As you stare forlornly down at your own Christmas gifts - a drab pair of argyle socks that now so glumly adorn your feet, know that your own haul of festively material goods is vastly inferior to that of one Irish man. One Eoin O'Sullivan.
It would be remiss of me to throw around the phrase 'Taylor Swift superfan' without doing due diligence as to whether it is deserved or not. Well, given that I have no intentions of leaving the house today, or to apply myself to my work in any really meaningful way, I am going to go ahead and say that Eoin O'Sullivan warrants that description.
And how could I not, given the evidence in the piece of home-movie cinematography embedded below?
The setting, dear reader, is the O'Sullivan household; the day is that of Christmas and the man concerned is the aforementioned Eoin O'Sullivan. The scene begins with our protagonist, Eoin, exploring the circumference of a lovingly wrapped Christmas present. As he carefully yet assuredly turns the present over in his hands, we can almost see his mind at work; assessing - like a crack team of special service soldiers circling the perimeter of an enemy compound - the quickest and easiest method of gaining access to the target within. He pounces.
However, with the wrapping paper dispatched, we can see that something is wrong, he immediately loses all sense of the composure he briefly possessed. Confronted by an Estée Lauder box, nestled in amongst the torn festive cladding, he becomes confused, perturbed and subsequently flounders about trying to open the gift-box until a nearby relative has to intervene. With entry to the Estée Lauder box now secured he realises that he is merely at the tip of an already confusing metaphorical iceberg. Instead of some high-end cosmetics awaiting him, there is simply an envelope. We can see a brief flicker of consternation ripple across the bristles of his neatly groomed moustache.
By this stage, another man - a lesser man than Eoin O'Sullivan - may have packed in the whole sorry business, accepting that whatever present may lay in store for them, it surely couldn't be worth having to contend with any more gut-wrenching twists. There's only so long one man can stay buckled in on such an emotional rollercoaster before it becomes too much and he is forced to signal to the nearest carnie to pull the emergency stop and bring the whole saga to a juddering halt.
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But not Eoin O'Sullivan. He rallies and with one final flourish, one final surge, he thrusts his meaty hands into the depths of this crisp, white envelope, retrieving its contents. Taylor Swift tickets.
I don't know if you've ever seen a man lost in a desert, struggling through the heat. A man who is slowly coming to terms with the thought that the end might be in sight - that he may have run his final race - only to then realise that the oasis he'd been staggering toward was in fact not a mirage as he had pessimistically presumed, but real; wonderfully, joyously real. The wave of excitement, of elation and anticipation that would burst across his face, it pales in comparison to the expression of unbridled ecstasy that erupts on ol' Eoin O'Sullivan's mug.
Lovely stuff, and heartening to think that Eoin's presenceat the concert may now single-handedly drag the average age of an attendee up into double figures.
