Photo by Michael Stamp

It’s hard to avoid the news that the IMF have hit town and are not even going to lay a wreath on the grave of the Celtic Tiger.  We’ve had the boom times and are now facing the bust.

I don’t write about the economy.  The only stories I cover tend to be the ones that are sparked by the money running out.  Even though both my books are about millionaires, when you’re writing about murder, even a farcical quasi attempt at one, money is never anything more than set dressing.  Death is the same whether it takes place in leafy suburbia or in a squat. It’s egalitarian that way.

But it’s hard to ignore what’s going on in Ireland at the moment.  Ireland’s party is over and the hangover has hit.  We’re left with a shambles of a government and a lot of lessons still to be learnt.  Ireland is the teenager with Europe, caught running up the phone bill and about to be denied car privileges for the foreseeable future.  The recession we’re in the middle of has hit the world but it’s knocked us for six.  Suddenly we discover that when the money was there the bills weren’t paid and the debt collectors are knocking on the door.

But what brought us to this point after so many years of prosperity? Why were the health and education systems left to fall into disrepair while the population bought holiday homes in far flung places and patio heaters bristled in every back yard?  When I think about the situation this beautiful country has got itself into my heart bleeds.  The situation we’ve found ourselves in has a feeling of inevitability and that’s not just because the party went on too long and we all succumbed to a national orgy of excess.  The problems have been there for almost as long as the republic.

Right from the start the writing was perhaps on the wall.  A health service funded by an illegal gambling operation for example.  The Irish Hospital Sweepstakes were famous for a flutter across the world and Ireland ended up with an enviable network of hospitals across the country.  Now those hospitals are closing or scaled down one by one.  The Sweepstakes themselves ended up in a sad little scandal as it was discovered that even when the cause was a noble one corruption wasn’t far behind.

I remember listening to an episode of the old BBC radio comedy show I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again.  The show starred John Cleese and The Goodies, Bill Oddie, Graham Garden and Tim Brooke Taylor. In an episode from the 60s which involved a skit about a trip to Ireland they made a crack about finding the Irish Government sitting in a woodland glade with brown paper bags full of money.  Now before all my Irish readers jump on me for referencing an Irish joke by a British show I’ll point out that it’s the subject matter of the joke I’m interested in here. The brown paper envelopes in the 60s…so reminiscent of the one businessman Ben Dunne handed former Taoiseach Charles Haughey, eliciting the now immortal response “Thanks a million big fella” back in 1991.

Then there’s the offshore gas deposits that would provide enough money to give Ireland a very nice little nest egg indeed.  But they were sold off to Shell by Minister Ray Burke (who’s since been jailed for corruption in other, unrelated, matters) in the late 1980s.

A casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that the government (who for most of the independence of the State have comprised of Fianna Fail, with or without a minor coalition partner) have plundered the country for every cent they could get while investing as little as possible of the country’s money into the services that make a functioning economy.  The observer could very well have a mental image of a robbery interrupted.  As the lights come on in a bare wood panelled room the black clad robbers are stuffing as much loot into their pockets as they can before the cops arrive.  There’s a filing cabinet overflowing with rifled papers, some of which are smouldering in the empty grate.  When the cops do arrive our robbers fall back on tried and tested denials.  “It wasn’t me Gov, no one saw me do it.  You can’t prove nothing.”

Of course I’m not the casual observer.  I live here and work here.  It’s hard to build a fantasy scenario when you’re afraid of how much the looming budget is going to dig into your pay packet.  Something really fundamental’s going to have to change here if things are going to get better and stay better.  Ireland is a wonderful country, and don’t let anyone tell you different.  But it’s been run into the ground by a load of people who shouldn’t have been let near a business let alone a whole country. For a republic that was born out of so much idealism it’s heartbreaking to see it brought so low.  Greed and ineptitude has won out and now all that’s left is to pick up the shattered pieces.  Let’s hope something better rises out of the wreckage and Ireland can learn from past mistakes.

If you haven’t been following the news or if you’re not Irish and are wondering what the hell I’m talking about it all started yesterday evening when the news broke that Minister for Science Conor Lenihan was to launch a self published book by a constituent which aims to debunk the theory of evolution.

The story had been buzzing around cyberspace for a couple of months but as the launch neared it gained critical mass and went well and truly viral.  The subject was being discussed on two popular Irish forums, Politics.ie and Boards.ie then it found it’s way onto Twitter.  As tends to happen, this sent the story into the stratosphere.  Before long the story had been picked up by high profile tweeters like Ben Goldacre, the science writer and Guardian columnist.

