A woman is out shopping when she gets a call to say there’s been a terrible accident and her husband’s been taken to hospital badly injured. Making her way to the car she notices a sign over the entrance to the new mall: Today only - All stores, all items, just €5. I’ll just have a quick peek, she thinks. Five minutes won’t make a difference.

In the first shop she sees the most wonderful pair of Manolo Blahniks. And only €5. Too good an opportunity to miss.

Just down the way she picks up a party dress by Rebecca Taylor. Kittenish and feminine. Irresistible at €5.

A pair of jeans, numerous tops, belts, more shoes, and two hours later sipping a coffee admiring her purchases she remembers the phone call. She races to the hospital and is met at the door by a stern looking doctor - a woman of her own age but with the air of authority of one much older.

Well, well, well. I hope you are ashamed of yourself. You swanning around the shops and your poor husband fighting for his life on the operating table. Now, missy, let me tell you, you’re shopping days are over. Your husband was so badly injured that he will need round the clock care for the rest of his life. He will have to be fed and washed and changed like a baby. And you will be the one doing it. There won’t be time for shopping. Shame on you. Shame on you.

The woman breaks down crying uncontrollably with guilt and remorse. With thoughts of how her husband has suffered. Of how she will cope.

Ha, says the doctor. I’m only messing. He’s dead. Show me what you bought.

Tempus fugit - time flees - not time flies as is the common misconception. That would be something like tempus volvit, but the linguist among us can correct me - over to you Gayé. How we came to translate it as time flies is just probably that it makes more sense in English that way.

On languages, while we’re on the subject, I am considering making a representation to the Terminology Committee of Foras na Gaeilge - If the act of shopping is translated as ag siopadóireacht, then surely going to the Italian take-away should be ag chipeadóireacht and likewise, buying sweet and sour pork with fried rice should be ag chineadóireacht.

Anyway, back to time. Why am I obsessed with it these days? I seldom rush. Rushing leads to mistakes. If I’m going somewhere, I leave early and am never late. An erstwhile Mrs. Sneeze insisted we, or rather I, try the leave early so she’d never be late system, and while it worked, it wasn’t any fun. She got dumped fairly rapid I tell you. Bad hair anyway. But that’s a story for another day.

Now I’m not advocating being painstakingly slow either, which is something I must explain to the staff down my local.

I know what time the sun rises and sets. I know when it’s midday. That would be enough for me were it not that a lot more precision is required when dealing with people. The dog is happy being fed at dawn, a good ramble and a chat at noon and a snack at dusk. People don’t seem to like me saying I’ll meet you 2 hours after sunrise. So I am forced into wearing a watch.

And a grand watch it is. I have it 12 years and like most of my possessions it came to me in a roundabout way. A lad bought it off a lad who was a jeweller for half-price as a gift for his father, only to realise that his father couldn’t use it because of failing sight. He sold it on to me at half what he paid. So I got a £200 watch for £50. 5 year guarantee and all.

The problem is the winder broke off three times. The first two repairs cost me more than the watch itself so I’m not getting it fixed again. It wasn’t an issue until the beginning of this month when the date needed changing. But I could live without having the correct date. Now though, I’ve bigger problem. The hour has changed. Instead of being 24 hours out, I’m 25. Or 23. Hard to work out and very confusing.

In the shop this morning, the talk was all of changing clocks. My watch is 23 hours slow was met with strange looks. But I’m used to that. Just yesterday in the same shop I asked the girl do you do laces and when she said yes, I lifted my foot up on the counter. She actually tied them by the way.

So here’s what I want for Christmas in case you were thinking of getting me something. A portable sundial. See it’s got a little compass and spirit level built in. Perfect. No adjustments needed and what moving parts there are, are all enclosed.

For those of you who liked my Making Movie Magic series and would like to try your hand/arm/leg at it, well now’s your chance - Annie Rhiannon is looking for volunteers to act in two student films in early November. Full details here.

In other news, Grandad’s not giving up blogging, even though a lot of folk thought he was. MacDara said he was slowing down because of his new job. And he did. For a while. Now he’s in full flight again. Eolaí intended blogging more than ever, then the customs officials and other assorted wankers put the brakes on him. Sweary gave up totally. Kav doesn’t know if he’s stopped or not and neither do we. Seanachie has ceased indefinitely. Annie said she’d be taking a blonky break. See above. Sam took a break for the summer. Things are strange in blogland of late.

So where am I in all this? To be honest, I don’t know. I’m not running out of material. That’s impossible with the neighbours I have, the way this country’s run and the fact all manner of piffle pops into my head unannounced any time of day or night. But I am under pressure to find time to put it all down on screen. A major work project. That’s good. That means money for beer and all going well there’ll be some left over for food. A major academic project. That’s not good. Long hours for no money, just to be able to add another three letters after my name. Haven’t I enough already? A major construction project. That’s good. It went on so long. But it’s now nearing completion which is when the householder not the builder takes on the greater share of the work. So that’s not good for my supply of free time.

