Neglect

I’ve been guilty of neglecting people and animals until something happens and then I say, why didn’t I do more to catch up with them, why didn’t I listen to them? Why did I let time slip through my fingers?

Last week a dear neighbour that I encountered frequently on our road was buried, cruelly taken from us and her family in a moment. She took the dog out for a walk and never came home. She was struck by a car. Many was the time I encountered her on the street, just wrapped in her dressing gown bending down and picking up autumn leaves that littered her front garden. Normally I waved from a distance and she waved back but since our dogs started sniffing each other’s bottoms, on this occasion I moved closer to intervene.

At that point, I  attempted to engage her in conversation. “I saw you collecting leaves off the street yesterday.”

She nodded her head.

You know you don’t have to?” I continued. I knew from her reaction that she hadn’t expected me to look for a reply.

“Gnoh,” she replied, “I gnoh that, ”which I struggled to make sense of so she came closer and at last, I could see the reason for her garbled response.

She’d forgotten to put her teeth in!

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Our dog is a matter of pride for me and after seven years of ownership of said mongrel and having walked him thrice daily, I was guilty last night of misreading his very obvious message. Bedtime for Button’s, a half collie and half King Charles, is when I’ve had enough of the tedious television and am on the verge of falling asleep on the couch.

Earlier in the evening we’d all sat and watched an excellent documentary on winter in the Alps. I say all because normally Buttons tunes out of television but on this occasion, his ears pricked up at the sounds of bird calls. Then he moved closer to the screen to watch marmots, large furry rodents, emerging from underground lairs to frolic in the Spring daylight. The takeaway information from the program was that, as the world’s climates warm the slopes of the Alps, are denuded of snow and the mountain goats and ibex are forced higher and higher up the slopes. However, the really interesting bit is that the said animals are now being pestered by horseflies who venture up as the snow retreats and the temperature rises. Imagine being stood on four legs, on a very narrow ledge, thousands of feet above ground and being pestered and stung by annoying little pests in places you find difficult to reach. Pretty easy to lose one’s balance I’d say.

Anyway, I digress. Last night all were in bed by a little after ten. I awoke at four to the sound of Buttons walking about the kitchen, his sharp nails tap tap tapping on the laminated floor. I checked all doors were closed downstairs and I poked my head around the kitchen door and beckoned him to lie down, which he did. I went back up to bed but before I’d drifted off he barked, several times before the house fell silent once more. I’d just assumed that he’d had a bad dream. He’s had them before so I eventually got back to sleep myself.

I awoke at about seven and completed my Duolingo lessons. Day two hundred and fifty-nine, studying French, since you asked. The app gets angrier as the day progresses if you don’t get the lessons done so for an easy life I do them the moment I wake up.

It was shortly after seven thirty when I pushed open the kitchen door and smelt and saw a truly stomach-churning scene. In fairness to Buttons, he had tried to warn me but I had neglected his barks for help. If I’d thought for one moment he had a case of severe diarrhoea I would have gone out with him at four in the morning in my pyjamas and wellington boots. But no, I chose to believe that I knew better.

I’ll save you the graphic details but suffice it to say I skipped breakfast after I had, on my hands and knees, gone through a full packet of wet wipes and a toilet roll, before bagging the “waste material.” Material which had been left in multiple piles of varying consistency. My forensic examination of the room revealed that he’d started the dump by the back door but found the need to expand his dumping range beyond the confines of the two-foot by one-foot door mat.

Since Buttons has never done anything like this before, I accept that this is “my bad.” The stained doormat and black bag now rest in the grey bin, outside our house, awaiting collection, fortunately today. My hands have been scrubbed clean, multiple times and Buttons has had several walks and it’s only gone noon. His bottom is as clean as a toilet seat and he’s on a water-only diet.

Neglect others at your peril.

The interview

Brian made this annual visit to the director’s floor, without any particular feelings of fear or excitement. The meeting was mandatory for both parties and was taking place in the lead-up to the Christmas vacation. His path to the  Finance Director’s door led him past the open plan area that contained the small secretarial pool that serviced the special ones. The ones with named car parking spaces, with expensive company cars, with unquestioned expense accounts, and with the secretaries there to meet all their needs, short of visiting the toilets for them.

