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

 

Crazy Organ Lady Goes to Lapland

Sunday was not a good day.

My deranged piano teacher HG, who for those of you without the limitless pleasure of having made her acquaintance is a Canadian-Irish hypochondriac rodent-woman whose interests include sacred organ music, apple juice, endless talk about nothing, and endless talk about herself (but we love her for it... ahem), took me out piano shopping (yes, I say it as off-handedly as that) to Pianos Plus. Unfortunately Pianos Plus is situated in the dead-centre of the middle of fucking nowhere, and to reach it one has to navigate around the notorious 'Mad Cow Roundabout', as HG so comically called it, which manages to keep up the road quality and bumpiness of an off-road rally track while still retaining the disorientating charm of a labyrinth. Not too fun. And I was tired. And HG was exceptionally animated and self-obsessed. A recipe for disaster.

She just wouldn't shut up about her beloved Pipeworks organ festival, with whose organisation she is vaguely involved and in which she probably wasn't even asked to take part, but still horned in on on account of her unfaltering self-importance. And for the love of jesus I do not care, have never cared, and will never, ever care about anything that concerns your friend Dk.

HG, while at the wheel:"Oh gosh, I have a cut on my arm! Oh, it goes right the way round! I don't even remember how I got that! That's so annoying, eh? It's actually really sore".

Me, unable to contain my utter disinterest:"Oh, that's awful. You should put a bandage on that."

HG:"No, it's completely fine. I know, it's awful! The funny thing is I don't even remember how I got it you know? That's the worst... It's still quite painful though, I just know it's going to be bothering me all day!"

Me:"Well it doesn't really look too serious, it almost looks like it's healed already."

HG:"No but it's really very sore. Oh gosh, but it's just so FUNNY..."

Oh yeah? Is that funny? Do you know what else would be really FUNNY? If I shoved your pathetic child's carton of apple juice down your throat!! UGGHHHHH!!!!

And do you know what else was really funny? When HG finally listened to my directions after about an hour of driving around in circles, when we finally arrived at the godforsaken place, it turned out that it was closed for Sunday. Oh joy.

"Oh noooooo... that's just awful, eh? Oh, I'm terrible I really should have checked, I knew that it was open on a Saturday and I just presumed it would be on a Sunday too... This is just so annoying eh? I really thought it would be open, I really did, I should have rang to check though... Gosh, it's just so FUNNY though.."

Don't tempt me woman.

New Name

So I decided to change my name, and for no reason really, other than I hated the old one and thought it was stupid and everytime I looked at it I screamed inwardly with shame and thought to myself 'I would NEVER read a blog with the name *****i*** *****h* *a***** (I can't even bare to write it out again). Thankfully now I can look at the name with some degree of...well, mild indifference; but at least I will never again find myself recoiling from the sheer tear-your-own-skin-off embarrassment whenever I see it.

Nothing much else to say with this blog; I've been spending my days practicing the piano and trying to start studying which aren't topics writing on which I can really nail you to your seat; so why not make like me and feast your ears on a bih'ra Beethoven? Hopefully I'll be able to play it this well eventually.

Let there be Light!

The Summer Exams are in two weeks and I'm dreading them, I'm playing in a feis tomorrow with a piece for which I have absolutely no love left and My bloody 18th still needs sorting out. This is more than enough crap to have me tearing my all my hair out from the strain. Normally, that is. But how could anyone sit inside weeping and feeling sorry for themselves, eating slice after slice of charleville cheddar cheese as I can sometimes be found doing in these times, when the weather has been so brilliant these last few days?

If anyone who is not from Ireland happens to be reading this, and that's being more than a bit optimistic on my part, you probably won't understand how much joy an Irish person feels when the weather is actually good for once. It just makes you want to go outside and take off all your clothes and scream 'I'm alive!'... While I haven't quite got to that stage yet, over the last few days I've at least tried to soak up as much of the sun as I can.

Monday was the best day - I was over at my friend Br's house for her 18th birthday, and it looked so nice outside some of us ended up heading out to Belgrave Square for a picnic. It was one of those lazy summer days that we only hear about over here; lying there on the grass in complete contentment, messing around doing cartwheels (well, I being an almighty sourpuss didn't manage to but some others did) and such. Everything seems to look better when it's sunny; the shapes that the shadows of trees make on the grass, the light glinting off a metal railing, even the people look more attractive. I think I could get used to this living, even if experience has taught me to watch the weather forecast and expect the worst. Still, I can hope...

Surprising Myself

Last year at around this time my Mum decided to end her life. It might seem a bit weird that I'm phrasing it in that particular way, "decided to end her life", but I've struggled a lot with trying to find a suitable way of expressing the action. I hate it when people try to put it euphemistically by saying she died "tragically" or even worse, that she "passed on" or "passed away". I can't stand everything that "passed on" suggests: that it was 'just another step along the way', that it was somehow majestic or even beautiful; everything that it wasn't, basically. I also don't like saying it in a complete matter-of-fact way, because that can be pretty upsetting at times too. I think the way I've found to say it is very appropriate; honest, definite, but not going into unnecessary detail and not prettying it up.

That's something that I've put a bit of thought into, but it's veering off the point a bit, so I'll continue. The anniversary of her death is coming up later this month, but it hasn't really been bothering me as much as I thought it might. In fact, I wasn't even thinking about it at all until a few nights ago, when it came up as a matter of practicality. Dad and Granny want the engraving on her gravestone to be done before the anniversary, and my sis C and I were given a draft of the text as written by my Granny to look over. Dad was clearly not pleased with the way Granny had phrased it and the reason for this was very obvious to both of us immediately, so he was hoping for us to feed him back his own opinion on it.

At first I didn't really care about it; I was pretty exhausted at the time. I liked Dad's version a lot more than I did Granny's, so I just told him whatever they decided was fine. In any case, all that stuff -visiting the grave with flowers and looking at the lovely inscription etc.- never seemed important to me in the slightest, completely detached as it is from my Mum. He told C and I to think about it for a few days and come back to him. And sure enough, over those few days as I turned the thing over and over in my mind I started to find that no, I wasn't that pleased with either version of things. Typical. When he came back to me last night, I completely surprised myself by getting pretty fired up about it. I said that I wouldn't let Granny pick an engraving that we wouldn't all agree on and that I wouldn't concede even a single word. Despite my dad agreeing with a version that I had come up with completely, he rather pathetically suggested that we " compromise" over the issue, that we should "pick our battles". Bollox to that! After all, C and I are going to be looking at whatever inscription we choose for a lot longer than either Dad or Granny. "But Granny is old, it's hard for her". "She's only thinking of Mum". Those were Dad's two main points on the issue, the former of which is just an equivocation that Granny might use to justify herself but not one I'll be fooled by, and the latter is just not true. So in the end, I told Dad this is what we want, tell Granny that, and we can discuss things with her if she wants, and if she doesn't like it she can piss off(except maybe not that last part).

Oh, and I surprised myself again today by having a really great audition for our school's music competition (I play the piano), on the kind of occasion where I usually fall apart horribly and scream abuse at the piano, which doesn't usually win me many gold stars...Roll on the final!