Colm O'Regan: The perfect Valentine's Day gift - a zombie plan for the one you love
Valentines Day: I’m not imagining much of a date night at the moment. I expect the children to slope off to bed after the usual three-hour filibuster.
Life is at 0.75x speed anyway, but throw in the sudden thirst, an onrush of appetite like a sumo wrestler training for a basho, having eaten like an unhappy 1980s supermodel all day, WHEN THE FOOD WAS PLACED IN FRONT OF THEM FOR FECK'S SAKE…
It’s a rerun of Brexit negotiations just to get them out of the room.
But I’m hoping there will be some Us-Time. To unwind on the sofa watching the perfect couples TV. Season 2 of , the Korean zombie drama.
You should write something about Valentine’s Day given the week that’s in it said my editor. I am way ahead of you boss, I said. Because I was thinking about zombies anyway.
Zombie shows are the only horror we’ll watch together — apart from a small child eating a banana with their mouth open. We grew closer as a couple nearly a decade ago, watching endless episodes of while the country emptied. I can’t remember when we got fed up of Rick warning “CAWWWWRL!”. Maybe somewhere in between the 8th and 9th Places They Thought Were Safe But Turned Out To Be Bad With The Loss of a Key Cast Member We Had Just Grown To Like.
But now we are back in the corral and snarling outside the spiked fence are the zombies of . is better than . I trust the Koreans a lot more when it comes to pandemics anyway. And everyone wears incredible hats.
Zombie shows like are good to watch as a couple because they force you to think about the big questions that you have to confront if civilisation falls. Questions best summed up by the Twisted Doodles cushion cover I bought my wife a few years ago for Valentine’s Day that said “I love YOU. You love ME. Please Destroy My Brain When I’m a Zombie.”
It’s important to at least try to have a zombie plan. You’d be surprised who has one. You could be at the swankiest gala dinner with all sorts of captains of industry, but with a little bit of gentle probing, you’ll definitely find one person at your table who knows exactly how they’re going to escape when the groaning slavering horde arrives at their mews.
You can guide them there with some general chat about solar panels or some other note of self-sufficiency and before you know it, you’re arguing on whether fire is a better defence than bullets.
Our plan is vague so far. Assuming the zombie attack started in Dublin, brought in no doubt by someone skiing, we might try and make it to Dripsey. I’d need to know I’d be welcome there. I haven’t been there much in the last 12 months. I’ve liked a few posts from the Tidy Towns Facebook page and bought tickets for the GAA lotto but would that be enough to get me past the barricades constructed on the road at the top of the Dam?
How would you get to Dripsey? The sat nav would say M7/M8 but you’d have to assume that was blocked. Perhaps after a Covid checkpoint gone horribly wrong. We’d have to go through the bypassed towns of our childhood. Tense and afraid that a contorted body would stagger onto the bonnet if you slowed down too much. And that’s just closing time in Portlaoise. What if they were zombies as well?
There’ll be enough on your mind when the time comes. So this Valentines, for the ones you love, have a zombie plan. Whether it’s written on a cushion or not.
