Dumb Riffs

On Saturday night, Graeme Souness asserted that the French football team ‘had another gear’ to shift into. Cue much noisy disagreement from Johnny Giles and Eamonn Dunphy, followed closely by me switching off the telly.

Lately, I’ve been trying to shift gears, although not a swift, elegant shift up exemplified by the likes of Thierry Henri and Nicolas Anelka. Rather, my shift in speed has been akin to a blindly galloping Paul McShane attempting to stop short before he collides with an advertising hoarding. It’s more an emergency stop than anything. It’s not pretty, but it’s necessary.

About three weeks ago, I finished and submitted my thesis. Since then, I’ve been attempting to balance the inevitable phases of doing absolutely nothing with a routine that helps me adjust to the dramatic change in circumstances occasioned by being almost completely done with something that occupied my time and drained my finances for the last…umm… 215 weeks.

This has included: an attempt to watch the entire 5 seasons of the Wire, trying to catch up with reading piles of magazines that sit at the end of my bed and remain unread, carrying out some research into journalistic articles about the cultural history of Dublin, writing endless lists of stuff I intend to do, and much sitting about.

It’s a slow, strange, jolt-ridden transition. But it’s not bad, not at all.