It’s a good job nobody is secretly recording me while I’m packing for our holiday. I’m listening to the Jolly Anglo Boys on the radio and reading the transcripts and I’m not the better for it. I didn’t actually know I knew so many swear words. I’m impressing myself.
Jack the rates up, that's what I really meant. Get the f***en money in, get it in. That's right: just do it.
I am flinging flip-flops and shorts I will not wear into a big red suitcase that has seen better days. You know, with a zip that doesn't meet the other zip in the middle. I wonder if the Jolly Anglo Boys have matching luggage that they don't even have to pack themselves when they go away. I hope it stays fine for them. But we want to get the liquidity ratios up. Correct.
Packing for holidays angrily to a backdrop of Anglo's Greatest Hits is not a good idea especially with children present. Don't be stupid, get it in. Don't be overtly pumping it so that somebody can quote you . . .
“What’s a banker?” one of the children says. “A very bad (inaudible expletive) person,” I say wondering whether the juicer will fit in the boot of the car with all the other crap and at the same time feeling bad about all the very pleasant banking people I’ve ever dealt with in my life.
It's the bad banking apples I am talking about, obviously, but the girls are only four and they won't understand. What am I saying? I don't understand myself. Well we'll have to f****en tiddly wink for it. So yeah, I'm saying to the guys 'look, just be smart'. Yeah.
It's like vintage Monty Python or Scrap Saturday. All I know is that when I watched Anglo, the Musical I was vaguely comforted after both viewings by the fact that it was a comedy and therefore exaggerated for laughs, and then I listen to a figure of seven billion being pulled out of someone's arse and someone else's "hilarious" rendition of Deutschland Über Alles and I realise that the musical wasn't satire – it was pretty much straight reporting.
Fact, not fiction, from the land somewhere over the satirical rainbow. Correct.
So the juicer. I fling it in the boot and hope it hasn't broken with the force of my throw. I plan to only ingest juice all holiday by the way. Spinach juice. Carrot. Maybe some fennel. Em, Yeah. That's like the plan one of my friends has this summer to follow all the exercise-related documents she has stashed in a drawer over a decade. As in it's not a plan exactly. Just a master-
class in self-delusion. A plan she plucked out of her arse, so to speak. Tiddly-winkle liquidity, get the money in, stick two fingers up, jack up the rates so to speak.
Deep breath.
I will pack properly in a streamlined fashion. I will not give in to the righteous, useless anger bubbling in the pit of my stomach. What's the point? That would be fantastic; if it was nationalisation we'd all keep our jobs. It would be fantastic wouldn't it?
I call my friend who knows more than I do about these things and he wants to know why anyone is surprised by the tone and guffaws of these “horrible, predatory” people. He says it has always been par for the course. Part of the culture. That if you walked into any pub in Dawson Street, Dublin, in the decade of utter abandon you’d have heard these conversations happening ad nauseam. The club always ruled this country. The club still rules. It’s just that now the voices of the sniggering jocks are in stereo in our kitchens and it’s turning our stomachs.
What I want to know is, do other people go on secret packing courses? Is that how they don’t end up throwing all the extraneous stuff in bags-for-life and plastic bags at the last minute? Packing should be taught in schools. Maybe, regulation too. Morality. I don’t know. Propriety? Just common or garden decency.
Give me the moolah . . . we’ll go down there with our arms swinging.
Well I'm off now anyway. A three-week escape from it all. Packed up and ready to get the hell out of Dodge. Good timing, so to speak. I may disable the radio. Yeah. I may avoid all media across all platforms. Exactly, exactly.
Just point the old car west as it creaks under the weight of all the stuff I won’t use, the stuff flung assways into the boot in Anglo-induced anger.
What do you think will happen? What
do I think will happen? I don't know . . . I really don't know. Yeah.
roisin@irishtimes.com