Stop, pause, rewind, reverse
Diary of a homebird
Ciara Galvin
IT’S typical, just as I’m contemplating turning in for an early night I go channel hopping and stumble across a ‘must watch’, eyes falling out of my head I persist and curse myself as the alarm sounds the following morning.
On one such occasion last week I turned over to a documentary called ‘The Imposter’. I hit the information icon, and I knew it was going to be a late night. A totally bizarre documentary telling the story of a Texan teenager, who after being missing for three years, seemingly turns up in Spain and returns to his family – seems legit, right? Well no, turns out the ‘16 year old’ is actually a 23-year-old French man who gets his kicks from impersonating missing people.
What made the story even stranger was the fact that the family of the missing teen welcomed the man with open arms … with his French accent and a 12 o’clock shadow that would give Tom Selleck a run for his money.
Anyway, you’re probably wondering where I am going with this, well, just at the edge-of-your-seat climax moment – the interloper was being rumbled by a private eye detective; there was talk of DNA testing; and the family were being accused of killing the real son – my male roomie decides to pop his head around the door.
I glance up. Oh no…
After 25 years of living at the homestead, I’ve become very tuned in to what facial expression means what.
Determinedly concentrating on finding out whether the family are hiding a deep, dark secret, I also attempt to listen to Pops – ‘Little pet, can ya just go on the Google-box [iPad / PC / some type of electrical device that has a search engine] …’. Internally, my sub-conscious sounds ‘Awhhh hell no’.
Technology is a constant conundrum for the roomies. The male roomie once told a guy in a Bangladeshi SKY call centre “I’ve no one and two”, assuming that the man on the other side of the world would be familiar with the RTÉ channels.
Sadly, the era of pausing and rewinding live television, badly needed when faced with situations like last week’s one, has yet to arrive.
Flitting between the TV and Google I located the answer required, and thrust the iPad in his direction. After resuming my concentration on the TV, I realised no harm was done.
It does have to be noted however, that the male roomie is an expert at bad timing. When you’ve been sitting at home all day doing nothing and you attempt to leave the house, you can be guaranteed to hear the dreaded words ‘I just need ya for two minutes’. That sentence still strikes fear into my siblings and me.
It can mean a multitude of things, anything from fixing a jam in the printer to settling in for a day of tree cutting in the back garden severely hungover.
Years ago the male roomie attempted to get two of my older brothers out of bed as he needed them for ‘two minutes’. After many attempts he said, “There’s only two gears people know in this house, neutral and reverse” – to which my eldest brother replied, “And Caoímhin doesn’t even know that.”
You might wonder why we, to this day, find the comment so hilarious, well months previous to this, my brother indeed had trouble getting to grips with reverse. Let’s just say the neighbour’s across the road required a stone mason after my brother became an ‘Imposter’ of sorts, attempting to become Creagh Road’s answer to ‘The Stig’.
In her fortnightly Diary of a Home Bird column, Ciara Galvin reveals the trials and tribulations of a twenty-something year old still living with her parents.
