Leftover Spare Change

Every so often 'we' (as a race of people) purchase new handbags, wallets and purses. Note the 'every so often'. We know that for a man, a wallet serves a string of simple purposes and they are to hold some cash, a bank card, 16 dozen receipts (amoung which are ones for Atlantic Homecare for some strange reason?) and a multitude of concessions to a premier lap dancing club. For a woman however, an oversized handbag harbours everything from a full array of beauty cosmetics, a hairdryer, a travel Iron, a miniature GHD and Osama Bin Laden. But as if that wasnt enough, they buy another form of bag to go into their already laiden-down suitcase to hold their spare-change; The Purse. Now if I wasnt duely accustomed to getting absolutely monkey'd on a weekendly basis I wouldnt understand the need for a purse. However, in order to better explain my understanding, I feel perhaps it may be best to tell this story from a male perspective. So, any lady readers, I will count backwards from 5; you will be relaxed and calm, clear your mind and allow yourself to be transported into the drinkery of a man; 5,4,3,2 annnnd 1; Its Friday, you're just finished work, you're sitting on the bus eagerly anitcipating the oncoming booze-up. You get home and indulge in the '3 essential S's' ( shower shit and a shave), gel the hair and BOOM; you're ready to rock. What happens thereafter is not all that dissimliar to a lady's night out; you spend your night sitting under the livin da vida loca bucket only its filled with vodka instead of water and you dance around like a flightless pelican desperately trying to get airbourne. But here is the tricky part; You started the night with 3 crisp 50 euro notes in your wallet however, as the night progresses you notice that you are paying for drinks with what appears to be an unending amount of 20 euro notes that deplete into 'tenners' and eventually into 'fivers'... You have nestled your taxi money away in the tiny pocket inside your jeans in order to avoid spending it 'accidentally' and you've measured your spending to accomodate your end of the night 'munchies'. However, while you're standing there in the fast food queue, you cant help but notice a whole host of gypsy beggers staring at your bollocks - just blankly staring; their whorish mouths watering as if they've stumbled across a free stash of the 'Big Issue' - pure profit. You dont know what they are staring at until you realise that because you so intelligently paid for all of your drinks with fresh notes, the spare change in your pocket has manifested itself in what appears to be a massive erection (now personally, I bask in the illusion that my manhood is the elliptical size and shape of half a tennis ball before reaching in and taking out a handful of coins to pay for my food. I notice again however that I select the 2 euro coins instead of the 50 & 20cent coins... Makes sense to maintain the consistency of my stupidity and continue to hope that no-one pushes me into a river). You get home and take off your jeans and flippantly throw them across the room watching them anchor in mid air and smash through the floor, plummiting through the ceiling in the apartment below you and knocking the residing OAP unconscious (either that or the landing is met with a dull thud). So, you wake up the next morning to a pyramid of copper and gold coins that are lying on top of an aptly placed bank statement that you opened and stuffed back into the envelope; Its a real pain in the arse. Yet STILL - when you get ready to go out, you select the higher valued coins to take with you!!? Over time you begin to save this loose change that isnt deemed worthy enough to go back into your pocket (usually in an empty aftershave box or a tennis ball container) and it slowly and surely builds and builds; Some weeks down the line, its 10 days to pay-day, you spot the container brimming with change (that you have began topping off with 2 and 1 euro coins) and off you go to find one of those change machines in a spar that will count it for you. Its not enough that the frickin machine takes 5% of what it has counted but its so loud that it may aswell have a pre-recorded repeating voice message that plays through an attached speaker blaring; 'LOOK AT ME EVERYONE, IM A FUCKING LOSER'- how God damn embarressing. I guess the salvation comes in the fact that there was a healthy 50 quid in the savings jar and you now possess the ability to go on the 'razzmatazz', as D4-ians call it (D4-ians - deco-ism - the collective name for people from Dublin 4). On the flip side, there is always the point in your 'richness' (RIGHT after payday) when you've dropped a couple of coins and you dont bother picking them up. ' OH NOT TO WORRY I JUST GOT PAID'- you think to yourself. Or when you're cleaning your bedroom and you stumble across some loose change that you just suck up in the hoover solely to hear the sound of it ricocheting off every internal componant on its way to the bag. It boils down to the pressure that we think we are under when the shop clerk/bar man asks for the amount due - we quickly scramble through our pockets feeling like we are against the clock and then we just end up giving them a 50 euro note anyway...

Bottomline no 19 - Expect to see me with a man-purse from now on

Next post; Alcohol makes us do the 'stupidest' things

Slan mo Chara,

Deco