Sarah, a shy new joiner to the pool, glanced up at his approach and gave him a cheery wave. He’d given her a guided tour only last week and she’d found his easy manner a de-stressor on her first day. Margaret, an older woman who sat opposite Sarah, caught Sarah’s sudden movement.  She stopped clacking away on her typewriter long enough to turn and look sourly at Brian as he passed. Margaret had never forgiven him for prizing from her grasp the company insurance policies when they had been hers alone to manage these past twenty-two years. Maybe he should have paid attention to her sour look when it turned into a smile. But Brian was this morning in a blissfully happy state of mind. He’d just learnt that he was going to become a father and nothing he believed, could puncture his happiness. He passed into a narrow corridor with offices on either side and the boardroom at the end. From past experience, he knew the plush carpet under his feet would silence his presence and so he knocked sharply on the  Group Finance Director’s door to catch his attention.

Clive Pittler,  Group Finance Director and FCA, was a short squat man of broad proportions and gazed up briefly upon hearing his knock. “Lord, is it that time already?” he asked rhetorically and gestured to Brian, the accountant, to take a seat. Clive returned to the papers on his desk.

Brian sat down and glanced around the room. The best thing about it was the view of a nearby forest that Clive could gaze upon if he swiveled his chair to look behind him. The waist-high grey metal filing cabinets that occupied the other two walls appeared to be chronologically filed folders of financial accounts.  The office was bereft of family photographs and only one picture of the directors, on a golf outing from sometime in the past, was on display. Clive was almost forty years with the company and he had a reputation for being bright and unapproachable. He went out of his way not to attend events with staff and never attended the Christmas dinner.

“I’ll be with you shortly” he mumbled as he concentrated once more on the document in front of him. Two minutes later he was done. Clive signed his name with a flourish before turning his attention to the visitor. He glanced up at Mr, Mr, Mr who? Clive suddenly realized he really didn’t know who was sitting opposite him. The face was vaguely familiar. Then his eyes lit on the open white envelope with a name on it, sitting by his right hand. The letter got him out of jail as it was addressed to Mr Rice, Brian Joseph.

“Hello – Yes, Brian – well, it’s that time of the year again” Clive announced cheerfully. He leaned back in his chair and finally focused on the accountant, a permanent member of his Finance team for these past ten years.

“How, how do you think you’ve done this year?” he asked the man seated opposite him. Brian’s answer was irrelevant to Clive. It simply bought him time to find Brian’s name on the salary list before him and register the bonus Brian was due and Clive was to notify him of. It was one of those jobs he wished Steve Hogsford, his Financial Controller would take over from him as he cared not a jot for this person or half a dozen others who would invade his world today. It wasted minutes of his day that he could least afford, especially with the Board meeting on Friday, for which he had other papers to prepare. Damn, Steve. I’ll bring it up with him at his review. Let’s see how he likes it!

“Well thank you for asking Clive” answered Brian, “I think I’ve done well this year. Ian Cooper left in October and I took on all his work. I thought the year-end audit went very well.”

Brian looked with mild amusement at the man before him. Small talk wasn’t Clive’s forte and Brian enjoyed Clive’s uncomfortableness. Brian could prolong it by engaging in further pointless exchanges about work, profitability, the office cricket team, or the Red Nose charity day that Brian had organized. It had raised one thousand pounds for charity but the company or more accurately Clive had declined to contribute. But Brian was equally bored with this display of mock interest in each other. Just show me the money you old goat!

“Well, it’s been a tough year in construction, as you know, Brian,” opened Clive, “I mean, I don’t have to tell you. We were all sorry to see Ian go but times are difficult and cuts had to be made,” he said this shaking his head solemnly. Clive reached out and passed to Brian the letter on his desk.

He looked Brian straight in the eye and added “I personally appreciate your hard work and I hope you will accept this sum as a token of our appreciation.” The words were spoken without a grain of sincerity and delivered parrot-fashion.  

Brian unfolded the sheet of A4 white paper which contained a few short standard lines. He read the letter “Blah, blah, blah… 500-pound bonus in appreciation of all your hard work, signed Clive.” The mean bastard, that’s half what I got last year. It was all Brian could do to bottle his disappointment and nod his appreciation to Clive.

He rose to leave but was gestured to wait. Clive had not finished with him and reached into a drawer to reveal a sealed white envelope that he proceeded to pass over to Brian.

“Can you also read this now and respond to me?” Clive asked.

Brian, sat down once more, surprised, and opened the envelope. He scanned the lines that spread out before him. He got the gist of it fairly quickly but just didn’t believe what he had read so speedily re-read it. It appeared to be a petition to Clive regarding Brian, saying that he was poor at his job, inattentive, and slow. He had failed to complete numerous tasks, he had left his managers dissatisfied, and in summation, was a waste of space. It said that this was the considered view of all of Brian’s fellow accountants and finance managers. It finished by asking Brian to consider his position. It notably had no author.

“Well?” said Clive.

Brian was temporarily rendered speechless and in a state of shock. It was a full minute before he engaged his voice box.

