andcurve.weblog - The weblog of Kevin Teljeur. Somewhere within all the noise, there is a note you need to hear.

Yes, it is true. Like the tide inevitably rolling in and dumping used tampons on the beach, I became a year older today. I am thirty three today. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? I can’t possibly be that old. This means I am in my mid-thirties, I’m starting to weigh up my pension options, buy sweaters and generally hang around the house with DIY tools looking for something to fix. Because then I won’t have to change the nappies on my fourth and most recent offspring.

Some interesting arbitrary and disturbingly vague statistics: The vast majority of this year’s well-wishers were (as usual) women – utilising that vaunted multi-tasking ability to simultaneously remember 358 birthdays while failing to buy the correct type of lightbulb – and I’m not sure if I should include Neil in that – at least a third were Romanian, a lot of them were Jennifer (spread over several days, at that, though she got it right eventually) and it all involved a lot of beer. Which actually isn’t a statistic at all, but it was certainly true.

More on this when I get my head around it. Right now though, age has caught up with me, and I need another nap.

Yay! Valentine’s Day!

Hm. Actually, this isn’t the occasion of jollity that it could have been, but I’ve had worse. I used to get very bitter about this, because I didn’t have a girlfriend, had no relationships, and until a year or two ago hadn’t even managed to get laid, which meant that I felt it was simply a day for the people who had all of these things to be smug and make patronising remarks to the likes of me to the effect that ‘it could happen some day soon’; the sort of thing that gets Lotto winners beatten up by their former best mates. I did have a sudden impulsive reaction one year which resulted in me buying flowers for a girl (and I’ll say no more, other than it was a long time ago and there is a photo of her on this very blog. No more clues, I’m afraid!) which was the wrong thing to do,Shit! I will say more. It was a particularly embarrassing episode and goes a long way to demonstrate exactly how much I needed to learn a bit about people, and women in particular. And just cop the fuck on. At least it vaguely amused people for a few weeks. and since then I figured that if some wench did want flowers or chocolates then she could bloody well give me a good seeing to first and we’d negotiate the sharing of the wealth afterwards. Needless to say, that strategy didn’t work out too well, and I’ve found a far more effective technique is to get woefully drunk in front of the required female and then make out with the front cover of a magazine as demanded by that same wumon.

Frequently Asked Questions:
Yes, I miss her. No, I don’t think I’ll be flying out there (maybe though). Yes, we broke up. No, she won’t be back in a couple of weeks. Yes, we’ll see.Yeah, pretty perverse stuff, but that’s the way things go for me. How my life has changed since those dark, bitter days! Right now I’m technically single, but this is very much like telling me I own a manatee in so far as it may be true, I’ll almost certainly tell anyone who brings the subject up but it doesn’t really feel that way. It’s complicated, and you can read more about it here. Damn that woman, I wasn’t supposed to be missing her, but that’s the effect she has! Speaking of manatees, I’ve discovered the perverse joy of convincing complete strangers that I own a manatee in a reservation in Florida. It’s such an outrageous and bizarre lie that it’s actually quite successful so I’ll have to try that one out again soon. Real ice-breaker, and I don’t think it’ll be too long before I get mauled by someone with a low tolerance for mockery or some sort of hatred for ocean-going ungulates.

I hope you’re all enjoying Valentine’s Day, do try and avoid getting arrested by your local Emperor and then executed in tediously elaborate fashion, and spend some time with someone you care for. And that you aren’t related to by blood preferably, but if the local customs allow it then each to their own. Or buy them some stuff. If you don’t care about anyone, then I strongly recommend a good wank, which might help a bit and at the very least you’ll find it relaxing.

Well, I better not be a complete scrooge, and do the right thing:

Merry Christmas everyone!

*sigh* Hope you all got something you wanted. I know I will. A few days of peace and quiet, and a few minutes to reflect. Have good holidays.

The first in a series of somewhat random older photos…

January ’03. The murals in Derry (known to the English as Londonderry); this is where the Catholic population live.

September ’02. David and Carolyn after a hard night on the town, Neil is nearby. David is still sore after trying to break into a car, and climbing a crane.

(Edited to include useful information like dates)

I started a series of posts recently, roughly every week or so, and then stuff came up and then something else happened, and then poo, the post was rendered essentially useless and I had to start again. The few remaining regular followers of my site, which include Tee and Tony, occasionally Kenny and Sean, and sometimes Fergal and a couple of Parallel customers (allegedly, but I hope so; more on this shortly) have no doubt been thinking that this is one of the less persuasive reasons to fire up a web browser, though my outburst of 11 November seems to have gone down very well as a piece of entertainment.

I was going to do my posts during my recent trip to England, but I didn’t have quite enough time (as you’ll see, that’s kind of surprising but that’s how it happened) and then after that I was all tied up until now, at the end of my week off…

Weeks of not posting, an absolute sin in terms of maintaining an audience which as I explained in a previous post is very important indeed, according to dogmatic self-appointed Danish web experts. Though as my previous post demonstrated, I have an audience which hovers in at around two so stuff like audience numbers is a moot point. Anyway, there’s been a lot on, and over the next day or two there will be many, many photos and all sorts of odds and ends. I’ll probably break them down into individual posts.

