Twenty Major - Still smoking in Dublin bars » de-punz

An escape from the world clique

Twenty Major — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 11:08:34 +0000

It’s amazing the things you can find out on Wikipedia. The other week I was looking up Siouxsie Sioux and discovered this about her life.

Her mother was a bilingual secretary, her father was an alcoholic laboratory technician who milked serum from venomous snakes in the Belgian Congo.

It remains one of the best sentences I’ve ever read in my life. I cannot attest to it’s veracity in any way but either way it’s just a fantastic thing to read. Can’t you just imagine young Siouxsie at home?

“When is Daddy coming home?”

“When he’s milked off another half dozen cobras and finished that bottle of knock-off Gordon’s”.

So many pop stars have had tough lives growing up though. Maybe that’s what gives them the drive and the ambition to succeed. I read recently about Lady Miss Kier from Deee-Lite. She grew up with a domineering father and mother who hardly looked up or down at her during her entire childhood.

She recounts how they barely fed her and when they did it was little more than slop. One morning, a starving, seven year old Lady Miss Kier came downstairs looking for some breakfast?

“Breakfast? BREAKFAST?!”, shrieked her mother. “I’ll give you breakfast!”, which was just what the kid wanted and it left her somewhat confused.

She stormed off to the kitchen and came back a few minutes later with a bowl of watery oatmeal. As the hungry child held out her hands for it her mother flung it as hard as she could into the fireplace.

“There you go”, she said, “gruel is in the hearth”.

Absolute genius

Twenty Major — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 15:03:04 +0000

Via Julie Segal

The things I haven’t done

Twenty Major — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 09:23:50 +0000

You know I’ve never been on the Luas. Not once. I’ve seen it but have never been on it.

“You should”, said Dirty Dave to me, “it’s great”.

Which I’m sure it is if you need to get from one point on its route to another but not much use otherwise. I wouldn’t just get on it for the sake of getting on it. I’m no trammy.

Yet we all have things we’ve never done in our lives that other people do every day. Look at all the bazillions of people who go to Liffey Valley shopping centre, yet I have never been.

And some folk will have done very unsual things yet not more commonplace ones. When Jimmy the Bollix was seeing international chart sensation Charlene (at a time when her career was on the wane, I’ll grant you), she spent a lot of time in Ireland and they went travelling all over the country.

One time, having returned from a tour abroad supporting the troops of whatever particular war was going on at that time, she expressed a desire to go to the Hill of Tara to help her get over the trauma of seeing a tragic incident in which a couple of soldiers were killed.

As she said to Jimmy, “I’ve seen two Paras die but I’ve never been to Meath”.

I’ll have a Gramm

Twenty Major — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:19:17 +0000

Back in the day, Hugh was a civil servant by day but by night, and at weekends, he was a full on tranny. We knew him because he grew up around us and would, from time to time, come into Ron’s for a drink.

“Babycham, please”, he’d ask Ron and Ron would give him a pint of Guinness. He got on particularly well with Dirty Dave. They just seemed to click for some reason and although I thought I sometimes saw a glint in Dave’s eye nothing untoward ever happened.

Not until one night that is. He came in, they sat at the end of the bar drinking Canadian Club and ginger ale, and could barely keep their hands off each other. Ron doesn’t allow any kind of heavy petting in his bar, which is a very good thing considering what might have happened, and when he went for a trip to the bathroom our 6’4 in a dress and heel mate had somewhat cooled his ardour.

He said he was off to Sides, Dublin’s most trannytastic nightclub, and he was going on his own. Dave was gutted. Of course we ignored him and continued to drink and tell hilarious stories. At the end of the night I found Dave sitting in the snug with his Sony Discman on.

“All right, Dave?”

“Not really”, he sniffed.

“What are you listening to there?”

“Foreigner”

“Foreigner? Why?!”

“Isn’t it obvious, Twenty”, he said. “I’ve been waiting for a girl like Hugh, to come into my life”.

Sinky

Twenty Major — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:32:52 +0000

My memory is not what it once was. And what it was was shit to begin with. Thankfully I’ve got good friends to prompt me when I forget.

