Poker chips and degradable plastic – a curious cocktail!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

Come on. No good sitting here. Time to get cracking. If only I didn’t feel so lethargic. My body is telling me to rest and my mind isn’t exactly fighting the idea either, but rest is not on my menu today. I’m truly tempted to stay here, sitting by the fire with my mate, who’s working his way through a backlog of Match of the Days, but no.

I’m moving house in a couple of weeks so my mood is neither here nor there. Ideally I’d be leaping enthusiastically into this process, but after six months of trauma and chaos I’m exhausted.

Challenges always feel less daunting when I’ve made a plan, which this time is mind-numbingly simple: do it room by room, carload by carload, until there’s only furniture left for the van.

Nobody’s going to do this for me, but how hard can it be? Muttering mantras about longest journeys and first steps, I head off to my bedroom to find and pack up the nooks and crannies of my life.

In a plainly pathetic effort to make it more fun for myself, I decide to turn this sorting of worldly possessions into a TV show called “Keepers or Crappers!”

Do you love it or need it?

If not, bin it.

Off we go with round one, which entails sitting on the floor and opening the door of my little bedside table.

What might be in here?

Not a clue.

Ah, my playing cards and bag of poker chips. Keepers. I’ll be a complete stranger in the place I’m moving to, and in the past I have found poker a way to make friends, especially as I tend to lose.

Reaching for the carrier bag I lift it out of the tiny cupboard to watch, as if in slow motion, the bag disintegrate in front of my eyes, allowing light plastic poker chips to explode to the floor and rebound energetically, running under the bed, rolling under the bedside table, rolling further, under both chests of drawers and what, and how, and please no, no no, no!

To read more of Charlie’s column, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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