish friend showed me how. I used to go to the Tesco around the corner, place the bag at an angle in my basket, with the zipper open a few inches, and fling expensive cheeses, coffees, extra virgin olive oil, herbs and spices, all the pricey stuff, deep into the rucksack. The zipper always looked closed tight. When at the cashier, I’d take the full bag out of the basket, search about for my wallet in the front pocket, pay them a few bob for a loaf and a few carrots, and walk out the door with all the goodies for free. Must have taken thousands and more thousands off the cunts over the years. Regrets? Not a one. They were routinely robbing the customers themselves, overcharging at the till for goods marked cheaper on the shelves, making an average of £33m annually. For which they were eventually fined £3,800 by the DCA.
bosco – you really are very, very stupid
http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/39595
http://www.grandorangelodge.co.uk/press/PressReleases-2005/050217-cherish_all_of_the_children_of_the_nation.html
And of Course St Patrick was not Roman Catholic ! One of the reasons that the Protestant Cathedral in Armagh is called St patrick’s Cathedral .
Well, Itchy, I have a darker history than that, but I prefer not to think about it. I won’t say too much but the words pick n mix haunt me to this day.
And I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
But did you ever pilfer a leg of lamb from Dunnes Stores?
… just to watch it fry…
“I’m gutted somebody revealed my real age, maggot. I really am.”
Do you find yourself humming “When I’m Sixty-four”?
The SQ gun thing is like being caught on the LUAS/DART without your travelpass.
heh and heh
I don’t know why people who shop in Superquinn on a regular basis don’t use the gun.
When I did, I did. You’d get the random check every now and then. You can also really confuse them by scanning stuff that’s not in your trolly… but only if you’re a bit twitchy and sure you’ll be checked.
i stand corrected maggot fair enough
Sorry bosco – was in a grumpy mood earlier – caused by Twats in the comments at Irish Times – took it out on you, my apologies.
I was going to drop in to The Dublin Writers Festival until I read the list of who is going to be there.
http://www.dublinbookfestival.com/authors10.php?page=116
I don’t see you listed there as a guest twenty.
Eoghan Harris is going to be there – I’ll bet Twenty gets his autograph.
And don’t forget – Monday is International Wimmin’s Day. In Cork, the Sexual Violence Centre will host a fashion, music and African dance show tomorrow from 12.30pm.
I wish it could be international women’s day everyday. I love the way women hold a tall glass with gin and talk sense and look perfectl..I’m drifting off here again.
Eoghan Harris made sense to me too recently – maybe he’s a female in disguise , jesus- when discussing George Lee on Newstalk with that cork guy who is on lunchtime (I don’t know his name but he’s a pain in the arse). Anyway..I was agreeing with Harris, it was quite disturbing. I was wearing an eye-patch that day. He was saying that the sympathy Lee was getting was only from politically correct arseholes and that Lee was a chickenshit big fucking baby. And he was right. But I suppose every dog has his day.
Eoghan Harris made sense to me too recently
Twenty holds grudges – you are in big trouble mate!
Johnny Logan looks like Mrs Slocum fron “are you being served?” What the fuck..the late late show is a very creepy show stuck in a timewarp. marty whelan, dana, johnny the hoe logan and some ff fucker.
more of this please
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiIsIE8iT28
International women are my favourite
A woman of any sort, legal and breathing, would do me. I’m not (in a position to be) fussy.
To many prerequisites Maggot. Open up to the world of dead undocumented immigrants.
Everyone’s an International woman to someone, happily.
Everyone’s an International woman to someone, happily.
I’m not an international woman to anybody missus!
Jeez, I took being someone’s International Woman to all new level. My significant other is in Switzeland and travels to Nice every weekend, my sisters are in Poland each in a different city, my mum and my step father are in London….
As they say, there is nothing better than a large close-knit family… in another country.
baha, good point, maggot.
I’m bored. No self scanning round here – any suggestions as to how I can amuse myself ?
Do some sketching?
http://nakedchicksonpostitnotes.blogspot.com/?zx=4142da95057ee4b4
oops. That link clearly didn’t work…
I even found myself doing some housework. I need a wife.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odWWQswh5wY
Thinking about it, Ferdia was a bit of a twat. Was obvious he was stuffed yet he just kept shaking his silver spear and falling to battle again. Obviously a gooner.
He was good in Rocky Develera & The Gravediggers, and likewise in The Rhythm Kings, but nowadays he seems to gone off the radar altogether.
