Sunday 22 October 2017

Two Years

If anyone asks me what did my father die of, I'd be tempted to say that 'he died of a Monday', borrowing one of staple family corny jokes.  But that he did - die of a Monday - two years ago this week.

It was his anniversary proper on Thursday.  Other than an early morning phone call from a cousin asking how I was, closely followed by a message from one of oldest friends, which caused a brief wave of emotion, the day was uneventful.  That morning, at tea-break, I sat in the same cafe, at the same table, (but with a variation of work colleagues present), at the time as that memorable day two years ago, when I received two phone calls, one after the other from my brother.  The first one saying that my father had a heart attack and the second, saying 'he's gone Lucy'.  I thought about mentioning the anniversary at tea-break, but the banter was in full flow and I let the moment pass.

So much has changed within the the steady backbone of Milltown in the last two years.  In the summer of 2015, our neighbour's son Robert, only 19 years of age, died in a tragic farm accident.  Nothing that has happened there before or since is comparable to their loss.  At the time, my mother remarked to me that my father had driven over to the wake, instead of walking, which would have made much more sense.  The signs were there that my father wasn't well.

The elderly couple up on the hill, who were there for forever and a day, died within a relatively short period of each other.   And our dear neighbour Dinny, living just down the road, passed away in the last few weeks. Coincidentally, his grave is directly beside my our family grave.  If you put your head to the ground there, you might hear my father giving a colourful running commentary on the politics of the day, with Dinny, head bowed, smiling.  Quietly agreeing. Nodding. 'That's right John, that's right'.   No doubt there would be a dig at Dinny for his liking of my mother's baking and 'The Case of the Freshly Baked Flan' that disappeared from our back kitchen, where it was cooling.  My brother's eyes popped out on sticks later, when Dinny offered him a slice of flan in his house, my brother recognising the pattern on the plate.

Visiting and enquiring about the couple on the hill and Dinny had become part of my mother's new routine since my father's death and now that will change too.  She announced recently, with a touch of melancholy, that she now was the oldest person living on the road and I feel for her and have a heightened sense of her vulnerability.  But with that, a gratitude for her family, family and neighbours that have rallied around and made a new routine.

Looking back, my father's death had much more of an impact on me that I would have ever expected.  I didn't think I'd miss him as much as I did.  In the years coming up to his death, my visits to Milltown were brief and conversations were few.  My marriage was falling apart and I wasn't able to talk about it. I worried about my mother worrying about me and about being an embarrassment to my father - Not so much ME being an embarrassment, just the situation.  Not exactly the conversation for the pub on a Saturday night now?  Not when it's your daughter.  Is there a good way to break news like this?

I standing in front of the stove in the old kitchen, hands gripped on the rail, the story spilling out of me. I'm trying to be matter-of-fact about it.  Giving the appearance of someone who is fine.  My father remains seated, elbows over his newspaper and listens.  He doesn't understand.  Didn't see it coming. Liked going for a pint with my husband.   I have to tell him more than I initially wanted to, things that he can't comprehend, things that I am struggling with myself. He's quiet.  Disappointed maybe.  Taken aback.  But no harsh words.  I leave him to consider the new reality for me and for his grand children.

There have been many times since his death when I have felt his presence, not that I've looked for it.  It just was there and not always subtly either.  This is John Russell we are talking about, remember.  Bad Country & Western music blaring in the Square, as I enter court for a challenging appearance; his energy right in front of me after a visit to my neurologist, a feeling so real that I can almost reach out and touch him and it startles me.  Although, if he was reading this, he might say it's a 'heap of shite'.
His death gave me a boost to my writing too.  Writing about him gave me both comfort and a new confidence.  Funny, I suppose, because I'm not sure if he ever read anything I wrote.  If he did, we both would have been to uncomfortable with each other to discuss it.

My children and the other grand children mention my father regularly.  The general gist of the comments is that 'Granddad was great fun'.  I'm heartened that even the youngest grandchild Eliza describes him in visual accounts that I know are her memories that not ones that she has heard from someone else.  As time goes on, the distinctive Russell genes come to the fore and I, and others, see my father more and more in his two brothers.  JR is never far away.

I took on the job of getting his memorial cards.  A simple task in terms of text and graphic design, compared to the publicity material and reports that I prepare regularly in my work capacity.  Yet it has taken me the guts of two years to get around to it.  I had underestimated the emotional impact of this relatively small task, this final gesture.  The graphic designer asks kindly 'Were you close to you father?'. 'No', I say and the tears start and don't stop for a fortnight in the run up to his second anniversary.  This doesn't suit me at all.  I thought I was done with this.  A new wave of grief pulls out from my chest like a tacky glue stuck to my fingers, in a way it hadn't before.

I put it down to the new peace in my life that has created space for untapped emotion to flood in like a tsunami.  

The finished memorial cards look well.  In the photograph, my father looks relaxed.  It's a photo taken on a European forestry trip.  I had looked for a suitable poem to include, a Seamus Heaney one perhaps, but then I realise that I have no idea what my father thought of Heaney, or any other poet indeed.  If he has strong views either way, I'm sure that I would have heard.  My mother chooses a prayer.  Images of Milltown Glen will be recognisable to anyone who ever travelled it.

I show my daughter the card.  She approves.  'Granddad is smiling!', she laughs.  Granddad had a bit of a reputation for not smiling, or indeed looking in the general direction of the photographer and sometimes, disappearing before the photographs were taken.

We used to joke with him that we wouldn't have a decent image for his memorial card.

'That's a shocking thing to say', he would say, put the head down and continue reading.

Then,

'Make me a cup of tea, like a good girsha'.




