With all my talk about dating, you'd think that I would have been inundated with Christmas presents from admirers, wouldn't you? Well, dear reader, I regret to advise that I didn't get as much as a battered Christmas card, cheap perfume from LidlDaLDI, or even a bloody Toblerone.
But I don't want you to feel sorry for me. I'm in great form, it's Christmas and good stuff is going down. In the week when Bob Geldof 'liked' a blog post I wrote (sorry, I just had to throw that in there), an email alert from a dating website tells me that I am Jesus's 'favourite'. Given that it is his birthday week, I wouldn't have thought he'd have time for a web trawl and to find me, a non-believer, among his many, many admirers. I click on the link. As expected, Jesus is a fine looking lad, but just, different than what I expected - paler, more clean shaven, a sharper dresser. He's got a look about him that says 'eternal youth'. But Jesus lives a continent away and I don't expect him to part seas, or to walk on water to see me. So sorry Jesus, you may be loved by millions, but I ain't the gal for you.
I collect a parcel from a distribution centre. Logistics Guy recognises my address and describes where I live with Sat-Nav precision and also, describes who lives in my house, or rather once live'd' in my house. Without really meaning to, I blurt out the current make up of my household and quick as a flash, he offers to take me out on a date. Just like that. My package contains a blood-red lipstick, a gift sent from a friend. I wonder if Logistics Guy has scanned the package, seen the contents and summed me as a femme fatale. Or perhaps, there's an offer on packages, a buy-one, get-a-date-free type scenario. Either way, I decline his offer and leg it with my lippy.
By chance, I see Feckin' Fecker parked in the car park of a filling station and my heart skips a beat. I don't know if he has seen me as I walk out of the shop. I'm suddenly self conscious about how I look and what I'm wearing. I hesitate as I leave. I sit into my car, hoping that he will knock on the window of my car, just to say hello. But there's no knock and I drive off, feeling slightly bruised. There's no Christmas text message either. For closure, it would have been nice to get a 'Happy Christmas', but I think I know him well enough to know that he hasn't contacted me because he doesn't want to get my hopes up of us ever being an item. But FF, I get it, swear.
Although we speak regularly, I have no idea what Vital Statistics thinks of me. He has the loveliest of smiles. I like the way he runs his hands through his hair when he is animated, although I'd much prefer him to run them through mine. I demonstrate great restraint and do not share this sentiment (and you won't tell him, will you?). Vital Statistics is an expert on risk assessment and seems to have applied the same methodology to himself and myself. He can't predict our long term forecast due to the unknown outcome of predicted life happenings for him. I understand his hesitancy, but reassure him that although I MAY be high maintenance, that I am low risk and being financially independent, a low cost option.
I wonder if he's too polite to say that he's not that interested in me, so I ask him out straight. He is puzzled by the question. He replies, 'sure I'm here', which is true, he is indeed, here, sitting right across from me and there isn't a gun to his head. But still I want more. I consider presenting him with a questionnaire that produces facts and figures that could prompt him.
For example,
(A)
On a scale of 1-10, where 1=Total Minger and 10= Hot Momma, how would you rate the woman sitting across the table?
(B)
Please create a pie-chart indicting percentages of how you consider your date, using the headings below
1. Bessie Mate
2. Would like to bring her breakfast in bed
3. Want to grow old with her
4. Thinking of blocking her number on my phone
5. Undecided
I think it's best that I embrace the advice of my two older male friends, who recently insisted on giving stone-cold-sober me a drunken pep talk on my loveless life and 'slow the fuck down'. So I won't ask Vital Statistics any more probing questions. I'll just remind him now and then that I'm a woman in demand, I mean, how many girls can say that Jesus winked at them?
Sunday 25 December 2016
Monday 19 December 2016
Christmas Tunes and The Power of Love
It’s 1984 and the
Christmas no. 1 song is Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, the song
written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise awareness and funding for the people living, or dying, in the Ethiopian famine. The great and the good in the British and
Irish music scene belt out the tune and white Europeans slap themselves on the
back for making a difference.
It’s
years later, St Stephen’s Night and I’m in a night club, known locally as 'The Shed', one of 7,000 people. It’s near the end of the night and the place is
full of sweaty men. Everyone seems
pissed. Arm in arm, they sway, roaring ‘Feed
The Woooooo –R-R-L-DDD .....’ and it’s a world away from the starving black children
with bloated bellies, vacant eyes, with flies on their beautiful faces that
stared out from the TV. The sweaty men buy
chips on the way home and puke them up on the bus, the tune long forgotten.
