The Wizard of FAS

Driving's great fun. I enjoy it. I've had my licence a little over two years now so I haven't reached the stage where it just feels like a chore yet. I certainly prefer it to walking, cycling, running, hopping or rolling if my destination is more than 10 feet away, and it is most certainly more enjoyable and less life threatening than getting the bus. You also won't find yourself standing in the rain, staring anxiously at your watch, waiting for your own car to arrive before handing over an obscene amount of money (not an obscene amount of money in the grand scheme of things, no, but certainly in terms of small change) to a stranger while questioning them on how they came to be driving your vehicle. Thieves very rarely return to the scene of the crime in the thing they've stolen.

So seeing as how I am currently jobless I have found myself wondering what I could do to earn some money. My eyesight's too poor to fight fires and I don't have the people skills for prostitution so naturally I thought "Hey maybe I could be a driver for some courier company or something?". One day, as though sent as a sign from the Gods... I'm not sure which one is the God of driving as an occupation to be honest so we'll just say Mars for now. Maybe he looks after transport in general when he's not thinking about wars and shit... I was passing through Charleville (the land that time forgot on the way out of Cork and into Limerick) on the way to a pointless gig in Galway, when I saw someone I went to school with climbing out of a van, delivering some boxes to a local beastly being with four teeth, a patch over one ear and wearing a rubber dingy (we were driving pretty quickly (as is safest in a place like that) so I may be slightly off with the description there), and I thought, "Well if he can do it, why can't I?".

So I thought about getting truck driving lessons. As I'm unemployed I am automatically signed up with FAS. For any foreign readers I'll just give a quick synopsis of FAS. All natives feel free to skip ahead... FAS are the unapologetically shit organisation who "help" the unemployed find work in Ireland. They have employed a fairytale wicked witch of some sort to design their website as its dark forest of dead-ends and wrong turns can only be successfully navigated with the use of breadcrumbs and string. I once heard tell of a man who decided to have a quick look before dinner for a job in the hotel and catering industry and died of starvation.

FAS also run courses on anything from photography to turf cutting in the hopes that you find a job yourself in the mean time so they can claim the credit. With my new found lust for truck driving I rang FAS and inquired as to whether or not they run a truck driving course that I could do for free so I wouldn't have to fork out 100 euro an hour for lessons elsewhere. "We do", said the man. "It's a week long course, full-time Monday to Thursday and a half-day on the Friday. All you need is a provisional truck licence". "Great", says me, and I hung up the phone before the man could try to lure me into some other course or trap with rotten apples or sweets.

And so I went and did the theory test required to get the provisional (actually I did it twice. I winged it the first time and failed by a single question) and marched up to my "local" FAS office which sits atop a mountain surrounded by an eerie fog and a smell you just can't quite put your finger on... Because odours aren't physical. To try to touch an odour would be a ludicrous waste of time and you'd look quite the fool... The secretary asked if I had made an appointment. I had not. She told me I would have to come back the next day at an appointed time as they were very busy, before quickly changing her tune when she saw that I saw the FAS man I have to deal with wandering around behind her, picking his nose and trying to find some objects to bang together in the hope they might make an amusing sound. "Oh, hang on. It says here Eric is your officer (that's right they refer to themselves as "officers"). He's actually on now. I'll just go see if he's free".

Once Eric had dashed back to his desk (out of view) and found a pen and some paper to make himself look busy I was allowed back. If you're wondering why I say "allowed back" it's because there was a red rope, much like outside a nightclub or in front of a work of art in a museum, protecting Eric and his fellow officers from the riff-raff that might wander in off the streets and ask them questions. This had to be ceremoniously moved by the secretary to allow me entry. Oh did he look splendid in his big chair, at his big desk, with his big computer?... No. He looked lost and frightened like a winged monkey that failed flight school due to the nose-bleeds he gets at altitude and so has to sit at a desk making out rosters for the real flying monkeys while they fly off and do whatever it is flying monkeys do, as a result.

