Loose Cans

Spent five hours at the airport yesterday. Oy. Because it's strike season in France, one of the Air France flights was canceled, which of course caused the next flight (Marie's) to be overbooked, bumping her to the next flight. Which arrived two hours later. But now everything is lovely. While I was waiting I managed to book a nice reasonable room in Galway, this B&B. Of course I could only book it for friday and sunday nights; saturday Mrs. MacCallion said she would help us find another room. So weekend in Galway! Gonna run home and pack right now.

One quick thing: Since the Halls gestapo (excuse my language; they have been endearing themselves to no one of late) would rather that I NOT have a guest here for ten days, their reason being that if I do it, everyone will, because God knows EVERYONE else has got 10-day breaks in the middle of term...except us...they have politely asked me to take your girlfriend and get the fuck out over the bank holiday weekend coming up (3-day weekend). So I think we're going to Galway, if I can get it together. I did some research, and it turns out to be feasible: €15 roundtrip bus tickets, €25 a night for a hostel. Which is slightly steep but worth it (I checked the Kinlay House first, Ben, I did, but then found a nicer place for the same price). This should be just oodles of fun.

She gets in at 5:10. As my Homer Simpson bottle opener once said before it was deliberately busted: "YES! OH, YES! WOOHOO!"

So the English Dept. meetup last night went quite well. I arrived with a distinguishing level of punctuality, and this led to my Poetry/Romanticism and Revolutions lecturer's (whom I liked very much before last night, and am even more partial to now) buying me a pint. He did this not because I was on time, but just because I was there, and so was he. He's a lovely fella. So almost all the lecturers and T.A.'s were there, as well as a sizable bunch of the studentry. The free food came out in due course, fried mushrooms (the fry was delicious, the mushrooms, not so much), baby sausages, chips (not crisps), chicken wings, chicken nuggets, and so on. I only spent about two hours there; one more pint and I wouldn't have been able to bike home. I would have had to leave it there, which, while an option, was not entirely sensible for reasons too numerous and boring to enumerate.

In any case it was good crack, the head of the department has taken to calling me "Prosody," but this is likely only because he neither knows nor cares what my name is. My poetry tutor was pleased to find out about my preoccupation with that sort of thing; I seem to be the only one in the class, if not the year, whom he does not have to convince of its virtues.

It is a queer sticky point, actually, form. The recalcitrance shown to its introduction and emphasis is something I might have expected from a class of "precocious" ninth graders convinced that form is a musty old shoe which no longer fits the wearer, or that they are quite simply beneath it. Because of course poetry flows right from the soul and to chain it to a form is to suppress creativity. Of course they are perfectly entitled to believe this; the only problem is that for the soul to 'flow' out, it's got to pass through the body, and naturally there's only really one place in the body where anything makes its exit...

I have quite an urge to turn this into a rant. Really do. But since I have a lecture in a half hour and need to eat lunch, because coffee and a Mars bar just isn't cutting it today and I have to ship out right after my Theatre lecture and get to the airport, you are spared the tedium.

You will all be glad to know I finally went and got a helmet during a hailstorm; the purchase was also helped along by my tendency to smash into sideview mirrors while trying to slip between cars. As it turned out, the helmet, at €38, turned out to be almost half the price of the bike.

Also they're going to let me stay. I had until saturday to check in with the Garda and register at immigration, and I finally got around to doing it today. It only took about 2 hours. Not bad. And now I have this pretty new ID with a chip and celtic knot holograms and everything. I feel so cool. The only pain in the ass is that like the groundhog, I have to do this every year.

I have a three day weekend coming up, and everyone's all kerfuffle thinking of what to do. I was thinking Marie and I could head over to Galway (just a four-hour bus ride) for a few days with some friends. This seems to be the best idea yet. If anyone has any ideas, by all means put them up there. But don't say stay in and keep warm. Don't think I haven't thought of it.

Firstly, Marie is coming tomorrow. At 17h10. For ten days. So you may all expect blogging to be a little bit on the light side for a while. And you may expect none of the salacious details to be posted here, either. Those are pay-per-view.

It's a very exciting time. As she would say, I'm so exciting!.

