Myself and Peter Doran went shopping in the Jervis Street Shopping center yesterday.  I remembered while passing Argos that I wanted to buy a bookcase, so buy one I did.  I was under the impression that it would be delivered.  However, I was told to go to collection point A to pick it up.  Out came a box, as tall as me and about a foot and a half wide, full of bookcase ingredients:  mainly very heavy pine ( and a few screws, I hope ).  It was going to have to carry it, a very unwieldy package, through crowded streets back to my bedroom.  Peter escorted me, puffing and sweating, through the food section of Marks and Spencers, as it was a "short cut".  I nearly collided with every granny on the northside as the pulled their trollies out in front of me, a wide load, without even a hint of indication.  I felt like Simon Geoghegan carrying a large pine rugby ball, as I side stepped to avoid the tackles and bodychecks from the shoppers, hellbent on getting the last of the strawberry cheesecake.  Eventually I made it out, but I had not yet scored a try - in actual fact I was still deep inside my own 22. Despair set in.  I toyed with the idea of selling the bookcase to some passerby.  Maybe I should abandon it in the street.  Or wait until half six, when the crowd might lessen.  Instead myself and Peter carried it horizontally, he at one end and me at the other.  We figured that if we were going to be an obstruction, me might as well be the biggest one possible.

Embarrassment reached such a level that I became a giddy gibbering fool.  As Peter tried to forge a way against the flow through a forest of people at the traffic lights, I could do no more than laugh uncontrollably and drool all over myself.  Peter, in front, was deadly serious.  "Excuse me, excuse me", he was saying.  Before moving out of his way, people looked at him, then at the bookcase and down along it to find at the end a very insane looking individual laughing his head off at absolutley nothing.  If they made eye contact, I became aware of my silliness and tried to impose a calm on my countenance.

I found I could heighten the levels to which my laughter soared by applying  sideways pressure on the bookcase and bouncing Peter off passing people.  One a number of occasions there could have been a fight.  Negotiating the traffic lights at Trinity College was particularly interesting as Peter decided to stop when HE was safely across the road.  He seemed to forget that I was still 6 feet behind, in the middle of a bus lane.  Of course you might expect that I would be panic stricken or rooted to the spot with fear of the approaching No 16.  But no.  Instead I was doubled up laughing at the hilarious "trick" Peter had played on me and staggered slowly towards the safety of the footbath.  I still have green paint left on the arse of my trousers by the brush of the passing bus.  

I decided it was all too exicting for me.  I could never stand another 15 minutes of this hilarity.  So I dediced to drop the bookcase off in work and get Stevo to pick it up in the car the next day.  Good idea, except that it involved heading up Grafton Street.  Peter decided that he was going to make the journey interesting for himself by trying to guide me into the metal stumps that stand at groin height at either side of the street.  Thus trained, I now believe that I could compete for Ireland in Olympic Leapfrog.

Happy new year!.