the birdbath identity...

Now then. Those of you who know me personally, will be aware that over the course of the last ten months or so, I have been engaging in a radical experiment. This experiment has involved a seismic shift in personal appearance. Or, to come to the point, I've been growing my hair.

Photographic evidence of the various evolutionary stages in this project are scattered across various websites and I won't post them here. Sufficeth to say that it makes for interesting (at least purely anthropological) viewing.

I began the experiment as a certified slaphead. Withing a mere matter of two weeks I had assumed the appearance of what my (then) girlfriend referred to as 'a manky tennis ball'. Another few weeks and there was a definite alteration in my personal comportment.

The weeks and months rolled by until we found ourselves staring down the barrel of Christmas and I found myself staring at a war-crime in the mirror. It was that stage: the one where your scalp looks like Dresden at the end of the second world war - a desolate, twisted wasteland with odd, angular projections jutting in several directions. Many close friends attempted to reason with me, but to no avail.

I kept going.

We get to May and a definite shape is starting to take form. My face looks altered. A different shape almost. Better I think (although there are those who violently protest to the contrary).

Then we get to three weeks ago, when sporting a glorious mane of bouncy, golden locks, I made my way into a Grafton street barber for what i expressly made clear was to be 'a trim'. No worries, I think to myself.

20 catastrophic minutes later I was sitting, jaw-agape, wallet-ajar, dignity trampled underfoot as I realised that the barber has translated my request for 'a trim' into the words 'make me look like a wanker' in whatever befuddled language he really spoke in his head.

Now, we've all had bad haircuts. It happens. Part of life. Par for the course. Run of the mill you might say. Insert your own proverbial platitude. But to be quite frank, I've had fucking enough.

What part of 'I want a trim' can you misunderstand? The words 'I want a trim' do not sound, even remotely, like the words 'Shave my head and make me look like a shirt-lifting, cat-raping beast from the deep'. They just fucking don't. At all.

And I'm sick of it.

You must understand... I have one of those faces. One of those. You know the ones I mean... you know the kind of face that you just want to punch? The kind of face that you instinctively want to repeatedly kick with a shit-smattered hob-nailed boot? The kind you have no rational reason to detest, but despite your tree-hugging, goat cheese eating tendencies, you find yourself wanting to wallop with a tyre-chain?

Yeah, well, I have one of those faces. I don't know why, but people (especially large men) have always wanted to harm me. Horribly.

Now, I do my best. I try to smile. I usually look like a lecherous git, but I do try. I try to be nice too. And I try to grow my hair in such a way as to take the focus off my face. Sometimes it works. But recently I have been getting those looks again. The ones that are followed by the sound of cracking knuckles and low, atavistic growls.

So, fuck the lot of ye. I'm growing it again.

Conversations from a teacher's staffroom

One of the (only) joys of being an English teacher, is the wonderful array of stories that Teachers have to tell each other. It’s part of what we do to get through the often mind-numbing tedium of teaching such wonderful things as adverbial expressions of time. Some recent conversations have given me some gems. Usually these always involve a misunderstanding of the English language. For the most part they are innocent enough mistakes. Occasionally however, a story comes along which leaves me helpless with laughter.

For example a friend of mine was telling me about a young Polish boy she is teaching. A quiet, shy, bug-eyed creature, he has sat wordlessly in the class and managed to get through several weeks without uttering a single syllable. One day the class concerned the subject of shopping and my friend asked the students what they should say when they aren’t happy with what they have bought, upon which our small Polish friend yelled out the immortal words “Wrong size Motherfucker”.

However, the coup de grace was a story I was told last week concerning a Russian student who came to stay and study in Dublin two summers ago. Students are placed with host families, who are charged with feeding and looking after these raging balls of teenage hormones. On the first night, the Russian student was having dinner with his new family (including pre-pubescent girls) and the conversation turned to his family back home in Siberia…

Russian kid: thanks you for de loverly dinner
Mum: you’re welcome. So, tell us about your family back home?
Russian kid: What?
Mum: Your family?
Russian kid: Oh. Yes. Mine family…
Dad: Yes, what does your father do?
Russian kid: My father?
Mum: Yes, your father. What does he do?
Russian kid: Oh, yes. Mine father. He has a business…
Mum: Oh very good. And what business is that?
Russian kid: Sorry?
Dad: His business. What is it?
Russian kid: Oh uhm, I, uhm, I don’t know the words..
Dad: Well, can you describe what he does?
Russian kid: Yes I can.
Mum: Good. So what is it?
Russian kid: He fucks dogs.
Dad: He fu… what?
Russian kid: He fucks dogs.
Mum: What? He does what?
Russian kid: He fucks dogs.
Dad: He what?
Russian kid: You know, he fucks dogs.
(tumbleweed rolls through)

Five minutes and several dictionary consultations later, the rather shell-shocked host family got to the bottom of the problem. Our young friend was trying to explain that his father was a champion dog-breeder...