29 February 2012
505
R. Linda:
I went to sleep and I had a dream I did, and oh what a dream it was. It be a leap-year dream and here is why. Leap-year dreams be not altogether good nor bad dreams, but dreams are just the same. It be an old O'Sullivan legend that if you dream lucidly on Leap-Year morning, your dreams are premonitions of the years to come until another Leap-Year appears. I don't know what O'Sullivan made this up, but one of them did and me family has always held this as a truism. Yup, they do. And, they find ways of weaving their dreams into some deja vu moment during the year with one of these quips, "See! I told ye I dreamt on leap-year mornin' we were eating Irish stew, and here we be!" Oh yeah, that be definite proof it be. How many times a year do we feast on Irish stew I want to know. Several.
I thought this be normal growing up, I was a dumb little f----er and did believe everything me grumpy grandda (in particular) told me. The man be a professional liar, but I didn't find that out until it was too late. His lies were ingrained in me foolish brain since an early age, and the lies were hard to deny they weren't true especially when I was brainwashed for years by this grumpy lying old man. I tell ya!
So here it be, me leap-year dream. I was sitting in an Irish pub with the Weasil and there was no one there but us and Dragon, and the Dragon was bustling around doing "things" as we sat at a high pub table chatting. What she was doing exactly I have no memory but I think she was rearranging glassware just so I wouldn't be able to find the correct glass to make a certain drink. This would be something she'd do best when it comes to me. Nothing in the world of Dragon and meself is ever less than confused. Anyway, the pub seemed to belong to me it did, and I don't know where I got it from, nor did it look familiar, but I was comfortable there holding court.
I had a half glass of Guinness and the Weasil had an empty glass. He got up as if it was his usual business to go behind the bar and make another drink for himself. He asked me if I needed to top off me beer and I said no, but the Dragon piped up.
"Make me a Harvey Wallbasher." She said.
"A wot?" He asked, standing very still like he heard her wrong.
"She means a Harvey Wallbanger," I threw over me shoulder at him.
"Whatever that Galliano and orange juice drink is." She said bustling around.
Weasil shrugged and started putting it together as I sat there shaking me head.
"Oh Gabriel," said she, "I see there is a new theatre on Route 101A in Milford. Across from the supermarket."
"Across from the supermarket be a Walgreens," I said visualising the area in me mind.
"No, there is a red and white sign with a comic theatre mask advertised on the building."
"OHHH," Weasil said realising better than me what she meant. "She can't see can she?" He said laughing as an aside to me hoping she wouldn't notice.
"Why?" I asked him.
"The red and white sign is the mortar and pestle that Walgreens uses as a symbol for its stores." He chuckled to himself, the Harvey Wallbanger almost made it.
Oh my God, I thought in me dream, the woman can't get her brain to work with her eyes for the life of her. From a distance, I'm sure the Walgreens sign does look like the comic theatre mask. But really? You'd have to stand very far away and have some other blind person suggest that was what it was. Oi!
Well, Dragon's Harvey Wallbanger was done and left on the bar top as Weasil came back with something neon green with a small flame on top. I remember that because I was fascinated at the colour and the blue flame that danced on top, the alcohol burning merrily, the Weasil sipping from it, not losing a beat or burning himself. For some reason, I was not compelled to ask him what it was and how it was he wasn't melting his face off.
"Sooo," I said leaning well back and watching this phenomenon, "you never told me what you gave your wife for Valentine's Day."
"Ooh, I didn't," he laughed, "Well I got her a car battery."
I sat there thinking I heard wrong, but I knew I did not. I repeated his words in me head and shook it in denial.
"You did not."
"BUT I did!"
"Why would you give her something like that?"
"Well, last year I got her a fir tree because she ran the one we did have down and never replaced it. I thought I'd save her the trouble," he said shrugging, "and this year her battery was dead and she hadn't done a thing about it."
I was speechless but only for a few moments. Of course that would make perfect sense in the world of the Weasil. The rest of us? Not so much. But here's the story on the car battery. The car, a BMW is four years old, has only 2000 miles on it BECAUSE Lady Weasil doesn't take it out in the elements. Yes, you're thinking right, if it rains, sleets, snows, or any precipitation of any kind is expected, the shiny motor stays garaged and with a motor cover over it. As you know it rains quite a bit in the UK and the winters have recently been very snowy, thus the low mileage. So there it sits, battery gone for never having the engine turned on. SIGH.
