The mushrooms go straight into the bin. I’m sorry but that’s non-negotiable. Mushrooms are fungus. As a child, I once dreamt they were growing out of my scalp. And an ex-girlfriend of mine once cheated on me with a guy who ran a mushroom house. (In restaurants, I usually just say I’m allergic.)

The remaining mix gets chopped, sliced, chucked in a pot and served up as moderately tasty gloop with tagliatelle and a salad. A cinch. Roll on Tuesday.

TUESDAY
Tonight’s recipe – salmon, green beans, lemon garlic butter and baby potatoes – proves slightly trickier. The Ireland v Estonia game is starting at 7.45pm and some of the things being demanded of me here seem more like party tricks than cooking instructions. (Know how to grate lemon rind onto a teaspoon anyone?)

The green beans take ages to top and tail. There are about a hundred of them and they all keep wobbling about on the chopping board. Do decent, hard-working people really need this kind of hassle when they come home at night? I doubt it. I don’t even work that hard and I can hardly be bothered.

Despite being in the oven for the requisite twenty five minutes, the salmon turns out not to be fully cooked. My dinner companion insists on hers putting back in.
- You can eat salmon raw, I protest.
- No you can’t.
- Smoked salmon is raw.
- Smoked salmon is smoked!

The match begins in five minutes. I eat my partially cooked salmon and, at the time of writing, appear still to be alive.

WEDNESDAY
If there’s a flaw in the Dineasy dinner plan it’s that the five dinners provided have a shelf life of five days. Therefore, one missed dinner can throw the entire operation in a spin. Tonight a friend has invited me to a gig. It begins in half an hour. So either I cook this now or I have pork teriyaki stir fry for lunch tomorrow. This will need to be quick.

Some of the ingredients are unfamiliar to me. Ginger looks like a cross between a potato and a clove of garlic. I have no idea how much to use, so I email Marie Claire. She advises me to throw in the lot. This may have be a calculated attempt to sabotage my dinner, because the result is almost inedible. So far, the half cooked salmon is still way out in the lead.

THURSDAY
By and large, Ciara’s recipes have been easy to follow. But there has been the occasional blip. On Tuesday, a missing comma left me wondering what a “heat drain” was and how I was supposed to remove the carrots from it. In preparing today’s stuffed chicken wrapped in smoked bacon, meanwhile, I’m asked to place a chicken fillet on a casserole dish and “slice down the middle making sure not to cut all the way through.”

I make a short incision across the face of the chicken breast. But the pocket created proves wholly inadequate to accommodate the stuffing of garlic, spring onions, sundried tomatoes and mozzarella. I’m in my sister’s house and she rather testily suggests that the fillet should instead have been carved open like a book from side to side.
- If that’s what they meant, why didn’t they say that?
- Some basic level of cop-on was probably assumed…

While she steps in to salvage the situation, I’m banished to the next room to play with my niece. Served with a generous helping of baby potatoes and a less generous helping of carrots, this ends up being my second favourite meal of the week.

FRIDAY
Friday is supposed to be reheated spaghetti bolognaise night. But it’s the weekend and I’m going out. Now I’m no Paul the Octopus or anything, but I suspect I may be seeing the inside of a kebab house before long.

They say we used to live up in trees. Well folks, climb a tree and live there for a week, and see how you feel. They also say we came out of the sea. Eh? If you lie in your bath for nine hours your skin is so wrinkled it’s not [sic] hardly recognisable. Yet a baby can be in a womb nine months in liquid without drowning, and when it’s born it’s not particularly wrinkled.

That a minister for science should think it appropriate to endorse such hilarious (and unscientific) hokum is obviously outrageous. Ireland is still viewed by some as a country with an overly strong attachment to Christian dogma. But it would be wrong to assume that the minister was pandering to an undercurrent of creationist-inspired anti-evolutionary feeling among voters here. Despite falling mass attendances, Ireland remains a Catholic country. And the Catholic Church has never taken a strong position against evolution.

In Ireland, our dwindling band of religious fundamentalists opposed the legalisation of homosexuality and divorce. They remain fiercely opposed to any liberalisation of the law on abortion. But on the subject of evolution they have been mostly silent.

Besides, as the former editor of a sex magazine called SIN, John J May cannot be what anyone would call a prude. He describes himself as “like Abraham Lincoln, self educated, and might be viewed as a polymath. [I] left school young and commenced my real education.” I took part in a television discussion with him last year and felt that I had never before encountered a man whose self-confidence was so wildly out of proportion to his erudition. He is, to put it bluntly, a crank.