Sunday 3 September 2017

Princess Diana and me

I was surprised to see that it has only been twenty years since Princess Diana died.  In my mind, it was ‘long ago’, with her etched into my childhood memories.  I was a girlie-girl who loved fashion and make-up, the kind of kid who made wedding dresses for my Sindy doll out of net curtains. (Sindy was my doll of choice, over Barbie, who I recognised even then as being ‘too skinny’.  Sindy, on the other hand, had a decent pair of hips).  

I was mesmerised by Hollywood actresses such as Audrey Hepburn Diana and Doris Day, but they seemed very far away.  Diana seemed closer, when she came to my attention as a mere ‘Lady’ and got engaged to Prince Charles in 1981.   


A photograph by then Fleet Street photographer John Minihan, captured a shy looking 19 year old Diana, with the sun shining through a flimsy skirt that revealed her long legs, causing a pre-internet media sensation - an image that always stayed in my mind.  I suppose the image was controversial at the time and looking back, represents a shift in the media in terms of what was off limits.  Funny that years later, with my work-hat on, that I would become acquainted with John, who grew up in Athy and chat to him about taking that iconic image.  When I was purchasing his equally iconic collection of portraits and scenes from Athy for the local authority Municipal Art Collection,  I considered including the Diana portrait, but decided against - not sure that others would have the same affection for the image as I do, or if it there was a place for it in the collection.


The fact that Diana married a prince was incidental to me.  Talk about the monarchy and 'The Establishment' went over my head. I just loved her style, all shoulder pads, crisp collars and drop earrings.  Her floppy hair and eye liner.  The way she blushed and held her head low.  Her wedding dress that creased on the day because it was was so voluminous and made of silk.  Her humanitarian work. I poured over her image in Hello magazine and made sketches in copy books, practice for when I was going to be a fashion designer.  


This summer, I was charmed to see the original toile of her dress and miniatures of her bridesmaids dresses, created by ''The Emanuel's'' in The Style Museum in Newbridge Silverware.  Instantly, I’m transported back to seven year old me, sitting in an armchair beside the TV, watching coverage of the Royal Wedding for what seemed like hours, while my mother goes about her work, occasionally stopping to watch, the smell of dinner and Saturday afternoon baking wafting around.  


Do you remember where you were when you heard that Diana died?  I was staying with my aunt Aine and she woke me on the Sunday morning to tell me, handing me a cup of tea in bed.  A surreal moment indeed.  The previous year when I had stayed with Aine, I answered her phone on a Saturday night to be told that her cousin Anna and her husband, Leo had been killed driving home from mass in Ardee.  We had often accompanied Anna and Leo to mass and I remember lots of laughing and skitting in between the prayers.  For whatever reason, we stayed home that night and I had just finished dying and cutting Aine’s hair.  I was glad to be there for her, and in an odd way, happy that at least her hair would look well for the funeral in the coming days.  Thinking back on it now, I am also amused that she trusted me as hairdresser.

Aine was another style icon for me, the aunt who gave me hand-me-down clothes and shoes as soon as I was old enough to fit into them. She gave me leftover make-up too - the palettes of eye shadow with only navy and purples remaining.  I could hear other children whisper in a shop when we stop to buy Iced Caramels for my Nana, ‘that girl is wearing make-up’.  I regularly asked Aine when would she get married, somehow missing out on the fact that she doesn’t have a boyfriend.  


As the years go by, I take on the role of Personal Shopper for Aine and my mother, on our day
trips to Dublin for wedding outfits, or whatever is on the list.   I feel pulled in two directions in Arnott’s store, with Aine having an aversion to lifts and my mother, escalators and neither of them fancying the stairs.   After a stand off, a compromise is reached after I train my mother to use the escalator.


In the weeks before Aine died in 2013, I watch her appearance take on the strain of illness.  Her elegant wardrobe is reduced to bed wear and she is too sick to care.  My heart sinks as I walk towards her hospital room, with the door ajar and I only recognise her now by the colour of her dressing gown.  When she dies, she leaves me a beautiful rose gold bangle in her will, a gift from an old boyfriend of hers, a man I have heard of, but never met.  I’m devastated when I am unable to find the bangle after a break-in at my home last year and am even more upset telling my mother. Imagine my joy when I find it recently, tucked in the back of a drawer. I bring my mother clothes shopping recently and we find ourselves picking up garments in dusty pinks and blues, noting ‘this is a real Aine top’.


Much of the commentary in this week’s media was around the mass expression of grief when Diana died, a new phenomenon, before a world of social media.  To me though, my feelings of sadness are very personal, linked to my childhood, inspiration and coming of age.  Twenty years on, I am looking at the coverage of Diana’s death through my own eyes as a mother and really appreciate the impact that her death, aged just 36, must have had on her two young sons, children who had already experienced the separation of their parents.  And all in the glare of the media too.

I picked up a Hello magazine recently in my hairdressers.  It was jam packed with photographs of the Royal Family, which I had limited interest in, apart from amusement at the attention given to Kate Middleton’s sister butt.  In fairness though, she would give Sindy a run for her money.

Saturday 22 July 2017

Illegal Trading at Poppy Cottage

Following a recent case of illegal selling of lemonade in East London by a 5 year old girl which lead to a £150 fine (that was later overturned), a further related incident was reported in South Co Kildare, Ireland.

At a special sitting of Kildare District Court, on Thursday July 20th 2017, a 43 year old woman (although 'fresh looking for her years', all of the male Gardai present agreed), Lucina Russell, appeared on charges that she had facilitated the illegal sale of fruit smoothies at her home in Poppy Cottage, Co Kildare, on Wed 19th between the hours of 4pm and 7pm.

Also in court were her two children, a boy and a girl, both aged 9 years of age, who cannot be named for legal reasons.  Both children looked disheveled and appeared not to have had a decent wash since school term ended.  Ms Russell was dressed in black, with traces of pancake mixture and Nutella in her hair.