"I wouldn't think she was happy with the tree?" I decided to plunge in on last year's treasure and work me way up to a car battery.
"Uh no, she said she could always have dug one out of the woods if it meant that much to me. BUT Gabe, the thing is she didn't do that either, so there you go. Instant fir tree."
Like this all made sense. I sat there with me face in me hands and was jolted out of me reverie by Dragon slopping her Harvey WallBASHER on the table and pulling up a chair.
"Oh that's nothing," she started, "my father wanted a grave plot for his birthday. He said it was the gift that would last forever."
"NO, he did not!" I said.
"Yes, he did so," she said, "so we all chipped in and got him one. There was a sale."
"NO! You are making this up, grave plots DO NOT go on sale!" I stated emphatically.
"Well, this one did and we snapped it up and gave it to him."
"That's just sad," Weasil chimed in.
"Not really, he's getting a lot of use out of it now." She said taking a swig of her drink.
"You know," the Weasil said thinking out loud, "maybe that's what I should get for the wife next year. She doesn't have one."
"WHAT?" I exclaimed. I was sitting with two crazies I was.
"Who said romance was dead?" The Dragon laughed, elbowing me and making me slop what was left of me Guinness on me shirt sleeve, "Dead, get it?" She laughed.
Oi, oi, oi!
"Hey Gabe, I have a factoid for ya," Weasil said to change the subject.
"And what's that?" I asked knowing full well I'd regret asking and I did.
"Your people, believe less in God than they do in ghosts! Something like 40% do."
"Oi." It was all I could utter.
"I assume you are proud of that statistic," Dragon said to me.
"No . . ." I started and knew if I challenged them they'd have a field day so I shifted me tactics, "only about 40%, I'm surprised," I said smugly.
Dragon laughed into her drink and I think she said, "I'm certain the percentage of the clergy would be up there high in the ranks of those ghost believers."
"Well, I got something better than THAT even," Weasil said, "someone took a survey in New York City on St. Patrick's Day last and asked who the patron saint of Ireland was. No one knew. DUH!"
Dragon giggled, and I sort of chuckled.
"AND, it gets better, when they told them it was St. Patrick, everyone nodded and said, "Oh yeah the Irish saint" and well, everyone in Ireland knows he wasn't Irish at all, he was Welsh!"
And we laughed again. Weasil was carrying on with this for a bit but me mobile phone rang and I looked down at a text message from Wolfie, it read, "Lin plays we r 2 go," which was really "R we going 2 see Lin play?" I texted him back, "Yes, all set." And he wrote, "Set we r." Then he wrote, "Lose they will," which was really "The Celtics will lose." I had to stop and wonder why Wolfie was sounding a lot like Yoda. With me thought processes so confused by this, I missed half of what Weasil was going on about, but whatever it was Dragon was laughing and not at Weasil's silliness, but at ME! I had no clue what he had said that made me the butt of a joke.
To put the skids to that I asked Weasil what ever happened to a girl he was dating before he met the crazy who is Amanda the Panda, as he refers to his beloved wife.
"OH you mean . . . " and he nodded, and I nodded back. "Well, I decided she was a handful and I broke it off."
"A handful? And Amanda be a ride in the park?" Dragon exclaimed as if she knew Weasil's significant other.
"Well yeah, she is compared to the other. BUT about the other one, it got interestin' cause she said if I didn't come back to her she'd poison herself. Yup, she did."
"What?" I said not without a hardy amount of incredulousness in the word.
"So what happened? Did she? Is that what you're saying?" The Dragon egged him on.
"Welly, no, she didn't. Did I mention she was already married?" He asked.
"No, you conveniently left that out," I said.
"Welly, two months later she ran away from the then husband with some other bloke, she did. Let that be a lesson to your arse Gabby, never git yourself entangled with a married woman. This one, well she was of affected character she was, and forward as the day is bright, AND worst of all, unbred even."
