I’d like to say a big thanks to KFS for the much needed kick up the hole that was required for me to post this. Lately I have been losing the will to blog, opting instead to spend my daylight hours in the foetal position making low pitched whining sounds, moving only to lift croissants to my lips. Night time hours are spent sneakily farting on BBB’s leg and then giggling into my hand.
Monday 3rd May
Last Thursday night when I came home from rowing BBB said to me:
“Next Friday we are going down to Mesagne, I’ve already booked your ticket”.
“Oh right”, says I, “hang on til I have forty seven heart attacks now over meeting every one of your family members as well as everyone you ever knew whilst simultaneously sweating my ball bags off in jeans because I have no summer clothes. Oh and eh thanks.”
“You’re welcome love”.
Anyway tonight we were going out for Sadie’s birthday. It was wonderful and everything but that is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about something a bit more sinister:
Ire.
Now boys and girls don’t you be acting like you never got it in your life, especially if you do exercise. If you must know, it’s the reason I don’t wear skirts in summer.
Anyway I went to Sadie’s gaff all dolly dickied up in my lovely frock and high heels thinking I was the bee’s knees but shur I wasn’t to the end of the stairs in my own house when discomfort struck. And I ain’t talking about the shoes people. My two inner thighs were stallin the heads off each other. I knew it was going to be a rough 45 minute walk into Sadie’s.
Now I can hear ye all “put a pair of tights on love”.
No! NO! I REFUSE to wear tights!
Imagine me in a pair of tights. Me like, who gets a dose of the heebie jeebies at the very suggestion of a hypothetical situation which involves me leaving the house in mismatched underwear. The way women look in tights just makes me want to puke. Like a Country Style skinless sausage. Not to mention the sweaty gusset situation. No thank you. So away I went in my stockings instead.
Big mistake.
By the time I got to the end of Sadie’s road I was a broken woman. If anyone looked out the window of their house as I was approaching they would have seen me doing the John Wayne down the road. Lads I was nearly in tears. On the way home I had to borrow a pair of ends from Laura because I knew I wouldn’t make it home without exposing some bone.
God what a nightmare. But shur look, it will come in handy if I am ever kidnapped and then thrown blindfolded from a moving vehicle into woodland and have to find my way back, all I have to do to start a fire is go for a brisk walk, using my skirt as kindling and tah dah! A roaring fire in seconds!
Tuesday 4th May
Got up, opened the shutter, saw the torrential rain, went back to bed.
Wednesday 5th May
Now lads can we just talk for a minute.
All you ladies and possibly some gentlemen (swimmers?) out there will be able to sympathize with me on this one.
Is it just me or is it literally impossible to shave your legs without shaving off at least a square foot of flesh?
Today I was shaving me legs at my beloved bidet (is there anything it can't do?) and lo! I made the tiniest nick and two seconds later there was blood squirting everywhere. Bloody handprints on walls etc. It was like a scene out of psycho.
I just don’t get it like. You are shaving away happy as Larry and you feel the tiniest sting ever invented so you take no notice. You rinse the razor and then you look back at your leg and you can see down to the bone!
I don’t know lads, I don’t be able. I always use a new razor every time, I’ve tried every brand but I swear there is no getting away from it. Had I but the time and money and unsensitive skin I would Nair my legs into oblivion the whole time.
I remember one time I cut the knee off myself in the shower and I nearly fainted. Like literally cut the knee off myself. There was a space between my calf and my thigh. Just a void. No I can’t go any further, I’m way too squeamish to relive this.
I just thank God I’m not a man, cos then every morning in the bathroom it would be Face Off all over again.
Thursday 6th May
Ooh getting all excited now! BBB had a match tonight at 10pm ( I KNOW – some shit time to have a match like) so I had to pack both our suitcases. In one way it was nice that I didn’t have him under my feet while I was trying to count out his underpants (always bring 2 spare – you never know!) but it was kind of shit as well because I had to do the Holiday Excitement Dance on my own. At about 1am I was knackered so I hit the hay and fell asleep straight away. The next thing I woke up with a start – BBB was back and he wanted people in Tokyo to know about it. He was clopping around the TILED FLOOR with his football boots, rooting in the depths of every drawer ever built by a human hand.
“Jesus CHRIST! Could you be making any more noise?” I said, in my half asleep voice, half in English half in Italian with my bun like a pineapple on the top of my head, only one of my eyes looking at him (the other one was still in Sleepy Town).
“Ok sorry Love”, he goes, and then proceeds to root in the back of the wardrobe instead. And I’m fairly sure he was zipping and unzipping something as well. With a tuba.
One of these days I’ll root up his arse with my foot.