When questioned by Judge HeeBee GeeBee, Ms Russell denied resisting arrest, stating that she ‘just wanted to put on me lippy and change my t-shirt’.   Arresting Garda Seamus Mc Sean presented the t-shirt as evidence in court.  Ms Russell was quick to point out that the red splatters on the garment were ‘only strawberries’ and denied there could be any blood present, other than that of her own, from the over-enthusiastic chopping off ‘the green bits’.   She admitted to not wearing a hair net while preparing the smoothies, but insisted that her hair 'was clean as disinfectant' and ‘so full of peroxide and head lice shampoo that you would eat your dinner out of it.’

Also presented in court were photographs of the illegal selling operation.  Ms Russell admitted to taking and posting on Facebook to ‘drum up business on a quiet road’.  Other evidence included a fistful of receipts for plastic cups, straws, frozen fruit, yoghurt and fruit juice.  Judge HeeBee GeeBee put it to Ms Russell that she ‘was the adult’ and could easily have refused to purchase the items for her children.  An emotional Ms Russell said, ‘Your Honour, you don’t know what it’s like - being eye balled by twins for days.  The Death Stare and silent treatment was killing me’.   In response to the Judge’s question ‘are they identical twins?, Ms Russell  replied that ‘they can’t be because he has a willy and she doesn’t’.  The Judge then witnessed the Death Stare first hand when the children looked at him and his ‘stupid question’ and he openly admitted feeling ‘The Fear.’

Reviewing the receipts presented in court and the homemade sign made by the 9 year old girl, the Judge chastised Ms Russell, stating that she had ‘spent a fortune’ on ingredients and that the 50cent and 1euro prices charged would ‘never recoup costs’.  She confirmed that she was not registered for VAT and did not have a Traders Permit.  He suggested that passers-by could have felt harassed and intimidated by the aggressive manner in which the children waved the sign around to encourage sales.  He accused her of ‘reckless trading’, stating that the activity would not stand to her children in the ‘real world of commerce.’  Ms Russell tried to justify her behaviour, saying that she wanted her children to have a ‘better childhood than she had.’  Attendees in court were moved by her harrowing account of a farming childhood of standing in gaps, de-maggoting sheep and picking stones.

There were emotional scenes when the Judge said that he had no option but to sentence the children each to one month without WiFi access.  Ms Russell received a one month jail sentence, with no option of bail.  Being led away from court, Ms Russell thanked the judge for his leniency and said that 'after a month of the children on holidays and two foreign students staying', that the sentence sounded like ‘heaven.'  She shouted to her children that there were ‘some left over strawberries in the fridge.’

Thursday 20 July 2017

A Beautiful Affair: My Mate Al Gug

My earliest memory of Allen Gogarty is when we are both 12 years of age.  We share questionable short haircuts, very possibly administered by our well-meaning mothers.  Our ‘dos are accentuated by green uniform jumpers and yellow shirts (I kid you not – yellow), that are most unbecoming to Irish teenage skin.  We are standing alone in P3, a prefab where we have English class and the sun is shining  - The salubrious surroundings where Ms Greaney inspires me with her enthusiasm for literature.

Allen and I have some sort of disagreement.  For the life of me, I can’t think about what.  We exchange insults and he calls me ‘Russell’.  It is indeed, hate at first sight.  I want to box him in the head.

After that though, I only remember Allen as one of my best friends.  In the whole world.  Ever.  He gets promoted to the Band of the Chosen Few who are allowed call me 'Lucy'.  Throughout our years in secondary school, he has the unenviable task of being my male ‘go-to’ friend.  He hears my woes and I, his.  Acne, homework, boyfriends, girlfriends, parents, art and music.  Teenage angst overload.

Aged 15, we go to see AC/DC in The Point Depot.  We travel to Dublin by bus and are met by Allen’s Sophisticated Older Sister near UCD.   She knows that I am a newbie vegetarian and brings us to a veggie restaurant.   It’s 1989 and vegetarian food in North Co Meath consists of meat with two veg, but without the meat.  In the restaurant, I order a vegetarian strudel, as if I know what I talking about.  There’s puff pastry, cheese, pine nuts and spinach, as exotic as I ever had.  But I don’t reveal the limits of my diet to date, nor do I disclose that I haven’t been on the South Side of the city before, for fear that I’ll show myself up as the culchie I am.  We meet Sophisicated Older Sister’s friend and he enquires, ‘so, you are Allen’s girlfriend then?’  I retort indignantly, ‘No, I’m just his friend who happens to be a girl’.  He smiles and nods amusedly.

Myself and Allen make out way to the front of the hairy, sweaty crowd in The Point and I get squished when the crowd surges forward.  I half-faint and scream out to Allen as a burly security guard scoops me up over a sea of heads and deposits me to the side of the stage, barely batting an eye lid.  Neither of us admitting the fright that we get and retreat to the middle of the arena.  We later lament that we don’t get one of the fake bank notes that drop from the ceiling as the band belt out ‘Money Talk’ as a memento of one of the best nights of our young lives.

Allen loves secondary school so much that he decides to stay on for an extra year.  He is worried that he will have no one to take to the Debs.   I tell him that I will accompany him if he’s stuck.  He’s stuck.  I borrow a dress and off we go.  Our religion teacher tells me that she always thought we would make a lovely couple.  I disappoint her telling her that we aren’t a couple, never were, never will be.  But for the first and only time since I have known him, I get a notion that Allen might actually fancy me  - He’s says, ‘Hey Lucy, are you coming outside?’, which, back-in-the-day means, ‘will you give me a  shift?’ 

I

NEARLY

DIE. 

I’m stuck for words.  ‘I’ve never thought of you like that before Allen’.  He throws his mop of hair back, laughing.  ‘Jaysus Lucy, I only want a smoke.  I don’t want to kiss ya.  Ya dope’.  We both laugh now and for once, I don’t lecture him about smoking.

