It's been a great day

Sigh, it's been a truly marvellous day. I'm absolutely and utterly very happily and entirely delighted altogether.

Yes dudes, today was "Oh shit! I've no Christmas shopping done panic panic panic" day. Or rather, heh heh, today started out as oh shit I've got no yadda yadda can't be bothered me hole typing it again day, but now...it's "I'm smug as bejesus cos' all my shopping is done." Er, day.

Yes, like the emaciated protagonists of all those fairytales who were poor but happy despite only being able to afford to lick restaurant menus for sustenance, I too am very content despite the onset of absolute exhaustion. I'm feeling fierce smug altogether. I'm so smug you'd all want to hit me if you were here beside me.

But no, I don't want today to be all about me. It's the season of giving so I want to dispense this compendium of wisdom crafted on the streets of Dublin this very day:

• If you're wanting to buy the most recent series of 24 on DVD, do not do so in Tower Records. It'll set you back €99, and it's only €59 everywhere else. In other words, hourly dosages of Jack Bauer and CTU's finest cost you €4.13 in Tower, but just €2.46 elsewhere. This is probably still a complete rip-off but I had a very knowing smile on me handing over the cash. Smug, you might say. And yes, I heard the latest series is a bit crap but Miaow Cow loves it.
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• If you're buying a Canon ixus 75 digital camera do not do so in Harvey Norman. It's far cheaper in DID. This is probably still a complete rip-off yadda yadda can't be bothered me hole typing it again (again) but I had a very knowing smile yadda yadda you get the picture. And that pun wasn't intended but it's so bad I'm leaving it in.
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• Wagamama is a superior class of eating establishment so it is. I went in with a dinner-sized hole in me belly and came out with a massive smile on me face. If you like Chinese stuff - noodles and cha han and yaki soba and chicken ramen - then go nowhere else. (They're all dishes of food by the way, and not the Star Wars characters. Or Bob Geldof's children). They don't even make you use chopsticks once they hear you're from Cavan. In fact once they hear you're from Cavan they just remove all cutlery entirely and shove you face first into the bowl like a drowning torture scene from a gangster flick. Now that's service. And there's a young one working in there who's very cute as well. Damn cutesy cute women were everywhere today, hunting about the shops in packs, in various states of acute cuteness, smelling all nice and stuff. Couldn't get away from them. The cute hoors. Oh well. (I had teriyaki salmon by the way, I'd recommend, wholly unrelated to cute women but I said I'd throw it in there).
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• Don't wear overly warm clothing, dress down to stave off the sweats. I'm used to all this as I am a seasoned train traveller with a high tolerance for pseudo-tropical temperatures, so I was suitably attired in flyaway clothing and avoided the social disgrace of having everyone's eyebrows wither and fall away when I took off my strides in the changing rooms. Then again, Dubs are awful whingers as soon as the temperature goes below six degrees - not as hardy as us culchies who are reared in remote woodlands and dressed in leaves and moss until aged eight - so this advice does not apply for people with no blood.
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• Urban Outfitters is a shop in Temple Bar specifically designed to remind men that they are not supposed to like shopping. There's about twenty floors in that place and you're absolutely fagged out when you get to the men's section on top, after clomping up endless flights of stairs going through all sorts of womanly paraphernalia that's nearer the ground because it's for women and they're the real spenders. In fact, after countless traipses around shops I started expecting men's stuff to be on the top floors in stores, but the one time I thought I was playing smart by going straight to the top, I discovered that I was in the one shop where they do it backwards and all the blokey stuff was downstairs. So I gets upstairs, feeling smug actually, looked around and to my horror realised I was in the girly section and so had to scuttle hurriedly through lots of crowded aisles stuffed with (cute) women holding up bras to the light (is there a watermark or something? Can you get counterfeit knickers now?) I always regard myself as a true traditionalist in this sense; I shall continue to be embarrassed to my dying day any time I wander unknowingly into the bras and knickers section and no amount of new age manishness or metrosexual type flip-floppery will change it, so there.
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• The thing you think you'll find quickest and easiest ends up turning into some interminable quest for the holy grail. I only wanted a pair of trousers that weren't jeans to wear to my works Christmas party (going upmarket this year. I'll probably shave too) and all I could find were suit trousers. Everywhere. Or jeans pretending to be trousers and trousers pretending to be jeans. I went from store to store and Billy to Jack like something in a pinball machine but eventually found my heart's desire with time running out. As my Dad always says, you'll always find it the last place you look.
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• Having acquired a reasonable level of fitness in the gym - in between frequent hypochondrial breakdowns and sheer stupification over Mad Lad - I was proudly full of stamina for all the cross-city trekking and toing and froing. In fact, I was still skipping about the place like a young goat come five o'clock, and to prove the point, headbutted a young lady in the rump as she unwittingly bent over a fruit stall on Moore St., and upended her comically into a tray of apples. Bah humbug indeed.
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• With all the trekking, toing, froing and acting the goat out in the open air, one contracted a nasty case of chapped lips. Thankfully, a nearby Pharmacist, or Poitigéir as it said Gaelically over the door, obliged with a tin of vaseline and I slathered it on liberally. I spent the entire day with a greasy slick shmeared across me gob, looking like two snails were having a race around my upper lip, but at least I wasn't creaking painfully every time I yawned.

I'm just so happy now with all that crap out of the way, I could eat myself.