Ten K Runs from the Post Office

Neal’s Belch no. 149 for 6th Aug, 2004

Having recently moved house again, this time right into the centre of the sprawling metropolis of Dublin, Ireland, I’ve been spending a lot of time optimising the arrangement of my cups, plates and saucepans in the cupboards. In the end I went for a big-stuff-at-the-back configuration. I really am a stickler for tradition.

My new home is very close to a McDonald’s, just like the old one. Which is always reassuring in a world gone mad. I can’t tell you the number of times I have woken up at two o’clock in the morning from a nightmare, only to calm down and relax when I remember that there’s a fast food outlet across the street that will be open in five hours time. There are also a couple of Chinese takeaways, a traditional fish and chip shop, and a post office. The post office doesn’t sell fast food, but with the overwhelming preponderment of electronic mail these days, I suspect that it’s only a matter of time before they will have to branch out into new services.

And I welcome that.

Already my local office is selling Fizzy Cola Bottles and tickets for Riverdance’s homecoming. I just wish they wouldn’t be so pushy about it. I went in for some stamps yesterday and the guy behind the counter not only gave me some stamps (the lovely new “Dead Painters painted by living Painters, by kind permission of cemmetary management” series), he also signed me up for a ten k run in aid of cute kittens, converted my bank account to run on Windows, and filled in a gun license application form for me. Now I’ve only got three days left to decide who I want to shoot.

To be perfectly honest, I’d rather not shoot anyone at all. I’m a peaceful, friendly person and I wouldn’t harm a flea. Unless the flea circus was particularly disappointing and they refused to refund the admission fee. Life is too short to watch an underrehearsed or sub-standard flea circus show. That’s what my mother always says, anyway.

Yesterday I took the cats out to see an ordinary circus with humans and elephants and tigers in it. And it was wonderful.

The trapeze artist poked her assistant’s eyes out and the clown turned up disguised as a police officer and arrested her for attempted murder. They’re having a trial next year. It really was so realistic. I love clowns.

Except when they waste valuable items of confectionery by throwing them at each other. Don’t they realise that half the world is starving because they can’t get any custard pies? I think it’s disgusting, and I’m not afraid to say so.

In fact, whenever I’m at a circus I stand up during the clown act, point at the stupidly dressed man or woman in the ring, and say in a loud, clear voice, but not shouting because that’s undignified, “You are an idiot”. I always get a murmer of appreciation from the audience and I can hear them whispering to each other about how impressed they are that somebody has stood up and said out loud what the rest of them are thinking.

I’ve always found that my opinions on most things are representative of the average person in the street. The problem is, there aren’t enough average people around these days, here in Ireland. Most of them emigrated during the recessions of the nineteen eighties. Which means that the average person in Ireland doesn’t live here.

That causes a lot of problems for people who carry out surveys and polls. In order to get a representative sample of the average Irish person, they have to travel all over the world and find them in plastic fake Irish pubs.

I hate fake pubs. Particularly because I never notice that they’re fake until I drink the first sip of Guinness and find out that it’s actually blackcurrant juice with cream floating on top of it. I think this sort of thing should be outlawed.

Anyway, yeah.