So why on earth did Lenihan agree to launch his book? In his only public statement, the minister’s spokesperson claimed that he had only planned to attend in his capacity as May’s local TD and that he did not necessarily agree with the book’s central thesis (such as it is.) That would mean that he did not see (or perhaps was not even aware of) any conflict between his duties as the country’s minister for science and the endorsement of such a profoundly unscientific book.

It would be nice to say that the spokesperson was definitely bending the truth here, and that the minister couldn’t possibly have been so stupid. But I would hesitate to do so in this instance.

It’s no secret that Lenihan is one of Dáil Éireann’s less highly evolved thinkers. In 2005, he famously referred to exploited Turkish construction workers as “kebabs” during a Dáil debate. (To get the reaction of the Turkish community, the equally cerebral and culturally sensitive TV3 News visited a kebab shop and interviewed a man making a kebab!)

But there are two other points to be made to put the minister’s decision in context. Firstly, there is the local nature of Irish politics. Ireland has 166 members of parliament representing a country of less than 4.5 million people. That’s one TD for about every 26,000 people. So it is expected that TDs will be available to their constituents in way that would not be common in other countries. While he was a TD for Sligo-Leitrim in the 1970s, my late grandfather was once asked to collect a greyhound in Athlone on his way home from a Dáil session and deliver it to a constituent. (He refused.)

The second important thing to understand is that Lenihan is steeped in the traditions of Fianna Fáil. Like the Chinese communist party, Fianna Fáil has long since jettisoned whatever principles and ideals it was founded upon. Today, its only raison d’être is the pursuit and consolidation of it’s own power.

As far as this preposterous book goes then, the only consideration likely to have weighted on Lenihan’s mind is whether helping to launch it would help garner a few extra votes for him at the next election. When it seemed that it might, he agreed to help. When he realised that it wouldn’t, he withdrew. It was gombeen politics, nothing more.

[N.B. This article got over two hundred comments when it was published here this morning. Some of them accused me of being anti-Irish. You know, I don't think I am - but it would explain a lot.]

I’ve never been lucky when it comes to love. My first husband Michael was great with the kids and the sex was fantastic. But one day he ran off with my best friend Tracy and the contents of our bank account.

I found new love with Dan. He was great with the kids and the sex was fantastic. But one day he ran off with my brother-in-law Pete and the contents of our lingerie drawer. Next I met Simon. He’s great with the kids and the sex is fantastic. But now he’s breaking down our front door of with an axe and threatening to kill me.

I’m ever so upset. What should I do?

Kathleen, Galway.

Oh dear, Kathleen. Sounds like you’ve bagged yourself another right psycho. My free advice leaflet ‘My Psychotic Husband is Trying to Break Down The Front Door and Kill Me’ should help – E.B.

Dear Sir,

Prithee thee and indeed, furthertheless. With reference to Dublin City Council’s orbital traffic routing system, does it not strike you as marked, that the city’s traffic can be found to mosey hither and tither but nary a wither?

Yours etc.

Geoffrey Willoughby, Rathgar, Dublin 6

Fucking hell. My thoughts exactly, Geoffrey – E.B.

Dear Eoin,

Hats off to TV’s Carol Smillie. No matter what life has thrown at her she has always borne it with a smile. Let’s hope she finds happiness with new love Marcus.

H. Oaks, Hertfordshire.

What a weird letter… – E.B.

Dear Eoin,

The other day, my granddaughter Beckie asked me what age I was. I told her that I was so old, I couldn’t remember. She replied, “If you don’t remember Gran, you should check what it says on the back of your knickers. Mine say five to six”.

Mrs Ryan, Tullamore.

Okay. So what did your knickers say? Mrs Ryan…? I need closure on that anecdote… Mrs Ryan…? Hello…? – E.B.

[Sketched outline of an article I was going to write for Mongrel back in 2007. At the time, we'd just asked the comedian David O'Doherty to do one of our 'And Finally...' articles. By coincidence, he came back to us with a fake Readers Letters page, so I abandoned this.]

To be sure, the general drunkenness on board does make for some wonderful early slapstick sequences. But the longer this production endures, the more muddled the narrative becomes.

Characters arrive and depart at arbitrary intervals, often without warning. In one promising subplot, an exhausted night worker is pelted with soft drinks cans, crumpled up cigarette boxes and assorted rubbish. But just as his irritation looks set to explode into violent rage, his tormentor abruptly exit at Clondalkin Village and the storyline fizzles out.

Elsewhere a swarthy middle-aged man attempts to befriends an inebriated teenage girl. But the premise is hackneyed and the interplay unconvincing.