Personally, I blame Ritchie ‘Milkboy’ Taylor for holding him back, the jealous cunt.
i like the writing of this guy very week; he’s usually technopositive
Flip to the future
By Tyler Brûlé
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/ffbdc0d4-175f-11df-87f6-00144feab49a.html
Published: February 13 2010 00:22 | Last updated: February 13 2010 00:22
It’s been a while since we’ve indulged in a little fantasy in this column (save for my JAL recovery strategy from two weeks ago), so let’s enjoy a bit of weekend make-believe.
Pretend for a moment you’ve joined me in popping a time travel pill with your grapefruit juice and we’re all hurtling fast-forward to the year 2020.
This is a highly advanced time travel supplement we’ve just consumed so we’re guaranteed to arrive in the future without suffering the embarrassment of poor travel planning as experienced by time bandits of yore. This means that our clothing and hairstyles will magically transform so we’re completely up to date with the citizens of the future, which will save us from looking like German tourists from Leipzig.
So, in 2020, we’ll all arrive in one-piece jersey romper suits woven out of pulped hardback books and synthetic slippers made from discarded Kindle e-readers.
Given that we’ve all travelled 10 years into the future in less than a second, it would be good to get a fix on what’s going on but, at first glance, there’s not a newspaper in sight – not even a handsome expanse of salmon pink newsprint. Hungry for news, we approach a passer-by to ask him where we might be able to buy or download a shred of information but he just shrugs and raises his flippers in despair. Flippers?
A quick glance across the street reveals that that this is not a birth defect but symbolic of where the world has ended up – a family of four is waddling down the street and they all have flippers instead of hands.
Unable to conceal our curiosity, we come clean about being time travellers and ask the man what the flippers are all about. At first he’s mildly puzzled by the question but then explains that the great wave of 2010 changed everything.
Great wave? Was there a tsunami that flooded the world, we ask. Is that why people ended up sprouting flippers? Did we all become aquatic for a few years?
“Oh no, not that kind of great wave, you silly time-travellers,” he chuckles. “It was the great touchpad wave of 2010 and 2011. The launch of touchpads meant we only needed to brush and touch screens to engage with the world, so fingers become kind of redundant.”
Ah, we nod in unison. Then what happened?
“Well, it all went very wrong,” he explains. “The world became so dazzled by the technology and the devices that delivered the content that the information eventually disappeared.
“The technology players fancied themselves as media barons but didn’t want to invest in the information and the media barons never wanted to blow the whistle on all of this technology, so they just rolled over and their businesses eventually shrivelled up and expired.”
So how do you keep up with what’s going on?
“I don’t,” he says. “With no companies delivering content there was eventually no need to have any devices, so the great backwash occurred and the people revolted. That’s why those slippers you’re wearing are made out of Amazon Kindles and my underwear is woven from recycled Apple iPads. We realised in 2015 that we were wrong but we were too late to correct the mistakes.”
But didn’t media micro-payments make everyone rich?
“They never worked,” says the man with a great sigh. “After the music business died, we should have known that no one would want to pay for single articles from newspaper companies and magazines but we were so busy trying to escape the clutches of social media that we didn’t take notice.”
This is all so depressing, we cry in unison. What became of all the players who allowed this to happen? Did they stand trial for crippling our culture?
“They did but most of them managed to get off because by the time the trial came around no independent news outlets remained and that meant there was no one left to hold them accountable.”
So now what are you doing, we ask. Not to state the obvious but those flippers are kind of useless, aren’t they?
“Yeah, they’re not great,” he says with some resignation. “We’re all trying to figure out how we can restore things and rebuild our culture but when you’ve only got two big flat slabs of flesh, it’s hard to do anything. All our music is kind of boring and clapping-based and it’s really hard to write with these.”
Feeling even more depressed, and having seen quite enough of the future, we say our goodbyes to the deflated gentleman, catapult back to February 2010 and find ourselves where we started.
The moral of the story? Savour the delights of slow yet sustainable media while you still can and don’t be afraid of chucking lots of cold water over friends, colleagues and brands caught in the glow of their touchpads.
Tyler Brûlé is editor-in-chief of Monocle
tyler.brule@ft.com
read aloud to youself in the willie o’dea way -=irish times
The week they said…
In this section
I corrected the mistake when I realised it – Former barrister and then minister for defence Willie O’Dea asserts that he “corrected” a false allegation he made in an affidavit sworn for the High Court
O’Dea claims he corrected his affidavit. This is not true . . . it can’t be done. – Barrister Vincent P Martin keeps the record straight
We look forward to him continuing to serve the Government and the people. – Brian Cowen expresses confidence in O’Dea
A perjurer at the Cabinet table. – Enda Kenny
You didn’t commit perjury and you’re the victim now? – RTÉ’s Seán O’Rourke replies to O’Dea on News at One