aoife.trench.warfare

Not long ago I realised that, once unleashed onto the unsuspecting national schools of the country in approximately two years' time, I would at some point have to teach tin whistle to the pupils in my class. This undeniable fact filled me with fear and self-doubt. The last thing I want is for a group of 7- and 8-year-old children to laugh in my face when I make a dog's dinner of the C natural, and ultimately lose their coveted respect for the remainder of the school year. That there is the stuff of nightmares. Okay, no bother, one might think, sure didn't we all slog through a stint of the tin whistle at one time or another in primary school. Just pick one up sure, it'll all come flying back. Be grand. Um, how about no . Getting back into the ways of the whistle has proved to be one of the most back-breaking things I have ever signed myself up for. An outline of the many struggles I come face-to-face with since taking up the quintessential traditional instrument are p...

In sixth year, the most grueling year of one's life in terms of study, decision-making, or in relation to the first, lack of decision-making, the CAO people forgot to tell us aspiring teachers one very important thing. In order to survive as an educator, you need to have the strength of an inter-county football team to simply get by each day. FACT. For the last week I have been on teaching practice, and I don't know what it is but mother of sweet divine the legs, feet and back do be quite shagged after 6 hours of it. Maybe it's the constant hurdling over bags, art supplies and children themselves. Maybe it's the endless trips to the photocopying machine, and the painful standing session that endures upon arrival. Or maybe it's the out-dated student teacher dress code that prevents us from wearing shoes that actually give us some much-needed arch support for the task of dealing with snotty noses, the flinging of random objects or continuous streams of chatter about ...

Do these women feel as good as they look? Yes, I am female, and yes, I believe in maintaining a stylish appearance but may I just say, I am of the firm belief that high heels are the devil incarnate and that they lead to nothing but catastrophe. I don't care how beautiful they are, I don't care if they make my outfit "pop" and I certainly don't care for their price - to me, high heels are Public Enemy No. 1. My own experiences with these weapons of mass destruction are, thankfully, limited. Being 5'10" does have its perks after all (thanks, Dad.) I own exactly two pairs of heeled shoes, one a pair of wedges and the other a dainty pair of kitten heels. Laugh all you want, you short-ass peasants, but we'll see who's LOL ing and ROFL ing at the end of the night when all of you are teetering to and fro at a dangerous height and toppling over one another like a crowd from Weight Watchers that have just gotten a whiff of a Big Mac meal. F...

If you have a tattoo of One Direction song lyrics somewhere on your body, if you religiously follow the Twitter pages of Hollywood's famed and forgotten, if your email address is something along the lines of 'mrsryangosling123@gmail.com' or 'meganfoxbabydaddy@yahoo.ie,' please X out of your browser. Because you, you sad pathetic human, are not going to like what I have to say. Maybe it was the decent, rural Kerry upbringing I had, or maybe I was born with a rare  gene that pre-supposes a blatant disinterest in all matters celeb. I will forever live in limbo as to the reason why. Inspiration for this post came when I was listening to the radio on the way up to college recently and a presenter implored us just before an ad break to stay tuned so that we would hear the "shocking reason why Miley is heartbroken." And I thought to myself, mother of sweet divine do people actually give a damn about this stuff? Trending topics on Twitter are a disheartening r...

The sight we were met with daily Hours trawling through page after page looking for the perfect skin. Creating polls like "which JLS boi is ur fave?!?!!??!!?". And of course, the daily dilemma of who to give the 'love' to. Sound familiar? Yes, this was actually our lives once upon a time, back in the days where words like "fine" and "meet" were in our vocabulary, we were heading off to Irish College every summer, and our biggest fear was the Junior Cert. This, my friends, was a time when Bebo reigned supreme. Every day after school, dial-up connection dependent, you logged into your Bebo account and spent the whole evening doing, in hindsight, sweet feck all. Ooh, Sammy uploaded the photos of today when all the lads went around the town OMG they even went to the park!! Awh I only got 65% on Jamie's quiz of "How well do you know me?", that's so shaming. OMG I got EIGHT loves today, and it's not even my birthday, I am...

People with buggies. I applaud you. Woohoo, turns out you can reproduce. Great. But do you really have to shove it in our faces everywhere we go? And shove it in our sides, and shove it in our legs, and shove it across our paths as we feebly attempt to walk hurriedly through life? Please raise your hand if you feel you have been personally victimised by people with buggies. Yeah, thought so. They are everywhere, these buggy-wielding maniacs. They lurk at the sides of the footpath waiting for you to dash by in a hurry only to canter out and impede you on your way; they form the queues of every place you have ever had to queue in, at peak time; they wait for you in the darkest corners of tiny clothes shop with even tinier aisles, waiting for the moment you wish to peruse the skinny jeans only to park themselves and their weapon of choice right in front of the various denim articles on display. Yes, we get it okay, I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why Little Precious and the...

I don't know what dark corners of the world wide web you were pottering through to land upon this page, but alas you are here, so bid farewell to the comfortable, ignorance-is-bliss lifestyle you once had, and step into the strange, eye-opening world of yours truly! One thing you're going to find out about me after you subscribe to aoifetrenchwarfare is that I have opinions, and strong ones at that. I get inspiration from nearly everything and everyone I come in contact with, be it an article, an overplayed song on the radio, a snide remark or simply a glance out the kitchen window. While I am firm in my beliefs about various things, I acknowledge that I don't have all the answers, and one thing I never intend to do is to insult or to indoctrinate anyone. I just feel that I need to lay my opinions out in black and white, and by doing this I can make more sense of them, and if they make some sort of an impact on you, well then it's all good. Unless of course you ar...