My best role yet — the grand designer
‘The fake grass is basically a carpet. The only thing missing is a roof ’
IAM settling into a life of quiet suburban desperation. Not the worst thing, says you, encouraging me to check my privilege. And it’s true. There is a part of me that revels in the mundane, that is grateful for ordinariness, that finds great exoticism in the everyday. I suppose life has been so odd that there is certain novelty for me in the life of a suburban dad doing boring stuff.
Or maybe I am just becoming incredibly boring. But I prefer to think that I am kind of ironically living out this boring existence. I am doing it all with a sense of slight bemusement. I’m not really doing it. My whole life is a clever parody of a boring person. It’s like an art installation. I am not really an unmade bed, I am a clever comment about an unmade bed, on life itself. I am not really a boring suburban dad, I am ironically playing the part of a boring suburban dad. I am a boring suburban dad in inverted commas. I am an individual.
I have a bit of a focus on the garden right now. Not actual gardening, you understand. I’m willing to go so far with this pretence of being a boring suburban dad like all the other mugs, but it doesn’t extend to tending my dahlias yet. The only living things in that garden are me, the kids and their mother.
There is a patio and there is fake grass. Not a shrub or a pot. You may say it sounds sterile. To me, it’s clean. You know the way the property shows all tell us we should make our garden into an extra room? I have literally done that. The only thing missing is a roof. The fake grass is essentially a carpet. So then, obviously, I needed furniture.
I have travelled far and wide in search of the right furniture. I didn’t even know I had opinions on garden furniture. But it turns out I do. Or at least this dad character I find myself playing has opinions on it. I must say I understand now what writers and actors say about the characters taking on a life of their own. This suburban dad guy I came up with continually surprises me. I found him/myself on a Dublin Bike the other day. And then out at the Dutch Bike Shop looking at ironic high-nelly type things.
Anyway, allow me to report back to you on behalf of all the other boring suburban dads from the cutting edge of the garden furniture scene. The main thing I would tell you is that there is a lot of rattan out there. And no, I’m still not sure which syllable we emphasise there. If you don’t like rattan, you’re in trouble. You can go olde worlde heavy metal or you can decide to start spending loads more money. My favourite was a revolutionary new style of outdoor furniture that is essentially a three-piece suite. The trick is that the material is magic so it repels rain and stains and dries off in minutes. It was pretty cool. And obviously it fits into my school of garden design, which involves making your garden like a living room. So not only would I have a carpet out there, I would also have a suite of furniture. Then I’d just have to wait for the outdoor TV to come onstream and I’d be sorted. Hang a few pictures on the wall and, Bob’s your uncle, I could live in the garden, weather permitting.
The suite of waterproof furniture was a bit rich for our blood, and it got me thinking about how much I would really use it anyway. From there I went on to wondering why I was bothering to spend any money on garden furniture at all. So having invested all this time in travelling to places like Wicklow to look at garden furniture, I did an about turn. I went into the garage and got out these awful-looking chairs that a guy in Woodies had left over a few years ago. I did a deal with him and got them for 100 quid. My wife hates the sight of them, but, you know what, they are chairs. In a frenzy of Dadness I got out various strong cleaning products and polished them up and I have decided they will do.
And so I have turned my attention to outdoor cooking. After all, if a man is going to live in the garden, he needs to eat.
So it turns out that the thing to have these days is a big gas barbecue that is essentially a cooker. As much as putting a cooker outside in the garden fits in with my aesthetic of decorating the garden as an indoor ‘space’, I can’t reconcile having a cooker in the kitchen and having another cooker 10 feet away in the garden.
I am currently looking at outdoor pizza ovens. Anything really, to see excitement on those two happy little faces. That’s the pay-off for playing this character.