Emerald Bile

"Hello Ma! It's Noreen"

"Oh hello Noreen. I hope you aren't calling to tell me you have the swine flu. Your father and I will not be coming to visit if you do. Not with his chest"


"No, we don't have it yet. I'm actually ringing because I have some very sad news"

"Is it the drains again?"

"No Ma, it isn't the drains. Actually I was calling to tell you that X has died. Y's sister - do you remember? You gave her a cutting of one of your shrubs once"

"Oh I thought she had died long ago. Are you sure you haven't got the wrong end of the stick?"

"No, she died last week. It was peaceful, and the family at her side after a long and drawn out illness"

"She's been dying for years, that one. I'm sure I remember you talking about her dying when you were only eighteen and that was a very long time ago - half your life she's spent dying."

"Well she's dead now, so even tomorrow it will be less than half my life that she's spent on the way out."

"Don't be cheeky Noreen, it doesn't become you at your age. And maths was never your strength. Why are you telling me anyway. Are the family after donations for something? I bet it's some peculiar humanist charity, something about choices, one of those sorts of things. She was always keen on letting people know how "different" she was"

"Actually her funeral is going to be a little different. She's getting buried just in a hole with no tombstone, in unconsecrated ground"

"I'm surprised she is being buried at all. I would have had her down for the cremation" (I sense my mother crossing herself) "She was very green, and those green people go on, don't they about how "cremation is better for the environment". It is not better for it, look at the Indians. They cremate everyone and their country is no environmental role model whatsoever. I find it very tiresome when people have these wacky funerals. I mean, she wasn't a Catholic so I suppose it is different for her in some ways"

"Well, she'll be going to hell won't she. So it doesn't really matter about the hole and no tombstone thing. And there'll be plenty of cremation down there"

"Don't say things like that Noreen. That's a terrible thing to say about someone who has recently died. I thought you were fond of her?"

"No, not especially. I just thought you liked to hear about when people die"

"Why would I want to hear things like that at my time of life? I like to hear about positive things, like people buying new houses and getting pay rises and having children. I'm not interested in death - that's just around the corner for me anyway. Did I tell you I have been put on a stronger dose? The doctor was amazed at my test results - never seen anything like it one someone with a working pulse"

"Right well, I have to go now Ma. Great talking to you. Will I send your condolences?"

"You'll do no such thing. I'll write a letter and I have a lovely card that will be just ideal. I bought a whole load recently. Mrs X has started making her own sympathy card range using hand made lace. She held a sale a few weeks ago to raise money for a new limb.........."

I don't take the bait - Although I am actually desperate to know about the limb and to discover which amputee/mutant will be on the receiving end of it, or even to find out if Mrs X's lace cards are going to provide limbs for poor foreign children - but I can't, I have to go to work. Besides I know it will be a long story, one designed to show me that, although I may have advanced a little in the "who's died recently" competition, I still have a reasonable distance to go before accomplishing proper Irish Mammy crazy.


Noreen

Fuck you.

Noreen

New, palatable president of America, Mr Obama, and highly unpopular British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have been awfully quiet about Iran and its elections, whilst news agencies and wild-eyed bloggers have been yapping on and on and on about it: "Let's have a nice moderate leader for those Iranians," they say. "Get rid of that one with the big smile - we hate him, he's a loony".

The reason for the reticence is because Mr Obama is "doing the maths" about the outcome for the world. He can't have Mr Brown piping up "We love democracy and the moderate one" until Mr Obama has finished the following two sums. I have just done the answers for him below, in case he has dyscalculia.

Sum 1. Iran + moderate leader= ?

Answer 1. Iran + moderate leader =no resistance from China and Russia regarding Iran's obtaining nuclear weapons =Iran gets the nuke= Israel gets the arse and nukes Iran = destruction of the world

Sum 2 Iran + nutter leader= ?

Answer 2 Iran + nutter leader= no one, not even China or Russia will want Iran to have any sort of weapons whatsoever - in fact the whole world will be opposed to them even being allowed to run with a pair of scissors=Israel remains focused on winding up Palestine and making a nuisance of itself in other regards = world remains relatively intact

If I were the President of America, or the Prime Minister of the UK, and someone said to me: "Noreen, you have been doing the maths for hours, what's it to be? Will we support the one with the crazy eyes or the other, quieter one?" Do you know what I would say?