"Unbred?" Dragon scoffed at the one who was affected, Mr. W.
"But never mind that I be not accustomed to the society of lasses who are dumb and can't seem to speak a full sentence before they lose their concentration and go on to something else. The mind boggles." He finished throwing up his hands.
Neither Dragon nor I said a word. We kept our thoughts to ourselves, it was safer that way. But YOU know exactly what we were both thinking. Yup, the young whippersnapper does all that too, talking about something, and the next minute onto something else and it leaves you thinking, what just happened, what'd I miss? Yee-ah.
"At least with Manda, she thinks for herself. It took her two years to accomplish this, but now she does." He said very proud of this.
What was I to say to THAT?
"And besides the other one was a mean, scraggly humbug." He said his thought out loud.
Dragon and I exchanged looks as we both took a sip from our glasses to give us something to do, until I realised me glass was empty. I got up and refilled it, the silence was heavy in the pub until the Dragon said, "And you miss her!"
Oh yeah he does, you could tell by the way he looked at her as if he was caught in a trap. I tell ya, I don't understand the lad at all. There he was dissing her and the next minute he's missing her.
"Look here Weasil," I said coming back to the table, "Amanda be a nice, amiable, witty, well-bred lass and you lucked out."
"Yeah, I suppose," said he taking a sip from his fiery glass. "But if I had stayed the course, I would be there filming humbug's mother trying to outrun a dog."
Dragon and I exchanged startled looks and she bit before me asking him what he was talking about.
"Welly, the humbug's mum had hip surgery and now she can get around pretty well whereas before she had to take baby steps with a cane. So her surgery has gone so well, the cane is no longer needed and she wants to take up running short distances. So, she has convinced her humbug daughter to throw a stick to see if she can outrun their sheltie in a game of fetch!"
"Get out of town!" Dragon said not believing a word.
"No, really this is what is going to happen and they set a date that her recovery will be complete so she can do this. I want to find out what that date is and go film it and then put it on YouTube."
"Seriously dude?" I asked him, but I could see he was serious.
"Welly, first she wanted to run alongside humbug's horse, but she realised the horse would be going too fast."
"And the dog won't?" I asked laughing.
"You would think the dog was old but it's only three years old and it may be short, but I know it's fast. So how the old lady got this in her mind I dunno, but I wanna see it for myself." Said he.
After this we just sat silently, Dragon with her face cradled in her hand looking at Weasil like he was some kind of circus attraction and me, I just sat there thinking none of this was real, it was a dream, and GABE WAKE THE HELL UP! Only I couldn't.
Dragon broke me inner self pleading with this, "What I want to know is if the old lady gets the stick, does she get a dog treat?"
Oh my God!
But then she changed the subject to a problem of her own.
"I have a dinner party next weekend. I've invited my close neighbours and they are of the age of me and mine, but we have a young couple with a small child of four or five. They brought him to a neighbour's holiday party and he was climbing all over everything. I was distracted to watch her priceless antiques come near to destruction from this. The poor mother was chasing after the young hellion and the dad just stood there with a drink talking to the assembly. Since then, I have heard they bring young upstarts to all such gatherings and I can't not invite them." This she mused into her Harvey Wallbasher, but never to not have a solution the young Weasil perked up.
"Surefire way to stop that is to write on your invitation they might want to leave young zippy home because your granddaughter was over and had a case of the measles and while you are sure the infection is out of the house, might be best to leave young zippy home to be safe."
"Wonderful, genius!" She said all brightened up.
Me eyes were saucers in me head they were. This was the most insane conversation I've had in a dream that I can remember. I think. And hearing Weasil called a genius was so disturbing me brain decided to abandon slumber. Well, that may have done it because suddenly I was awake, the clock alarm buzzing like a massive swarm of bees. I shut it down and lay there for a moment realising it was leap-year and I had dreamt a lucid dream and that meant (if the legend be true) I'd be having that conversation with Weasil and Dragon sometime between now and next leap-year (whenever how many years that will be). WHICH means, neither of them will be out of me life for a very long time and somewhere down the line, I will not be reporting the news, I will be tending bar!