“I’ll have to get back to you Clive,” was all Brian could muster.

Clive considered the reply for a minute, nodded sagely, and waved Brian away. 

Out in the corridor, Brian’s brain analyzed the facts and raced to come to terms with what had just happened. Where to start? Ten years with the company and never a bad word said – until now. His mind was racing as he walked down the corridor away from the executive offices and towards reception. He sought out one of his bosses, Peter Jones, an amiable man, and the company’s Residential Property Director. Peter looked at the letter blankly. “No, Brian I’ve not been consulted, you’re fine with me try Peter Pepper.”

Peter Pepper was Brian’s other boss and Peter had only taken on this role in the last 12 months. Of course, it would be him. Pepper was the closest you could get to a Vulcan in the real world. He was skinny as a rake, pale and bespectacled. He spoke very quietly and each word was delivered correctly and unemotionally. He lived alone and appeared to be bereft of friends, family or hobbies. Enquiries regarding his weekends elicited the knowledge that he’d cooked a casserole on Saturday and had split it into eight portions which he had frozen and intended to eat in the coming year.  He’d joined the company upon leaving university with a Bachelor of Commerce. He by now had qualified as an ACA and his game plan appeared to be, to stay with the company until retirement.

He had relocated to Brian’s world a year previously when the Group’s offices were flooded in Higsterr, and the entire head office team had arrived temporarily in Laybridge and had stayed. The finance team, from what Brian could gather, were a small cluster of five accountants who managed from a distance the consolidation of the results of trading divisions. They had to this point dealt with information but not people. Arriving in Laybridge required new skills of the Group accountants and the jury was still out on whether they could hack it.

On their arrival, the finance departments of the Group and region had been merged and Peter had gradually taken control. It was a creeping-ivy-style takeover. One day Peter took ownership of the billing function and then the accounts payable team began to report to them. A month later the banking team were introduced to their new manager, Peter.

Ian Cooper had previously been their manager and had resisted the takeover from the outset. He resisted their relentless inroads into his domain and was buggered if they would get any information voluntarily from him. Perhaps he knew their plan? Perhaps he didn’t? They allowed him enough time to irritate them and then removed him surgically in a morning lightning strike. He was sat at his desk at 9.00 a.m. and sat in his car in the car park by 10.00 a.m. By 10.05 am he was history. That day Brian met his new manager, Peter Pepper.

In the world of office politics, Brian played a mean hand. He allowed Ian to confide in him. He listened to Ian’s rhetoric “We will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them in the canteen and on the photocopiers.” Quietly Brian cooperated with the Group. He took lunch with the tightly knit finance team and became a regular at their Tuesday night badminton sessions. Brian was the essence of good nature and was diligent and obedient to a fault. However, none of this, it would appear, had made any impact on the one person whose opinion mattered. Peter, it now appeared had wanted him out.

Brian met two other accountants en route to Peters’s office that morning. Neither owned up to having any knowledge of the letter or its contents. When Brian finally reached Peters’s office he found him seated behind a spotlessly clear mahogany wooden desk. Peter peered at him over his dark thick spectacle frames.

“Peter – is now a good time?” Brian asked.

“Certainly” answered Peter, “I’ve been expecting you.”

Brian stepped into the office and closed the door. He sat in the only empty chair, located in front of the desk. Only then did he realize that his chair was lower than the desktop. This was not by chance. It enabled Peter to tower over the seat’s occupant and was a neat touch picked up from his reading of that well-known office tomb “How to shaft people on the way up,” compulsory reading for the ambitious among us.

“I am correct in guessing, Peter, that you are the author of this letter?” Brian said placing the letter on the desktop. Peter gave the letter a cursory glance and nodded in affirmation.

“Can I paraphrase its contents to you?” Brian said, “You know it’s written in your words, (pause), but I’d like to give you my spin on it. ”

“By all means” responds Peter leaning back in his swivel chair.

“It goes like this – all your bosses and your colleagues think you’re crap. Resign or be fired,” Brian said, his eyes drilling into Peters.

“Have I got it right?” Brian asked.

“In one” Peter answered and allowed a mean smile to creep across his lips.

“Peter I’ve met with Peter Jones and several other department staff and no one knows didley-shit all about this tripe. What’s going on here? I thought all was fine between us?” Brian said.

Peter had been waiting months for this moment and he delivered his words with absolute relish.

“I have suffered your presence in this building for the past twelve months. You have been a constant irritation to me, something on the scale of annoyance between a pubic lice and a buzzing bluebottle. Your attitude is crap and you’re none too bright. I’m amazed you ever qualified.  But the most annoying thing about you is that the world thinks that you’re a good guy. But I know you’re not.  I know you have been undermining me with the staff, having quiet words of dissent with people about me. I noticed from early on, the way you’d stop talking when I entered the room.  I can see through your fake friendship with the other accountants. In your next job, you should focus on your own work and keep your nose out of what doesn’t concern you. Further.”

