Get up, do nothing, worry about money

A day in the life of home alone Joe.

Today I got off the phone with Dad in Mayo. He (and therefore everyone else) wasn’t coming home til Wednesday. This meant I had a fully tanked up (thanks to my €30 of Saudi Arabian coal juice yesterday) Opel Corsa with a CD player sitting in the driveway on a glorious sunny day and I had the key for the next three days. I ran into the dining room as it all hit me. I frantically spread out a map on top of the assorted crap on the table. Anywhere, I could go anywhere. Anywhere in Ireland, north, south, west and a little east was within my grasp. You’re never more than eight hours away from anywhere in Ireland, I could be literally anywhere in the evening. I could appear at Kerouac’s doorstep, brazenly expecting lodgings. I could turn up at Chateau Dave, Sambuca Towers. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t really. But I could go west and pay a visit to Maire and Paul in Galway. Maybe drive down to Kilkenny and give Lindsay a surprise visit before her debs, which I’m attending with her at the start of next month. So many opportunities ran through my head. Only this. I got paid on Thursday and it was quite a large sum by any standard, if your standard is unskilled phone monkey like myself. Just over €700. With that, I spent €192 (ironic considering the work I do involves answering people who’ve dialled 192) paying off a swanky new suit I bought for the wedding in Donegal this week. I also paid Mam the customary €80 Putting Up With Joe Fee. Then I went out for a drink with lunasa that went on to become a meal (Pizza Hut, the only non-dressed-up restaurant in Dublin). This I refuse to regard as unnecessary, since I had a great time and the pizza was gorgeous.

But then I got this notion of spending a ridiculous amount of money on a new CD player (my Sis broke my old one in Spain, refuses to admit responsibility, legal proceeding have been initiated). This rather sexy Panasonic model caught my eye in the Argos catalogue. Mainly because it had a CD player AND a radio. Only €149. Amazing how stupid I can be sometimes. “Only” €149. I hopped in the car after work yesterday and made my way rather briskly to the now-gargantuan Blanchardstown centre, parked it and ran up (believe me, I can get even more pathetic) to the Argos shop. A c*** in a turquoise t-shirt told me they were closed. It was only 6pm. I told him all I had to do was fill out a slip, I knew what I wanted. Turquoise Boy refused. I could have kicked one of those kids outside McDonalds in sheer frustration. Then anger turned to revenge. “Ha-ha!” I said, rather loudly. “ I’ll show them! I’ll take my custom elsewhere!!!” I ran into the centre, leaving bemused shoppers in my wake.

Dixons. Yes, shame on me. Another British multiple. But believe it or not, there isn’t one Irish-owned electrical shop in Blanchardstown (I’m going to ignore “Tommy’s Wonderland of Value” for obvious reasons). So in I go and manage to find the CD players rather sharpish. JVC, Philips, Panasonic. And then I saw her, my old friend. The lover I just can’t let go of. I try to keep her out of my life, but there she was, at my most vulnerable. The one I can never resist, no matter how hard I try. The Over-Priced Sony model.

It was round, like the CD it was to made to hold. My CDs. Suddenly, the idea of putting them in a Panasonic seemed abhorrent. I was using an ancient Panasonic as a temporary replacement for the past two weeks, but who was I fooling? I knew I could never live without a Sony. Now it all made sense. Now, I was where I belonged. At the counter, about to buy a Sony. For €10 more than my wildest dreams.

You see, I baulked at the idea of spending €149 on a CD player. It would be tight going, but it would be worth it. Now I was spending even more. But how could I not? A Sony D-F3Zkwhatever. It doesn’t matter what it was. That it may have little or no bass due to the difficulties of integrating a decent standard of tuner into the lid. That the mono-stereo selector was under the lid and only worked by sticking a pen into a hole and flicking a slide switch across. That it was a very expensive thing to buy on your credit card at a time when your financial situation was….delicate at best. What’s left of my pay packet must take care of my spending during a wedding and a debs. I have to buy a bus ticket to Donegal, a €50 voucher for Argos for the newlyweds (under re-consideration after the way I was treated, is there a Roches Stores in Galway?), a bellyful of pints, a return ferry to a small island then tuxedo rental, a ticket to Kilkenny, an orchid to pin to the good woman, another load of drink, possibly a taxi or four and…..well luckily I’m getting paid the next day. But this, combined with my penchant for impulse buying means the next week or two will be seat-of-the-pants living.

I impulse-bought the new Coldplay CD yesterday. I don’t know what I think of them. I’ve read a few articles about them that all seem to ask “Coldplay – what are they for?” I mean, it’s obvious U2 are here to save the world. N Sync are here to destroy it. Barry White is here to love the world and tell her how beautiful she is, and Marilyn Manson is here to fuck it in the ear and piss on it’s eyes. But Coldplay are lacking a raison d’etre, a reason to be. They sing about love and loss and apologising about love and apologising about loss and…um….yellow things. Everything’s yellow. But dagnammit, they’ve got catchy songs and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re a secret boy band, sent by Louis Walsh to take on…oh…I dunno. Embrace? Anyway, it sounds nice and I felt I had to have a new CD for my CD player. I broke it in with my favourite CD of these days, “By The Way”. So it was cool. Good shtuff. Right.

Why do I want to make a joke about Charlotte Church right now?

j

(and by the way, I never went anywhere in the car, I was attempting to illustrate how I wrestled so much with the choices of where to go that in the end I did nothing. I got a little sidetracked, just like I did in this entry)