Gabe
Copyright © 2012 All rights reserved
R. Linda:
I went to sleep and I had a dream I did, and oh what a dream it was. It be a leap-year dream and here is why. Leap-year dreams be not altogether good nor bad dreams, but dreams are just the same. It be an old O'Sullivan legend that if you dream lucidly on Leap-Year morning, your dreams are premonitions of the years to come until another Leap-Year appears. I don't know what O'Sullivan made this up, but one of them did and me family has always held this as a truism. Yup, they do. And, they find ways of weaving their dreams into some deja vu moment during the year with one of these quips, "See! I told ye I dreamt on leap-year mornin' we were eating Irish stew, and here we be!" Oh yeah, that be definite proof it be. How many times a year do we feast on Irish stew I want to know. Several.
I thought this be normal growing up, I was a dumb little f----er and did believe everything me grumpy grandda (in particular) told me. The man be a professional liar, but I didn't find that out until it was too late. His lies were ingrained in me foolish brain since an early age, and the lies were hard to deny they weren't true especially when I was brainwashed for years by this grumpy lying old man. I tell ya!
So here it be, me leap-year dream. I was sitting in an Irish pub with the Weasil and there was no one there but us and Dragon, and the Dragon was bustling around doing "things" as we sat at a high pub table chatting. What she was doing exactly I have no memory but I think she was rearranging glassware just so I wouldn't be able to find the correct glass to make a certain drink. This would be something she'd do best when it comes to me. Nothing in the world of Dragon and meself is ever less than confused. Anyway, the pub seemed to belong to me it did, and I don't know where I got it from, nor did it look familiar, but I was comfortable there holding court.
I had a half glass of Guinness and the Weasil had an empty glass. He got up as if it was his usual business to go behind the bar and make another drink for himself. He asked me if I needed to top off me beer and I said no, but the Dragon piped up.
"Make me a Harvey Wallbasher." She said.
"A wot?" He asked, standing very still like he heard her wrong.
"She means a Harvey Wallbanger," I threw over me shoulder at him.
"Whatever that Galliano and orange juice drink is." She said bustling around.
Weasil shrugged and started putting it together as I sat there shaking me head.
"Oh Gabriel," said she, "I see there is a new theatre on Route 101A in Milford. Across from the supermarket."
"Across from the supermarket be a Walgreens," I said visualising the area in me mind.
"No, there is a red and white sign with a comic theatre mask advertised on the building."
"OHHH," Weasil said realising better than me what she meant. "She can't see can she?" He said laughing as an aside to me hoping she wouldn't notice.
"Why?" I asked him.
"The red and white sign is the mortar and pestle that Walgreens uses as a symbol for its stores." He chuckled to himself, the Harvey Wallbanger almost made it.
Oh my God, I thought in me dream, the woman can't get her brain to work with her eyes for the life of her. From a distance, I'm sure the Walgreens sign does look like the comic theatre mask. But really? You'd have to stand very far away and have some other blind person suggest that was what it was. Oi!
Well, Dragon's Harvey Wallbanger was done and left on the bar top as Weasil came back with something neon green with a small flame on top. I remember that because I was fascinated at the colour and the blue flame that danced on top, the alcohol burning merrily, the Weasil sipping from it, not losing a beat or burning himself. For some reason, I was not compelled to ask him what it was and how it was he wasn't melting his face off.
"Sooo," I said leaning well back and watching this phenomenon, "you never told me what you gave your wife for Valentine's Day."
"Ooh, I didn't," he laughed, "Well I got her a car battery."
I sat there thinking I heard wrong, but I knew I did not. I repeated his words in me head and shook it in denial.
"You did not."
"BUT I did!"
"Why would you give her something like that?"
"Well, last year I got her a fir tree because she ran the one we did have down and never replaced it. I thought I'd save her the trouble," he said shrugging, "and this year her battery was dead and she hadn't done a thing about it."
I was speechless but only for a few moments. Of course that would make perfect sense in the world of the Weasil. The rest of us? Not so much. But here's the story on the car battery. The car, a BMW is four years old, has only 2000 miles on it BECAUSE Lady Weasil doesn't take it out in the elements. Yes, you're thinking right, if it rains, sleets, snows, or any precipitation of any kind is expected, the shiny motor stays garaged and with a motor cover over it. As you know it rains quite a bit in the UK and the winters have recently been very snowy, thus the low mileage. So there it sits, battery gone for never having the engine turned on. SIGH.
