Author: damienowens

I once had a friendly conversation with a burglar. I didn’t know he was a burglar at the time, mind you, despite the fact that he was burgling even as we spoke. Burgling me, in fact. I had been semi-woken by some sort of noise – possibly a bang, although I couldn’t swear that it wasn’t a crash – and, alert as ever, noticed that there was what they call “a shadowy figure” standing in the doorway of my room. This was years ago, in the days of house sharing, and I assumed that it was one of my housemates up and about investigating the noise. “What was that?” I asked in the shouty whisper that people adopt when they’ve heard something in the middle of the night and want to find out what it was. “Eh … nothing,” the figure said. “Go back to sleep.” So I did. I think I even said goodnight. Next thing I knew, the stairs were being thumped down, the front door was slamming shut and the entire household was standing at the foot of my bed shouting about their missing CDs. Oops. A Garda later demonstrated how you could open our front door by speaking harshly to it. Your man had just let himself in, didn’t care if anyone was home. Probably high on life, or possibly heroin. The same Garda also assured us that, having discovered we were a pushover (special dirty look for me), the burglar would be back. We bought elephant guns and stared suspiciously at the front door for the next three weeks. Then he came in through a downstairs window one night and got the rest of the CDs. Didn’t even stop to say hello. True story.

I was sorry and you were sorry
but neither wanted to say.
We sat through Countdown in silence;
no mumbled “cat” nor “toe”.
Then you got the Conundrum
and I said well done
and that was that.

Obviously, this list isn’t exhaustive. It probably covers only 20% of the things I can do.

• You know when people name a song or movie and say ‘Guess the year’? I’m really good at guessing the year
• I know the name of those little plastic things on the end of your shoe-laces
• I never get confused between ‘its’ and ‘it’s’
• I know almost all of the lyrics to ‘Dancing Queen’
• I never cut people’s heads off in photos
• I used to be able to do the Rubik’s Cube and could probably get the hang of it again, if I had to
• When I see a dead badger at the side of a country road, I always feel really sorry for it

OK, that last one isn’t really a skill, but I still thought I should mention it.

I caught a glimpse of a punching bag in a sports shop window the other day and a long-forgotten memory came screaming back. I was about ten, I think, and I’d just seen Rocky for the first time. I loved it, the training, the slurring, the beanie-wearing, the idea that a person could overcome some of the obstacles in life by punching them really hard. At last, I thought, my long search is over – I’ll become a professional boxer. So I spent a couple of happy days walking around in a towelling dressing-gown while knocking my fists together, ducking, and breathing funny. The path before me was clear. I would join a gym (run-down but, dammit, honest) where I would meet a leathery old-timer (Ernie or possibly Gus) who thought he’d seen it all. He’d take me under his wing (“You got what it takes, kid”) and give me a rugged nickname of some kind. Before long I’d be overcoming the crap out of lesser talents and wondering who might play me in the biopic. But then I remembered that boxing involved getting hit, sometimes in the face. I checked my list of Things You Should Try to Avoid and there it was, number fourteen – “Getting hit in the face.” I dropped the boxing ruse like a hot turd and went back to pondering what the flowers might wish for if only they could talk. But now I find myself wondering how things would have worked out if I’d actually, you know, tried it. Maybe I would have found my niche. Maybe I would have discovered a natural sense of balance and poise that I didn’t even know was there. Maybe I would have … no, wait. Hang on. I’ve just remembered the getting hit part again. Head like a sieve, me.

Someone just e-mailed me a list of inspirational quotes. Leaving aside the obvious implication that I am personally in need of inspiration, I must say it’s an interesting document. “If you are going through hell, keep going,” Winston Churchill is supposed to have said. Nice. Henry Ford has an entry too: “Whether you think that you can or that you can’t, you are usually right.” Oooh. Sweet. And what about Gandhi? “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Top of the range stuff. The point of lists like these, I suppose, is to comfort the average nobody (me, say) who rarely needs to lead a nation or found an industry, but who is forever losing his keys. A comforting word from a historical great, so the theory goes, can see you skip safely past the myriad tiny thumb tacks that are strewn across the carpet of everyday life. That’s all well and good, admirable even, but it doesn’t bloody work. You read the quotes, every one a winner, and you start to feel worse. It’s all right for Winston Churchill, you hear yourself thinking. He never had to leave a movie back when it was lashing rain. The problem, it seems, is that big ideas just don’t scale down very well. Mind you, they probably knew all that themselves, these historical greats. Gandhi may well have had lots of startling things to say about the human struggle for self-worth, but I bet you couldn’t stick him when he got a stone in his flip-flop for the tenth time that morning.

‘Do you take this woman-‘
‘Do I …?’
‘Yes, you. Take this woman.’
‘This woman?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re asking me do I take this woman.’
‘Yes. To be your lawfully wedded wife. To have and-‘
‘To hold.’
‘To hold, yes. In sickness and in health-‘
‘In sickness …’
‘And in health.’
‘Sickness and health …’
‘Yes. Till death do you part …’
‘Right.’
‘Well, do you? Take this woman?’
‘This woman, you’re saying, you’re asking me do I take this woman to be my lawfully wedded wife, so forth, in sickness and in health, till death do us part?’
‘Yes.’
‘I fucken do.’

I’ve been thinking about Paddy Englishman, Paddy Irishman and Paddy Scotsman. What crazy adventures they’ve had together! How they’ve thrilled and delighted legions of children and unimaginative adults! We owe them a great debt of gratitude. But times are hard and we must face an unpleasant truth that we’ve been avoiding for decades: one of the boys is redundant and will have to be let go. Every three Paddys routine works in the same way. Paddys one and two assess their situation – stranded on a desert island, say, or lounging in a brothel – and between them establish a pattern of appropriate behaviour. Then Paddy number three comes along and makes a fundamental error of judgement, frequently fatal. It makes no difference which Paddy performs which role. That’s a matter of taste and personal prejudice. But I think you’ll agree that Paddy number two contributes nothing, regardless of his nationality. As soon as we hear how Paddy number one reacts, we can assume that Paddy number two will follow suit. We skip over him in our minds, eager to see how Paddy number three makes out. This is clearly wasteful. Henry Ford wouldn’t have put up with it, you can be sure. To drop a Paddy is a drastic step, I know, but think of the savings in breath, in time, in effort. Future generations will thank us. And if it works out, maybe we could streamline some other comedy staples. Knock, knock jokes, for example, are carrying dead weight of their own. Come on now – do we really need that second knock?