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/24424753852[/tweeted]

Dara O’Briain, the comedian and broadcaster also chimed in.

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/daraobriain/status/24415254156[/tweeted]

Then the story got picked up by the traditional media appearing on the evening news on both RTE and the BBC.  Conor Lenihan appeared on RTE’s 9 o’clock news completely unrepentant.  He said he didn’t see a problem with the launch as the author, John J. May, was a constituent and a friend.  His name disappeared off the launch flyer on Mr May’s website.  Then this morning the Irish Times announced that Lenihan had pulled out of the launch.

This is John J. May.  This is the man who Conor Lenihan was willing to hold himself up to public ridicule for.  Many, many years ago I worked for John May.  He ran a company called The Day You Were Born.  The name kind of gives it away.  For a small fee you could get a piece of paper with information about the day you were born.  You know the kind of thing – that day’s headlines, sports results, what was in the chart.  You can still get that kind of thing now but back then, in the early 90s it was a reasonably new idea.

My job was to get the headlines.  I spent some very happy weeks in the Reading Room of the National Library going through microfilms picking headlines for each day in a certain year.  I still remember some of the news stories I found during that time.  The broadcast of Orson Welles’ War of the World, as covered by the Irish Times, or the reading in the Abbey of one of Yeat’s plays when he had engaged with a heckler about the merits of his writing.  I was there the day Charlie Haughey walked out of Leinster House for the last time.  I had been listening to the radio knowing something was imminent and lead a mass walkout as we all left our books and ran downstairs to watch the doleful procession leave Leinster House, ignoring our pale faces pressed up against the wire that separates the Dail from the Library.

There were a group of us working for May. Every couple of weeks, it might have been once a month, we all met up in a pub in Clondalkin where he would brief us and hand out the pay cheques.  We all thought him a little odd but we all needed the work  so no one wanted to rock the boat.  It was definitely one of the odder jobs I have had.

Years later I ran into May again.  I was getting work experience in special interest station Anna Livia FM and May turned up as a funding guru with radio experience.  Rumour had it he had run a pirate station in the 80s that had been based around where the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre is now.

John May always seemed in those days to be a bit of a Flash Harry character.  I’m not by any means suggesting that he did anything untoward, just that he was a man who always had an eye for a fast buck and was enthusiastic and diligent in getting it.  I had heard something about affiliations with some kind of Christian group but don’t know any details about that.

The way he is pushing this book of his is no deviation from type.  He’s a pushy, fast talking person and it doesn’t surprise me that he would manage to pull off a coup like this, guaranteeing his tome will get world wide publicity and will undoubtedly sell more than it would otherwise.

It doesn’t surprise me that he would end up in the middle of something like this but what does surprise me is why a government minister would get involved.  It doesn’t really matter if Conor Lenihan goes along to tomorrow’s Gorillas and Girls launch party in Buswells Hotel.  What does matter is the fact that he agreed to it in the first place.

He might think that he was going in a personal capacity but he is a government minister with special responsibility for science and the book is anti evolution.  What exactly did he think was going to happen.  Surely if John May is a friend of his he would know that May would make sure the launch got as much publicity as possible.  It’s years since I’ve seen the man and even I could figure that one out.  The problem the minister doesn’t seem to understand is that in cases like this there is no “personal capacity”.  If in his personal life he is a rabid creationist, say, he should not be the man standing as a figurehead to promote and champion Irish science. If he can’t understand this surely at the very least his political acumen should be severely in doubt?

The Lenihan debacle was bad enough but this morning another embarrassing story broke, this time centring around the Taoiseach himself, Brian Cowen. This morning Brian Cowen appeared on Morning Ireland, the main breakfast news programme in the country.  It was a pre arranged interview.  The Fianna Fail party, his party, were having their yearly think in down in Galway before the Dail resumes sitting next month after the summer break.

You would have to have spent the last year or so on another planet not to have heard of the spectacular crash and burn that has been the Irish economy.  Things have been bad for a while now and this December’s Budget is likely to be a particularly tough one.  You always know things are bad when the media start over using the word “swingeing” when talking about funding.

Cowen’s appearance on radio to talk about the economy isn’t so very unusual in these trying times but this morning something about his voice on air and the way he bumbled through some of his answers provoked a fairly speedy response.  Opposition politician, Fine Gael’s Simon Coveney got the ball rolling.

