Nah it was nearly Christmas but I woke up one morning with a headache like a crown of thorns and there was a load of dew on my window and passion fruit in my undergarments so it felt like what the Japanese refer to as ‘chocolate egg celebration period.’

I’d heard through my financial adviser that all the money is in being a postman. Postwomen need not apply. I pictured myself walking from door to door in Donnybrook spreading good cheer to happy wealthy families in the wee hours of the morning. With that crystal clear daydream in my mind of where I’d be and what it’d be like I sent in my application. I was successful! My degree, masters and PHD had finally paid off.

But I didn’t get stationed in my locality of choice. Instead I ended up in one of the dodgiest parts of Dublin town. I won’t name names in case I get in trouble. So lets, for argument’s sake, call it Bally-X. No that’s much too obvious. Let’s call it X-Fermot. Yes that’s much better.

My financial adviser had also recently given me his Philip Glass box set, a new addition to my aural pleasure-dome. ‘Music for cultured robots’, he described it as. A good description as Philip Glass takes simple, almost arithmetic musical structures and plays them at nine squillion BPM. Excellent music for doing anything repetitive.

Off I went to X-Fermot with my I-pod full of Philip Glass and posted post to people. Like a robot on whizz, I made my rounds like a robot on whizz. What was interesting about my locality was that I was there so early that I often met people coming home from a night out. However, smack and glue can do dangerous things to the mind so on more than one occasion I was accused of trying to put hate through people’s letter boxes. Some people started to cry when they saw me. Not a Christmas love type crying. More a shame spiral kind of, what the hell am I still doing up,’ type crying.

I sat with one woman on her doorstep for half an hour as she explained how her life had been torn apart by a postman before and how it would never happen again but was I sure I wouldn’t come in for a cup of tea.

Then one morning, as Philip Glass had me gurning for more robotic concertos, I got attacked by three dogs They came out of nowhere and bit the shit out of me. I’ve never been the same again. It also meant that the good people of X-field road in X-Fermot didn’t get their Christmas cards and gifts that year. I didn’t have the balls to tell the other posties that I wasn’t willing to go down the road with the dogs again because I thought they’d laugh at me. So every day I just fucked all the post for that road into a skip nearby. I probably ruined some people’s Christmaseseseses. But remember folks, a postman is for life, not just for Christmas. Except in my case.