Last week I was supposed to get my car inusrance renewed. Totally slipped my mind but thankfully my good pal Jari Litmanen was on hand to ensure I got it done. The same day I would have completely neglected to buy a card for Jimmy the Bollix’s son’s birthday if it hadn’t been for Tommi Mäkinen and I can’t speak highly enough of Hollywood director Renny Harlin for making sure I sorted out that thing with those chaps who owed me that money.

Thankfully, despite my increasing forgetfulness, there is always some Finn there to remind me.

Fryin’ lorry

Twenty Major — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:44:14 +0000

Some years ago Dirty Dave and Stinking Pete decided they would do stand-up comedy. They were all ready for their first open mic session at the International when they realised they didn’t have a name for their act.

Against all my better judgement I told them I’d go along to the first show and think of a name based on their act. They were bad. Not David McSavage bad but still pretty fucking bad. The climax of their show saw them both whip out their lads, wank furiously and spray the front row with their jizz.

Back in Ron’s they asked me what I thought.

“Not good, chaps, not good. And the ending. You may need to re-think that”.

“I told you, Dave”, said Pete. “There just wasn’t enough spunk. Right, Twenty?!”

I shook my head slowy. “More cum? Unwise”.

Who r u calling a geebag?

Twenty Major — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:30:31 +0000

Yet another unscheduled trip to the hospital with Dirty Dave. Learning my lesson from dodgy A&E waiting rooms I took him to the Swiftcare clinic where for just €60 extra you get seen by a doctor, nobody tries to piss/puke/cum on you while you wait, and you’re in and out in just an hour. Marvelous things.

He had a run in with a woman he’d been seeing. See, she had a fall many years ago and entirely lost her sense of smell. The doctors have no idea when it might return and if spending time in Dave’s company hasn’t re-fired her nasal synapses then I doubt anything will. Anyway, there was a bit of a misunderstanding about a meeting time and place so while Dave sat at home cleaning the fungus out from between his toes she was sitting waiting for him in a bar.

His mobile was upstairs so he didn’t get any of her messages. All 17 of them. It wasn’t till she rocked up at his door that he knew something was wrong.

“I texted you, ya scaldy bollix”, she said, fixing her eye patch.

“I thought we were meeting later”, he said but it was no good.

“Nobody stands me up like that. Ya made me look more stupid than Mary Coughlan at a singles night. And all the SMS I sent you and you didn’t respond to one of them”.

“My phone is upstairs”, he managed to get out before she started beating him about the head with her HTC Hero. For each SMS sent she gave him a clobber.

It was only when he rang me that I found out he needed my help.

“What’s happened, Dave?”, I asked, as I tried to make sense of the tears, wailing, and what sounded like throat singing.

“Oh Twenty”, he cried. “I’ve been the victim of a serious textual assault”.

I Dream a Dream

Twenty Major — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:01:03 +0000

Some years back I worked in Luigi’s chipper after he’d had a bad accident and spilled a load of hot oil on his face by having his face held in the hot oil because of some money he owed a nasty fucker from Celbridge. Me and Jimmy used to do some shifts in there just to offer him a bit of protection and for the love of a fish supper.

It’s easy to forget, as a gainfully self-employed gadabout, what a vast range of people you meet. There was Elegant Bob, who always wore a dapper, pinstriped three-piece suit. Immaculate it was. And every Tuesday and Thursday he’d come in for a ray and a small bag of chips.

Luigi didn’t do kebabs, he felt the idea that a chipper should sell all kinds of fast food diluted the quality of the product, but that didn’t stop a young lad, with a face like a spoon, asking for one every time he came in. ‘Fuckin cunts’ he’d mutter when we told him he could go to Iskanders if he wanted a kebab and then he’d order a ‘bunburger, no onions, can o’ cidona’. Good old spoonface. Jimmy liked the look of one girl but Bulimic Mary only got her name when she began vomit one chip at a time moments after leaving the shop.

That summer Jimmy had to go away and see his son that he had with Michael from The Bangles. There was some kind of issue, he’d been hanging around with the wrong kind of people in school and had come home with a gun. Apparently it was a .38 special. Jimmy had to go over and sort it out. ‘No son of mine is going to be messing around with guns … well, not rubbish ladies guns anyway’, so we were a bit shorthanded.