We both move to Dublin and man oeuvre in and out of each other’s lives, with mutual friends, who often gathering for Allen’s gigs in Dublin and at home in Meath.  He tells me about the Hot Spanish Flat Mate that has moved in.  He’s wondering whether he should declare his interest to her.  At some point, he does and they are an item.  The Hot Spanish Flat Mate never had a problem with my friendship with Allen and I know she’s the one for him.  She still is.

They move to the States.  There’s marriages and babies for him and me.  I’m proud that he makes a career out of playing his music in New York.  Yet, he takes the time to come home to play music at my wedding.  He chooses ‘Black is the Colour’, as the First Dance song and I am amused now that when I hear that song, I think of Allen, rather than my groom on the day.

The years go by and the meetings are less frequent – the pressure of trying of trying to fit it all in on precious visits home.  Pints have been replaced with cups of tea in our parents’ houses. 

I get a message from Allen last week to arrange a meeting on a flying visit home.  We forget about the Dublin V Kildare football match in Croke Park when we arrange to meet last Sunday in an old haunt, The Palace Bar in Dublin City Centre, in advance of his gig in the Bad Ass Cafe.  My heart sinks as I arrive and the pub is over spilling with fellas in Dublin jerseys. 

He jumps out of a taxi, a wild head on him, with his guitar and music stand, but doesn’t see me amid the sea of blue.  I stand in the middle of the cobbled street and wait until he spots me.  The frown is replaced by the familiar dimpled smile appears and I get a bear hug that I’ve waited three long years for.  He sounds hoarse and tells me not to nag him about smoking the night before.  We retreat to a quieter hotel for a chat.

Later, he sings ‘Beautiful Affair’, by Stockton’s Wing in The Bad Ass Cafe and I want all of Temple Bar to ‘ssshhhh’ and just listen to him.  We will never have enough time to catch up, but it feels so good to see my friend. 

I love ya babe (But only in the platonic sense of course)


https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=AwrBT4Nqy3BZ9WkAqgtXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTB0N2Noc21lBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNwaXZz?p=allen+gogarty+beautiful+affair&fr2=piv-web&fr=mcafee#id=1&vid=6008787f3f4d68f1f1edb069fa278c1f&action=view

Saturday 8 July 2017

Sitting With Myself

The garden is starting to take shape in the half-tamed wilderness kind of way, my little falling-down-house is my version of clean, the children are half-reared and happy, work is hectic, but rewarding.  I’m looking and feeling better than I have in years.  Life is good.    

At the moment, I'm taking half-days annual leave from work each day, supplemented with late night emails and calls, to juggle childcare and caring for my Spanish student.  That might sound like chaos, but it works. 

On Wednesday, the Spaniard asks if he can bring a friend home for dinner.  The girls from across the road pop over.  My pair, cycle their bikes into my Hobbit House and announce that then were all hungry, pre-dinner, and want pancakes with Nutella - our traditional go-to snack when we have foreign students staying. There was a lovely buzz in the house.  I observe how the younger children puffed out their chests and act out in front of the Spanish boys who warmly go along with it.  The pancakes can’t come fast enough. The table sprinkled with lemon and sugar.  They all eat until they have pains in their bellies. 

The Spaniards retire to the sitting room to sing along to Spanish rap music and the children experiment with slime-making recipes in the kitchen.  Surprisingly, they don’t wreck the gaff.  Mixing cornflour with shampoo yields interesting results. 

I take a cup of tea in a china cup and sit in my beautiful space in the balmy heat.  Butterflies, birds, the cat rubs by my leg, as the soft breeze hits my face.  Surrounded here by nature, family, visitors, I feel as lonely as hell.  It’s a very familiar feeling these days. 

I’ve been running on empty for about 4 years now.  Within this time, there was drama piled on top of drama.  Unpleasant as it was, the drama acted as a big roll of sticking plaster, distracted me from the job in hand – to just sit and be with myself.  The temptation is to just keep running – to help my mother, to visit a friend in need, working, busying myself, to rush into a new relationship.  I can see why Forrest Gump ran for 3 years, 2 months, 14 days and 16 hours.  It’s so much easier to run than to stop.  But now, all of a sudden, the drama is over, it seems.  I have peace and stability in my life. I thought it would bring me happiness (and it has), but overall, the feeling is loneliness.  

It’s not that I want someone to help me with my garden, or to cut my hedge.  It’s for someone to sit and admire it with me, to laugh with me about how crooked my clipping efforts are.  It’s not that I want for someone to pay for me to get my hair done.  It’s for someone to notice that I’ve had it done.  It’s not for someone to organise for my car to be NCT’d.  It’s for someone to send me a text to see how it went.  Or the important meeting a work.  It’s a bear-hug from a man other than my giant baby brother.  It’s for someone to buy me an ice-cream while I wait in the car. 

I stand in the graveyard at the funeral of my friend’s mother last week and I’m happy for him that his wife is there to support him in her quiet way and feel the loneliness come over me again that I went through my father’s funeral without that someone there for me.

All of things that I crave involve having someone special in my life.  But part of that feeling is just another sticking plaster - a quick fix remedy.  

For now, I need to dust myself off, enjoy the new found peace and just ‘be’or as Forrest's momma said, 'you have to put your past behind you before you can move on'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKKmzmeU5-0


Saturday 1 July 2017

Holding Hands in the Countryside: Going Back To My Roots

Thought I’d better ‘fess up.  I did it again.  Yes, I signed up for online dating.  Exactly one month ago today.  It is with great relief that the subscription has now expired and with immense regret that I have yet to find the man of my dreams.  If I were to grade myself on my efforts though, I would award myself the grand score of ‘half arsed.’   It was somewhat reassuring, but mostly depressing to see some familiar faces there, in cyber love land, since last year.  I wonder do some people exist here in an online vacuum forever, looking and winking without any notion of actually meeting anyone? Or maybe they are actually trapped, banging unnoticed on the laptop screen hoping to be rescued?