It’s 1984 again, New
Year’s Day. I’m in my second cousin
Ailbhe’s house, the house where I first experienced a birthday cake made out of
raspberry ripple ice-cream blocks, decorated with Smartie’s. I’m there to play with Ailbhe, accompanying
my Granny Russell, invited, in acknowledgment of our strong family ties. There are other guests there too, in the other room. I think they are all at least 100 years
old. Ailbhe’s older brothers discuss
Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s song ‘The Power of Love’, when the video comes on
TV. I’m pretty sure that it’s MTUSA. The brothers speak with confidence and
enthusiasm about this song that isn’t really a Christmas song, but yet it is. They are unaware that I am listening. I don’t understand what they are saying, but it
awakens a new curiosity in me. I examine
the singer Holly Johnson later, in the same way that I have already considered Boy
George.
I’m driving and East 17's ‘Stay Now’ comes on the radio. I’m transported back to Christmas Eve 1994 where i am standing in the clothes shop in
Kingscourt where I have worked at weekends and holidays throughout college. Now on my twelfth pairs of trousers to be
altered that day, men come into the
shop on their way to the pub, on their way home from the pub, or on their way to midnight mass, requesting bespoke alterations. None of them seeing the lateness
of the day, and the day that it was, as a reason why their trousers shouldn’t
be stitched, while other customers needed serving. As we sew, myself and the owner chat. She tells me about her niece in England who
is dating one of the guys from East 17. I’ve
seen them on TV, London hipsters.
Street. Wide-boys from Lun-Dan,
real life East Enders. Parka jackets and
baseball caps. Oozing confidence. Dressed in white. So frigging cool. I’ve seen
photos of my bosses niece. She looks so beautiful
and sophisticated, not much older that me. I can see why yer man
fancies her. I feel every inch of the
chubby country girl that I am. In hindsight now,
I surprise myself that even after two years in art college, how my self-esteem
then was so low. I’m a dab hand at the
hem-stitch all the same, I’ll give myself that.
The Cheesy-Song-Christmas-Amnesty
allows me to hum along to the likes of Cliff Richard’s ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ and Mariah Carey’s
‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’, while ‘A Space Man Came Travelling’ allows
me to admit that Chris De Burgh isn’t all bad.
David Bowie and Bing
Crosby’s version of ‘Little Drummer Boy’ was recorded in 1977, when I was 3
years old. I’m not sure when this song first
comes to my attention, but it must be years later. I do not know who either
of these men is as I have never once heard their names mentioned at home or seen their
faces. It is the song that catches my
attention first - one of my favourites at school- but it is the Bowie/Crosbie duet that has me captivated and I decide that they must be famous. Last night, my children hear this rendition
on TV, and turn to watch the tune so familiar to them. They too recognise the
other worldliness of this and we share a moment.
The pair ‘shush’ me
when Picture This’s new tune ‘This Christmas’ comes on the radio now. They are the band’s no 1&2 fans since I
brought them to a free concert by the band in their home town of Athy the
summer just gone. It is their first proper
outdoor gig. In time, I hope they will
look back and remember the fear in their throats and the exhilaration in their bellies from that day and all the
stuff that music has the power to unleash.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyoTvgPn0rU
Sunday 11 December 2016
Holding Hands in the Countryside Part III
Before we actually meet, messages from The European draw me
in. He is eloquent and poetic and seems
to have a good sense of me. We meet in
an expensive restaurant, of his choosing, for an early evening dinner date. He has impeccable manners and helps me to
take off my coat. As he does so, I can
feel his eyes linger on my back through the loose drape of my top.
He is handsome, tall, well- dressed and well-heeled, smart
and funny. His job is high tech and
demanding and he explains it in a way that I can understand. I’m fascinated with his upbringing and his
family, his experiences in a country that rebuilt itself after war. He
tells me about his family vineyard and olive grove, that he hopes to retire to.
He attributes his beautiful skin to moisturising
with olive oil. In the bar later on, a
guy with a guitar plays Crowded House songs and myself and The European try to
out-do each other with memories that the tunes conjure up. He is interested in me and what I do. I point out all of the things about myself
that make me a Love Liability, but The European just shrugs and announces that
it’s ‘not a problem’.
It’s after midnight
when I leave. I’ve had the loveliest of
times. But as he lingers in the car park,
I resign myself to the fact that, despite my best efforts, there is no spark
there for me and I know that we won’t meet again. I’m disappointed. I think of the Mrs Merton interview with Debbie Mc Gee. She asks 'what first, Debbie, attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?'. I wonder what it would take to channel my inner Debbie.