[tweeted]http://twitter.com/simoncoveney/status/24458595143[/tweeted]

When Cowen got off air he was approached by the waiting media in Galway.  TV3′s Ursula Halligan asked him if he was in fact hung over after a late night, a fact he spiritedly denied.  But by then it was too late.  Once again the story had leapt from Twitter into the waiting arms of the International media.  As I write this the story of the question and Cowen’s denial has made it onto the BBC news.  It’s also been picked up by the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and has been picked up websites in South Africa and India.  It’ll probably keep growing.

Throughout the day those who were in the bar of the Ardilaun Hotel near Salthill in Galway last night, where the Fianna Fail party and attendant political correspondents are staying, came forward with stories of what went on last night.  Stories of late night sessions abounded, but whether or not anyone breaks ranks to give a full blow by blow account remains to be seen.  In the end only those who were there on the night will know exactly who was there and what went on but again, it’s not really important.

On Liveline this afternoon, members of the public were queuing up to give their support to the beleaguered leader.  Everybody deserves time to unwind, they said.  Give the guy a break.  We all like to think our politicians are human, Ireland perhaps embraces such displays of human frailty more than most.  Maybe this was why Bill Clinton decided to wait until he was on a visit to Dublin to apologise from his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.  But there’s a big difference between Brian Cowen and Bill Clinton in this regard.  Clinton was leading another country.  He was a visitor and his admission put us in the glare of international media.

Brian Cowen is leading this country and he’s not accused of playing around with an intern.  The suggestion is that he was unprofessional enough to stay up so late he was groggy and hoarse the next morning when he knew he had an interview on one of the most listened to shows in the country, his country.  He’s the guy in charge.  He doesn’t get to play with the rank and file.  He has the ultimate responsiblity for steering this sinking ship and, at a time when decisions are being made about how much the country is going to suffer in the forthcoming Budget, surely coming on air sounding, at best tired and disinterested, at worst hung over, is not the way to instill confidence.

Once again if he can’t understand why appearances are important now, why having credibility as someone who’s holding the reigns is vital.  If you were working in a company and had heard rumours of redundancies and pay cuts how would you feel if you came into work to a boss who was unshaven, sweating and looked like they were wearing last night’s clothes.  I’ve no idea what Cowen was wearing on the radio this morning, he could have even been in his pyjamas, but he sounded as if he was wearing last night’s suit.

What both incidents in the past 24 hours have shown is that there are people in Fianna Fail, who are the majority partner in our coalition government, who do not understand that the job they are doing has a lot to do with appearances.  You keep up appearances to keep people’s confidence – not just the voters but also the world outside.  All these two stories have done is give a picture of a country that is floundering, one that is a joke.  A country that has no leadership.

It’s that that makes me embarrassed to be Irish today.  I hope it embarrasses those at the centre of the stories as much.

Escaping from yet another Dublin shower today I found myself in the Dead Zoo.  I’ve fond memories of the Natural History Museum here, a museum of a museum with it’s moth eaten specimens leering out of wooden case after wooden case but it’s been closed for the last couple of years.  A tour of teachers, being shown the academic potential of somewhere that has never been anything other than educational, almost came a cropper when a back staircase collapsed under the weight of years.

It was closed immediately and remained so for years while it was made safe for a modern, and more litigious, public.  It finally reopened in April of this year, although the upper floors, with their cases of bugs and fishes will remain closed until someone can work out how to install wheelchair access to the Victorian building and deal with the problem of railings that are far too low for today’s obviously lemming like masses.                                                                                            

Natural history museums of their nature tend to hark back to an earlier age of discovery.  The golden age of entomological specimen gathering was in a time when people didn’t worry about endangered species and cut a murderous swathe through most of the animal population of the globe.  Bats with desiccated wings like onion skins, baby birds frozen in moth-eaten anticipation of food that never came and elephants with visible stitches fixing a premature disembowelling don’t fit easily with our queasy modern sensibilities.  Death imitating life can be a bizarre and macabre sight with fatal bullet wounds and sword marks carefully patched for display and family groups made up of animals that were born in different corners of the globe.

You won’t find multi media exhibits in the Dead Zoo or interpretive exhibitions aimed at progressive education, Dublin’s Natural History Museum is frozen in time … and all the better for it.

There are few places you can go today where you are effectively stepping back into time, into a different way of thinking, another age.  The museum was set up in 1857 to house the Royal Dublin Society’s growing collection of entomological specimens.   Dr Livingstone himself spoke at it’s inauguration.  The cases of international species on the first floor record, not just a search for knowledge but also the growth of an Empire.  As the British flag crossed more of the globe so the carcasses started to arrive from more far flung places.