I chatted, and went on dates with two guys who, coincidentally, both had the same first name.  Andy1 was mad about me.  He could see us settling down together and would love me forever.  I was mad about Andy2.  I could see us settling down together and I would love him forever.  Let’s just say,- if the wrong text message went to the wrong Andy, we could have had trouble, or a trampled heart at least.

It’s Not You, It’s Me has everything going for him.  We have the loveliest of times.  But, I know when we say goodbye that night, that we won’t see each other again.  He beats me to it next morning, sending me a message confirming what I already know.

By Mutual Agreement is a sweetheart.  He is smart, handsome and kind.  He thinks that I am smart, pretty and kind.  We text the following day and agreed that there was no ‘spark’ and therefore, no point in meeting again.  We reassure ourselves that our date reaffirmed that there were decent people out there and wished that we had the patent on the ‘va-va-voom’ dust that we are all looking for.

Chancing His Arm winks at me every day.  I eventually send him a message, telling him that, as he is aged 26, I really am old enough to be his Mammy.  He enthusiastically sends me back a message saying that ‘age is just a number.’  I wonder if he would be any good at cutting my lawn, but decide against asking, for fear that I will end up in court for exploiting a child.

Adult Dancing thanks me for my kind ‘no thanks’ message and asks me if I have any nice friends who would be interested in him.  I actually contemplate setting up a match-making service for all of the beautiful decent souls I have met and the many lovely ladies in my life looking for love.  Anything that would lessen the torture. 

In the middle of it all, a pattern emerges.   Many of the guys that I have encountered have a farming background.   The last time I snogged a Farmer Boy, was when I was 17.  Farmer Boy was helping to cut the silage on our family farm.  I wiped my face after kissing him, to clear the oily/sweaty/grassy evidence from my face before going in to help my mother prepare dinner for the silage men.   Farmer Boy keeps his head down during the meal, his long hair falling against his heavy metal t shirt. 

I can’t say that that look would do it for me anymore, but there’s something about being a man of the land that is drawing me in.   I think it's because I feel like I have been floating in space for the last while and I'm drawn to that feeling of being grounded, quite literally.  There's the familiarity of my rural upbringing.  And the feeling of comfort when I shake the rough padded hand of a man that works on the land. 

AgriGuy1 still checks in with me most days, tells me that he will fall in love with me, but hasn’t actually asked me out on a date and I ain’t offering.  Meanwhile, I’m only dying for AgriGuy2 to pick up the phone and he hasn’t.  I suppose there’s a silage pit to be covered …

If yis hear of any  va-va-voom dust selling in LidlDeeAldi, will ye let me know?
  


Sunday 18 June 2017

Father's Day 2017

Although it’s still less than two years since he died, it would be dishonest of me to say I go around ‘missing’ my father.   It hits me when I see a man that has the cut of his jib.  Or when I’m driving and some random memory pops up.  And always, always when Meath are playing in Croker.  He would have been glued last night, watching their defeat against Kildare.  F’ing and blinding at the TV, than never answered back.   He would have been chuffed that my son’s school report said that he had a ‘great interest in politics’ – in his likeness in so many ways.   Him entertaining my daughter’s dodgy ‘knock-knock jokes.

The real vacuum is the fuss that was around him.  The farmer’s clock that meant that dinner served any later than ten-past-one in the day, was likely to lead to starvation.  No heed either to the fact that my mother may have been down the yard helping my father that morning and so unable to produce an abracadabra dinner.  But my mother knowing his ways, would usually have prepared dinner in advance.

All the fuss too, to cajole him about buying a new suit for a family occasion.  Him insisting that the old suit was ‘grand’ and that he just needed to loosen the belt, my mother and I exchanging glances and saying nothing.   Him looking dapper in his new attire and I wonder what all the commotion was about.

No need now, to hide the hair conditioner in the bathroom, which my father was known to wash his hair in.  My mother, at nothing, asking him to wash his hair again to take the dullness out of it.  ‘Would ya stop woman’, he’d say as he combed his hair impatiently into a side parting.  Never a man for the barber either, he could barely sit still while my mother cut his hair, on a Saturday night as he watched Winning Streak.  Teasing him about his bald patch, which he insisted was the result of being hit by a stone on the head as a child.  My mother laughing, saying that the scar must have grown over time. 

It’s probably no accident that Mr Private, the guy I dated for months was older than me.  Reliable and kind, funny, opinionated.  A father figure of sorts, not that I was looking for that.  Or maybe I was, unknown to myself. 

I’m not one to look for signs of my father’s presence either.  But lately, I have thought of him and asked him, begged him, to send me strength, that just didn’t come.   

Last week, I was in court for something that I will tell you about in my memoirs.  A lonely place to be on my own, having turned down all offers from friends to be there for support, feeling that I should 'do this alone'.   As I gathered myself in the toilet, the dodgiest of Irish county music blaring in through the window from the market stall outside.  And I just knew that he was there.  I laughed - Always on your terms Da, always.


Happy Father’s Day 

Friday 9 June 2017

Dusting Off

So, my little house was broken into.  Again.  Six months after the last one.   Less damage done this time around, for that I am grateful, if that’s the word.  But it doesn’t really matter what was taken.  It’s the intrusion. 

When I return home, I see the back window wide open and I innocently think that perhaps I had left it open - I hope.  But when I see the children’s money box smashed on the table, my fears are confirmed.  The first time time that I was broken into, I ran around my ransacked house, screaming.  This time, I get spooked, run out and lock myself in my car (which I have thankfully left parked outside my gate) fearing that the intruder is still there and phone the Gardai. 

I think of Mr Private.   Just a few weeks ago, we knew each other’s every move.  In fact, I was supposed to be with him now.   But I can’t contact him.  Too much water under the bridge.  

