What I Did On My Sunday
Listening to: Del Amitri - Waking Hours (1989) possibly one of the most personally-important albums I own. I just love this, but I need to be in a good space to listen to it.
The builders left early, one of them wasn't feeling great. I got on the bike and went the library here in the town, if not really to borrow any books but more to get out of the house for a few hours.
Working from home has its perks, but you can feel awfully trapped as well, staring at the same white wall every day. Add to that the fact that, while the builders where working in the garden, I was back upstairs in the office, not wanting to get in their way or appear like some sort of overseer to make sure they're working. Ironic, as if there's anyone not working, it's me.
The main builder is always making these wee comments about how much time I spend behind computers. I keep saying that it's my job, but that doesn't sound convincing today as it is Sunday. I want to tell him that I think he spends too much time in builders yards looking at plywood and hardcore, but I need them to finish the work so I meekly agree and head back upstairs. I mean, I am very comfortable doing nothing, hell, I've made it my life's work, but that lifestyle choice seems a bit decadent when, like the Master from The Big House watching on from the veranda, drinking Mint Juleps and brandishing a whip, there's people digging ditches in my garden and I'm upstairs writing this.
Anyway. Once they left, I was on the bike and into town.
Our library here is actually really crap. I can't remember the last time they had any new books. I've been borrowing the same books now for years, every time going there in the vain hope that they've got some new books, but always coming away disappointed. They got rid of the CDs a few years back; the graphic novels went shortly after.
Soon they'll get rid of the books too.
Not that you'd care. The library is used more as a place for students to come and study, or for local organisation to hold workshops, or for hosting information evenings on all the things the council are working on (which mainly involves digging up the roads). As a meeting space it works incredibly well.
Just not so much as a library.
So I read a few magazines (none more recent than November 2025), updated my Instagram, read some news, and checked out the → book store downstairs which has the same problem as the library upstairs—they seem to have an aversion to new books—and then treated myself to a coffee and an lemon slice (with cream), total cost €9.60 (aarrgggh) but worth the effort. Sitting at the window watching Sunday going by in the warm afternoon sun.
Then home to watch the Cup Final between City and Arsenal. Incredibly boring, two teams that embody all that is wrong with modern football (soccerball for you North Americans). Here is just one part of the game, roughly 25 minutes in:
Keeper has ball. Passes to left back. To keeper. To right back. To keeper. To left back. To keeper. To right back. To central defender. To keeper. To left back. To keeper. To right back. To keeper. To central midfielder. Attempts forward pass. Loses ball. Opponent passes ball forward. Lose ball to right back. Who passes to keeper. To left back. To keeper.
Jaysus wept, you'd think they were afraid to get the ball up the park and score. Not like the old days. Back then <...insert long, loooooong monologue about how football was better in the old days, not like today when it's all rubbish and fuckit, what's the point of playing the national anthem when, of the 22 players on the pitch, only five are _actually_ English. I had that Roy Hodgson in the back of my cab once...> ... ah, yawn, still here?
It finished → 2-0 to City, a result about which I care very little other than that not having Arsenal win will save us from having to listen to that glaikit 1c*nt Mikel Arteta. Instead we had to do with that insufferably smug twat, Pep Gladiola and his chrome dome.
And no, I can't be arsed looking up how to spell his name correctly.
I ordered pizzas from Domino's as a wee treat to ourselves, well, mainly me, and so we wrap up the afternoon and get ready for Sunday evening. We started watching → The Man In The High Castle on that Netflix they have nowadays. I read the book, but for the life of me can't correlate that to anything I saw in the first episode. The visuals are great and Alexa Davalos → especially but C. thinks—with some justification—the acting is a little wooden and anyway, she fell asleep halfway through the first episode and I can't be bothered explaining what happened so I think we'll find something else to watch.
And that is what I did today.
Right. Time you went home, your dinner is getting cold.
Go on, get out of my garden. And mind the ditch.