Where Have All The Fly-By-Night Boys Gone?
B*Witched. Stirrup leggings. Pat Kenny. Oh, the list of bugbears from my past that haven’t actually fucking stayed there would be much too long to post here, even keeping in mind that this is a comedy site and you’ve all been conditioned for schadenfreude. But the sudden absence of one particular irritant both delights and confounds me, and I’d like your input.
Since I moved to Cork …
I haven’t seen one travelling couch-salesman.
It doesn’t upset me, mind, that since leaving Galway I’ve not had one obnoxious cunt with a badly reined-in accent and threatening neck veins on my doorstep trying to convince me to give a sofa a good home. I don’t miss the bastards. I wouldn’t miss them blind, in the dark, with a jammed Taiwanese shotgun. I’m just curious, is all. There is a serious lack of boors selling suspect leather 3-piece suites in my vicinity these days, and I wonder … is it me? Is it Cork? Is it my camouflaging myself in the middle classes? Where the hell did they all go?
And another thing. What happened to the starving Polish artists selling their photocopied scribblings door to door, all uniformed with dewy eyes and expensive runners? When I lived in Galway, I couldn’t sweep my doorstep without banjaxing the shins of some aesthetically-pleasing hippie holding aloft a generic charcoal kitten portrait as an ineffective shield against the evils of capitalism. I don’t miss the bould, ugly couch-pedlars who never met a doorbell they didn’t make violent love to, but the sexy mascara’d artists are a right loss. How will I decorate my hall, if not with all-purpose posters of idyllic Polish homesteads? I mourn the loss of art, especially as I suspect that these poor souls have been sucked into alternative careers in stuffing letterboxes with stickers asking for clothes for the Third World. Dammit, it’s just not proper.
It’s the recession, y’know. It welts us all in funny ways; I’m tickled by the lack of unbeatable settee offers, and choked by the loss of those troopers of tracing paper. They were, at least, brief distractions from knock-knock reality. Neighbourhood Watch reps, people looking for the owner of the dog they’ve just run over, Fine Gael candidates, narrow-eyed scuts selling tickets for their school raffle, Christians … all of these are much, much more disconcerting to open the door to, and their ranks are thick, and plentiful.
So as I leave you for the weekend, Coddlers, I’d like to know – what’s the most irked you’ve ever been by a doorstep cold-caller? And what the Jaysus did you do with the furniture fellas from the Hiace brigade?
It’s not the seller of goods and provisions that get on my ample man boobs…..it’s the market survey people……oh sweet gordon ramsay and all the saints in his kitchen those kids piss me off…..I have three locked in the cupboard under the stairs now….that’ll teach them to ask me my opinion on Baileys cream liqueur
but to answer the question I was most driven to murder recently by the young chap from Sky TV who was trying to sell me a mini dish deal thingy…he wasn’t best pleased when I told him I didn’t need his package as I was “happy” with virginmedia…..he then went on to tell me that I didn’t have 50mb broadband as it didn’t exist….arsehole…it was all I could do not to set The Cousin on him
Market survey people can’t be pitied, even just the once, as I discovered to my chagrin when they started flocking to me like flies to shite after I once answered one 5-minute interview on my favourite cigarette brand.
I don’t smoke. Looking back, I really should have said that. Would have saved me a lot of headaches.
I don’t get market survey types anymore either. Maybe it is Cork!
I had to look up stirrup leggings and I still do not know exactly what they are. Are they loose or spray on, what is the point of the strap that goes under the arch of the foot. But what do not get is the fellows who at 6am drive the dog wild by inserting slips of sticky-back paper. And the sofa knackers seem to be a small town phenomenon. I never encountered them in Galway city. Or Dublin for that matter, but when I lived in Maynooth pretty much once a month someone was trying to flog me something or another, usually blankets for some reason.
When they were trying to flog you blankets, they weren’t pushing a soup trolley as well, were they, Vince? Because that sounds like the St. Vincent De Paul.