I’ve been researching my family tree recently.  My dad’s family were in India before the British Raj working for the East India Company.  Looking into the glass eyes of an Indian deer today I realised it had been alive, had been running away from the hunter across a parched landscape when my grandfather was a small boy somewhere on the same subcontinent.  For a second it was a window into my own history.  Just for a second.  The Indian deer was straddling a stuffed fawn that had made the move from the living zoo to the dead one some time at the turn of the 20th Century.

Elsewhere the Victorian zeal for categorization is exemplified in a wall of glass frames housing the  impressive collection of R.M. Barrington.  Mr Barrington, whose picture sits on the wall beside his life’s work was the author of the snappily titled The Migration of Birds as observed at Irish Lighthouses and Lightships.

It was a wonder there were any birds left to migrate after Mr Barrington’s thorough investigation.  The cards inside each case read like the shipping forecast.

On the back wall the skeletons of man and his closest relatives quietly proclaimed it’s faith in evolution while a nearby display showed our ascent through a parade of skulls passing through several million years of history.  Incongruously between them was the case of Pepper’s Ghost, a giant fish caught in 1861.  It was thought to be the largest trout ever caught until it was denounced by the Department of Fisheries a century later as an oddly marked salmon.  Pepper’s Ghost was relegated to a corner of the first floor, it’s usurper getting pride of place in the Irish collection of the floor below.

There are very few places like the Dead Zoo left.  Most have moved into the new century with interactive displays for children and the whole multi media experience.  Here in Dublin the most you’ll get are a couple of cabinets with drawers you can pull out, but if you’re looking for video presentations and a cafe you’re in the wrong place.  This is a museum of a different time and it’s a credit to the National Museum that the place has been left as such.  Where else can we step back in time and see things as our grandparents saw them?

Today I’m writing in praise of fountain pens.  It might sound a rather perverse eulogy about an irrelevant luxury but my fascination has a far more practical root.  I use them every day and they’re as much a part of my kit as my laptop and my shorthand notebook.

I’ve used fountain pens pretty much all my life.  I went to one of those schools where they were considered to have magical properties developing the handwriting of small children.  If we used our fountain pens (cheap plastic Stypens with washable blue ink and only that) our handwriting would exhibit such exquisite regularity and grace that anyone reading it would be totally at our mercy…or something. 

I bought into the hype but as a lefthander I had  to endure years of ink stains and smudged pages with no sign of this miraculous calligraphy we had been promised.  I got the hang of it eventually though and could write pages at a time where the nib didn’t gouge a hole in the paper or the ink sputter little blue raindrops all over my science homework.  I actually got to like the feeling of the nib gliding across the page and my hand never cramped with a fountain pen the way it would with those evil scratchy biros that were the only cheap option before the advent of gel pens.

One of the first things I bought when I left home was a proper grown up fountain pen, a black and gold affair to replace the sugar pink Waterman I had been using up till then.  When I got my first job as a journalist I went out and got a grown up Waterman for more money than I’d even spent on a pair of shoes.  But as I got into the job the pen ended up sidelined for anything other than a brief note or my signature.  I started typing everything and my speeds increased until the words seemed to magically appear on the page almost as fast as I had thought them.  The only time the pen got taken out of it’s leather case was to write Christmas cards and each year I noticed how far my handwriting was slipping from the graceful loops we were taught to aspire to in school.

But there are times when the clack clatter of the keyboard seems a little bit too aggressive.  Those times when an idea is taking its time in forming and the blinking of the cursor becomes a blink of accusation that taps out it’s taunts in a staccato rhythm.  When there’s no deadline looming and there’s time to indulge such thoughts something a little more sensuous is in order. 

I recently went on a bit of a quest to find a pen that I could write with as smoothly as I can type.  Something that would glide over the page so smoothly and sit in my hand so neatly it was just an extension of my arm.  A pen that would allow the hand to form the curves of the word and smoothly as the fingers tap out the qwerty code to put thoughts on the page.

The magical pen is apparently an Esterbrook.

These little pens were the Volkswagen Beetle of the pen world, manufactured in their millions by the American company Esterbook from around the Second World war.  They’re so common they can be found cheaply on EBay and they clean up to look as if they were made yesterday.