Having explained to him my reasons for being there and having given him my fresh new provisional truck driving licence, he informed me that the course I sought is actually an 8 week long full-time course and that there were 98 names ahead of me on the waiting list. How could it possibly take 8 weeks to teach someone how to drive a truck? Especially when the applicant has to be familiar with the whole process of driving in the first place? It's as though they spend the first week (or week and a half depending on the speed of learning of the group) with the class sat at the side of a road, pointing and saying "Is that a truck? Is that a truck? I'm sure that's a truck now... Is it?". I have a university degree for fuck sake. Not a great one to be fair, it's only Arts, but still. I know what a truck is. You have to do a theory test relating specifically to the driving of truckular vehicles in order to apply for this course. What could they possibly be doing for 8 weeks? And to top it all off the next course starting near me won't be until ""sometime before the end of the year. Thank you Eric for that very clear and decisive timeline there. It also happens that I would have to sit an interview and pass something called a "CAB Test" before being chosen for the course which my father tells me is some sort of aptitude test to see who is comfortable and familiar with being in a truck, which again begs the question "Why, and indeed how, the fuck does it take 8 weeks to teach someone how to drive a truck?".

I left Eric and castle-mount gloom an angry and confused young man. The formerly red but now yellowed brick road, stained by drunks and homeless people over the years, I followed to safety and normalcy, was thankfully not as long or dangerous as I had thought on the way up. It seems that even the knife wielding lunatics who roam there feel sorry for the poor bastards who come trudging back down bewildered and overcome with a sense of dread at the thought of having to go back up in a few weeks with a new plan.

And so I have given up on my truck driving dreams and instead have set them on something a little more attainable like world domination. One blog post at a time...

My Gay Dog

First things first, my dog isn't actually gay. That was just a snappy title. But it was inspired by a true event, like Titanic or the second Harry Potter. My grandad died a couple of months ago (reason to complain in itself, sure, but I'll leave that for now) leaving my dear, little, old grandmother with noone to look after and worry about. My older brother, younger sister and I are her only grand-children so yes naturally she turned to us at first, but even my sister is finishing school now and not really looking for someone to babysit her. Although she is looking for more babysitting work herself if anyone needs a new one. She will never be more drunk than you when you get home. And that's a promise...

And so Granny (as she likes to be referred to) turned to Scamp (as he likes to be referred to). Scamp is a cross between a yorkshire terrier and a jack russel. If that puts an image in your head of a small dog with some black, some brown and some white hairs of reasonable length whose main hobbies in life are sleeping and crying then congratulations, you've won a prize.

Scamp lives outside by day and fights crime inside by night. When outside he has the shelter of what we call his "box" to fend off the unruly advances of the elements. That's if he so chooses. Sometimes he prefers to stand atop his box whimpering in the wind and drowning pitifully in the rain. Yes it's a sad sight. But he's a dog. He's designed to live outside. That's why he has all of those hairs. He does not need a coat. Granny, however, disagrees. She bought him a small red "coat" a couple of weeks ago. Apparently the ten or so years he's been living in our back garden were nothing compared to the monsoon she's forecasting to hit the southern tip of Ireland in the coming weeks.

I don't like Scamp's coat. My brother does not like Scamp's coat. Scamp does not like Scamp's coat. We all agree that it looks ridiculous and he looks ridiculous in it. My sister, however, loves Scamp's coat and loves nothing more than putting it on him in the morning before he goes outside. She does not seem to notice, or care about, the fact that it is clearly too small for him, restricting his ability to perform basic daily manoeuvres like standing up and turning left, and above all, that it just looks stupid. What's more it likes to get caught when he's rolling around in his box (another pastime of his) leaving him upside-down and helpless, like an over-turned tortoise in a stupid red coat. He does not need a coat. He is a dog. Dog's should not be put in miniature human clothes. Whoever came up with the idea should be shot, or if they've already been shot, then they should be pulled from the ground and shot again, just to be sure.

Just imagine you're looking through a not very extensive book on the history of the world that has images of all the great people who've walked on this planet and each of them is accompanied by a dog in a stupid little red coat. How could any of them have been taken seriously? Do you think Julius Caesar had a little dog in a toga under his arm when he was barking out orders at Marcus Brutus or Russel Crowe in the middle of a battle? What if Martin Luther King's dream had been for all dogs to be kept uncomfortably warm and visible at all times to any oncoming traffic through the use of luminous fringing on an otherwise tartan dog-smock? Oh what a sad world it would be.