I phone my mother and text Just Friends, a guy I dated at Christmas and stayed in touch with.   Just Friends and I have made a pact – half joking, but deadly serious - that if neither of us meet anyone by next St Patrick’s Day, that we will get together.   There is nothing that they can do. 

The sympathetic Garda leads me around my house.  Relief this time, that my boy’s bedroom wasn’t wrecked, that all the damage is in my bedroom.   My favourite pearl-drop marcasite earrings, that everyone admires are gone.  Worth nothing to anyone, except me. 

Taken too, is the brand new iPhone 5 that my boy disabled before I got to use it.  I never found the time to unlock it.  Hoping they get no good out of it either.

Waiting for the Gardai to come to take fingerprints is the worst part – trying not to touch anything that the greasy hands have touched.   I can trace where they have been, their presence marked by the uninvited disturbance by their unwelcome hands.  I feel like walking away from this place I call home and never coming back.

Before the Forensics arrive, the children and I take down their ‘Crime Scene’ kit and the friendly Garda confirms that the contents are very similar to ‘the real thing.’  He gives them a demonstration of how to brush for prints and the pair seems pleased – a news item for school next day.  I think it’s called ‘making the best of a bad situation.’  We don’t dwell on the mean-spiritedness of someone who would break children’s money boxes to take their few euro. I cringe at how dusty my house is and think that, had I known that I would have a break-in, I would have made a better effort to clean before I left.

We laugh that our cat, Sparky has taken advantage of the break-in, climbing in through the gaping window and taking residence in my bedroom.  He has pooed on the duvet.  I kid you not.  I decide that I will treat myself to new bed linen.

The school tour the following day is a welcome distraction for us all.  I get a house alarm installed – shutting the gate when the horse has bolted.  There is great excitement too, examining the monitors and setting and un-setting the alarm.  My daughter wonders if a fairy visits, or if her 'Sylvanian Family' animals move around the house when we aren't there, will they set off the sensors. I reassure her that the @ePhoneWatch installer told me that they were too small for that to happen.

The memory on my ancient iPhone 4 is at capacity.  I need to delete something to create space.  I scroll through the hundred of messages between myself and Mr Private and decide that it’s time to press ‘delete.’   I wipe the grey finger print dust from the windows and around the house.  And move on.

Thursday 1 June 2017

... And in a Flash, He Was Gone ...


Just as I was losing hope of finding a new home for my beloved dog Hudson, I was presented with an offer that was almost too good to be true.

'Would he sleep on my bed?'


'Would he what', I smile.


'Does he like car journeys?'

'Almost as much as he likes sleeping on beds'.

That night, Hudson goes on a 'sleepover' as a trial run and that was that.  My sweet, gentle giant is gone.



I tell the children that '…it's for the best …', but they are not one bit happy.  There's floods of tears.  I explain, again and again, that we have to think of what’s best for the dog.  I remind them of the endless hours the poor mutt has spent in the last year waiting for us to come home, only to turn on our heels to go out again.


‘ … I loved him too, you know…’

As I clear out his basket, wipe his paw prints and sweep his hair from the floor, I’m relieved that I’ve now one less responsibility, one that had become a burden. 



At the same time, I’ve a heavy heart, knowing that the acts of cleaning and gathering are removing his memory from the house.  




And then myself and Mr Private call it a day.




Mr P becomes Mr Past Tense, just like that.




Those words again


‘ …it’s for the best… ’

and worse again,

‘ …it wasn’t meant to be.. .’    

For the second time in days, I don’t quite believe my own words. 

Saturday 27 May 2017

Slane

‘Slane’ is on today.  I’m not going, unlike the rest of the country.  I’ve a big application form to get stuck into.  Although it’s for a music project, that doesn’t sound like a rock-and-rock excuse.   If I was in my Mam’s in Meath, there’s a good chance that I’d get an itch and try to find a ticket.  But the rain falling against my window in Kildare, dampens any such notions, even though I was a big Guns N’ Roses fan as a kid.  ‘Appetite for Destruction’ was one of the first albums that I got on tape.  My lovely nordie aunt Moira bought it for me.   Between my mother and my aunt, they got confused with my request and it appears that Moira asked the long-haired young fella in the record shop for ‘’Guns ‘N’ Daisies.’’ Oh, how they laughed.

Just knowing that Slane is on, fills me with nostalgia.  The castle set in the big field that doubles as a natural amphitheatre, along the River Boyne.  This pretty little village transformed for just one day.

It’s my aunt Olive, my father’s sister, in the ‘old kitchen’, in 1985 on her way to see Bruce Springsteen.  She’s wearing a bright blue jumpsuit, as only she could, with her long blonde hair.  Eleven-year-old me sits quietly and admires her style.  As she stands there with her hands in her pockets, laughing, she is unaware that I am watching.  I don’t have the word for it then, but she looks so confident.   None of us in the knowledge then that she would die so young and that Moira to follow just months later - The screech from my mother as I share the news from the phone call, standing in the middle of the farm yard.   

It’s Lord Henry Mount Charles on the Late Late Show.  He sounds too posh to live just the road from our house.  He takes all of the hob-nobbing with music royalty in his stride.

Impeccably dressed, but wearing odd socks. 

On the telly. 

Imagine. 

It’s seeing his distress on TV after the 1991 fire at the Castle.

It’s the post fire Guns N’Roses concert in Slane that I go to with my new-on-the-scene boyfriend.   He’s a biker and musician, a beautiful Jesus lookalike, with better hair than me.  He’s more of a heavy metal fan and tuts at the idea of being here.  It’s the first time I took a day off from my Saturday job and my boss isn’t best pleased.  The sun beats down and I get spectacularly sunburned, but only down one side of my face – nowhere to hide in this big field.  We meet Jesus’s friends, one more uber-cool than the next, who similarly tut about being here.  I am totally morto at my tomato face, but the bikers seem too cool to notice.   The skin on my face peels for weeks afterwards.  Any wonder then, that I turn into the ‘Have you got your sun screen on?’ Mammy type figure at other concerts I’ve been too, slathering unsuspecting young lads in cream.