"I wouldn't think she was happy with the tree?" I decided to plunge in on last year's treasure and work me way up to a car battery.
"Uh no, she said she could always have dug one out of the woods if it meant that much to me. BUT Gabe, the thing is she didn't do that either, so there you go. Instant fir tree."
Like this all made sense. I sat there with me face in me hands and was jolted out of me reverie by Dragon slopping her Harvey WallBASHER on the table and pulling up a chair.
"Oh that's nothing," she started, "my father wanted a grave plot for his birthday. He said it was the gift that would last forever."
"NO, he did not!" I said.
"Yes, he did so," she said, "so we all chipped in and got him one. There was a sale."
"NO! You are making this up, grave plots DO NOT go on sale!" I stated emphatically.
"Well, this one did and we snapped it up and gave it to him."
"That's just sad," Weasil chimed in.
"Not really, he's getting a lot of use out of it now." She said taking a swig of her drink.
"You know," the Weasil said thinking out loud, "maybe that's what I should get for the wife next year. She doesn't have one."
"WHAT?" I exclaimed. I was sitting with two crazies I was.
"Who said romance was dead?" The Dragon laughed, elbowing me and making me slop what was left of me Guinness on me shirt sleeve, "Dead, get it?" She laughed.
Oi, oi, oi!
"Hey Gabe, I have a factoid for ya," Weasil said to change the subject.
"And what's that?" I asked knowing full well I'd regret asking and I did.
"Your people, believe less in God than they do in ghosts! Something like 40% do."
"Oi." It was all I could utter.
"I assume you are proud of that statistic," Dragon said to me.
"No . . ." I started and knew if I challenged them they'd have a field day so I shifted me tactics, "only about 40%, I'm surprised," I said smugly.
Dragon laughed into her drink and I think she said, "I'm certain the percentage of the clergy would be up there high in the ranks of those ghost believers."
"Well, I got something better than THAT even," Weasil said, "someone took a survey in New York City on St. Patrick's Day last and asked who the patron saint of Ireland was. No one knew. DUH!"
Dragon giggled, and I sort of chuckled.
"AND, it gets better, when they told them it was St. Patrick, everyone nodded and said, "Oh yeah the Irish saint" and well, everyone in Ireland knows he wasn't Irish at all, he was Welsh!"
And we laughed again. Weasil was carrying on with this for a bit but me mobile phone rang and I looked down at a text message from Wolfie, it read, "Lin plays we r 2 go," which was really "R we going 2 see Lin play?" I texted him back, "Yes, all set." And he wrote, "Set we r." Then he wrote, "Lose they will," which was really "The Celtics will lose." I had to stop and wonder why Wolfie was sounding a lot like Yoda. With me thought processes so confused by this, I missed half of what Weasil was going on about, but whatever it was Dragon was laughing and not at Weasil's silliness, but at ME! I had no clue what he had said that made me the butt of a joke.
To put the skids to that I asked Weasil what ever happened to a girl he was dating before he met the crazy who is Amanda the Panda, as he refers to his beloved wife.
"OH you mean . . . " and he nodded, and I nodded back. "Well, I decided she was a handful and I broke it off."
"A handful? And Amanda be a ride in the park?" Dragon exclaimed as if she knew Weasil's significant other.
"Well yeah, she is compared to the other. BUT about the other one, it got interestin' cause she said if I didn't come back to her she'd poison herself. Yup, she did."
"What?" I said not without a hardy amount of incredulousness in the word.
"So what happened? Did she? Is that what you're saying?" The Dragon egged him on.
"Welly, no, she didn't. Did I mention she was already married?" He asked.
"No, you conveniently left that out," I said.
"Welly, two months later she ran away from the then husband with some other bloke, she did. Let that be a lesson to your arse Gabby, never git yourself entangled with a married woman. This one, well she was of affected character she was, and forward as the day is bright, AND worst of all, unbred even."
