Last of the Letters

ManAboutForty can do little these days without comparing (or contrasting) "new" life-events to events from more glorious days. It follows that this blog might become nothing more than a historic account of the prime of ManAboutForty. Well, maybe that's unlikely. Though it might not necessarily be a bad thing.

This past week I have watched as ManAboutForty slid steadily down the "ordered-by-date-of-last-update" list of the other blogs I read. (Okay, I'm only listed on one other blog, but the point is made.) It's now almost ten o'clock on Monday, and up to now I couldn't bring myself to report anything significant from the weekend.

And it's not like it was the least significant weekend of all time or anything. The baby of the house here was One. Ireland's rugby team rounded off a hugely successful year with victory over The Boks at Croke Park. (Even more significantly, I got to see the game.) And I went greyhound racing on Saturday night with two neighbouring men-about-forty, at which meeting we consumed over a gallon of porter ... each! (Can't remember the last gallon, and that's not because of the reason you might think.)

So, eventful enough actually. However.

Facebook photos have already been published to report the birthday party. The national press were always going to give sufficient exposure to the rugby match. So that leaves the night out at the dogs (slash on the porter). Here's the story.

Night at the Dogs

I remember everything; so there's a start. I even remember getting up in the middle of the night to get sick in the toilet. (As I hinted at already, the last gallon was a while ago. And the excuse is: we think the reason for the kids being off school sick recently is down to swine flu.) That might have been report-worthy. But the detail could not compare to a night in December '88 - a glorious first - when five Smithwicks left me locked into a cubicle in CJ's... (Read that with all the ambiguity that it suggests.)

So, really nothing new from the Night at the Dogs. But then.

Another Journey Back

Tonight, there was a new comment on the blog. On the Letter from Wildwood. From another Anonymous - a "Manoverforty". We know not the day nor the hour. A trigger. A short search of the old letters drawer. More letters from then. (Bundled with an elastic band by my Personal Conservator, and marked "Private Letters".)

If ManAboutForty has run out of things to say, even before he starts, so be it. But the following extracts from two more letters from the nineties just happen to be the best thing he could find to get his blog "back up the chart(s)" this week. They are from another college friend.

L— is a present-day "manoverforty", is another father of three, and these were amongst his final two letters from the end of those days of letters. (A fact which is echoed ominously by the third last line of the final letter.) Things had moved on from the care-free urgency of getting summer-work. College days were over, and we were clawing at the coat tails of the merest scrap of a full time job.

At the time of the first letter, my friend had secured one of these scraps, albeit still living at home. I hadn't yet. In fact, I spent November of fifteen years ago painting a house that my uncle was renovating to rent to fishermen on the River Suck.

He is answering a letter I had written to him, asking him for the names of the recruitment agencies (names and addresses changed) that had obviously been so very successful for him. The reply has a certain tone of submission, energised with pleading. (Maybe borne out of writing so many job applications.) This plea is now from the other side. A plea (to the still jobless me) not to come (rather than go) "gently into that good night" in which he now found himself; after all the effort. I could still go back while I had the chance.

The plea could not be heeded, of course, and by the time of the second letter, about seven months later, the darkness had descended.

Rochestown,

Cork

December '94

Picture this, Sunday evening, 6.00pm. Our kitchen. The roast just out of the oven, the roast potatoes will take another 20 minutes. Have not eaten since 10 o'clock. The stuff that Sunday dinners are made of.

Disaster strikes! Door bell rings, greetings exchanged, and enter stage left, without que, aunt, uncle and cousins. Suddenly the previous urban bliss recedes, dimishes and reduces along with the roast. I gradually realise the roast potatoes are not divisible by this increased number, at least not in my favour.

This would not have happened in Castlebar. Oh woe, woe, why did we move? The answer: so that my kin could be closer to my roast potatoes.

6.30 - no sign of dinner. Clinking of glasses. The muffled sound of conversation from the rooms below.

The roast and I somehow connect cosmically. I feel his empathy: "Who are these infidels? They took no part in my selection, procurement, preparation and are now to gorge upon me," he cries.

"My ... dinner!," I cry, "Cest la famille et fåmé!"

-2-

Question: Who did not get me a job?
Answers to appear periodically throughout this letter.

Now Mr. M—, your chosen subject is dickheads and employment agencies in modern society. (The two terms used are wholly indistinguishable by law.)
Or
Bloom's alternative route through Ireland's iniquity.

Q1: Who is reputed to have written the first recorded PFO?
A: Michelle O'Regan, Paul Keane & Associates, Lee House, Lee Quay, Cork. 021-5131318

Q2: What agency discovered and decyphered the now famous hieroglyphs on King Tut's (B.E.) pyramid - "APICS/MECH,ELECT DEG+2YRS. HI-VOL EXP MFRING ENVIRON + C/C++/Win. C£neg. ."?
A: Shane O'Loughlin, JDCS, Munster Hse, 36 Uppr. Fitzpatrick St. Dub. 6

Go back ... before it's too late! Find another way! I'll be fine, don't worry!

