Making It Up As I Go Along (2 page)

Just in case you don’t speak Hiberno-English
fluently – and there’s no shame in that, no shame at all! – I thought
I’d do a little dictionary for you.

agin:
a derivative of
‘against’, it means ‘counter to’. For example, to ‘take
agin’ a person means one has developed an antipathy towards a certain person and wishes
them ill. One of my favourite words. Taking agin people can count as a hobby, to be listed on
job applications along with keeping fit and cooking, except it doesn’t have to be a
lie.

banjaxed:
broken. For
example, ‘That fecking IKEA chest of drawers is banjaxed’ means ‘That item of
furniture I purchased from a well-known Scandinavian retailer no longer functions.’

banjoed:
same as
banjaxed
. Unless one is talking about furniture, in which case it means
‘upcycled’.

bayshte
: beast. As in
‘I made a bayshte of meself, ayting them four Easter eggs.’ Can also refer to
animals (‘bayshtes of the field’).

be the Janeys:
an
expression of astonishment.

bet-down:
burdened by
life. Having endured a lot of disappointment and looking every inch of it.

bolloxed:
Can mean broken
or inebriated. Context is key. ‘My hairdryer is bolloxed’ means one’s
hairdryer is
hors de combat
. But ‘Cripes, you were bolloxed last night’
means a person was extremely inebriated on the previous evening.

bould
: comes from the word ‘bold’, but does not mean
‘daring’ or ‘courageous’. Rather it means very badly behaved.
‘Bould as bras’ is as bad as it gets.

by the hokey:
an
expression of astonishment,
very similar to
be the Janeys
.

cliothar:
I’m
guessing, but I think it’s related to ‘clatter’. It means a short, sharp blow.
Often used in reference to a child who has just drawn all over your lovely Designers Guild
wallpaper: ‘What that little fecker needs is a good hard cliothar.’ A word that
Mammy Keyes seems particularly fond of.

clob:
face, as in,
‘I stuffed me clob.’ Confusingly it can also mean ‘mouth’.

craythur:
a derivative of
‘creature’. A term of compassion, as in, ‘Ah shur, the poor oul’
craythur, he was never right after he drove the combine harvester over the postman.’

divil:
a derivative of
‘devil’, but does not refer to Satan/Lucifer/the man below. It’s usually a
term of compassion and often accompanied by a sigh. ‘Ah, the poor oul’ divil
…’

eejit:
a foolish person.
For example, ‘The fecking eejit’s after leaving his jacket on the bus.
Again!’

enjoying the day:
inebriated.

feck:
the most
misunderstood, falsely maligned word ever. It is NOT a swear word. Anyone, even the Pope, could
say ‘feck’ and no one would look askance. It is nothing like the other
‘F’ word. Feel free to use it liberally.

gawk:
enjoys two usages.
One is ‘to look at or view’. The other is ‘to vomit’. Context is key.
‘The gawks’, or worse still ‘a desperate dose of the gawks’, is when one
cannot stop vomiting – often the morning after one has been
enjoying the
day
. This is also when ‘the dry gawks’ may occur.

gobshite:
a powerfully
disparaging term of abuse. Mildly sweary.

gom:
I refer you to
eejit
.

grand:
a fascinating
word, which does not mean ‘swanky’, ‘excellent’ or
‘awe-inspiring’. Mostly it means ‘just okay’ or ‘barely
adequate’; however, an entire (very funny) book has been written on the word by Tara
Flynn. I urge you to read it.

in top form:
usually
means ‘inebriated’. But – confusingly – it can sometimes mean simply
‘in top form’.

jar:
drink, alcohol,
Babycham, aquavit, grappa and whatever you’re having yourself.

JohnEamonChippyBill:
the
wonderful pundit-men on the panel for Ireland’s football games.

lad:
can mean ‘a
teenage boy’, but when I use it I tend to be referring to a penis. For example,
‘Well, if he thinks he can arrive around here, with his lad in his hand, he can think
again!’

lads:
a greeting, which
can apply to both sexes, even those who are not lads or who don’t
have
lads.
Always accompanied by an exclamation mark, for example, ‘Lads! How’s it
going?’

lock-hard:
specifically
‘lock-hard men’ – famous creatures in Dublin who appear from nowhere while
you’re trying to parallel-park on the street. They will stand and shout instructions,
always urging you to ‘lock hard’ on the steering wheel. They will invariably make
the job of parking your car far more fraught than it would otherwise have been and will expect a
couple of yoyos for this.

looderamaun:
I refer you
to
eejit
.

lungeon:
the meal you
‘take’ in the middle of the day, if you are posh. See
sangwidge
if
you are not posh.

now:
means anything
but
the present time. For example, ‘I’ll do that now in a minute’
means ‘I’ll do it as soon as I feel like getting round to it. Now feck off and leave
me be.’