A bit of a recap: Two weeks ago Rik the Belgian came over, and although he spent a lot of that two weeks roaming around the country, we had a lot of fun in Dublin and it was great to see him again. During that time, I went to Tee’s brother’s wedding party,
The traditional pulling off of the garter with the teeth. I don’t think this was their first time…
That’s Tee’s (and Joseph and Derrick and Michelle’s) Oul’ Fella in the foreground
Michelle and Laura, Tee’s sister and best mate respectively. Dangerous women for sure.

Dmitry and Alex’s party,
Sarka, Tanya, Rik and Ciaran; aren’t we cosy?
Dmitry is concerned we’re not drinking enough, while Rik realises he is actually very drunk. Again.
Me, Ciaran and Sarka celebrating Sarka’s theft of Ciaran’s beer

I got myself a room in Los Blancheles (that’s Blanchardstown; I won’t say it again), hung out with Rik,
Rik tasting Guinness; this is his ‘appreciation’ face

went through childhood ephemera with my brother, more parties, a vast improvement in my footie skills, my mother bought a house (with cash! What a turnaround.), I visited the Jennifer,
Jen and Tristan having a wrestle; that kid is strong!

I had a big adventure in England, I walked to Maynooth,
Garret The Troll surveys the journey ahead. There is still far to go.

there was a great party to help poor Pakistanis,
Ibiza Uncovered. In Owen’s house. Notice the pride of Pakistan at the top…

and I painted my mother’s house.
Haarrrgh! The roller!

Friday morning two weeks ago I got to experience the Calcutta Express, which is the train from Maynooth to Pearse.
Waiting for the Calcutta Express at Castleknock station. Sitting on the roof will be harder when they electrify the line out here.
Not many people know or even believe that Los Blancheles has a train station although it is cunningly named ‘Castleknock’, and I’ve discovered that people in Dublin know surprisingly little about the greater Dublin rail network, or at least what’s left of it (it’s a fact that as soon as the English were out of Ireland, the Irish ripped up the bulk of the rail network and replaced it with shoddy roads and poor public transport. Fucking idiots.). The line through Los Blancheles is known as the Calcutta Express simply because it’s generally completely packed solid during rush hour, standing room only, and to make matters worse it has to wait for a random period of time just before Connolly station (and sometimes at other points on the line) because it plays second fiddle to the coastal line.

Potentially a great service, unfortunately run by an Irish state company (yeah, underfunded, I know, but money doesn’t organise timetables or explain to people why the train has stopped apparently at random. Diligence does that.).

We had a company lunch on Friday too, which is always an odd experience
Having an interesting lunch. That is Lyner on my right.
I mean, it was great that Tom took us out to the Indian, the food was good albeit minimal, but having a regimented lunch with most of the work crew in a semi-structured environment tends to feel like… work. It was reasonably good food though, and relaxed enough.

After a hard and fast game of footie I had a hard and fast game sprint to Kilkenny to visit Jennie and her remarkably fast growing kid. Originally the idea was to stay for most of the weekend but for various reasons (not least, having spent very little time in my new home so far and having to get a number of things done, as well as the ongoing crusade to weed out uneccessary old stuff from my childhood memories since my mother is moving and wishes things to be ‘sorted’) I ended up staying just Friday and heading back on Saturday evening which was probably better for everyone… Jesus, her young fella has grown! I hadn’t seen Jennie and her kid since well before I started going out with Tee (which comes close to putting exact dates on it all) so the last time he was exactly a year old. Now he’s 18 months, walking, talking, making lifestyle choices, negotiating his next mortgage and figuring out how to steal my job… Crazy stuff, and reminds me that time is passing; I’m not getting any younger. 33 next March!

So there’s Tristan:
Tristan sizes me up. He reckons he could take me.
And the Jennifer:
Poor Jennifer is all played out. She needs a rest.
And we can combine them:
Now they’re both all played out!
And then we can remove Jennifer, and add Mikey and Jane:
Mikey (Jen’s brother) and Jane, his wumon, with Tristan
For those who routinely make the same jokes (and you know who you are), I was in Australia at the time. So go fuck yourselves, it’s not funny anymore.

Kilkenny is great place even if it’s expanding like there’s no tomorrow. There’s a great clothes shop called ‘Praha’ which has a logo in the colours of the Czech flag. Actually, it just sells the same stuff as everywhere else, I guess the proprietors must be Czech.

I got my duvet on Sunday morning, after an overlong and tortuous trip to the Los Blancheles Shopping District, where you can buy just about anything that it is possible to buy, and get caught in 10 kilometre tailbacks with your SUV on the way home. Shopping, ‘they’ say, is the new religion here in Ireland and everyone was at worship that morning, flinging their cards and cash about with abandon. A lot of these people have high mortgages too, or other debts, it’s pretty frightening to shop for a pastime under those circumstances.

The entrance to Los Blancheles Retail Park. You park, and then you retail. Shop til you drop from sheer irritation.

Me? I just needed a good warm duvet with feathers pulled from a real duck.