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#84 on the list of brilliant things about this place: tonight is the English Department get-together for students and faculty, and they booked the lobby of the arts building. Oh boy.

I'm joking, of course. No organization here would ever dream of a sauceless gathering. They rented out the top floor of the Duke pub.

Afterwards I get to bike home in the most revolting weather and watch Manchester United beat the snot out of Rangers (Scottish champions league team) on RTE 1. Yesterday I watched Celtic (the other, "better," Scottish team) get walloped by Anderlecht, but they deserved it. They're absolute shite and it was a terrible match.

I'm not joking about the weather, actually. It started yesterday. Remember that article?: "Uncharitably rainy. Unconscionably rainy." And it was horrific this morning. About no degrees celsius (it got down to zero yesternight; yesterday it was hailing. Hailing!) and windy and wet. Really, really wet. Cold wet. Wet that makes strong men cry. And of course the moment I clasped the dripping handlebar of my bike I found out the hard way that the gloves I just had to buy myself are not in any way shape or form waterproof. Neither, apparently, are jeans. That made the ride up that much more unpleasant. Really nasty. Was warmed to hear from dearest Ma that real gloves and a scarf and a hat are on the way, the cleats having already arrived.

It may be brutal here now, but when it's bone-chilling in Ohio or Chicago, and it's still hovering in the 30's here, then I will feel ever so much better. Man feeds on schadenfreude. Or at least I do.

You would think it unpardonably cruel to force people living 2.5 miles away to get to a 9am monday tutorial (I, unlike some of you, cannot go to class in my bathrobe. This is my major complaint about living here). At 7:45 you have to roll out of a bed you only got into a few hours ago (five, in my case; Mankind turned out to be a real ballbuster), stumble into a shower that's cold because everyone else is taking one because you have science students in your flat and they all have 9am classes, poor bastards, throw some clothes on, eat a little toast if you showered fast enough, take out the trash because there's an unholy stink in that living room, but come on, what do you expect from a flat with six men in it, run down the stairs, dump the trash, get on your bike, realize it's about 10 degrees fahrenheit but it's too late to run upstairs to get a warmer jacket as it is now 8:46am and you have a rather long ride, but you're wearing fingertip gloves, see, and your brakehandles are of course freezing cold, if you tried to lick one your tongue'd stick to it, but you hop on anyway and whiz over the water feature which isn't finished yet and is really nasty lately and nearly run over poor Maria, sorry, sorry, then you're out the gate and pedaling down Dartry Road, and that first intersection is a horror, but maybe you have the light so you make the right turn signal and pedal like hell around the bend and woof you made it, good job, but then you notice you've got like a stitch in your left leg, back of the knee, from three hours of frisbee yesterday, and this will dog you for the rest of your ride, but you have other things to worry about, like the fact that you can't feel your fingertips anymore, but you're late so you don't have time to worry, dammit, and so you race down Rathmines Road at a hundred miles an hour, gleefully speeding past the parking lot in the left lane, he he he you are so clever oh SHIT you just hit a guy's sideview mirror, second time in as many days, god damn it what's wrong with you, but now you're at the next intersection from hell, but this one is worse, by now you're sure you're in Cocytus, the frozen pit of hell, and just as you get to the crosswalk and stop the light changes and you have to accelerate hysterically to outrace the minivan you're trying to pass to get to the bus lane before the bus does, this is all very confusing to explain, but you make it, you're in the bike lane, home free, except for that bus ahead of you which you're going to have to make an end run around, okay, fine, I'm alive, keep going, and you make it to the top of Rathmines Road after a brisk race with another cyclist, he won because he can shift gears, the fucker, but you have a lot more respect for Lance Armstrong, and so as you're about to go over the grand canal, there's this brief steep hill up to the bridge during the ascent of which you absolutely cannot stop otherwise you will flip right over, and so of course this MOTHER FUCKER in a Fiat cuts you right off, I mean, what the fuck is he doing, so you bellow, "OH FUCK!", brake abruptly, Christ those brakes are cold, throw your weight forward to keep from backflipping, and then rise up in the pedals and muscle your way to the top of the rise, looking back to glare at the asshole in the Fiat, and then you're off again, flying down the bike lane, you love bike lanes, they're even painted a demure red out of respect for your aesthetic sensibilities, and this part is mostly safe, a brief respite from terror, but the you get to Harcourt street where you have to make a right turn towards St. Stephen's Green, and this is slightly treacherous because the bike lane end, and you weave in and out of cars instead of slowing down because it's about 8:56 right now, and so you get though that and you hang a left what is assuredly the worst paving job you have ever SEEN, I mean, they have better paved roads in rural Botswana, incredible, it's like the city's biggest thoroughfare and it feels like riding on frozen oatmeal, you've got ass calluses from doing this everyday, you tried another way once but that didn't work out well, you had forgotten it turned into a one way street which definitely did not go your way, ow your leg ow that hurts but finally you bump and stumble along onto acceptable pavement and accelerating blow by the cars stopped at the red light, you love red lights now, fly past the thrumming City Tour buses malingering at the mouth of Grafton street, check your watch it's 8:58 and then you lean into the sharp turn onto Kildare St. and shoot around the bend and now you're all alone, yes, it's a downhill and you can see the entrance to Trinity at the end of the street, and you sprint down, moving in, out, because you can, there's Hodges Figgis bookstore, lovely place, mentioned in Ulysses, slow the bike, sling your right leg onto the left side of the bike because you're very proud that you know how to do this, hope someone sees you, bring it to an open post, fumble with the lock key because your fingertips are FREEZING, lock it making sure to thread the lock through the spokes of the front wheel, because it would just be SO crudely ironic if this bike were to get stolen again, then you run across the street in the middle of which you notice that the bus you passed two minutes ago nyah nyah is bearing down on you rather fast because you keep forgetting that they're on the left side, stupid, even though YOU ride on that side now, you should be used to it but you're not, but you leap to the curb and then you run into the building, up three flights of stairs, taking your iPod out of your ears as you climb, oh shit it's hot in here, trot down the hall to your tutorial in 4011, it's 9:03, not bad at all and you're not even the latest, but you aren't prepared at all, didn't read or even have the material, didn't know where to get it because how am I supposed to know where the T.A. office is (3160), but hey, look, it's no sweat, it's Paine and Burke and these I know I can swing, and so you sit down, warm up, and have just the most lovely monday morning class.