“Hold on a minute – am I getting this correctly? Brian said. “You feel threatened by me. Me?  Christ, you are paranoid, Peter.”

“You? A threat?” Peter snorted his derision. “Look mate, you’re no threat to me and from today you are history here. Pack your bags and clear your desk out.”

“Or what? You’ll personally throw me out?” Brian asked. He rose to his feet and leaned forward into Peter’s glaring face.

It was then that they both heard the click. It was the click of a Dictaphone button. Brian pulled the small recorder from his pocket and pressed the Rewind and Play buttons and the tape recorder proceeded to repeat their conversation, word for word. Slowly the colour drained from Peters’s face. 

“Want to add anything, Peter? A few choice swear words for the industrial tribunals benefit? “ Brian asked waving the small machine under Peter’s nose.

A period of uneasy silence passed.

“I am going nowhere,” said Brian, in slow measured tones. In fact, I was thinking of a 10% pay rise Peter, seeing that I’m now doing Ian’s work as well as my own.”

“Sssounds reasonable to me” Peter stuttered. “I’ll drop Clive an email.”

“Today Peter” Brian added “…do it today, while it’s fresh in your mind,”

“Yes today”

Doorstep Encounter

How safe are you when in the suburbs at night?

It was shaping up to be a quiet night after a hectic day. The local park bench had been commandeered by the family and bedecked with banners and bunting to celebrate a first birthday.  We enjoyed fizzy drinks, crisps, and chocolate cake with the adults scattered about on rugs while the grandchildren ran around like mad things, climbing trees, collecting conkers, and taking our dog for walks. We’d thoroughly enjoyed the event but we were now at home and beginning to flag. Television had become the norm for such evenings and my wife slipped off to bed at about ten, leaving just me and the dog to watch Match of the Day, a football program I’d watched since I was a nipper.

Next door, Peter my neighbor was also watching television when he became aware of raised voices coming from the street. He listened because he had no choice not to.

“Hey man c’mon let’s split,” said one guy.

“No, no stay here Damo man, I got a good feeling about it. ……..Come over here stay a bit longer.”

And so it went for the next thirty minutes. The too-ing and frow-ing of youthful male indecision ie. talking crap to each other.  Peter reached forward and turned the volume up on his television, tuning them out.

At about eleven p.m.I found my eyes closing. At the third time of asking I gave in and decided to go to bed. I rose from the couch and walked over to the television, reaching behind to switch it off at the socket. Then I switched the room lights off and pulled the door closed behind me. I was now in the hallway and was walking towards the foot of the staircase when I saw a figure through the stained glass window of the front door. There, right there, just a few feet away from me stood a guy! He, for it, was definitely a male, was standing on my porch and rocking back and forth, from heel to toe, as if to some inaudible musical beat. Maybe he was wearing headphones. All I could see was that he had his hood up.

I could hear the garbled scraps of a conversation he was having with someone. So I approached the door warily and stopped just opposite him. We stood just inches apart separated by the width of a door for maybe twenty or more seconds. He seemed completely unaware of my presence. He continued to stand there like a robot set in neutral gear, waiting for instructions to move off. It was a clear warm evening and with a bright Harvest moon, it allowed me to see that he was wearing a pair of dark shorts and runners. He had short-cropped hair and was definitely speaking with a Dublin accent. Dublin but not inner city Dublin, if you follow me. 

I felt compelled to do something so I flipped open the metal letterbox and leaning down spoke into it.

“Excuse me – What are you doing?”  I asked.

Well, he spun around 360 degrees, pirouetting with surprising nimbleness.

“Kindly move away from my door” I ordered before I straightened back up.

Startled he glanced down to where the voice came from and then his eyes travelled slowly up the door until he came to my face, visible though distorted, through the frosted glass.  At first, I thought he’d go away but unfortunately, my intervention seemed to have the opposite effect on him.

“Damo, I’ve got someone!” he turned to look over his shoulder and shouted enthusiastically. “Someone is here!” “C’mon over man!”

“Bugger!” I thought.  Fortunately, for his own reasons, Damo, whoever he was, didn’t come over.

Next, my swaying door stepper suddenly reached for the door handle and gave it a yank, trying to open it. Watching his movement, I became more convinced than ever that he was drugged or in a drunken stupor. He never uttered a word to me and he seemed sluggish in his movements. Getting no joy he let the door handle go, stepped back, and then ran as fast as he could at my door!