I use an SJ, like the green pen in the advert, smaller and thinner than the standard J model.  It was  made sometime in the 1950s.  It’s light and sits perfectly in the crook of my hand.  But the best thing is the nib.  You can change the nib on an Estie and the choice of alternatives is vast.  I can get a nib designed for shorthand or one that will give my writing the look of a thin ribbon on the page as the line widens and contracts according to the direction of the stroke.

But the best thing about using a vintage pen is the history.  I have no idea who owned my little pens before me; whether it was the pen of a school child trying to master that elegant penmanship I could never get the hang of in school; or maybe a secretary whose shorthand would surely have put mine to shame as she took dictation in a Mad Men pencil skirt and figure hugging sweater.  Maybe it belonged to a writer or a journalist doing what I do long before I was born.

Using a pen like that makes a blank page an invitation not a challenge and these days my handwriting’s no longer looking like it was the work of a drunken spider.  It can coax out tentative ideas when the clock’s not ticking and best of all does not need a nearby power supply like my laptop.  I’ve some time between trials and I’m looking forward to blocking out some new ideas with my little pens.  Most of the time the tools of my trade are the latest gadgets, netbooks, flash drive recorders, social networking and all that jazz.  Sometimes it’s nice to get back to basics.  It really is a nicer way to work.

When I was in school in Sligo the trip to the flicks was the once monthly treat for boarders.  I went on my first proper date to the cinema.  It was hardly the most obvious date movie…a film called Skindeep most famous for the scene where you see light sabre-like duelling condoms.

Once I’d left school and moved away from home, cinema became a refuge from long days and a strange city.  The cinemas along Abbey Street here in Dublin were my favourites – the Adelphi for the Hollywood blockbusters and the tiny Lighthouse for foreign films and arthouse.  I can remember a friend and I going to see Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves dozens of times during the summer of 1991.  Both of us can still quote most of Alan Rickman’s Sherriff of Nottingham dialogue by heart.

The Lighthouse was a different experience.  Tiny and red carpeted the screens had an intimate atmosphere I’ve never encountered before or since.  Screen two in particular only sat around around 30 people.  I remember once, during a showing of Tous Les Matins du Monde staring the Depardieu father and son, someone started handing round Maltesers to the whole audience – there were only about six of us.

The Adelphi and the old Lighthouse are long gone, as is the Adelphi’s sister hotel the Carlton which used to be at the top of O’Connell Street opposite the Savoy.  By then the Irish Film Centre had opened up in Temple Bar, showing art house and independent films, retrospectives, foreign films but also providing a hub for a certain section of the cinema going public.  There was a restaurant there, a bar and a shop.  The big airy space in an old glassed over courtyard seemed fresh and modern.  I was working for a community radio station at the time, while I was in college.  I’d got involved with the movie show and used to love going to the IFC in the morning clutching paper cup of coffee and balancing a notebook on my knee in the dark.

I saw so many films in those morning showings, too many to detail here.  I’d always wanted to review movies and was finally living the dream.  I used to sit in the dark listening to the scratching of pens from all the other reviewers around me.  I enjoyed every film I saw, partially because they were free, even if I would sometimes find fault – just for the show of it!

I loved the IFC, now the IFI, but I always missed the Lighthouse.  Even in the early morning press screenings, no one ever handed round Maltesers and there was never the same sense of camaraderie, that you knew you were in the company of like-minded people, or at least, one or two like minded people and quite a few homeless people and pensioners.

So I was delighted, ecstatic even, when I heard that, not only were we getting a local cinema in Smithfield but it was going to be the resurrected Lighthouse.  This time last year it opened and we’ve been going ever since.  In it’s new incarnation it’s a far cry from the tatty seats and cigarette stained red carpet of the old Abbey Street venue.  The new Lighthouse is quite simply the nicest cinema in Dublin and in the top three of cinemas I’ve ever been to.

I love the multicoloured seating in the largest screen and the fact that every screen is different.  I love the fact that it’s designed with lots of interesting spaces and places to sit when you’re not watching films…it cries out to be used for seminars and conferences and talks, and I gather it’s been pulled into service for that very purpose more than once.  But probably the thing I like most about it is that it’s so far underground, deep under Smithfield Square, that mobile phones just don’t work – and anyone who’s had a pivotal cinematic moment ruined by some gimps novelty ring tone will agree that no signal is a good thing in a cinema.

I’ve become positively evangelical about the Lighthouse.  It really is a world class place and worthy successor to it’s Abbey Street predecessor.  It deserves to do well and I really don’t think I could deal with losing the Lighthouse for a second time!