The following afternoon, one of those Saturdays where there
is soccer and rugby on TV, I meet friends in a pub in a neighbouring town. It’s packed with lads, in for the double
header. I barely get to sit down when Sport
Star makes a bee line for me. He’s
drunk. He takes my left hand, raises it
and loudly asks ‘How can someone like you have no ring on your finger?’. People have turned to look at me now and I feel
my face redden. Sports Star lingers and I
try to change the subject, as he notices a stain on my shirt and rubs it gently,
causing me to feel even more self-conscious.
I can see that he is a gentle
soul, his features creased by years of alcohol abuse, but his good looks still
there. When he eventually leaves, my friends lament Sports
Star’s wasted talent and I can’t but think about him later.
I’m at an event, when The Snapper approaches me. I reach to greet him, with a peck on the
cheek, but he plonks a kiss on my lips.
He tells me that he loves me. We have
had this conversation before and I give him all of the reasons again why we
couldn’t be together. He disses my lukewarm
rationale. Truth is, I don’t know why.
All I know is that the human heart is as complex as be damned.
Thursday 8 December 2016
Dear Scumbag
Dear Scumbag, I’m sorry to resort to name calling. It seems so juvenile. Given that we have been so intimate in such a
short space of time, you would think that I would at least know your name.
You have a good idea of what I wear, my taste in jewellery,
the make up of my family, what I keep in my fridge. You will have seen that we had a double birthday celebration here
recently, and a while ago, a bereavement.
Did you take the time to read the
cards before you scattered them across my bedroom? Did you look at my photgraphs? Did you feel as much as a pang of guilt? A rush of adrenaline maybe. Or perhaps, indifference. Do you know – you are the only person, apart
from me, who knows where my children’s baby teeth are stored? Does that make you feel special, Scumbag?
You were only one of a handful of people that knew I wasn’t home
that night – a very rare midweek get together, with my ‘MS & Me’ blogger
friends, a glorious night away in a hotel. How ironic that I cleaned the house that day before I left, thinking how nice it was to come home to a clean gaff. I came home the following day, on a high, with an award that the blogger team
collectively received from the MS Society for ‘Volunteer of the Year’. I knew straight away
that you had visited. I could see that a
window box had been moved and was on a garden bench. You will laugh when I tell you this Scumbag – my first
thought was that someone had left me a gift and had put the window box on it to
stop it blowing away. I know, ha flippin’
ha. The silent scream that I had walking
around the house, wondering if you were still there. Trying to establish what was taken amid the
ransacked mess. The children’s school
bus arriving minutes later and the pair of them walking in on top of it. No time to gather myself or hide what had
happened.
A sleepless night in a friend’s house comforting a child,
who wakes every time I move in the bed. ‘Lie
facing me Mammy, rub my tummy’. I wouldn’t
have slept anyway, worrying that you and your friends might come back. Nights of restlessness follow and I am prone
to outbursts of tears at inappropriate times. All the necessary tasks to follow up - forensics, insurance, glaziers - exhaust me. I launch an art exhibition three days later and panic at the thought of
speaking in public, something I have done almost weekly for years.
Have you any idea how distraught a little boy can be when he
finds his farm set wrecked? The boy who goes ballistic if I accidentally disturb one of his carefully arranged animals when I go
into his room to open the curtains? Did
you admire his meticulousness before you ripped the fireplace apart in his
room? You should have heard him howl
when he first seen what you did and again, on the evening he tidied it all
up. He cried and shouted obscenities at
you that only a 9 year old could conjure up.
I told him that the nice Garda he met said that we were to forget about
it. He is taking that as Gospel and it helps. The house
is back in order now (It's amazing how well I can clean when I am pure thick), but there’s the daily reminder of a damaged window to look at in
him room - You made a right job of that Scumbag. Would I make you blush if I called you an old
pro?
No doubt your greasy hands quickly passed my lovely jewellery to
your friend, Scumbag 2, who like you, know the cost of everything and the value
of nothing. Do you ever think about the
story behind your acquisitions Scumbag?
The special moment when someone gives a gift for life? The person that did a decent days work to
make a purchase? It's not something you can appreciate really, is it?
You probably think I’m being over dramatic. Of course, I am thankful that no one got hurt
and that you have little to remember your visit to Poppy Cottage. I’m not angry, I’m just tired and hopeful,
dear Scumbag, that Karma will someday bite your greasy ass. Happy Christmas, Lucina xx
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