Sorry – moment of weakness.

Now here’s one that comes highly recommended from the Marquis du Sade: Industrial Selection, 32 Highfield Park, Dublin 2. Do me a favour … find out who this “AT” is, and where he lives, so I can burn his house down and sell his family into slavery.

-3-

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present, fresh from their successful debut at La Scala, Milan (where they played a convincing Iago in Verdi’s Othello (not surprising): Project Management, 13 Melbourne Rd, Dublin 2.

Q3: What is the name of that famous team whose supporters sing, “And you’ll aalllllways waaaalk aaloooone, you’ll aaaaallways waaaalk allone, alone, alone”?
A: Tom Flannan and Associates, Quay Hse, River Quay, Limerick – 425644 (I think).

Q4: Here’s an easy one: who lives at Nestor Hse, Leinster Avenue, Foxrock, Co. Dublin?
A: That’s right: Peter Nestor & Associates. (Associates get about a lot, doesn’t he?)

Q5: Who has got the most honest name in the business; those fine young cannibals?
A: Head Hunt, 87 Fairhill Street, Dublin 2

Q6: What agency doesn’t give a shit whether you live or die?
(You’ll have to be a bit more specific.)
Sorry … and lives at Arthur Hse, Patrick St, Limerick – 061-317563?
A: Carlton Personnel Group.

It was all very innocent to start with. One day I wrote to one agency for a job, got no reply, but I was bitten, hooked, addicted. Soon I was writing to 20 agencies a day. Had to steal to pay for stamps. But I was happy. What a buzz, man. But then it went all wrong.

-4-

One of them replied to one of my letters!

You can’t imagine the shock. I stopped there and then. I knew I was getting in too deep. What was the name of this cruel torturer? I’ll never forget them for as long as I live. It was McMurrough & Associates, 2 Edward’s Quay, Cork. 021-322970. Bastards! May ye burn in hell!

This is taking a lot out of me, you know. I don’t know how much longer I can go on for, so please find enclosed a list I made in a mad youthful fling some time ago. And now I am passing it on to you. The king is dead; long live the king.

How goes the painting? Or, like Behan said, “No – real fucking painting”, when asked what he did for a living.

On reflection, and looking at this letter, my hand-writing is terrible. Go on – admit it.

Did M— do much hovering at the weekend? Does G— really talk like that in the mornings? What are you doing for lunch?

I read somewhere that you must ask questions in a letter. The reason why escapes me. You will surely have forgotten the questions by the time you answer them.

I am fine. I eat, sleep and breath quality now. In fact I know OSI backwards at this stage.

-5-

2 or maybe 3 weeks later.
(It’s all a blur.)

It’s me again. Sorry for the wee delay, but I work in print now, where late delivery is a fine art.

I am coming up to Galway-West on St. Stephen’s Day. Or the next day.

Question Time again.
Where will you be on those given days? What would you like from Santa? How did your interview go? Does a bear shit in the woods?

I assume at this stage you have painted faster than I have written and you have been repatriated with your family. So I will send this letter there.

Fond regards,
L—.

“And the sky line is like a skin
On a drum I’ll never mend…
And all the rain again
Falls down on the works
Of last year’s men.” – LC.

- encl.

*

Seven months later I had a ‘real’ job; complete with car and “requirement to travel on company business”. Money was in circulation. The days of stealing to pay for stamps were over – our new employers were comfortable enough to overlook a relatively minor abuse of its franking machine. (As evidenced by the invaluable source of historic information which is the envelope.) Rigourous finance departments, aware of the virtual extinction of personal letter-writing, were clearly bending their attention more towards abuse of the subsidised “free-scone-for-morning-break” scheme.

Money might have been in circulation, but some things stay the same – like Christmas will always incur loans that need repaying.

*

Cork

July ‘95

Things you can do with £40 if hadn’t given it to L— in the first place.
1. You could give it to a friend, who tardily pays it back.
2. You could pay back a friend who gladly pays it and who waits patiently.
3. You could put in your pocket and bring it to Germany.
4. Buy £40-worth of gobstoppers.
5. Think of 40 ways to spend it.
6. Write a letter based on the question.
7. Not give it to friends who promise to pay it back speedily.
8. Buy one roll of screen-printed foil security labels.
9. Get a criminal record, i.e. D&D
10. Give it to a charity … oh, you did that already.
11. Invest in L—‘s Gilt Edge, Silver Lining Enterprises.
12. Don’t invest in L—‘s Gilt Edge, Silver Lining Enterprises.
13. “Take me away from all this, Ashley”, for £40.
14. Make an anonymous donation towards the reconnection of the lads’ phone.
15. Buy something you do not want, or will ever want.
16. Spend it all in the one shop.
17. Don’t spend it all in the one shop.

I’m losing my ability to write entertaining rubbish.
Enjoy Germany.
Temptation is a terrible thing.

- encl.