The fact that I live in a 5,000-year-old underground passage-tomb should, of course, result in fewer visitors than a normal, say, three-bed semi in a Dundalk housing estate.
For instance, just a few weeks ago I had an Eircom guy around offering me a sensational deal on an Eircom Phone Watch alarm. Now, it took me some time, and no amount of gentle persuasion, to convince this fellow that I am not in need of such a device.
Typical salesman, he wasn't taking no for an answer. So after about an hour of being patient with him, I eventually had to scare the bejaysus out of him by getting my son Cúchulainn to perform one of his warped spasm feats. And it wasn't pleasant, I can tell you. I'd say Mr. Salesman is having a few disturbed dreams of late. The boul Cookie, as I call him (short for Cúchulainn), pulled his face into his head and popped his brains out his ears. I won't even tell you what came out his rear end. After vomiting on my doorstep, if you could call it that, the Eircom man ran for the hills and hasn't been seen since.
You see, I tried to explain that there are no actual corporeal beings living in my stone chamber, and that motion sensors would be no use in a situation where the only occupants of a building were in spirit form. But this guy just wouldn't listen. He kept blabbering on about security this and intruders that and motion sensors the other.
I tried to tell him no-one would dare enter my domain, even if they could find it. My address is not in the phone book, and the postman doesn't know it exists. It's a wee bit off the beaten track, in a field on the side of a hill outside Ardee. The last time I had a visitor was in 1789 and such was the scare he got his story has been widespread in local folklore ever since. I set the Cailleach Bhéara on him. Frightened the poor divil out of his skin.
I'm the sort of fellow who does not normally welcome visitors. Especially because I've got a whole sleeping army of enchanted warriors in the deepest chambers of my underground lair. They don't take kindly to being woken, because they're in a 1,000-year sleep and only a six-fingered hero can wake them from the spell. But more of that another time.
One succinct point I also raised with the Phone Watch guy was that I don't, in fact, have a telephone. I mean what Celtic god would need a phone, given our ability to communicate with any of our kind across vast distances? Just last week, I had a chat with my old mate Bodb Dearg, a Tipperary chief, for a whole hour and it cost me nothing. If I had a phone, the same conversation would cost me a fortune - probably half the gold buried under all the ringforts of Ireland.
Anyhow, I won't make light of a situation in Dundalk where an intruder posing as a water company worker stole a 70-year-old woman's handbag. Admittedly it's the sort of thing that many people could be duped by. A guy arrives saying he's going to test the water (remember the lead in water scare recently?) and you think, well, better let him in and make sure my water's okay. And ten minutes later he's gone and so is your money.
It's just an awful pity I wasn't around to help. This poor woman must be very shaken up by the ordeal. How many of you, if someone who looked like a council worker or a water company employee or an ESB official called to your door, would ask them for ID and show immediate suspicion of them? Let's be honest, your natural inclination is to hold back on the suspicion because you don't want to be rude to them if they're genuine. But that's the reality these days. You should always ask the person for ID and if you're still suspicious, ask them to wait a moment, close the door on them and phone someone nearby to come down to your house, just in case.
If I get my hands on the culprit, heaven help him. I'll set the Hound of Culann on him and it'll make a warp spasm look like a picnic party.
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