THESE ARE exciting times for me as I am now the proud owner of a bed. Never before have I been able to point at any item of furniture and expound See that bed over there, the one with the black satin sheets and the leopard skin duvet cover? That belongs to me, that does! Of course most people will be unmoved by this revelation because for them, it s just a bed. For me, though, it s a milestone; just like when I left home for the first time and discovered that things like soap and toothpaste and toilet paper don t just appear in the bathroom. You have to buy them . . . with your own money.
The reason I ve been out bed shopping (as opposed to hopping!) is because I ve just moved into a new house. This move has convinced me that of all the men in my hometown, Birr, I am the 38th luckiest. The most fortuitous of all, needless to say, is Mr Mouse Kelly, who many will remember as the rugby enthusiast who bagged a cool #4 million on the National Lottery a couple of years ago. Then there s Richard Coughlan, the town s young up-and-coming international golf professional. Then there s about 35 hurlers with much sought after All Ireland medals they can call their own. Then little old me.
Readers with long memories may recall a review competition run by Hot Press in conjunction with Ian Dempsey s now defunct Beatbox several years ago. Better writers than I entered, but I had the savvy to rip the piss out of the pope and won first prize. Part of this prize involved writing four more articles for HP, and on the strength of them I was lucky enough to be offered the nearest thing to gainful employment that I have ever experienced.
Through this position I was given the opportunity to embark on a course of what the Dutch would call Total Journalism, by performing a stand-up comedy routine and chronicling the experience. This led to further stand-up routines, and soon after, people started paying me money to make rooms full of people I didn t know laugh. It was at this point that I got cocky, went to London and bought a bed.
So, because my entire career to date has been based on a single incident of chutzpah followed by a mind-numbing array of lucky breaks and chance encounters, it has occurred to me that the milestone that is my first bed purchase could well signal the point where everything starts to go horribly pear-shaped.
So far, though, all remains well. As I mentioned in my last column, I have moved into a new house. It s a very big house and my bedroom is approximately half the size of Offaly. It s in Clapham South, is above a bakery (mmm, smell that bread baby!), is within spitting distance of the off license, the bookies, the supermarket, the Tube, the park and the good friends I was staying with prior to my move. It is also the home of Madeline and Finola, a Scot and a Sasanach respectively, who have made me feel very welcome and seem blissfully oblivious to the innate Offaly savagery for which the name Barry Glendenning has long been a by-word.
Indeed, house-sharing with girls is excellent, as the fact that they acquire things like plants, decorative blue bottles, candles and pictures more than compensates for the occasional ten minutes spent cross-legged and swearing on the wrong side of a locked bathroom door. They also have friends.
So far so good, then, touch wood. Actually, I ll be touching no end of the stuff in the coming days, as I ve just taken delivery of some shelving and a desk from Ikea, the furniture folk. I was agog at how cheap it all was, but it transpires the bastards make you assemble the stuff yourself. Let s see how they like it when I write their cheque, rip it into 50 different pieces and whack it in the post with a roll of sticky tape. n