Grrr!

Posted on October 31, 2006
Filed Under Outside Dublin, Rant, photography, sea, wet Wednesday rule, work | 2 Comments

Don’t you just hate it when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed. I’ve been in a bad mood all day and I don’t know why. Adding insult to injury, I can’t figure out why I’m in a bad mood in the first place and that’s only adding to my annoyance level. Listening to Tori Amos’ ‘The Power of Orange Knickers‘ from her Beekeeper album has cheered me up a little bit but the clenched jaw is still tense and unyielding.

For reasons I won’t go into, I had to visit two abattoirs outside Dublin today. Although I’m a vegetarian, I’m used to seeing the blood and guts etc of dead animals but today, the local workmen, with their blood- and shit-stained overalls, annoyed me. Their local, non-Dublin, accents made me frustrated because they couldn’t, loike, speak proper Dublin-ese. The traffic was truly horrendous and I kept getting lost as Ireland doesn’t do signposts. Or postcodes. So no sat-nav for little johnny.

Let’s pretend one of the factories was in Navan. I phoned them and said, ‘I’m in Navan but I’m lost. Can you give me directions?‘

‘Na bather, leave Navan and go towards XYZ. After about 4 or 5 miles (!!), turn right after the petrol station, go down the hill and then up the hill. Turn left at the next petrol station. Continue on for another 2 or 3 miles. Then you’ll see a wall on a wide stretch of the road. Turn right and then, shortly after that, turn left up a dirt road. We’re about 2 mile up that road’.

PAUSE.

‘You can’t miss us.’

I thought they were taking the piss but their directions were accurate! Navan, my arse!

The ‘meat’ industry has seen heavy consolidation in recent years and, although, ownership has changed hands into large companies, many of the abattoirs are still mom and pop operations. By this, I mean the ‘killing zone’ is often a warehouse beside the family home. For obvious reasons, they don’t put advertising signs outside their premises. And although we might know them as Corporation X (Navan), all the locals still know them as ‘Murphys’ or whatever. So when you’re visiting these places (and you’re lost), it’s often a judgement call whether to try a particular premises and potentially get shot or mauled by the guard dog. Or maybe, just maybe, get the right slaughter-house.

As I said already, the traffic was absolutely dreadful. I uttered every stereotypical curse and muttered under my breath at old people, young people, middle-aged people, lorry drivers, middle-aged lorry drivers, women drivers, farmers, sales reps, those going faster than me, those going slower than me. Anyway, you get the picture. In fact, every road user today was demonstrably a complete and certifiable moron. Except me, of course!

Even my staff were annoying me. As I got lost (again) on my way to one of the abattoirs, I rang the office for a phone number and directions etc. My assistant started searching on google etc and was taking ages. It must have been at least 30 seconds before I took a deep breath, and trying to remain calm (ha!), said, ‘look up the phone book and call me back‘. Then I hung up before he could say anything.

Another guy was bugging me and he’s actually on holidays right now.

It was just one of those days where nothing worked quite as I expected it to…

– The reception on the radio wasn’t strong enough and there was just enough hiss that I could just subliminally hear it.
– I didn’t have exact change for the toll booths on the motorway so I had to queue behind several (insert stereotypical morons).
– Once outside Dublin, I couldn’t find anywhere for a decent coffee.
– The temperature in the car wasn’t hot enough. Or cold enough. So I spent too much time fiddling with the air-con and opening/closing the window.
– It was too windy outside the car. So when I opened the car door, I didn’t open it far enough so the wind blew it back towards me and nearly took off my leg. Every bloody time I got out of the car.
– All the regular talk radio hosts are on holiday (except Orla Barry – shame) while all the music DJ’s were not, so it was hours and hours of second-rate radio.

Grrr!

And to think, yesterday…I saw people just enjoying themselves…

As the saying goes, ‘there’s nowt as queer as folk‘.

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