I eventually make it back to Slane for Bon Jovi in 2013, only because my friend Maria gives me two tickets.  Conveniently, my cousins who are coach operators, are bringing bus loads to the concert.  The bus is full of neighbours and relations.  I hate queueing at concerts for a drink, so decide to do my drinking before we get inside the grounds.  Seems like everyone else has the same idea.  The Nurse’s bra is full of silicone-like pouches, substituting the intended medical liquid with alcohol.  I admire her Festival Fitness, as well as her impressive cleavage.  

We get inside the gates and my cousin who had said ‘Stay with me Lucy and you will be grand’, disappears within minutes and turns up the following day missing his jacket.  Truth be told, the concert is all a bit blurry, but maybe that’s how best to watch one of your childhood heart throbs after all these years.  Jon Bon is looking well all the same, but the music is pure cheese.  I’m tutting but singing along … wooo…. Ooooh …. Livin’ on a pray ……. yer…. 

Enjoy Slane today peeps.  I’ll be with ye in spirit x

Monday 22 May 2017

Holding Hands in the Countryside: The Chastitute and a Senorita

It’s Saturday night and Mr Private wants to go to see the play, ‘The Chastitute’. ‘Seriously?’ I say, in the same high pitched voice that my daughter sometimes uses. He is serious. It’s part of his one-man-mission to convert me to all things Kerry – GAA, coastlines and now, John B. Keane. Friday night was ‘my choice’ (the rather excellent feature film ‘In View’ in the IFI), so I don’t protest. It’s all about compromise after all.
The play starts with the lead actor on stage with a thick Kerry accent and a pair of wellies. I sigh and resign myself to two hours of stage-Irish. It’s centred on bachelor farmer John Bosco McLaine and his endeavours to get a woman in 1960's Kerry. McLaine is a ‘chastitute’, which is described in the play as a person without holy orders who has never lain down with a woman… a rustic celibate by force of circumstance’. Whatever chance McLaine has of meeting his match is further hindered by Catholic guilt delivered with gusto from the pulpit. In fairness, the script is hilarious, with a wonderful turn-of-phrase. It’s hard not to look at it with my work hat on, wondering what the budget for a fine cast of 13 actors is, no half measures with the costume or set design. There is no shortage of guna deas's here either to lure McLaine.
There are poignant moments throughout the play when I got a real sense of the loneliness of men, just a few short decades ago in rural Ireland and I’m reminded of my father’s males acquaintances. The Protestant, who I would watch in wonder as he sat across our kitchen table, drunk as a skunk, balancing peas on a fork and somehow making it to his mouth without spilling them. In his posh accent, thanking my mother for dinner, always addressing her as ‘Mrs Russell’, despite her insistence that he call her Kay. I didn’t know that the Church of Ireland faith existed until he walked through our back door. The drink made him brave enough to talk, with a glint in his eye, of ‘senoritas’. For years, I took these creatures he spoke of as girls of another religion.
Shy Boy, who couldn’t look me in the eye, head down with his hands in his pockets, watching as his brothers and sisters married off and left, one by one. His father telling my father that I was a ‘grand lassie’ and wondered if Shy Boy would wait for me. My twelve-year-old cheeks burning as my father said it to me, half joking, but deadly serious. Shy Boy would later be the main carer for his dying father, the love between them a sight to behold, but a tenderness that he never shared with a life partner.
I remember too, talk, with lament, of fine men with good farms of land and overbearing mothers. No girlfriend good enough for her darling son, who in turn went wild with The Drink from loneliness after her death, the farm gone to ruin.
It’s easy to dismiss ‘The Chastitute’, or my childhood memories as a thing of the past, but my recent experiences of and stories exchanged through online dating would suggest otherwise. Loneliness is not peculiar to a time and place. The isolated rural farmer may be a rare breed today, but the modern day chastitute is there too. There’s many time-poor adults balancing busy work and complicated personal situations. The Catholic guilt, replaced now with the culpability of a failed relationship and the upheaval caused to children caught in the middle of a bad situation. The guilt associated with wanting to feel happy again. The anxious 40-something, her biological clock ticking like a time bomb, trying not to appear too desperate, not realising that her date is so grief stricken by his own situation that he can’t even hear what she is saying. Ironically maybe - all of this at a time when options for dating, civil marriages and gay marriage have never been so plentiful.
The end of the play is surprisingly dark. No happy ever after for McLaine.

Mr Private holds me tight as we walk to The Westbury for a drink and I feel like a senorita

Thursday 11 May 2017

Holding Hands in the Country Side : My Mr Snuffleupagus

Okay, so, I fancy myself as a Carrie Bradshaw, a la ‘Sex and The City’, with my ‘Holding Hands in the Countryside’ homage.  There are similarities – we both write about dating ... Actually, that’s where the similarities end.  She is a fictional character.  She wakes up looking fabulous and rocks the most bohemian outfit with coiffed hair, which typing away on her laptop with steaming coffee from her awesome, clean and tidy apartment in NYC.  

The wagon.  

Being a pretend person, she can describe at length every aspect of her relationships, including that with her no 1 guy, Big.  I, on the other hand, tend to jot my blogs on the ‘notes’ on my iPhone, often late at night, between two snoring children, with pjs that have seen better days and then upload to my blog, with little or no proofing, to my laptop.   The other rather big issue is that I am dating someone who is intensely private and therefore, not keen on any kind of exposure on the W W W, despite good wishes and comments from my readers who are only dying for the goss.  

Mr Private has met so few of my family and friends, that it’s quite possible that he doesn’t exist at all.  Like the character on the US children's TV series Sesame Street, Mr. Snuffleupagus, you will have to decide for yourself if Mr Private is real, or if this Big Bird imagined it all.  