 Horrified I stood my ground. Whatever happened I made myself a promise that he would not enter this house. I stood on the other side of the door with my arms outstretched supporting the door and its frame. I  braced myself for the blow and when it came it sent vibrations around the whole building. The house shuddered with the impact and upstairs my wife in bed, watching a program on her phone, felt the house vibrate, not once, not twice but three times. Each time  I pushed back with all my might.  Now he dismounted the doorstep and stood on the driveway.  I braced myself for his next move.

I had a moment to think and I did then, what I should have done earlier. I dialed 999 on my mobile phone.

“What service do you want?” Ambulance, fire or Garda (police)?” came an anonymous clipped voice.

“Garda (police) please” I answered. I was put through in seconds.

“Hello? This is the Garda station in Dundrum, can I help you?”

“Guard, a man has been standing on my doorstep this past half hour and he’s just attempted to force his way in. He standing less than a foot away from me, on the other side of the door. Can you help?”

“He’s still there?”

“Yes”

“I’m dispatching a car right away.”

I rang off and looked at my would-be intruder. Again I leaned down and used the letterbox.  “I have rung the Guards and they are on their way,” I said.

The news didn’t seem to make any visible impression on him. Perhaps he was too far gone to understand what I’d said.  I heard a noise from behind me and turned to see that it was my wife who had come down the stairs.

“What’s going on?” she asked innocently, looking past me and at the shadowy figure still on our doorstep. I brought her up to speed and she decided to return upstairs and survey the street from the upstairs bedroom window. I watched her go and checked my watch. Three minutes had passed since I’d rung the guards. How long will it be before they get here?

I slipped the phone back into my pocket and looked again at my doorstep. I was just in time to see his back disappear around the boot of my car.

“Can you see them?” I shouted up to my wife.

“No, not now” she answered. “Just as I reached the window and pulled up the blinds I saw a figure walking away from our house. I think he’s gone and I never saw the other guy.”

She joined me in the hallway and three minutes later a garda car with flashing lights pulled into our cul-de-sac and came to a stop outside our house.  Two burley guards in full combat uniforms listened to my story. I gave them a good description of the lad but he’d left on a footpath that led to another estate with multiple exits. The police cars would have to take a more circuitous route.

It took a while to get off to sleep that night, I can tell you. It’s now been more than a year since the door stepper made his appearance and it appears that this incident was a one-off.

An unexpected delivery

It was another quiet afternoon in a housing estate in Stillorgan, County Dublin in September 1975. It was shortly after 3:00 pm and the school children, having been released minutes earlier, began to appear in ones and two’s walking down the road and past our green. The green was of a semi-circular shape around which twenty bungalow houses had been built back in the nineteen fifties, occupied now by a mixture of elderly original owners and new young families. 

On our left, when looking directly at our home, was the home of Auntie D, a widow now in her fifties. She’d been the daughter of a vicar attached to the British army and the family had been based in Egypt in WW2. She had fallen in love and married an RAF fighter pilot who didn’t make it out of the war and she now lived alone. She worked in an insurance company and left for work daily with her big dog in the car alongside her. He spent the day in her car, in the office car park. She and my parents had a good relationship but it was sorely strained at times, especially when my parents converted the garage into a living room and extended it back to accommodate my grandmother who came to live with us. Mrs. D refused to consent to a pitched roof despite a tall hedge hiding the extension and for her sake, my parents compromised with a flat roof installed.

On our right was a family whose mother was poorly for many years and whose children were considerably older than me and my brother. Their house was often shrouded in darkness but I knew they were there, lurking behind the dark curtains. The next house along held the most beautiful babysitter in the world. A young blonde-haired girl, a few years older than me lived in that house and minded us on the rare occasions our parents went out for the night. The girl also visited on Thursday nights around seven so she could watch “Top Of The Pops”, a pop music program, as her family hadn’t a television.

The babysitter’s mother owned one of the most memorable cars of the time commonly called a “bubble car.”  Its proper name was “Motocoupé” and was based on a design from the Italian manufacturer Iso Rivolta.  It had one door located in the front, that opened outwards taking most of the side of the car with it.  You sat down into it like a pilot stepping into a cockpit. With a single-cylinder four-stroke engine in the back, as it had no boot, it sounded like a lawnmower when the motor was running. This car sat outside their house for years, long after the mother’s early death from cancer.

The next house along was home for four elderly siblings, the Walshes, three women and a man who lived out their later years together. I often saw the women walking over to the local shopping centre but the man was an elusive occupant.  Profoundly deaf he dressed in the same dirty old clothes day after day and it was said he tended a vegetable patch that had pretty much taken over their back garden.  Other than the occasional glimpse of him entering or exiting the home I knew nothing of him or his past other than the fact that they’d all fled the violence in Northern Ireland sometime late in the sixties and had made Dublin their new home.