So the bottom line is … the one at the end … but I’m not sure what it should read. Blogging might be weak and/or weekly for the next fortnight or two. Or maybe just fortnight and a half. Or maybe 2.5 fortnights. I can’t say. I can guarantee that I’ll be back in full swing toward the end of December. Around the time of yer man’s 2007th birthday. Clients, lecturers and builders all take a fortnight out then so I’ll have time.

The offices of a property management company

Client: We’ve moved to a new house and we’re having no joy trying to sell the old one. We’re thinking of renting it out. How do we go about getting tenants?

Agent: My first word of advice is, any darker than two weeks in Lanzarote and don’t touch them.

Client: Huh?

Agent: Certain African nationalities are notorious rent defaulters. Never take them as tenants.

Client: Is it okay to take them as husbands? I did.

Agent: Fuck!

A pub on a Wednesday afternoon

Tom: Ah, there ya are Dick. Be a good man and put that docket on for me before you sit down. Me auld leg is at me today.

Harry: Jayzez, Tom, you were running in and out to the bookies like a young fella ’til now.

Tom: Well, see, that was me other leg.

We had the great eircom share sell off not so long ago. What I remember most was the incessant propaganda from every angle all but telling us how stupid we would be if we didn’t buy. Leinster House told us how we would become stakeholders in the state’s greatest corporation. (Well they wanted to offload the company, didn’t they). The banks offered tailored loans. (Well they wanted the interest, didn’t they). The outcome: Thousands lost a fortune.

Then we had the Ryder Cup. Home owners clambered to put their houses up for rent on the Internet. Hundreds of websites on which to advertise your property sprung up over night lunch. (Site creators made a killing on fees, didn’t they). The outcome: One single house that I know of was rented.

We Irish seem to fall for the hype and propaganda all too readily. Or maybe there’s something in our psyche that activates the panic buying gene - a throwback to famine times. Oh look! There’s a spud. Grab it now, you don’t know where the next one will come from.

The latest round is personal .IE domain names. If I get one more email from a two-bit reseller telling me time is running out to pre-register my personal .IE name I’m going to personally (see, I’m keeping it personal) visit the sender’s premises late at night and pour a bucket of giraffe pee* onto the CEO’s new office carpet. I was going to pour scorn, but I think pouring pee would be more satisfying.

Look lads! Leave me alone! I’m a big ape now. I can make up my own mind whether I want a .IE domain. And stop trying to hoodwink me with your special offers. I know how much a .IE should cost. Don’t try make me think I actually have to have a website associated with this address. Don’t try make it sound like a once off payment secures the name for life. Lads, lads, lads! I buy these services all the time. I know this stuff. That’s what I do for a living. Well, that and importing giraffe pee.*

Don’t give me this crap about protecting my name on the Internet and preserving it for children or grandchildren. Think about it - Paddy Mangan in Ballagh gets paddymangan.ie. Will Paddy Mangan in Fethard give a bollix? Will any of the 7,348 Paddy Mangans around the country give a bollix? I doubt there will be many offerings of bollix. And anyway, Paddy Mangan in Ballagh’s grandchild is Sophie so paddymangan.ie won’t be worth squat to her. And your man in Fethard hasn’t a clue about the Internet - he thinks it’s somewhere in America.

But most of all, lads, don’t tell me I can be pre-registered. That’s just baloney Clonakilty black pudding. The IEDR will not be accepting a single application for a personal domain name until October 31. You guys are merely compiling a list and will squirt it at the IEDR on that date. Every reseller in the country will be doing the same - at 1millisecond past 0800 GMT. Mr. Mangan in Ballagh may have preregistered with domains4u 3 weeks ago, but may lose out to his namesake in Fethard who only signed up with domains4me today if the latter’s queue is processed first.

Will the IEDR servers cope? Will it cause the equivalent of a DOS attack? Will the whole system collapse? This remains to be seen. I would hope the IEDR are working closely with the resellers to gauge the load.

Who is being honest about this? Well a few are. I have to say fair play to the folks over at Blacknight - We cannot offer ANY guarantees (neither can anyone else). And to Hosting365 - We cannot make any guarantee that your name will be accepted, but are offering a full refund (or you can choose another name) if it fails. There are others but some are fudging it - By pre-registering now, you will have the best chance of securing your chosen domain name. … The rules of application are defined by the Irish Domain Registry and their decision in relation to an application is final. No mention of queues or what the rules/procedures are exactly.