Clearly, this bus journey suffers from having far too many characters and not nearly enough character development. As a result, it is unclear whether it is tragedy, drama or gritty social satire. What one is left with then are little more than a series of clumsy, half-formed vignettes.

The 69N, ultimately, is a peregrination which crumbles under the weight of its own lofty ambitions.

Shows: Thursday – Sunday, 0.00-4.00.

Running time: 90 minutes.

Instead she is a celebration of doggedness, discipline and bull-headed good humour. Whether folding, tidying or making brown bread, what marks your Ma out from her peers is the acknowledgement, implicit in her housework, that the satisfaction of these aspirations is usually transient, even if it can occasionally also be transcendent.

Sister Maura doesn’t flinch. “It’s not your mickey Brendan”, she says. “It’s called your penis.” She put on her glasses. “Now let me have a look at it…”

Verdict: ******

(N.B. Bonus star awarded for including a nun saying the word “penis”.)

He attends team meetings, coffee mornings and going-away lunches for temps he hasn’t met. He’s sat through presentations on breast cancer awareness. He doesn’t give a fuck. But now our parent company is forced to act. Damien shown the door.

His replacement, Gary, has been seconded here from the London office. I have no idea if Gary works hard and plays hard. But that’s certainly the kind of dickish expression a guy like Gary would use. The plan is that he’ll step in, show us what’s what, help us clear the backlog and depart in four months time with an extra bullet point on his CV.

I am essentially bereft of personal ambition and had always just assumed my colleagues felt the same way. (Well, how the fuck else would they have ended up here?) Turns out I’m mistaken. Some of my female co-workers still have dreams of marrying their way out this shithole. And right now Gary is the hottest ticket in town. Hell, he’s the only ticket in town. He’s in his early thirties, single and moderately handsome. More importantly, he’s going places. Hell, his shoes alone probably cost more than our entire entertainments budget.

His goal, he tells us, is to clear the entire backlog of overdue claims, which has built up over the past two years, by the time he leaves on November 19th. That’s four months from now. And how will he accomplish this audacious goal? By ring-fencing the backlog and eliminating it. Our line managers are intoxicated by this turn of phrase. Ring-fence and eliminate. Ring-fence and eliminate. What does it actually mean though, I ask my own supervisor? “Well, first we’ll ring-fence it,” she explains, “then we’ll eliminate it.” Yeah, it’s quite a plan alright.

Gary’s secret weapon, it transpires, is a program of modest performance-related staff bonuses he’s been authorised to offer anyone who agrees to actually to get the finger out and do some work for a change. And for a while, his strategy actually seems to work. For the first time in living memory, the office becomes a hive of activity. Expensive fragrances waft through the corridors. Hemlines rise inexoribly. In one corner of the office there appears to be an orange make-up death match underway – it’s like there’s a team of Oompa-Loompas suddenly pitching in!

The excitement though doesn’t last. At the second or third of Gary’s regular team-building piss-ups, something happens which changes the atmosphere in the office dramatically. I’m not there when it happens and don’t really care enough to ask around. But from what I gather, it would appear one of the girls made a pass at Gary. And he rebuffed her advances in such a manner as to convince her rivals that they would not have fared any better.

The announcement, the following week, that Sarah Cawley – Damien’s buxom former deputy – will be taking over from Gary when his secondment ends fails to improve morale. Sarah has worked her way up through the ranks here and, boy, do the other women hate her for it. Lurid rumours of her supposed ongoing affair with Gary soon sweep the office. He picks up on the change in temperature but doesn’t seem too perturbed. She, inevitably, takes it personally.

Soon things are back to the way they were before Gary arrived. So much so, in fact, that when an email is sent around one day out of the blue, asking us all to congregate outside Gary’s office, I doubt I’m the only one who has forgotten the significance of the date: November 19th. Gary is handing out plastic glasses and pouring drinks. It will later transpire that he has, on some bizarre technicality, just re-designated thousands of outstanding jobs as completed. The remaining backlog has been cleared at the stroke of a pen.

“Congratulations everyone on a job well done,” he beams. “Now if you’ll just gather around we’re going to take a few snaps…” A couple of stooges gather in front of a large, mocked up calender with today’s date circles in red ink. The rest of us look on impassively, sipping what must be just about the world’s crappiest champagne. These photographs are for the company newsletter back in London – nothing surer.

“Sarah, Sarah… come in here, grab the other end of this thing!” This guy is like Goebbels or something. What the hell is he doing now?

They unfurl an enormous banner and hold it up for the camera. In letters three feet high it proclaims:

WE DID IT!

What begins as a few isolated titters soon swells, with the help of a few nudges and discreet whispers, until soon the entire room is convulsed by scarcely contained laughter.