I’ve nothing against the multiplex experience.  There’s nothing wrong with a decent blockbuster when you’re in the mood and multiscreens are great for those.  My favourite in Dublin is Cineworld on Parnell Street…a good selection of films and it’s actually a big enough place that even marauding packs of kids don’t get underfoot while they’re waiting for the latest pre teen sensation to start.  But a small local cinema like the Lighthouse that shows interesting films and champions the titles that would never get a multiplex showing…that wins every time.

I love films and I will always love going to the cinema.  Being able to get lost in another world for a couple of hours knowing that around you there are other people lost in exactly the same world is like nothing else.  It’s a totally different form of storytelling than books, communal rather than solitary and there are times when that simply can’t be best.  Theatre is a local experience.  A play is done performed by a specific group of people in a specific venue and will only be that way with those people and that venue.  Cinema is universal, one vision suits all, the whole world can see the same thing.

The Lighthouse is a cinema for people who love film, run by people who love film.  That can’t be bettered!

I’m not a violent person but after sitting for the past few hours staring at the dreaded Form 11 I want to visit all kinds of biblical plagues on the Revenue, and the Department of Finance too while I’m at it.  There are so many pages…and so many numbers…and so many notes!

I’m a writer – I deal with words – numbers make my head hurt.  I would happily give the Revenue a third of my wages (well maybe not a third) if only they would write their forms in plain English!  Until I had actually looked at the damn thing I was pretty confident that filing my first tax return would be no problem at all, but now three hours later I’m feeling like the school dunce and it’s still not filled in.

I know I should get an accountant.  Getting an accountant would be the sensible, sane thing to do, given my numerically challenged status.  But that would be way too sensible.  I decided over the summer that I would file at least one lot of returns myself.  So I could understand in future how it’s done.  Well I take it back!  I don’t want to file anymore.  And after Tuesday’s Budget they’ve only gone and made it even more complicated.  Income levies indeed! (Not even getting into the whole 2009 Budget thing here).

At this stage my brain is well and truly boggled and my frustration levels are sky high.  It doesn’t help that all my self employed colleagues have been telling me how simple the whole process is.  Or that I’m struggling with a form that doesn’t even have my name on it.

Because this is the other thing that irritates me about the Tax Man.  Ever since I went self employed I have become someone with whom he will not talk.  I have become a chattel of my (PAYE) husband’s and no longer merit a letter or any form of correspondence.

There is actually a reason for this.  It’s not just random meanness, unfortunately.  Myself and the husband, you see, are jointly assessed.  And the husband is the principal earner.  When part of the joint income is self assessed, it’s supposed to be the principal earner who fills out the forms.  It’s that assumption that irritates me.  I was the one who filled out the forms to become self assessed.  They took my PPS number to do it.  Then they wrote back to the husband and told him I was now self assessed.

This was never the case when I also had a PAYE job.  I was deemed important enough to be sent my own tax forms in their own envelopes.  Even though we were still self assessed.  Now that I have more paper work to do and horrible confusing forms to fill out, I don’t even warrant a letter.  They even tried to tell me I needed the husband’s permission to use the Revenue online service…though that’s been cleared up now.

I’ll eventually get my head around the form, and I will be sad so hand over the money but hand it over I will.  I just don’t understand why just because I’m self-assessed one of us has to cease to exist.  I get the principal earner idea but I’m talking stationary here.  All I want is the letters addressed to me.  Rather than having to locate them in the husband’s rather chaotic filing system.

It’s all very frustrating and annoying and is enough to make you want to be a tax exile!  I bet then they’d use my name!

Tonight is a night to sit back with a nice glass of wine and laugh…and so that the neighbours – or the husband don’t have be carted off in a straight jacket there had better be something to laugh about.

So I’d like to share a couple of my favourite comedy sketches…and if you like them please go and buy the dvds they no doubt came from, I’m long enough in this job to realise the importance of copyright!

First up, and with immediate apologies to my very nice publishers (see my links on that one) but in memory of every PFO (the first word is “please”, the second anglo saxon and the third a preposition!) I’ve received over the years, one from the team behind Black Books.  If you’ve never seen the show, it’s written by one half of the team who wrote Father Ted and is equally brilliant though there’s no priests in this one.

Ah piss midget – that’s up there with twathandle (seen scrawled on a postbox in Drimnagh).  Next up, the inimitable Dave Allen…duelling funerals!

Finally, this just makes me laugh every time!

Well, I hope at least one of those amuses you.  Enjoy…