Next along was a house that was left empty for years yet was never put up for sale. I imagined a wealthy son made his fortune in London, England and inherited the bungalow when his mother had died.  

Then you reached Alan’s home, one of my childhood pals. His Dad was an Italian who ran a barber (men’s hairdressers) shop in central Dublin and his mother was a German woman who also worked away from home a lot of the time. It meant that Alan had no parents around most of the time he was at home and he and his sister got up to a lot of mischief during those long unsupervised hours. He once found the key to the family garage and upon opening it he discovered the contents of a sweet shop his parents had once run.  He began selling the sweets and toys to us and the other local kids. That went on for some weeks before he was discovered and abruptly shut down. For the next while, we only saw Alan through his sitting-room window.

The next house was occupied by the subject of today’s story, a lovely dark-haired woman in her thirties, Rose, a mother to two young boys. The family were the most recent arrivals on the green and I watched from a distance as their furniture was carried in off the removals van. They said her husband ran a car dealership in Dublin and was doing well but on the day they arrived there was no sign of him. I being a moody teenager at the time had no interest in befriending the young boys but they settled in without my assistance. Over time my mother struck up a friendship with Rose, a friendship that lasted the rest of her life. 

One day Mum was chatting in the kitchen with Rose when I came in from school. I could see that Rose was very animated and was telling Mum a story so I just sat down and listened.

“Mary, you know that clock my mother left me? Rose asked my mother. She looked back blankly at Rose.

“The one you admired in my sitting room and sits on the mantle over the fireplace?” Rose added. My mother now looked deep in thought, her eyebrows and forehead scrunched up in thought.

“The gold carriage clock with the ornate handle and Roman numbers.” Rose impatiently provided more information before at last Mum’s face lit up with a smile.

“Ah yes,” she said

“Well, a fortnight last Friday I went over to Drizlers the jewellers, you know in the shopping centre and dropped the clock in for repair. It had stopped keeping time and was drifting along an hour or more adrift of reality,” said Rose. “I nearly missed mass last Sunday because of it.”

“Could they fix it?” Mum asked while filling the kettle and setting out two cups on the kitchen table.

“Yes, they said they could and they said they’d drop it out to the house when it was done” answered Rose. “I paid them five pounds there and then and got a receipt for it.”

“So is it working now?” asked my mother, only mildly interested and picking up the Irish Times off the table.

“Here’s the funny thing,” said Rose conspiratorially, looking over her shoulder “ I went back to the jewellers yesterday and they said it had been fixed and delivered the previous week”

“No,” said Mum, “really? And you never received it?”

“They said they’d talk with the delivery company about it but they were not giving me back my money or a replacement clock, though it was more than a clock to me if you follow me,” said Rose now looking my way for understanding. I nodded and she continued “So this morning I answered the phone and it was the jewellers. They said the delivery man had tried to deliver the clock to my home last week but no one was there so the man knocked on a few doors until he found a neighbour willing to take it in.”

“So who had taken the clock?” asked Mum, passing Rose a freshly brewed cup of tea before sitting down.

“They couldn’t say so I put the phone down and walked to next door, number forty. She said no, they hadn’t taken the clock in,  and of course, there is no one living in thirty-nine so I walked up to number thirty-eight, the Walshe’s front door and I pressed the button.  I stood there for a while and then I pressed it again.  I thought I could hear someone in the house but maybe it was the radio.? Anyway, no one answered and I’d already walked a few steps down the drive before I heard a man call out.”

“Mary, I nearly leapt out of my skin as the voice seemed to come from someone standing right behind me. I shivered as I felt his breath on my neck”

“I turned around and it was the Walshe brother, looking like a vagrant and talking Swahili or some foreign language! Mary,  I couldn’t understand a word he said.”

“Those Nordies” my Mum answered “I can understand a Scotsman faster than a northerner.”

Rose nodded and continued “So I had awful trouble explaining to him why I was knocking on his door but eventually I think I got through to him. Between his deafness and his accent, I really had my doubts as to whether he understood what I was saying.”

“When I’d finished talking he said something to me and beaconed me to follow him back around the side of his garage.”

“Now was that wise Rose?” my Mum asked.

“Ah, once I’d talked with him I felt he was sound enough so  I followed him into the back garden where he picked up a pitchfork and began to dig in the soil.

“Did he think you wanted some potatoes?” I asked.

“I didn’t know what he was at,” said Rose with a laugh “Digging my grave eh?”