Gary appears perplexed, but he shrugs it off. He’s got a flight to catch. He doesn’t give a shit. Sarah takes another look at the banner and her face turns white. In the published photographs she looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a massive oncoming vehicle.

No takers, but she’s undeterred. The girl is a conversational terrorist. No topic too banal. She tries another tack.

“I don’t really know what I want for lunch… Trish and Emer are going to Little Caesars… She rang… Trish, like… Says we’re going to Little Caesars… D’you wanna come…”

“And I was like… I don’t know, love… I have a salad in… Made it last night for me dinner… But got a take out in the end… So I says, I’ll bring it in for lunch tomorrow… You know?”

I shoot a glance around the office. Everyone’s staring straight at their monitors.

“I mean, I’m getting kinda tired of Little Caesars too… Wuz there yesterday and all… In Little Caesars, like… Supposed to be watching my points, like… But I don’t really feel like that salad, you know… I don’t know what I feel like…”

“I’m kind of hungry but I’m not hungry… D’you know that kind of way?”

She catches my eye, mistaking my incredulity for a glimmer of interest.

“D’you know that kind of way, Eoin?”

For some inexplicable reason, I break the habit of a lifetime…

“I think do,” I reply. “It’s the hungry/not hungry paradox, isn’t it?” She appears confused. “It’s kinda like the whole tired/not tired thing we discussed this yesterday, or the busy/not buy thing we talked about the day before. Continue talking – please! – because I for one am fucking riveted here…”

“Are… Are you being sarcastic?”

Jesus, what a moron.

She stands up from her chair. Her mouth is open as though she’s lost for words. But she isn’t. She’s leaving a gap for someone else to admonish me. No one’s biting. “I know you’re only joking love,” she coos, with as much condescension as she can muster, “but you’ve got a fucking weird sense of humour.” I make no reply, but smile weakly. She walks back to her PC, then turns around sharply again. “I’m serious… I mean, for fuck’s sake, like… You’re a nice lad but…”

My attention returns to the newspaper article I’m surreptitiously reading. It’s hard to concentrate though. I don’t know if I’m blushing. I really hope I’m not.

Then I receive an email…

From: Dennis O’Sullivan
Sent: October 28th 2004 11:53
To: Eoin Butler
Subject: fair fucks

go on ya boy ya.
dat was fuckin funny fair play to ya
EVERYONE in comms hates her

That’s odd. I thought they were friends. A couple more in the same vein. Then…

From: Edel McCabe [emccabe@ifm.ie
Sent: October 28th 2004 12:01
To: Eoin Butler
Subject: Here Here

Hey eoin
you don’t know me or nething but anita was telling us whats happening over there with The Bitch from Hell as we likw to call her. she was shagging one of the managers in ifm when she was here. she says she did’nt know he was married but shes a lieing s;lut and she gave another guy a std

3cheers from all in ifm

The peroxide volcano erupts. Its as though she intuitively knows the wires are hopping with friends and colleagues sticking in the knife. She wavers slightly before bursting towards my desk. “Who you think you are anyway?,” she sneers. “You haven’t said boo to a goose as long as you’ve been here. Now you seem to think you’re… I don’t know what. But you’re impressing no one!”

Trouble is, I’m not entirely sure she’s correct.

A couple of people ask me if I want anything from the shop. This doesn’t happen normally. At the Pig & Heifer I get a “Hey Eoiny!” from a man who usually walks right by me. No one calls me Eoiny. This is really strange. Beneath those bland facades, it seems, my co-workers despise each other with an intensity that puts my own casual loathing of them to shame.

They’re angry, rudderless and looking for a hero. With one unscheduled departure from the script, I’ve inadvertently pulled a sword out from the stone here. How the hell do I put it back?

Fuck.

I take a deep breath and remember a lesson I learned many years ago in school: Relax. Sit tight. Do nothing. Tomorrow another boy will bring in a calculator watch and all of this will be forgotten.

I open the newspaper.

Part 3 is here.

“With er… regard to the salary review you were promised, as such, we are presently not in a position to implement any… increases, as such, going forward… at this time.” Days later I catch him pouring vodka into a vase in his office. I don’t tell anyone. But I make a conscious decision to do a hell of a lot more dossing, going forward. By now though, the only way I could be less productive would be if I were to start pouring soft drinks over people’s PCs or inserting swear words in their correspondence.

The most obvious recreational outlet for a man of my disposition – the internet – is denied our department by longstanding company policy. Admittedly, if you were to let most of the idiots here loose on the information superhighway, they’d lose themselves in masturbatory abandon faster than you can type NYMPHO TEEN SEX SLUTS IN NAKED GANG BANG ORGY. But it’s still a pain in the arse.

