On Tuesday I'm heading to Dublin for the European Poker Tour Event #4. I love poker tournaments more than anything but the thing I am most looking forward to is seeing Sinead.
Sinead was my deeply-treasured flatmate but a month ago she dumped me and went to Ireland to finish her university degree.
Here are a few salient facts about Sinead:
Sinead is fantastic
Until she moved in with me, Sinead would lose her keys/lock herself out up to three times a week. I said I would evict her the very first time she lost her keys. In nine months, she only mislaid them once.
Sinead is the only person in the known universe to have been given a bar tab at Ricky's, the town disco.
Sinead is the last person in the world that should be allowed a bar tab at Ricky's.
Sinead is late for everything except work. Sinead believes that any time up to one hour after an appointed meeting time is well within accepted limits.
Sinead thought it would be fine to do a parachute jump in a skirt and slip-on Chinese slippers. When I asked her if she had packed some jeans, she was utterly bemused. "I'm wearing a skirt," she said. "But Sinead", I said, "you can't do a parachute jump in a skirt. For a start, it will fly up."
"I've thought of that," she said, "it's a tight skirt."
Sinead doesn't really know how old she is.
When Sinead and I went camping in the Pyrenees, I told her to not to bring too much as I only have a Smart car. She brought her hand bag. No towel, no sleeping bag, no rucksack and certainly not the Grivel Double Spring Ice Axe I'd asked her to bring. She was wearing her normal outfit: top, skirt and slip-on Chinese slippers. The next day, when we arrived at the bottom of Mount Somethingorother for a modest hike up to the summit, Sinead could barely get out of the car park (difficult gravel). Luckily there was a bar there - she was fine.
Sinead: Ready for anything
For almost a year, Sinead (happily) used a phone which had a battery life of approximately two and a half minutes. All mobile calls with Sinead ended abruptly. Sinead was actually offered a perfectly good phone over a year ago but never went to collect it. By the end of its life, Sinead's phone was just a skeleton. It had no outer covering. The space bar no longer worked; all her text messages were just one long word. It looked so disgusting that Sinead would just deny all knowledge if someone saw it lying on the table and asked whose it was. Everyone hated Sinead's phone except Sinead. When it finally died and she picked up the new phone, she refused to use it. She said she didn't want to take it out of the flat in case she lost it.
Sinead is a brilliant teacher; all the children at Speakeasy adored her. They called her "Xumai". They were devastated when she left.
Sinead once started a conversation with me as follows: "Mad, you're not going to like this, but i've been thinking about your funeral...."
Sinead endured hours and hours of tedious, post-Pau dumping analysis. Even when she told me it would never work (something I refused to believe, despite being dumped by him many more times than I've had spaghetti pesto (which is a lot)) and I went out with him AGAIN, she would still sit patiently through the next dumping phase as if it was all brand new.
In nine months living at my flat, Sinead never unpacked. The closest she got to unpacking was putting all her clothes on the floor.
Sinead is one of my favourite people in the whole world; I miss her a LOT.
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