Oh look. Another email. From ezdomains. Now where did I leave that bucket?

*I got 40litres on the Internet from Universal Urine Suppliers and another 2kg of concentrate from Wees of the World dot com.

Nearly finished folks. This is the last one. Unless there’s a sequel of course.

There were another two of three days in the grounds of the Big House. Perhaps it was ten. Days seemed to melt into one another. Even when we knew we wouldn’t be called for a couple of hours we weren’t allowed leave the set. Just in case the light suddenly became perfect for that certain shot they’d been trying to do all week. It was one of those surreal I was there for a fortnight one weekend experiences.

The fight in the tent was to end with it collapsing and the character who caused the row being chased across a field by an angry mob. Chasing means running, right? Shooting a scene means doing it over and over again, right? Look, by now I was good at waiting, walking and lifting. But I’d tried running back at the dog track and didn’t like it. It lead to injuries. So I slipped away and found my new best buddy, the props guy. Right, what do you want me to do? Eh, I’m grand. I don’t need help. But they’re doing that running across the field thing, so you do need me until they’re done. Ah, I see. Okay, we’ll go dismantle those fences then. Oh, and smart move, Primal. They’ll be wrecked. Yeah, I know. And look at the poor innocents getting all excited. They can’t wait to run the bollix out of themselves.

I wasn’t caught and dragged back but Harrison, as my little Ford was to be known from then on, was. Listen, Primal, can you bring your car around and park it up beside the van over there? The van with the explosives on the back window? Isn’t that dangerous? Ah, no, it’ll be grand. We won’t be setting them off until the van’s driven into the middle of the field. Do you know anyone else with a smallish car? We need one or two more to make it look like a capark. But why don’t you just put the van in the middle of all those cars over there? No. Too many jeeps and big expensive cars. And anyway it’s too dangerous what with the explosives and shotguns and all. But you said …

So I positioned Harrison, the stuntmobile, where I was told and gave them the keys. They moved it a few times and despite my GPS (Go, Primal, Search) system it took me ages to find it that evening. I got it back intact except that the handbrake was pulled so far up it was like Al Gore’s head in his arse and I had to use a hammer to beat the button back in to release it. Where did I find a hammer? In the back of the van - a backup in case the explosives didn’t work maybe. I’m telling ya, MacGyver was only in the ha’penny place compared to ole Primal here.

But there was to be more excitement before the day ended with the clay pigeon shoot. Now, folks, listen up, said the director. We knew this was serious as the instructions were normally given by his assistant. We have 10 minutes light left. How did he know that? One take. We have to get it right. This man here asks if anyone would like a go with the gun. And Scud here will put himself forward; he’ll take the gun; aim at the clay; spot something off to his right; swing around toward you; and I need you all to duck down then. Got it? We muttered confirmative or whatever. We were tired. An expert from a gun club rattled off a health and safety statement about how guns, even with blanks, were dangerous and should never be pointed at anyone. I expected him to point out the emergency exits and show us how to don life vests.

One elderly extra rambled into the group. A bit late for the lecture. Any-wuune loike tu troiy, asked the actor in his best west-Brit. Here, I’ll have a go, said the old man, stepping forward and taking the gun from the gobsmacked actor. The director assumed the old guy was messing and pandemonium broke loose. We were in kinks laughing and the director was shouting for more lights to be brought up, everyone to get back in place and at the same time lecturing the volunteering-veteran about what extras should and shouldn’t do. Makeup touched up the two actors. Wardrobe straightened the costumes. A heavy duty cable was dragged from the far end of the field, stands erected and lights turned on. The gun was reloaded and checked by the expert. He gave another speech about gun-safety. ADs shuffled among us extras, moved us this way and that and then crouched down behind us.

The shot was done again and wrapped. In only 3 minutes after it broke loose, pandemonium had been rounded up and caught.

The weeks and months flew by and I’d nearly forgotten about the movie when it opened in the cinema. I went with a couple of friends which as it turned out was a mistake. None of us actually watched the film or even followed the plot. We were all people spotting. · Oh, look, that’s Dee Talbot. Jayzez, she’s bet into them leotards isn’t she? · Look! Look! See there. That’s my leg. · Oh god, Primal, look, that’s you. You look weird but I’d recognise that hat anywhere. · Ah ha, see, there’s my car. See it there? · See where they are now lads? Well that’s no nightclub, it’s a fekin gay bar in Camden Street. · Hold on, that’s not Clonmel, that’s the main street in Naas. And so on, the whole way through.

More weeks and months went by and it came out on DVD. I was finally able to sit down and enjoy it properly. And yeah, before you ask, I did watch it a few times more with my finger on pause so I could catch all the shots I appeared in. Would I do it all again? Probably not. But that one time was fun.