Author: damienowens

I first realised that I needed glasses when I was about fifteen. The horrible penny dropped during mass one Sunday when I looked up and noticed that the priest had gone blurry. I was impressed at first. Wow, I thought; I didn’t know they could do that. But then I noticed that the altar boys had lost some of their definition too. A sweaty-palmed trip to the optician confirmed the worst. I would need to go from two eyes to four and could rest assured that no girl would ever speak to me again as long as I lived. My first pair of specs were exactly like Ronnie Corbett’s, only grey. Soon they were exactly like Ronnie Corbett’s, only grey with one arm superglued permanently open (the wee screw fell out and I panicked). It wouldn’t have mattered what they looked like, of course. I would have hated them anyway. But people change. We grow, we evolve, we mature, we stop letting our parents pick our glasses. Over the years I’ve gradually come to terms with the old goggles and have even had a pair or two that I was quite fond of. For one thing, they make an excellent prop, which is more than can be said for contact lenses. Lenses may not steam up in the rain and it’s very difficult to accidentally sit on them, but you can’t look over the top of them while saying something sarcastic. You can’t chew on the end of them while pretending to be thoughtful. You can’t take them off and shake your hair down, thus revealing yourself to be a beautiful woman after all. Hmmm. Note to self: work on examples.

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Old MacDonald. He was 76 and had been battling ill health for many years. Old MacDonald had a farm, EIEIO. And on that farm, he had some cows, EIEIO. With a moo-moo here and a moo-moo there, here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a moo-moo. Old MacDonald was a widower, having lost his dear wife, Old Mrs MacDonald, in a freak milking accident in 1987. He is survived by one son, Young MacDonald, who will take over the dairy business. Young MacDonald has some debt, EIEIO.

There was only one customer in the bar. Short and heavy; a washing machine with a moustache. ‘You ever listen to that song?’ he said. ‘I mean, to the words?’

Elvis Presley was fading out on the radio. The bartender shrugged. ‘It’s a-’

‘Listen hard next time it comes on. “If there’s one thing that she don’t need, it’s another hungry mouth to feed in the ghetto.” If she’s so broke, I’m saying, this bitch, then why don’t she keep her fucking legs closed? She’s starving as it is, Jesus Christ.’ He paused, but not for long. ‘Then this brat she spawns, he “needs a helping hand or he’ll grow up to be an angry young man”. Where was my helping hand? Where were these bleeding hearts when my old man was hitting me with a fucking whisky bottle? “He learns how to steal and he learns how to fight”, this delinquent. You following? He learns how to steal and he learns how to fight. What, does he take a class? No one’s making him do shit. Personal responsibility, I’m talking about. Choices. The choices of the individual. “He buys a gun, steals a car”, this nigger prick. He “tries to run but he don’t get far”. Well, boo fucking hoo.’

The bartender swallowed hard. There was no mention of race in the lyrics. He wondered if he should say something.

‘Choices of the individual,’ the customer said again and shook his head at the sad state of the world.

My gob is regularly smacked by people who are fluent in the use of English as a second language. It’s one thing to learn how to conjugate the verbs or to acquire a vocabulary. That’s largely a matter of brute practice. But how do they cope with the million tiny subtleties that make the difference between getting a warm handshake and getting a thick lip? Take the likes of “normal” and “ordinary”. At first glance from a foreign eye, I would imagine that normal and ordinary seem to mean the same thing – typical, average, usual, par for the course. And yet you can get yourself into real trouble, real fast if you don’t know what you’re doing with them. “Normal” gives us a warm glow in our tummies, like a verbal Ready Brek or Jack Daniels. We would all like our heart rate to be normal, for example. And yet we recoil like a scalded cat from being ordinary. You would look sideways at a doctor who sniffed that your heart rate was “ordinary”. How would you go about explaining the difference to a foreign language student? If they mean the same thing, how can one be good and one be bad? Well, for a start, you wouldn’t bring cardiology into it. But you might point to the antonyms. It’s not that people want to be normal; it’s that they don’t want to be abnormal. And we don’t fear being ordinary so much as we crave being extraordinary. This should clear the matter up for your foreign friend and, better yet, it will give you a chance to say “antonym” and look cleverer than you really are.

Westlife have a new album coming out soon. It’s called The Smell of You. Track list is as follows:

1.  The Smell of You
2.  Take These Tears and Wipe Them
3.  We’ll Always Have Dundalk
4.  My Ring
5.  Big Massive Dove
6.  My Heart is Full of Pus (feat. Dame Kiri Te Kanawa)
7.  Your Good Eye
8.  Feel You Up (Tonight)
9.  Pull My Finger
10. Brand New Micra
11. Don’t Look Fat in That
12. Whisper Your PIN
13. The Smell of You (Reprise)