Friday 7th May
Ooh it’s the big day! We are heading down to his home town! Now it’s no secret that I get all up in a heap when I have to go to the shop, so imagine what I’m like when I travel. The last time we were in Dublin airport and BBB said to me,
“Amore, can I tell you something?”
“Of course”, says I, thinking it’s going to be something rosemantic about how much he enjoyed being part of my world or some soppy shit like that.
I turned my face to his and looked dreamily into his eyes, waiting for his reply.
“You are some bollix when you travel”.
So this time I was determined to change!
“I promise I’ll do my best not to be a bollix today, ok?”
“Ah no, be a bollix all you want girl, no bodder”, says he.
“If you insist then.”
We got down to his house with minimal bollixing in the evening and I met his brother and his Daddy and then we went to stay in their summer house, just me and BBB. It was fabulous so it was, lovely big garden, swimming pool, nice relaxed atmosphere.
My only qualm was there was some questionable fauna down there. Now I’m no arachnophile lads, so imagine me when these big yokes with ten heads and seventeen legs the size of an elephant started emerging from the undergrowth. No now. Sorry. Just no.
I went to throw something in the bin in the kitchen and was reaching for the handle of the bin lid when my eyes focussed on the biggest grasshopper I have ever seen perched there. It was at least three inches big lads I’m not joking, I mean it’s roasting hot down there. I was taking in the breath do leave out a roar when he jumps ten feet in the air and I actually choked on my own breath. I think the shock actually stopped my heart for a moment.
I'm not cut out for this type of carry on.
Saturday 8th May
The strangest thing is happening. I seem to be falling even more in love with BBB. Oh dear – this is not ideal. This is not ideal at all. It would be very convenient for me to stop loving him right now. That way the inevitable suffering and heartbreak of my leaving can be avoided. But no, seeing him in his natural habitat is just amazing. And so is the feeling of how nicely I’ve slotted in down here.
I’m finding it so hard to enjoy the moment though because my mind is frantically skipping ahead to the pain.
Tonight we went to Brindisi with his bestest bud, who recently had his heart broken. On the way back BBB was consoling him a bit while I was sitting in the back.
“Ah no now don’t be thinking like that. There’s someone better out there for you. I mean my uncle [let’s call him Jimmy] was only saying to me this morning that I shouldn’t settle down when I’m nineteen, that I have my whole life ahead of me, and you never know who I might meet etc etc”
Of course now he was so caught up in consoling his friend that he neglected to notice that I was sitting in the back seat listening. He really shouldn’t have said that in front of me. I mean I did my bestest not to take it personally, shur for all his family know I am just some blow-in gringo.
I mean he is right. BBB is only 19. When I was 19 shur I was off out gallavantin, going off to live in obscure countries cos I wanted everyone to piss off and leave me alone. Bit of peace and quiet like. Of course he should not be settling down with the first aul wan who falls in love with him.
I just think it’s so sad, because I’m not 19. No siree bob. I’m not 19 at all. Not even a little bit. And I’ve done plenty of gallavantin and now I feel like it would be nice to gallivant with someone who roots in drawers at inappropriate times of the night.
As sad as I was I was pissed off as well. Pissed off a small bit with Jimmy like. Now I KNOW it was nothing personal, shur he hardly knows me. He was just giving some man-to-man advice to his nephew.
But piss off like. Piss right off! Doesn’t he think I don’t know these things? Doesn’t he think I want what’s best for BBB?
So there I was sitting in the back of the car, the lights of Brindisi flashing past, and all the sadness and the anger just kind of welled up and I really tried my best to hold it back, I really did, but big fat tears started rolling down my cheeks. Why couldn’t I have met him ten years from now? Or even five? For fuck sake like. Then we stopped at the monument in Brindisi port and I had to rub my face on the back of my sleeve, but it was too late.
“What’s wrong love?”
“A bit of an allergy.”
“You’re crying!”
“You shouldn’t have said that thing that Jimmy said in front of me.”
“Oh Christ I’m so sorry I was only trying to console him.”
And then we had to smile for a photo. This one in fact.
Sunday 9th May
Om nom nom today we had a lovely big BBQ.
While preparing for this BBQ, BBB told me to collect some pine cones from the garden for the fire. Grand says I, and set off picking up the giant pine cones, using my top as a kind of apron, loving seeing him all manly at the grill while I skip around gathering pine cones.
“How wonderfully idyllic, no - rustic”, I thought to myself as I reached for another pine cone.
Then suddenly, the dream was shattered. I put my delicate white hand on a pine cone, just as a giant monstrosity of a spider, a burger with legs, was crawling onto it.
Needless to say I roared and fucked the pine cones back down onto the ground and ran off at top speed.
There’s such a thing as too rustic like.