A Link to the Past

What should I be doing?

Studying for my Mocks which begin next week.

What am I doing?

Trawling the internet for a cheap ocarina.

I don't know: I just came home from school on Friday utterly shattered and thought, you know, I deserve some relaxation here people. So I figured what better way to unwind than with some soothing music, and who better than myself to play it? I honestly couldn't tell you where I pulled the idea from, but it struck me to look for our old ocarina, the one my parents bought me at some market stall on an family holiday to Menorca. As I recall this was an excrutiatingly dull holiday on an island which I'm pretty sure couldn't have existed before tourism, and as far as I recall I ended up spending most of my time out on the balcony of our apartment complex accommodation learning to play the ocarina. Handily enough it came with a pamphlet explaining how to play the ocarina for beginners, and by the end of the 2 weeks I could play such popular hits as Happy Birthday and The Sound Of Silence with its help.

I found the leaflet of course... but the ocarina itself seems to have been thrown away or lost in time (and I can say that definitively enough because I spent a worrying amount of time looking for it). My new tack is, being from the generation I am, to look for one online. But it hasn't proven to be a very fruitful search... See all the ones online are really artificial looking, nothing like the earthy, authentic clay one I had when I was ten. The whole thing's a bit stupid really, because all I want is my old one and nothing else and I'm hardly going to come across that, even on e-bay... and the sound of the ocarina, to be honest, is not a soothing one at all. It's piercing. Still, I don't seem to be able to rest until I've found one... so if anyone can point me in the direction of one, or you know if anyone has an unwanted ocarina lying around the house, you know what to give me for my next birthday.

Frosty The Blogman

I'm off to see a showing of the Snowman in the National Concert Hall, or the 'nch' for those of us who are 'in the know' ie. completely up themselves. The National Symphony Orchestra (no abbreviation for that, 'unforch') are performing the soundtrack live as you watch the film, sitting right in front of you, live, Alive, in a state of living. I mean talk about excessive Christmas jubilations here. Getting into the spirit of things this much just seems wrong. I have a vague feeling someone should be arrested on account of this, though I know not who or why.

I will post my impressions on the morrow with any luck. Though I might not get the chance... I must apologise for my recent lack of blog-tivity, Christmas exams have taken over my life a lil' bit so whenever I find the time to blog I have nothing interesting about which to write; instead of boring you all I take the lazy way out, which works for everyone, except not everyone just me. Once these finish up and the festivities begin you can expect a little more frequency on my part. Or you can not do that, that's totally fine too... WHATEVER YOU WANT... I must go.

Meeting with a Madyoke

Was in the Academy of Music today for a piano exam. Cakeman (instead of using letters for people's names as I had previously been doing, I'm now switching to using code names, just because I thought I might make the effort to 'spice things up' a little.... oh, i hate my life...) had our exams one after another so we went in together. Sitting in a hallway waiting during Cakeman's exam I ended up beside possibly the biggest Looper ever born of woman. 

No sooner had the door closed behind Cakeman as he went in for his one when one of her clammy talons grasped my shoulder, and turning my head I beheld the jibbering nutcase in all her desperate madness, gobbling down her fingernails and fumbling to open her music book so that she could show me what pieces she was doing.

This wasn't the first time I had encountered someone with a tendency towards insanity waiting for a piano exam; the Academy where the exams are held is just the sort of place where you might run into ex-convicts, child savants and the like. Often it's someone who found music on the back of a particularly unhinging mid-life crisis, but I suspect that the woman who accosted me today was of a more disturbing variety - she seemed like the sort of person who had mid-life crises for kicks. Hoping I could dispel her interest in talking to me, I did my usual act that I do in these situations: put on a vaguely interested smile and say things like 'yes, thats always the way', trying to be discrete about taking out my phone to check the time every fifteen seconds.

Oh she was a talker. Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk. How she talked! She was certainly one who liked a good chat now and again, though preferably now. She must've asked me was I nervous about 10 times, although she clearly saw me already come out from having my exam, and each time she put forth the question I let it be known to her in an increasingly pissed-off tone of voice that I had already done the fucking exam so what was there to be nervous about now, you stupid, stupid bat. 

I was becoming desperate enough to pretend-call my Dad to get her to go away and leave me be when she mentioned a name which drained the blood from my face - HG (for an explanation, read my old blog concerning this... creature) . As it turned out, this mad person was also a product of that annoying little rat! Turns out HG told this psychotic woman to look out for me:

Crazy: 'Ye theres this guy Patrick/wefklsl;dfslslkalallives around clonskeagh...woeihfio HG ye she saidnell ye golddkajlad gold medalsjfilsjls oh ye golden ye teachesnsepojf out in clonskeaghsehs'

Me: 'Oh ye?'

Crazy: 'Ye!jsiejfsljrwelsjklfsjl, kind of dark curly hair,aewhakldoingehwjkan exam todayasawbndvbn might runaw intu himdahakk;'

Me:'Oh ye?'

Crazy: 'Ye!sjksjkllives in clonskeaghgjsdsiojslk'

Me: 'Oh ye?'

You get the picture. It was sad really, because I had explained already what my name was, where I lived, what exam I was doing, everything... At one stage she did look at me and I could swear some small broken fuse in the depths of her distorted brain clicked and she realised that I was in fact the person she was describing. But since I never let on that it was me she must have thought it couldn't possibly be. Inside I was cracking up though.

I had a little more fun with her then, because by then I had realised the true depths of her disillusionment. I played along as she told me stories about her kids (none of which i understood, but it involved a lot of her slapping herself in the shoulder and wagging her finger at me) and showed me a photo of her piano, which she had brought with her to show the examiner(wtf?). When Cakeman was finished we made a speedy exit and shouted to eachother  all the way through town about what a madyoke the madyoke had been - she had shown him the photo too, and what pieces she was going to play.

I can't wait to tell HG what I thought of the madyoke

 

Exams!

Yes, it's that time of the year again. And since I've been cooped up inside for the past week alternating between studying desperately, tearing page after page out of my notepad, on the verge of paralysis from the horror of how much Maths I do not know, and watching The Inbetweeners on 4od, I can think of nothing better to write about other than the matter at hand.

Friday - Irish

I did a very disproportionate amount of study for this one as it was my first exam. I spent the previous week writing and rewriting essays about 'Gealt' (For our international readers that's 'crazy person/maniac/looper') and 'Jack', probably the two worst poems ever written in any language, and 'An Bhean Óg' ('the young woman'), a story in which nothing happens for a very long time. Needless to say, I excelled in the exam, and felt extremely pleased afterwards, but this was followed immediately by a feeling of impending doom about all the other subjects, for which I hadn't done a tap.

Monday - English and Music

Both of these went well since they don't involve much learning off of reels of useless shite, and suit well the winger of exams. Our music teacher Ms. Dunne put the same question on the paper that she gave us at Christmas, pretending that it was a favour she was doing us instead of the truth that she just hadn't bothered to make out a new one. All's well that ends well, I suppose...

Tuesday - Latin

Can I just start by stating that Virgil had NO MATES. He writes terrible poetry. His hateful text has caused nothing but woe, and we all would have been better off if he had never been born, in order that we might be saved from his diabolical similes, which are always utterly unsuitable and go on infinitely, every time he wrote one of those similes he just should have started a new book just for that one simile, but yet again I stress that it would have been even better if he had just never existed... So ye, expect for the Virgil everything went fine.

Wednesday - Maths and Art History

The worst ones so far... Math's was a train wreck, Art History not much better. I'd rather not talk about it...

Coming Soon - Chemistry and French

What I should be studying right now while I write this. Alright I'm going to go do that now. Bubye.