“Well, I stood for a few minutes as he dug and then he threw the pitchfork aside and knelt over the hole. He reached into it and returned moments later with a muddy package. He stood up and shook some of the mud off the parcel. He then walked over to me and thrust it into my hands.

Putting the pieces together my mother then asked the million-dollar question “Why did he bury your clock in his back garden?”

Rose grinned as she answered “Apparently he’d met the delivery man on the driveway and being deaf he didn’t hear a word of what the man had said.  With the times as they are in Northern Ireland and having been resettled across the border because of the violence, he believed the man was handing him a bomb.  The ticking of the clock inside the parcel only served to exacerbate his fears. That and the swift departure of the delivery man. In a blind panic, he ran around the side of the garage carrying the parcel and hastily buried it in the garden.  He then stood a safe distance away and waited for the thing to go off and when it didn’t, well he just forgot about it, at least that was until I came to visit!

“It could only happen to you Rose,” said my mother and they both took a sip of tea.

Lost

I am always losing things. In recent years my favourite thing to lose has been my reading glasses. I can lose them in nanoseconds. I have them in my hand and then- they’re gone! They have disappeared, dissolved into nothing and I can spend the next twenty minutes looking for them.

It exasperates my wife who looks on as I walk aimlessly around the house peering under newspapers, peeking into presses, examining dressing gown pockets, running my hand down the side of the couch or unmaking beds. Eventually, in growing frustration, she joins in.  

At first with verbal prompts like “And where did you last see them?” or “I last saw them on the kitchen table, have you looked there?.” Unlike me she comes equipped with a photographic memory and can rewind time so often her prompts are sufficient but ultimately she’s in there with me and joins in on the search if it goes on long enough.

Once or twice, sheepishly, I have to admit they were found on the crown of my head! You’d think I’d have felt their presence but no, modern cheap glasses weigh less than a feather and once crowned become part of the mass. On other occasions, I’d find that I’d left them in spurious locations like on the kitchen window ledge. No, not on the inside window ledge, but the outside window ledge, during winter and a blizzard!

So I had to recognise that I had a real problem and I thought I had solved it the summer before last. For some weeks I’d bought up half a dozen pairs of glasses at a time from the local pound shop and had placed them all around the house. At less than €2 a pair even I could afford the extravagance.

This unfortunately only partly worked as reading glasses appeared to be social creatures and would seem to cluster together, often moving themselves from where I’d left them to locations where they found other glasses to commune with. No matter how many pairs I bought I was still regularly searching for a pair. Then I would find a huddle of them in my manbag or taking the sun on the car’s dashboard.

Recently I had to change the strength of my glasses and this has added a new dimension to my problem. Now I have to not only find a pair of glasses but then have to hope they are the right strength. These cheap pairs came with, when purchased, a small removable sticker which showed the strength of the glass but once that sticker was removed, your guess would be as good as mine as to their strength and mine was often wrong.

I started this story by saying that I was forever losing things and being of a certain age it struck me that it could be an indicator of the onset of senility or such like.

However, I can now cheerfully tell you that corporate bodies are losing things every day with far greater efficiency and frequency than I ever could.

Day 1 I had some important paperwork that I needed to get from Wexford to Dublin, a distance of just over one hundred kilometres so I sent the documents in an envelope by recorded registered post. It cost that bit extra but it gave me the certainty that it would arrive the next day.

Day 5  I contacted the Dublin recipient company to find that no, they hadn’t received the documents. I got them to check their reception desk and post room and they confirmed there was no sign of it. Wrongly, I concluded that they had a Covid-19 backlog and with so many employees working from home there was a delay at their end. Before long it would be found, scanned and processed. I had a deadline of just getting in processed in the current year so I took my eye off the ball for a week and assumed the best.

Now, there is another matter that I can take issue with myself with. Why do I do that? Always assume the best?

Day 12 Anyway, a week later I rang again the Dublin company and fully expected the envelope and documents had been delivered but there was still no sign of the documents.

 “But registered delivery meant next day guaranteed delivery,” I said to myself.

I feverously typed in the web address for the track and trace service and then entered the unique code for my registered delivery. Up it came and there was the record of my posts progress.

The envelope had been accepted by the local post office at 2:19 pm on 3^rd December and just under three hours later it had travelled twenty-two kilometres to the Gorey County Wexford sorting office. Three hours and thirty-four minutes later it had covered another ninety-five kilometres and had reached the vast Portlaoise Sorting Office in county Laois. That’s where the trail went dry. It would appear my envelope had still eighty-five kilometres to travel. That was ten days ago and the track and trace system had shown no movement since.

