Iron Men Cometh, Iron Lady Vanishes

As I hobbled to the shops with my sheepdog to buy the papers, my hero, Alpha Romeo, swung around the corner with Sunday papers in tow. We sat in my garden with a pot of peppermint tea and read the interview together, I wish the photographer had let me make a smiley face, eleven years after the event I am much relieved to have spoken out and hopefully bring some relevant dimension to the increasingly vitriolic debate.

I've got a bandaged nose from my minor op and instructed to rest. The good timing of the anaesthetic after-effects on this particular day is I'm still a bit high, or rather less sensitive and while the interview brings back memories, seeing the lapse of time and the inaction of the State has angered me more.

Being so post-op tired I'd love to watch a movie on landlady tv, but it's been broken since I went into hospital. When A. R. leaves, I decide I'll fix the tv myself and remove the mountain of books and photos that saddle the gadget table, prise it away from the wall only to find enough dog hair to stuff a mattress. Groan, now we have to hoover while the princelings slumber.

The problem is the TV is set into a shallow recess and flush with the wall, no visible cables or plug, it's a a cool  MTV crib kind of thing that the cost centres insisted on back in Tiger days as well as a fridge that spewed ice. At least I didn't buy bank shares, I say that a hundred times a week.

Flattened by the exertion, the anaesthetic and unproductive effort I sleep like a log in the afternoon. We adults don't get enough sleep, but when I do, I'm like a different person, imminently more capable and tolerant. I wonder if Margaret Thatcher, who survived on three hours sleep a night would have been a less confrontational woman had she had her rest, would the Argentines have their own island back. I wonder if Enda could break the stranglehold of the unions and the dissent in his party if he arose at 4am each day to do battle. Where's his mettle?

The phone rings, it's a man who would never ring for an idle chat, what man does you might ask? He's seen the newspaper interview and wants to clap me on the back down the phone. He's in my house within the hour, his mountain bike strapped to his jeep, his lithe figure propped up on a stool, aviators on, Americano in hand. They don't come more Tom Cruise - the movie version I mean. Or is it Hugh Jackman? Maybe Val Kilmer? One of those super guys.

Approaching Valetta by boat, could be Ironman's Swan 60

I nod towards the gaggle of gadgets in our midst. He turns, he lifts the great slab of 50 something inch screen off the wall. I'm his able assistant while Sir Leigh arrives and thankfully takes over from Tristan in the chef department. Unplug, reboot, we're in business within minutes, two ironmen to the rescue in one day, not bad in landladyland.

Because my friend doesn't understand blogs, I had to show him a sample of this one, where his petrol head ally Baron von Richterscale appears, and now he wants to make up his own name, but that's not really cricket.

After dinner I left him and Sir Leigh to talk about a plan that will change the face of Dublin, change how we use the city, how we see ourselves and how others see us. One that Sir Leigh has worked on and I have seen gather momentum over the last few weeks. So it's time for me to retire. What will I call him? Initially, Dublin's Eligible Cool Lad About Now, will do.

Don't know why he hasn't been snapped up yet.