In response to certain comments: No, they don't feed me at my college, you knew that. There are no dining facilities at Trinity Hall, and I eat only lunch on campus. They don't serve squirrel, though. Basically they serve sausage, chips, and beans, which is the most cholesterol-laden mound of food I've ever seen. And EVERYONE eats it. They also do these deepdish pizzas which look okay when you order them, and for €4.40 are 'cheap,' but then they pop them in the microwave for a minute or two, and they come out and the crust is just like jello, yech.

I'm turning into a reasonable cook in my own right, though. On friday I made a fairly complex recipe in the slow cooker, a tortilla stack (imagine 4 enchiladas on top of one another), with a fair measure of success. Actually it was really good. And yesterday, I made an excellent steak (I think it was the first I've ever made in a frying pan). Mike, I know you pride yourself on your marinades, but trust me, one of these days, add to the traditional teriyaki-and-soy two dollops of nice think Hoi-Sin sauce (like Marvo used to use). Delicioso. And then don't forget the rice, like I did. I actually had to run (bike) all the way down to Tesco, the supermarket, which is about 3/4 of a mile away, in the pouring rain to get some teriyaki because the top shop down the road didn't have any.

Next Sunday I promised to make the first feast of Ramadan for Reem from Dubai. I'm thinking maybe pork chops fried in bacon fat...

Just so you know, the other night I ate squirrel. Not packaged squirrel, recently shot squirrel. My friend Ben (not the flatmate, another one) had just popped it while rabbit hunting. Apparently squirrels look like rabbits. Anyway, we grilled it and ate it, very unostentatious meal, no sauce, just slightly browned squirrel. It was okay. Like squabs, but not as tender and delicious. To anyone all up in New York, Central Park turns out to be swarming with dinner. Just go out at dusk and start firing into the trees. You'll probably hit something.

Now I must go and read the rest of Villette (ugh gack blurggg, it really is as horrible as expected), which is to say ALL of Villette, plus two essays of Freud's and three of Bacon's. Mmmm...Freud.