So I go online after work, emailing film scripts, political biographies and journal articles to my work account to read the next day. When those run out, or when they don’t get past the email filter, often wind up composing endless off-kilter missives and sending them to myself. Of these I keep a careful record, since they might one day provide the documentary basis for a Guilty But Insane plea.

From: Eoin Butler
Sent: 27 August 2004 14:49
To: Eoin Butler
Subject: Dummy album review

Dear John Paul,

It is with considerable confusion that I acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 21st.

I am well aware that you are the Supreme Head of the Roman Catholic Church and that I write album reviews. But I fail to see how this makes us rivals.

I know you’re worried that I’ll mistake [BANDNAME]’s [WHAT IT ACTUALLY IS] for [WHAT ITS SUPPOSED TO BE] and I appreciate your concern in this regard. But I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I’d go as far as to say [SOMETHING FUCKING HILARIOUS].

With all due respect Your Holiness, it is you who would appear to be “losing it”, not I.

Yours &c.,

Eoin

I’ve been angry and frustrated most of my time here. Angry with my bosses for being so incompetent. Angry with my coworkers for being servile and pathetic. But most of all, angry with myself for even being here in the first place. Even anger fades. And when it does, all that’s left is the unbearable purgatory of just being here.

The ringing telephones. The clanging prints. Those inane stop-and-chats of the How’s things? / Ah, you know yourself / Has to be done / You said it! variety… I’ve developed a shell in which I can shut all those things out. A near total detachment from the hellish reality that surrounds me. I skirt the perimetres of sanity, frankly, for vast chunks of my working day. But I do so within clearly defined parametres (visiting hours: nine to five) and I swear I’m able to deal with it.

Hell, I’m tapping into a level of self-awareness that would previously only have been known by the likes of Alexander Selkirk, Mordechai Vanunu or the monks of the Skelligs Rock. And I’m doing so on a clock-in/clock-out basis. I’m adrift in a deep green sea of my own subconscious but I could meet you in the pub in fifteen minutes if you wanted to. I’m tripping along the ledge here, tripping along the ledge with no fucking rope and no fucking safety net and these fools are actually paying me to be here.

This isn’t mundane, this is the greatest fucking job in the world…. Let go of me you fools, fucking PUT ME DOOWN!

Comments on this article are here.

Part Two is here.

This SHOULD NOT be allowed to stand! This WILL NOT be allowed to stand!

By God there will be JUSTICE for the CHIP SHOP FIVE!!!

You’ve probably heard the “official” version of what happened in Marco’s Take Away last Saturday – the version peddled by Marco’s dumpy wife Antonella and her “friends” in the local media. Yet there remain some unanswered questions:

1. The Local News called it “perhaps the most shameful night in our community’s history”. But what about that time a handicapped boy was locked in the phone box and he pissed himself? What about then??

2. At least 20 people were involved in the incident in Marco’s and yet only five get all the blame. How is this fair??

3. Antonella says because we were the ones who started all the trouble. But how would she know? She’s five foot nothing. She has to stand on a box to see into the till. Rudolf the Red Nose Fucking Reindeer could have started it for all she knows.

4. Marco also accused the Chip Shop Five of stealing his poor box. Then he remembered that he hasn’t had a poor box in the chipper in six years. Where’s our apology you slaphead fool?

5. An anonymous source (who, oh who, could it have been??) told the papers there was a “hard core of five young hooligans” who were “totally out of it”. However the barman from The Glimmer says we were “well on alright, but not out of it”. Bit of a discrepancy, ne c’est pas?

6. Noted slapper Natasha Whelan told The Local News she got a black eye (which no one has actually seen) when she was “caught in the crossfire” in Marco’s. We threw a batter burger at you, you dozy bitch. A batter burger doesn’t give you a black eye. Second degree burns maybe, but not a black eye.

Until our demands (which we have yet to formulate) have been met, we will be pelting Marco’s Take Away with eggs and wet toilet paper on a nightly basis, weather permitting. Oh and if you’re reading this Antonella, we spoke to our lawyers and they said they hope a bird shits on your head.

Because the Chip Shop Five have RIGHTS! The Chip Shop Five have APPETITES (and a taste for fast food)!

O Glory, O Glory to the brave CHIP SHOP FIVE!!!

Signed on behalf of the Justice for the Chip Shop Five Committee:

WILLIE JOE PADDEN
WINSTON CHURCHILL SEAN “PUFFY” COOMBS
DESMOND TUTU EOIN BUTLER