There are few things worse in life than losing something but one of them is sitting on a telephone queue knowing that you are caller forty-three and that your call “is important to us” but it is still going to take half an hour before you can reach a human being to offload to.

When I got through I and cleared the security questions Sean, as we will call him, went very quiet and then he went away for quite a while as I held on hoping the phone line would not fail. The news on his return was not good but promised better times. He’d spoken to the management in Portlaoise and though they refused to courier the envelope to Dublin they would ensure it was delivered the next day. A batch had been lost so I was not alone. It had been pushed behind subsequent batches and had not come to the top of the pile.

“This document is time-critical,” I said but it was to no avail. He insisted the best he could promise was delivery tomorrow.I took some satisfaction in logging a claim of dissatisfaction on the delivery company website.

Day 13 I rang the Dublin company at about 3:00 pm and using their chatline discovered they still had no sight of the documents. I felt I had to speak to a human to see what could substitute for the original forms. I rang their main number and I spent half an hour on, you guessed it, a telephone queue. When I was finally caller number one I received a polished professional answer from the receptionist, clearly working from home. The dog barking loudly gave her location away.

Through I went to the pertinent department where I was told that I’d missed their payment deadline and I would need to get my financial agent to contact their account manager which I did. I sent the agent a soft copy of all the documents I’d sensibly photographed before thrusting them in the post and he promised he’d follow through and he did.

Day 14 I followed up again with the Dublin company and still no sign of documents, many days after posting by registered post. Back I went to the track and trace service where stubbornly my envelope still sat in Portaloise. Another half an hour on, you guessed it, the telephone queue surprisingly brought me to speak with the most unlucky customer service representative in the world, Sean. I’m sure he welcomed my return like a hole in the head. He apologised and left me on hold again while he foraged for news of my envelope.

“I have to tell you the management team in Portlaoise cannot find your batch much less your envelope.” Sean didn’t sugar coat it for me.

“Hell, man, I want to escalate this!” I said angrily “put me through to your supervisor” I ordered.

“Mister he’s not in the building at present and even if he was he couldn’t do anything more for you” Sean answered.

“Well, Sean I want him to ring me on his return. OK? This is totally unacceptable as a service” I said and we parted company.

Day 15 Today I am still waiting for contact from the postal delivery service. I sent into the Dublin company pictures of the documents that were lost and I wait to see if anything has been processed.

Answer: The photographs appear to have done the job but my transaction is awaiting processing. This is a live story and the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

When I was 16

When I was 16 I longed for a motorbike. Longed is not a strong enough word, I craved a motorbike so badly it dominated my life, my thinking, my every conscious moment. For three months I pestered my parents and worked evening and weekends in a local supermarket collecting discarded metal shopping trolleys. I visited housing estates at night, under cover of darkness to retrieve trolleys, braving guard dogs and local hoodlums to wheel them rattling and squeaking back to the store.

Eventually, my Dad took pity on me and loaned me remaining £80 and I was the proud owner of a gleaming twin cam Yamaha 100. Then I had to hit him again for a further £15 to cover a full helmet with a visor and a pair of gloves. I had a friend, well, my brother’s pal, who knew something about motorbikes, who helped me buy it and then insisted the oil tank needed to be cleaned out so he rinsed it out with a bucket of water. That cost £10  and a mechanics time to undo the damage. Next, I sat on the bike in our back garden and lost control in a matter of seconds. I careered across Mum’s flower beds broke the foot pedal clean off and embedded the machine in the hedge. Dad shelled out another £10 and so far I hadn’t even got on the road. My debts were mounting.

Finally, the day came where I took to the road, slowly and unconfidently.  Dave, drove ahead of me, in his father’s van and we swung onto the Stillorgan dual carriageway. He put the foot down and the van took off belching black smoke and I was hard pressed just keeping him in sight. I would have lost him altogether only he turned off the road. He was entering UCD’s campus and fortunately, it was summer time so few students were about.  He powered ahead navigating a large roundabout with ease and racing ahead to the heart of the complex. I didn’t see the roundabout until I was on it, literally. I ran up the central grass mound and launched off it hanging grimly onto the handlebars. I was airborne for a second before landing with a bounce and a wobble. I’d survived! Not only that, I had narrowed the gap with the van. On we powered and with the college’s buildings coming in sight I reached a corner I couldn’t get around, at least on the road.  With a bump, I mounted the kerb and found myself hammering through the empty bicycle shed. A glance left showed I was level with the van. I opened the throttle to the full and powered past Dave before rejoining the road.

I emerged a yard ahead and triumphant! However, I had little time to savor my victory as it took all my limited skills to bring the motorbike to a halt, sixty feet up the road.

Why?  because that was where the police car was.