Luigi indicated, via the medium of notepad and pencil (because his lips hadn’t yet uncrisped) that he was doing a favour for his sister who had, much to his dismay, gone and married a German just after the war. They made up eventually and now he and Immacolata were quite close. So it was that Immacolata’s daughter, Belladonna, had a family of her own and her youngest son Torsten, named after his father, wanted to come and learn English.

I thought this was fine and immediately set about ensuring the young man could swear properly. “You vucking cont”, he would try as I would laugh and help him to say ‘cuuuuntt’ like a real Dubliner. He was personable enough, for a German, and came in handy for the inter-chipper 5-a-side league as he was training to be a professional footballer. This was his life’s ambition and to be fair to him he did go on to represent his country years later. He scored the winner against the sneaky Borzas one night which was poetic justice as they’d drafted in Claudio Gentile as a ringer.

After a while though we noticed some odd things about him. He would only refer to himself using his surname and despite the need to be an eager, hard working multi-tasker in the high pressure, exacting world of fast food, he would only carry out specific tasks. These consisted of the duties his grandmother had told him he would have to do when she waxed lyrical about her brother’s ‘restaurant’ – cooking fish, putting salt and or vinegar on them or going into the back room to bring out buckets of the coating for the sausages and the fresh cod.

One day when I asked him if he might go back there and bring out another tray of coca-cola for the fridge he lost his shit altogether, ranting in Genglish about how this slapdash approach to job related tasks was just the exact reason Ireland was in such a state and why our economy and workforce was a joke to everyone in Europe … even the French. Ouch.

“But Torsten”, I said. “I just asked you to carry out some cans of coke”.

“How many times have I said zis?”, he replied, as if I were the dummkopf. “Frings will only get batter”.

Given the day that’s in it …

Twenty Major — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:05:19 +0000

… and the shocking punfest that’s going in the comments on the previous post, this is my favourite ever post on this blog. Originally posted nearly 5 years ago. 5 fuckin’ years. Jaysus.

—

Malachy Wong

It was a quiet night in Ron’s last night when all of a sudden the door opened and there was a distinct odour of sweet and sour sauce and monosodium glutamate. I looked up to see a Chinese man staring right at me. Normally this would have me reaching for my inside pocket. Not this time.

“TWINTY MAJORRR. HOW DE FECK ARE YE BOY?” he roared.

“Malachy Wong!” says I. “It’s been a long fucking time.”

“Dat it has ya langer. Now, are ya goin’ ta buy me a pint or am I goin’ ta have to do me kung-fu on ya like?”

So I bought him a pint and we got talking. Malachy Wong is a bloke me and Jimmy met in Cork one night we were down there for purely recreational purposes and not to put manners on some lad who had stolen a car Jimmy had stolen just an hour before. Feeling a bit peckish we stopped in at ‘The Golden Pond’ to grab a takeaway and Malachy was behind the counter. We asked him directions and being the kind and adventurous soul that he is he decided to follow us in case we got lost.

As it happened that was a good thing as the lad we were going down to talk to had four older brothers who were all built like fucking tanks. Jimmy hit one of them in the head with a piece of timber as thick as a government minister and he didn’t even flinch. As we retreated to our car to get out of there and come back another time there was a high-pitched shriek and in came Malachy and he Ju-Jitsued the shite out of all them.

“Tought ya might need a hand ya pair o gobshites”, he said and since then we’ve been firm friends. Fate brought us together and it was fate that brought his parents to Cork in 1962. They were heading for England to make a new life but the bloke that was smuggling them from the tip of France died and their boat drifted for days and days before it washed up in a little village called Baltimore. From there they made their way to the city and opened up the first Chinese takeaway in Ireland. As a tribute to the first man to help them onshore they named their first, and only, son ‘Malachy’.

“So what are you doing up here?” I asked him.

“Well, I need to get a copy of me birth cert so I thought I’d pay you a visit, boyo. How’s Jimmy?”

“Still a bollix, Malachy.”