"Unbred?" Dragon scoffed at the one who was affected, Mr. W.
"But never mind that I be not accustomed to the society of lasses who are dumb and can't seem to speak a full sentence before they lose their concentration and go on to something else. The mind boggles." He finished throwing up his hands.
Neither Dragon nor I said a word. We kept our thoughts to ourselves, it was safer that way. But YOU know exactly what we were both thinking. Yup, the young whippersnapper does all that too, talking about something, and the next minute onto something else and it leaves you thinking, what just happened, what'd I miss? Yee-ah.
"At least with Manda, she thinks for herself. It took her two years to accomplish this, but now she does." He said very proud of this.
What was I to say to THAT?
"And besides the other one was a mean, scraggly humbug." He said his thought out loud.
Dragon and I exchanged looks as we both took a sip from our glasses to give us something to do, until I realised me glass was empty. I got up and refilled it, the silence was heavy in the pub until the Dragon said, "And you miss her!"
Oh yeah he does, you could tell by the way he looked at her as if he was caught in a trap. I tell ya, I don't understand the lad at all. There he was dissing her and the next minute he's missing her.
"Look here Weasil," I said coming back to the table, "Amanda be a nice, amiable, witty, well-bred lass and you lucked out."
"Yeah, I suppose," said he taking a sip from his fiery glass. "But if I had stayed the course, I would be there filming humbug's mother trying to outrun a dog."
Dragon and I exchanged startled looks and she bit before me asking him what he was talking about.
"Welly, the humbug's mum had hip surgery and now she can get around pretty well whereas before she had to take baby steps with a cane. So her surgery has gone so well, the cane is no longer needed and she wants to take up running short distances. So, she has convinced her humbug daughter to throw a stick to see if she can outrun their sheltie in a game of fetch!"
"Get out of town!" Dragon said not believing a word.
"No, really this is what is going to happen and they set a date that her recovery will be complete so she can do this. I want to find out what that date is and go film it and then put it on YouTube."
"Seriously dude?" I asked him, but I could see he was serious.
"Welly, first she wanted to run alongside humbug's horse, but she realised the horse would be going too fast."
"And the dog won't?" I asked laughing.
"You would think the dog was old but it's only three years old and it may be short, but I know it's fast. So how the old lady got this in her mind I dunno, but I wanna see it for myself." Said he.
After this we just sat silently, Dragon with her face cradled in her hand looking at Weasil like he was some kind of circus attraction and me, I just sat there thinking none of this was real, it was a dream, and GABE WAKE THE HELL UP! Only I couldn't.
Dragon broke me inner self pleading with this, "What I want to know is if the old lady gets the stick, does she get a dog treat?"
Oh my God!
But then she changed the subject to a problem of her own.
"I have a dinner party next weekend. I've invited my close neighbours and they are of the age of me and mine, but we have a young couple with a small child of four or five. They brought him to a neighbour's holiday party and he was climbing all over everything. I was distracted to watch her priceless antiques come near to destruction from this. The poor mother was chasing after the young hellion and the dad just stood there with a drink talking to the assembly. Since then, I have heard they bring young upstarts to all such gatherings and I can't not invite them." This she mused into her Harvey Wallbasher, but never to not have a solution the young Weasil perked up.
"Surefire way to stop that is to write on your invitation they might want to leave young zippy home because your granddaughter was over and had a case of the measles and while you are sure the infection is out of the house, might be best to leave young zippy home to be safe."
"Wonderful, genius!" She said all brightened up.
Me eyes were saucers in me head they were. This was the most insane conversation I've had in a dream that I can remember. I think. And hearing Weasil called a genius was so disturbing me brain decided to abandon slumber. Well, that may have done it because suddenly I was awake, the clock alarm buzzing like a massive swarm of bees. I shut it down and lay there for a moment realising it was leap-year and I had dreamt a lucid dream and that meant (if the legend be true) I'd be having that conversation with Weasil and Dragon sometime between now and next leap-year (whenever how many years that will be). WHICH means, neither of them will be out of me life for a very long time and somewhere down the line, I will not be reporting the news, I will be tending bar!
Gabe
Copyright © 2012 All rights reserved
