Census

~ Diary of a Dublin housewife

Census night was last night, and yours truly was left to do the honours as usual…

  • Anyone got a pen?
  • What colour?
  • Black.
  • No.
  • Blue?
  • No.
  • What colour do you have?
  • I don’t have any.
  • Then why did you ask me what colour I needed?
  • Just curious.
  • Feck sake, Jimmy. Just watch telly will you.
  • Do you not want a hand?
  • I want you to fill in the whole bloody thing to be honest.
  • Ah, you’re better at that sort of thing,Bernie.
  • You just can’t be arsed you mean.
  • True.
  • Well, can you at least find a pen for me.
  • Where can I get a black pen at this hour of a Sunday night?
  • Blue will do.
  • Where can….
  • …Check Kokos room.
  • Are you mad? It’s a black hole up there, you can hardly find her bed, never mind a bloody pen.
  • Is she even home?
  • I haven’t seen her since yesterday. Is she staying in that fellas gaff again?
  • I dont know. Maybe she’s actually in bed.
  • Just put her down on the form anyway.
  • I can only put her down if she’s home.
  • Sure,who’ll know any different?
  • She can’t be on two forms.
  • Put her on the absent list.
  • But what if she comes home?
  • Jesus, I’ll just ring her and ask her.
  • Well?
  • No answer.
  • I’ll fill her part out in the morning. Now, what time do you leave for work?
  • I’m not working tomorrow.
  • Are you deliberately trying to wind me up?
  • You did ask…
  • What time do you usually leave?
  • 7am
  • Really?
  • Yeah really, while you’re dead to the world.
  • And what time do you leave work in the evening?
  • Depends on the job.
  • I need a time.
  • Just put down 5pm
  • How come you don’t get home until after 6 then?
  • No I don’t.
  • You do.
  • 5.30 then.
  • So it takes you 30 minutes to drive home?
  • For fuck sake,Bernie. You know I don’t come home at the same time everyday.
  • Well there’s no section for  irregular hours.
  • Just put 5.30. There’s hardly going to be someone from the census office watching the house to see what time I get home.
  • If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it properly, Jimmy.
  • Whatever.
  • OK then, religion?
  • Roman Catholic, same as you
  • You don’t even go to mass.
  • Neither do you.
  • Hmmmm. Ok, Roman Catholic then.
  • Do they want to know what I had for me feckin’  breakfast?
  • Language?
  • I only said feckin’
  • No, do you speak any language other than  english?
  • Irish.
  • No you don’t
  • But I can.
  • Go on then.
  • Go raibh maith agait.
  • Is that it?
  • Conas atá tu, tá ocras orm, is mise Jimmy. Slán leat.
  • OK, so you remember a few phrases from school, but you don’t speak it.
  • An bhfuil cead agam dul amach go dtí an leithreas?
  • You’re just being silly now, go and check the smoke alarms, I forgot to fill that bit in.
  • Three.
  • Is that all?
  • How many do you want? We live in a 3 bed house not  Aras an Uachtarain.
  • You were dying to get another bit of irish in, weren’t you?
  • Who’s being silly now? Right, are we done? I want to go for a pint.
  • You’d better be home by 12, or I’ll  mark you absent.
  • Yes miss.
  • Will you do the time capsule section?
  • Ah, Bernie.you just do it.
  • I’ve a pain in my hoop with it at this stage, Jimmy. I don’t know what to write.
  • Just write anything.
  • Okay so.
  • What are you writing?
  • ‘Your great grandfather, who thinks he can speak Irish is gone to the pub where after a feed of pints, he will speak his real native language …pure shite.’
  • No need for that talk in front of the great grandchildren, Bernie.

Thank god this is only every five years 🙄

25 thoughts on “Census”

  5. I wonder how you get anything done with such entertaining family members around !

    Gosh! your humour should be shared on Netflix–it’s too good.

    Thank you for the laughs.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  6. I forgot about the capsule thing on census. I make copies of mine to save so I’ll have to recheck what I dared to write! Funny readings on C! If hubby was left to fill in the census… ours would be empty!

    Like

    Reply

  10. Oh! Bernie you had me in stitches again, especially
    “Your great grandfather, who thinks he can speak Irish is gone to the pub where after a feed of pints, he will speak his real native language …pure shite.” There’s quite a few in our family that speak that! Thankfully they’re all moved out!
    I am pretty sure we did our last cenus on line! …it didn’t save up from the boys though they all kept ringing and whatapping to ask questions. ….. keep on keeping on woman you’re a star!! 💜

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s