“Ahh, some tings never change, eh? C’mere an’ I tell you though. Had a right laugh wit da young lad in the offices of Births, Deaths and Marriages. He made me fill out a form like, asking all kinds of shite like name, address, date of birth, and what ethnic group I belong to.”

“Right…”

“So I filled de feckin’ ting out and he calls me over and says ‘I tink you’ve got dis bit wrong here’. So I says ‘No, I don’t', and he says ‘I reckon ya do an’ all’ so I says ‘I’m telling ya I dooooon’t’. So he’s looking at me sorta biting his tongue and he says ‘Now I don’t wantcha ta tink dat I’m bein’ racist or nothin’ like dat, right, but there’s no way you’re white.’”

“He has a point, you know.”

“I know, ya spanner. Shut up. Anyway, I says ‘I am what I am and de box I’m after tickin’ is the one that applies to me’ so he says ‘Well, with the greatest respect an’ all I don’t tink it does’. So I pretend to be all aggravated and start swearin’ Chinese and runnin’ round the walls like Crouching Tiger Thingy Thingy. ‘Get yer supervisor in here. NOW!’ I shout so off he goes and a couple o’ minutes later in walks a fella with a big square jaw and curly hair.”

“Is that right?”

“It is. So he says ‘Mr Wong, I have discussed this case with my underling here and although you might think you’re white you’re not white so you can’t pick that box’ so I say ‘Is it dat you don’t want people like me in the same group as you? Is dat it?’ and he gets all flustered and says ‘No, no, no. Of course not. This is strictly in the interests of accuracy’ so I say ‘So you just want to categorise people and make sure dere’s no interbreeding because God forbid you might have a ginger child with slanty eyes running around Ireland ya bigoted shitehawk. I’m off to Dail Eireann to see my TD, so I am’.

“And?”

“So he says ‘Now I don’t think that’s necessary’ and I say ‘Don’t you tell me what’s necessary. My family has been delivering Wun Tun ta da Barry family for years and they’ve got some pull, let me feckin’ tell ya. I’m goin’ to the Daily Star and the Irish Sun and de Sunday Independent…’ – ‘NO! NOT THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT’ he interrupts. ‘Look’ he says ‘I’m sure if you’re happy with the box you’ve ticked then we’re happy with the box you’ve ticked. Isn’t that right, O’Neill?’ and the first fella says ‘Sure, absolutely boss’ so I say ‘Right den, glad we’ve got it all sorted, lads’ and 10 minutes later I had me birth cert and I went down to Davy Byrnes for some oysters and a pint.”

“You’re some man for some man, Malachy”, I said. “So how does it feel to be white.”

He looked at me for a moment like I was a knacker’s turd.

“I’m not white at all, Twenty, ya clown. I’m a Cork Asian.”

Stereophonic

Twenty Major — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:36:04 +0000

I visited Jimmy the Bollix last night in Tallaght hospital. He was involved in a serious car crash driving back from the Wicklow mountains where he had to put something in a deep hole. His was the only car involved and he smashed through a ditch, into a field and was stopped by a large tree.

“Are you all right?”, I said to him when I went in.

“It was mental, Twenty”, he said, bandaged, scraped, bruised and cut. As he told me what happened I assumed he was in a delicious morphine haze.

He said he was going along, listening to the new Gorillaz album in marvellous hiss free stereo because he and Bobby Womack go way back, happy with his lot as he’d done good work up the mountains. ‘Nobody will ever find that’, he said. As he was coming around a corner something caught his eye. It was a ewe holding a highly polished placard of some kind. Naturally I figured he’d taken a blow to head and was remembering things wrong.

He insisted this is what happened though and as he was trying to figure out what the fuck he’d just seen, out popped a lamb from the hedgerow displaying a glossy banner. He couldn’t read what it said but it distracted him so much he barely had time to react when a ram leapt out in the middle of the road holding an incredibly shiny poster mounted on a metal pole. With the beautiful day that was in it the sun reflected off it, straight into his eyes and caused him to crash.

I was dubious.

“Are you sure this is what happened?”, I asked.

“100%, Twenty. I promise you. Sheep blinded me with signs”.

Twenty Major - Still smoking in Dublin bars » de-punz

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