oul’:
a derivative
of the word ‘old’, but does not mean ‘aged’. It’s a
fascinating word that enjoys many usages. It can be disparaging, for example:
‘He never rang me, the thick oul’ eejit.’ But it can also be compassionate:
‘Ah shur, the poor oul’ divil, and the guttering after falling down on his
head.’ However, sometimes ‘oul’’ adds nothing to a sentence, except to
perfect the rhythm, which matters a lot in conversational Hiberno-English. If this is the case,
there is no need to ascribe meaning to it.

oxter:
armpit.

praties:
potatoes, spuds,
the staple diet of the Irish.

press:
a cupboard.

quare:
unusual,
distinctive, astonishing, special.

ride:
a very attractive
person, often used by women to describe men, but these days women say it to each other, in this
manner: ‘Look at you, you great big ride, you.’ This is a compliment of the highest
order. ‘Ride’ can also mean ‘an act of sexual congress’.

ridey:
an adjective
derived from
ride
, it means ‘very sexually attractive’.

sangwidge:
a casual
lungeon, consisting of two slices of bread bracketing cheese or ham or similar.

scuttered:
inebriated.

shite:
like
‘shit’ but marginally less bad.

skaw-ways:
crooked.

spannered:
inebriated.

stotious:
inebriated.

sure:
pronounced
‘shur’, it has no meaning. It’s most definitely
not
a term of
agreement (as in ‘
Sure!
’). It’s simply an extra word added to the
start of a sentence, in the way ‘so’ is used in the modern global lingo. Except
it’s not annoying.

tay:
comes from the word
‘tea’, and it can mean a hot drink in a mug or one’s evening meal.

togs:
a bathing suit, a swimming costume, trunks, those sorts of
things.

thrun:
comes from the
word ‘thrown’ but hints at unhappiness – to be ‘thrun in the bed’
implies a bout of depression.

tool:
a foolish man.

yoke:
a catch-all word
that seems to defy translation. Basically it can mean
anything.
Some people have said
that ‘whatjamacallit’ or ‘thingummyjig’ is the same as
‘yoke’, and certainly ‘Where’s the yoke?’ can mean (and frequently
does) ‘Where’s the remote control?’ Or ‘I broke the little yoke on the
yoke’ can mean ‘I’ve broken the small attachment on my spiralizer.’ But
‘yoke’ means much more and can also be used to disparage a person. For example, if a
man with whom you shared sexual relations does not seek to repeat the experience, you could call
him, in very bitter tones, ‘a hairy-arsed oul’ yoke’. Or if an acquaintance
has recently lost weight and is making much of it, you could say, ‘Look at her there, the
skraggy-arsed oul’ yoke, swanking around in her size 6 jeans, thinking she’s
it.’

yoyos:
the currency of
Ireland. Sometimes known as euros.

Over the years I’ve written various beauty
columns, and many of you who folley me on Twitter will know about my great love for chemists.
And you will also know that I ‘enjoy’ bad health. That’s what this bit is all
about.

My love of cosmetics goes back decades and I blame
Mammy Keyes – well, like all mammies, the poor woman has (entirely unfairly) got the blame
for many of her daughter’s woes over the years, so why shouldn’t she get the blame
for my deep and abiding love of cosmetics? One of my earliest memories is of her sitting at her
dressing table, patting some funny liquid in the palm of her hand until it eventually emulsified
into a white cream, which she then spread over her face. ‘Take care of your skin,’
she often told me, ‘and some day it will take care of you.’

The strange thing was, this was Ireland in the
1960s and 70s, when the Catholic Church controlled everything and the message it gave was that
women were meant to be baby factories who entirely neglected themselves in order to boil massive
pots of praties and say round-the-clock novenas while kneeling on frozen peas. A weekend away
with the girls consisted of forty-eight hours in Lough Derg, eating burnt toast and singing
‘Hail, Holy Queen’ and walking on pointy stones in their bare feet.

Vanity was a total no-go area and my mammy was
– and is – a devout holy type. But still, she couldn’t resist the lure of the
beauty counter. Like, she didn’t go mad or anything, she wasn’t an eyelashed
glamour-puss who showered me with perfumed kisses and called me ‘Darlink’, but she
had the basic products, and one day when I was about twelve I smothered my face in her
foundation and I was stunned – I looked … well, FABULOUS!
My
whey-white Celtic skin was bright orange – I think it was actually the law at the time
that all foundation sold in Ireland be that colour – and the chic way to apply it was to
cut it off at the jawline so that the face looked like an orange lollipop, balanced on a white
neck.

Mesmerized by my own orange loveliness, I gazed
at myself in the mirror, seeing that the white bits of my eyes looked extra-white and the green
bits looked extra-green and my shameful freckles had been banished entirely. The transformative
effects of make-up were never so obvious, and because I’d always felt like an ugly little
yoke I vowed that this magic gear would be part of my life for evermore.

Funds, of course, were initially a problem. But
mercifully my new love of cosmetics coincided very neatly with the traditional early-teenage
shoplifting years and I was down in Woolworths in Dún Laoghaire most Saturdays, relieving
them of the odd kohl pencil or lipstick. (I’ve since repented and am very sorry for that
carry-on. If I could go back and change things I would, but that’s life, isn’t it?
We all do things we subsequently regret and the guilt is our punishment.)

