Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

I have no date for the ball.

I had invited my friend Tim from Durham. I gave him quite a lot of notice, you know. A couple of months, I'd have thought. But some time last week he started muttering about how he might be starting work. 'He wouldn't be such a cad', I said to myself, and thought no more about it.

But he is indeed such a cad. He says he is only starting work so can't take the time off. Pish posh. It's quite common for people starting new jobs to have already committed to doing something in the first week or two. Employers really don't mind, you know, if you're polite and honest about it. He should have told them as soon as they offered him the job. But did he? No. He also claims that he's got Council on Friday (who has Council on a Friday? Oh wait .. we do) but the ball is on Saturday. And that he has no money (but didn't he say he's just started a job?).

I'm quite unimpressed. Severely unimpressed, perhaps. That's him wiped off my Christmas card list. If he was going to let me down, you'd think he'd have the decency to give me more than five days' notice.

I'm tempted to go alone now, you know. Bangor is already clearly segregated into Those Who Are going to the ball, and Those Who Are Not. You can't spring a formal occasion on people out of nowhere. It's even more difficult to spring formal occasions on people who don't live in Bangor, who might, say, have to travel from Ireland.

Oh how exasperating.