I was cold-called by a guy selling a deterrent mace spray for cold-callers. It was a very confusing exchange, and somehow I ended up with red, streaming eyes. Not because of the spray, I’d just finished watching the scene from The Lion King where Mufasa dies.
One place I lived, we used to get guys turning up at the witching hour saying things like “Hi. The taxi driver dropped me off.” Which, you know, how nice for you, but what the hell do you want? We had our suspicions, but it wasn’t really confirmed until some oul fella turned up at 1am and said “Howya. Have ye got any girls?” So yeah, turns out I lived in a former brothel.
(Amusingly, on a later occasion a female housemate answered the door in her silky kimono dressing gown. Dude couldn’t believe his luck… for the first second anyway, until she screamed “FUCK OFF” and slammed the door in his face. Good times.)
emordino, that must surely be the pinnacle of annoying house calls, so I declare you the winner of this particular foray into one-downmanship.
Flann, you’re not the winner, because Mufasa was a right smug cunt and Scar should have triumphed over that drippy wally, Simba.
Sweary, I am shocked. Mufasa was a symbol of nobility and an all round class act. He had the strength of a lion, and the eloquence of James Earl Jones.
Scar was opportunistic. I’ll give you that. But if I saw a lion that raggedy at Dublin Zoo, I would mock it.
Clean your shoots missus/sur? (Whilst checking out your gaff for alarms and locks.) They’ll be back soon enough Sweary.
Flann, I cried too when Mufasa copped it.
That’s it, I have officially given up on understanding anything having to do with the Irish. It’s completely incomprehensible to me why anyone would go door-to-door selling couches. How the fuck do they lug them about to show them to potential customers? Strap them to their backs? Pull them on a cart? Make Eastern European immigrants tote them? As an entrap… entrepanari… entrepenarial… money-grubbing bloody Yank, I am sure there has to be a better way to do this, and as God is my witless, as soon as I get over there, I will suss it out and make a fucking fortune. I’ll import Mexicans and have them cart around couches of fine Corinthian leather, so I will.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, JoHo’s, God’s Witless Mongs, whatever you want to call them, they have to be the worst. They are the only ones dumb enough, or brave enough, to go knocking on security doors in our ghetto. Anybody else would end up in the basement with the gimp, but even the gimp doesn’t want a JoHo.
When some stranger comes knocking on your door around here, it’s because the people that lived there before sold drugs. You can pick up any ho-bag hooker by a freeway on-ramp, but it’s a bit harder to score with a reliable supplier. For 2 years after I moved here, I’d get some meth-head knocking on my door at 3 in the morning, looking to score. Seems that when you’re in prison, and your drug supplier moves, they fail to send out those “Hi! Our business has moved to a new location!” postcards. The fuckers.
Damn I will be glad to be out of this shithole.
We must be lucky….only get the odd Jehovah’s Witness or someone collecting signatures so that they can run for city council (the latter always seems to happen when I am in the middle of preparing dinner).
I must admit the idea of anyone selling furniture door to door seems terribly strange to me.
Hey Sweary..
Still get the couch selling suited travellers in Galway City, well Ballybane anyway. No Hiaces tho, upgraded to small lorries. Their smiles scare me. Nobody should look that happy. The blunter and ruder I am the more they smile.
Haven’t seen a polish artist in years.
Always had knackers trying to sell carpet but never sofas. They don’t seem to bother anymore, but I did see one in the shop on Sunday morning shoving a pound of Monaghan bacon down the front of the skinny, white, bawgin’ jeans. Threw me right off my stride and had to have cereal instead, the bitch.
Those lovely stirrup contraptions were known as ski pants in the north (I know, don’t start) I do miss the comforting pull of the strap in the arch of your foot which also stopped the gusset riding up your arse.
The Jehovah’s and Mormoms don’t bother with us anymore, but I’ve spied some lurking Christians, fucking CHRISTIANS, and sure there’s no reasoning with them.