I would say "Did you know Xerxes had Jews in his army?" and then I would pull a special politician face, which looks slightly amused, but also has a tinge of sadness and wisdom. And if they asked me any other questions, I would smile and wave, and then go inside and bitch about how small the White House actually is, or complain about the really vulgar colour scheme in 10 Downing Street and how the government art collection seems to be favouring very peculiar new artists that look like they paint with their arseholes.
Noreen

I do not like shopping for clothes much, ever, unless I can go to a tailor and get stuff sewn for no money at all. It's one of the few benefits of living in Third World Countries, which I frequently have to do. At the moment, however, I live in England, which although having many of the trappings of the Third World, doesn't run to me designing all my clothes myself and having them hand made by my own personal sweatshop for sixty pence. So I asked some English people for advice on how to do my dress shopping on a reasonable budget. This woman told me about a place called TK Maxx, which, she assured me, despite sounding like a Turkish chicken shop, was actually a place where one can buy "designer" clothes, at knock down prices.

Now, I think I really have the hang of England, and generally when people say "designer", they actually mean some type of overpriced leisurewear, like a Fred Perry shirt, or ugly, top-end, high- street merchandise, like Burberry trousers, or Hackett rugby shirts. But that's fine - I'm not proud and since I think that most people in this country look like they are wearing their outfit for a bet, it is probably safer not to worry too much about the old appearance and to blend in with them, as they are an unpredictable and vicious race.

The main thing that really irritates me about shopping in English shops, is the personality of the shop assistants they have hanging around in them, lezzing about the changing rooms, pulling the curtains back and having an opinion about how you look. I mentioned this dislike to the woman with the shopping tips: "Oh they do not have that in TK Maxx" she said. "Not a bit of it. You just browse and everything costs around eight pounds and it's all designer and brilliant as the stock changes regularly and you can get really amazing stuff". She stuck out her leg and showed me a pair of sparkly leg warmers which made her look like an extra from Fame. "I got these there and they were fifty pee" She said "And I got a Calvin Klein suit for a tenner".

I took myself to TK Maxx on a Saturday afternoon, which I know is not the brightest time to go to a clothes shop, as they are all cram packed with fourteen-year old girls with individually lacquered eyelashes standing proud of their eyebrows, in identikit leggings and eighties polyester tops, shrieking at each other and dawdling themselves around the clothes rails. You even find these kids in Country Casual and The Edinburgh Woollen Mill. Fuck knows what they are after, but like tills, every clothes shop has its quota of them.

TK Maxx was a great barn of jumbled items, assembled on the worlds longest rails, ordered only by signs saying "skirts", or "girls fashion". I pawed weakly at a line of tops on a rail close to the entrance, while two female, human doughballs, with necks that melted into vast, rounded humps of shoulder, encased in draped lilac jersey, eyed me; muttering to each other in a strong local brogue. Flanking these larger women, were sixteen fourteen year old girls, dressed like shrunken stevedores, grabbing clothes from the rails, indiscriminate of size, or price, or colour, clutching them possesively to their chests. I fished out a sleeveless blouse with a pattern that resembled regurgitated wham bars. The size was right, the shape and colour were hideous, but it felt like a small achievement, to have found one item in the store, that I could theoretically wear, if I were entirely out of clothes and didn't have the werewithal to sew plastic bags together into a makeshift dress. People around me were rummaging in large crates, pulling out plastic hats, sandals made of rope and hats made of felt and lurid, garish colours and hundreds and hundreds of ugly washed out jeans. I held the shirt a little distance from my bosom.

A woman with thick, leathery skin approached me, holding out her hands.

"Do you want that or not?" She said.

"Oh, do you work here?" I said.

"Are. You. Going. To. Buy. It?" she said, rudely, "Because if not, I want it".

An Eastern European woman appeared and solved the problem, by removing the shirt from my hands and taking it off to the till herself, with leather-face chasing her, as fast as her towering, strappy, golden, wedge shoes would allow her. I was relieved: I had been saved from making a terrible wardrobe mistake, and the two old slags fighting over the top created a perfect distraction from my utter gormlessness at shopping in a rotten old aircraft hangar filled with overpriced jumble. TK Maxx - fuck off. I will have to toughen up and become a nudist.
Noreen

I was talking to a man recently, and he was telling me about his work. He reeled off his job title, which was something boring: "Investment Manager in Emerging Markets", something like that. Anyway - it was pretty obvious, from this title, the sort of stuff he worked at - yawny boring finance in poor countries. An awful lot of people have lunatic job titles, that give you no clue at all about what they do for a living: "Vice President, Integral Logistical Resource Development Systems" that sort of thing. When someone describes themselves in those vague and hideous terms, run fast, because they will follow it up briskly with a tiring and considered explanation for the layman. Dreadful.