But enough of the philosophizing and on with the
make-up! I got my first job when I was seventeen, and from the day I got my first pay cheque to
one morning about three months ago I quite literally NEVER left the house without wearing
foundation. I really mean it. No matter how tired I felt, no matter how poor I was, foundation
was my bridge to the outside world. I genuinely felt I wouldn’t be able to look someone in
the eye without it. My desert-island product would have been foundation, because if I
hadn’t any, I wouldn’t have been able to jump around on the beach, waving my T-shirt
and shouting at a rare passing ship to please rescue me. Instead I’d have to hide behind a
coconut tree, to protect the pirates from getting a
shocking gawk at my
freckly clob. (What happened about three months ago was I had IPL on my face which did some
quare business where my freckles all disappeared and my skin became – and forgive me for
sounding like a boasty boaster – very fresh and even. Apparently the trauma of the IPL
(which stands for Intense Pulsed Light) stimulated bow-coo de collagen. I was told that this
would happen, but in my heart I think that anyone who makes a promise like this is a liar and no
one was more surprised than me that it actually really did work. I mean, it won’t last,
I’ll have to go back and get it done again at some stage, and it’s a) spendy and b)
painful beyond description. But still!

In my twenties I moved to London and shared a
flat with two other girls and lipstick became our non-negotiable product. Chanel lipstick, no
less. We lurched from pay cheque to pay cheque, borrowing and bartering, barely able to keep
ourselves in Jacob’s Creek, and yet we prioritized Chanel lipstick. Red, of course.
Because it was empowering, so we were told. We’d get promotions if we wore red lipstick.
We’d run the world if we wore red lipstick. We’d get on the property ladder and
learn to drive and get married if we wore red lipstick. Anyway …

Despite the red Chanel lipstick, my life hit the
skids in spectacular fashion when it transpired that I’d become a little too fond of the
Jacob’s Creek and I ended up in rehab. (Even there, I wore foundation every single day.)
After six weeks I emerged and at high speed my life changed course and I started writing a book
and got a publishing deal and met a lovely man and got married – so maybe, in a roundabout
way, the red lipstick
did
work!

Then I got a gig doing a make-up column, and to
this very day I still say it’s the nicest thing that’s ever happened to me. I swear
to God, you have no idea! Free make-up began arriving at the house in the PEOLs (Padded
Envelopes of Loveliness). My first
batch was from Lancôme, and this was
around the time when women were trampling over each other in beauty halls to get their paws on
Juicy Tubes, and I got three – THREE! – of the new colours in the envelope. It was
so thrilling that a family conference was called, and all my brothers and sisters and Mam and
Dad came to admire the free make-up, and we sat around the kitchen table staring at it, and no
one could really believe it, and Dad, who used to be an accountant, totted up how much it would
have cost if I’d paid for it, and we MARVELLED at the figure, and my mammy became quite
anxious because she was sure there had to be a catch, but all in all, it was
bloody
fabulous
!

Overnight, the arrival of the postman flipped
from being something to dread – bills and strange requests and that sort of thing –
to something to anticipate. If he rang the bell, it was a really good day – it meant that
he had a Padded Envelope of Loveliness that was too big to be shoved through the letter box. No
matter how early he arrived, it was with a joyous heart that I skipped down the stairs to open
the door to him. Soon he began to realize that I was causing him more work than the rest of the
road put together, and all I could do was apologize and give him a decent tip at Christmas time.

I hit a rough patch when I worried that loving
make-up was incompatible with being a feminist, but I’ve eventually made my peace with it.

However, as we know, all good things come to an
end and eventually the magazine I was writing for folded and the Padded Envelopes of Loveliness
stopped arriving. (Ten years on, thinking about it still gives me a stabbing pain of loss in my
sternum.) However, I stayed passionately interested in all aspects of beauty, getting
particularly animated by anything officially ‘New and Exciting’.

Now the thing is that I
wasn’t (and I’m still not) a beautician or a trained make-up artist, I’m
simply an enthusiastic amateur – a very,
very
enthusiastic amateur. But I do have
my moments of insight. Like, you’ve heard of the ‘Lipstick Index’? It’s
the theory that during a recession, sales of lipsticks increase as women shift their spending
habits from expensive fripperies like shoes and handbags to more affordable things like
lipsticks. Well, it’s been overtaken by the Nail Varnish Index, and what kills me is that
I predicted it! I knew it was happening because I could see it in my own behaviour – I was
haunting Rimmel counters and buying two or three nail varnishes in super-bright colours, bagging
the whole lot for under a tenner. But the only person I shared my theory with was Himself, and
I’m
raging
that I didn’t do a David McWilliams and write a scholarly paper
on the topic for the
Sunday Business Post
, and be hailed as the new Irish economic
sage, but shur, there we are.

First published in
Irish Tatler
, November
2014.