Because this emerging markets man had a boring job that had already explained itself to me in one short phrase, he felt the need to make more conversation about his working life. "I'm a bit like Ronseal." He said. "I do exactly what it says on the tin".

I watched the Ronseal advert, and it is correct up to a point. Written on the side of the tin is the description of the contents: "floor varnish" (noun)and yet, one can describe the use of the tin contents as "varnish" (verb). If those were the only words written on the tin, the claims of the advertisement would be entirely true. But on the tin, as well as the words "floor varnish", there is also the brand name "Ronseal" in big letters - probably the first word any purchaser notices. As far as I know "Ronseal" doesn't have a meaning beyond "a company that pretends to be incredibly down to earth" (noun). As well as the massive words "Ronseal"(noun), there are a whole load of other words on the tin, including a description of the ingredients in the product, which are also not ways to describe the use of the product. "Ethanol" (noun)isn't something you do (verb), unless you are homeless. What Ronseal need to do, is to be more clear "Does exactly what the verb on the tin says". That is all
Noreen

Jesus was always going on "talent this, talent that" in parables. But His definition of talent, as a skill or gift, was not entirely accurate. For a talent in those early AD days, was actually a unit of measurement - a measurement of volume, or mass. The "talent" was a substantial quantity- about the weight of a large child, and was frequently used as a measurement for precious metals. From there, it was a short step for the talent to be seen as a unit of currency.

Jesus, however, was not a fan of the materialism, so he rebranded "talent" to mean "the ability to do anything more than breathe in and out".

Noreen

Long metal chopsticks
struggle to hold cold noodles.
Plastic zippers
outrank brass buttons.
Land of simultaneous movement and immortality,
where God resides in each person
and there is no finer delicacy
than the bitter bile of crows

Noreen Jong-Il

St Patrick is not actually my favourite saint, my favourite Saints are the ones to do with physical problems - St Lucy, the patron saint of styes on the eye and St Blaise, patron saint of throat diseases. What useful saints they are. However, I do have very great respect for the Patron Saint himself, as he drove away snakes from Ireland, and I fucking despise snakes.

I've heard people giving out: "St Patrick did not actually drive the snakes away, the ice age did it". Fuck away off with the ice age, you jealous, snake-riddled nations. St Patrick got rid of the snakes and that is that. Are there snakes in the world? Yes there are. Are there snakes in Ireland? No. So it isn't because of the ice age, is it! It's because of the holiness.

Across the Irish Sea, St George, Patron Saint of England, got rid of dragons from England. If there were still dragons (not Komodo ones, they are not dragons, they are lizards) in other parts of the world, then I would absolutely think: "Well done, St George. Fair play to you, for getting rid of the dragons out of England". It would be especially impressive if there were still dragons in Wales and Scotland but these lumbering, terrifying creatures were unable to cross the Severn Bridge, or go over Hadrians wall without combusting. However, I don't think there ever were dragons in England, or indeed anywhere in the world. Now I'm not saying St George was a lying shite and made up a dragon that he had driven out. No, I think he did have a go at driving out cold blooded animals but I think rather than mythical dragons, he focussed his driving out powers onto newts and then there was a spin put on his achievements by the media.

Whatever the size of the creature he destroyed, St George was clearly not as efficent at his job as St Patrick, as newts remain in England to this day. I'll hand it to St George that he reduced their number - newts are now an endangered species, but he didn't sucessfully rid the country of them, nor did he leave a legacy of people who were going to take up the baton after his death by finishing off his work and getting rid of the rest of the newt population.

In fact, where I live in England, there are several groups of bossy people in sturdy shoes, who make it their business to poke around in damp wells and springs, hunting for newts and taking pictures of them, and getting incensed when people want to build houses, or dig lakes near the newts and they start on, protesting and making picket lines and hollering: "What about the newts!" Recently in the local paper there was a four page spread, explaining how newts are as fussy about shagging and eating as pandas, and so it is, therefore, our national duty to nurture newts, and to make sure they have absolute silence and darkness and privacy to copulate in, and no children must disturb them ever. And there have been groups of people gathering in the evenings, discussing whether, as well as maintaining a utopia for newts, we should also draw pictures of newts at the top of all municipal documents and put a newt on a flag and so on and so on - you know what the English are like.

No, St George did not do a particularly good job at pest control, especially compared to his highly efficent, holy neighbour St Patrick, and that is the real reason for his fete not being a public holiday in England. Don't say that to anyone English though, or they will cut you.
Noreen