Maybe if I could share a bit I could convince you?  What’s to know?  Interesting fact of the day?

He loves Rice Krispies.  

‘swear.  

I assumed when I was rummaging in his cupboards (as you do, when you are newly dating someone), that the crisped rice cereal was for pint sized visitors, but no, this grown man walked among with aisles of supermarket choice and opted for this culinary feast to start his day. 

I feel bound to stay with him long enough to adjust his taste buds to something more grown up.  He had his first pancake making lesson with me at the weekend.  It was messy, no one got hurt and we both got fed.  It’s one of those many bite-your-lip moments when you are getting to know someone, where you say NOTHING for fear that he thinks you are trying to change him ( … as if… ).  Like when he puts on THOSE SHOES again and in your head you are thinking ‘you are fucking kidding me’ and imagining them decommissioned to the bin. 

The alternative - I could throw in the Rice Krispie towel and buy him Superman pyjamas?


It’s strange how he has put his arm around me at football matches surrounded by thousands of people, kissed me on a train station platform packed with commuters and held my hand in city centres.  And yet, we remain largely invisible, but there in the moment, it all feels very real.

Wednesday 3 May 2017

Glimpses of JR

It’s the folded piece of paper that I come across among the pages of my 2015 work diary yesterday in my office, when I’m searching for something else.  It reveals itself to be the receipt for food and drinks served on the day we buried you.  ‘John Russel funeral’.  Missing one ‘L’ in Russell. 

It’s the ‘beautiful day’ comment when I’m so distracted with work that I didn’t realise that the shining sun is welcoming the month of May.  You could never understand how I was so unaware of the weather when I would speak to you on my lunch break of sorts, eating a sandwich at my desk.    

It’s the man walking across the lobby today.  He has the cut of your jib, one hand in the pocket of his good trousers, walking along awkwardly, minding his back now, damaged over years of hard graft.  It’s the brightly checkered short-sleeved shirt, the copper magnetic bracelet, hair combed to one side making a good attempt to conceal the bald patch, the strong leather belt accentuating his soft pot-belly.  Either here to see his consultant, or accompanying his wife to see hers, but she’s nowhere to be seen.  He looks lost, but won’t ask for help.  He is jingling keys in his pocket.

It’s the receptionist as he registers my mother.  

The usual.  

Name.  

Address.  

Date of Birth.  

‘Single or married?’ he asks her.  

When she replies ‘widowed’, he doesn’t react and keeps typing, head down.  

Despite the fact that he has just punched me in the stomach.  

Saturday 22 April 2017

Me and Michael D

There’s some nice perks to my job – but there’d need to be.  Working for a local authority is tough at times, with Joe, or Josephine Bloggs channeling their frustrations about ‘the Council’/’the system’, or indeed, the world on you, as a public face of the organisation.  An invitation arrived on my desk recently.  ‘The OPW and The Royal Parks, London invites you to the launch of ‘Parks, Our Shared Heritage’ an exhibition showcasing three centuries of history at these magnificent Parks.  Farmleigh Gallery, Phoenix Park. 

The exhibition was to be opened by President Michael D Higgins.

Sold.

I’ve always been a fab of Michael D.  I don’t remember when I became aware of his existence, but when I did, I was struck by this uber intelligent man speaking passionately and unapologetically about the arts and culture.  Music to my ears.  

Seven years ago this week, Michael D travelled to Athy to launch the Athy Film Club in Athy College. Hearing him speak with pride about his contribution to film development in Ireland was a reminder that people, politicians can, and do, make a difference.  He obliged me again, in the run up to his Presidential election, when he launched the Kildare Readers Festival in Newbridge.  There, he was presented with the ‘Dara Bronze’, a limited edition coin, designed by Mary Gregoiry and commissioned by Kildare County Council, in recognition of his contribution to the cultural life of the country.  The coin had previously been awarded to Dermot Earley.

In 2010, I was part of the organising committee of a conference in Limerick University ‘25/25 Arts and Culture in Local Development’, with the lovely Monica Corcoran and Sheila Deegan.  It was one of the most stressful projects I had been involved with, mainly because there were so many partners attached.  The day before the conference, we got word that the then Minister for Environment, John Gormley would not be joining us at the conference dinner in Thomond Park to formally open the conference.  We didn’t get an explanation, but there was Trouble in Dail Paradise at the time.  I got on the bat phone to Jack Wall, then Labour TD in South Kildare and asked (pleaded) if he could get us Michael D instead and that he did.  Bless your red socks Jack. 

I phoned Michael D who advised that he was launching a book in Kildare Street, Dublin at 6pm the following evening, but he hoped to be with us by the time dessert was being served in Limerick.  No pressure like.  I can’t say that I tasted any of the food I ate that evening, clock watching, as we looked over the rugby grounds, but true to his word, the Bat Mobile driver got Michael D to Thomond Park, just as the pavlova was being licked from the bowls.  Calm as anything.  He was on crutches, having broken his kneecap in a fall, while on a humanitarian mission in Columbia.  He later joked about his ‘famous Colombian knee’.  Some of the officials were concerned about how we would get Michael D on stage, without drawing attention to his injury.  With a link of my arm and a quick hoosh, he was good to go.  His speech was spot on.  He ‘got’ arts officers, understood the complexity of what we do within the complex local government structure and spoke with knowledge and understanding about the Arts Council and the cultural landscape in Ireland.  It was powerful, funny and emotional.  The day was saved.

Time moved on and Michael D was elected as President of Ireland.  

My then toddler son was playing with my work phone one Saturday morning.  Through my half-sleep, I heard the phone beep and I knew he had sent a text message.  It read ‘snfowqu4-dnlj1 u470r9’ and was delivered to Michael D Higgins. It was 7.34am.  I didn’t get a text back.

Notwithstanding this, My Boy has always had a curiosity with the President.  Both my children have met various elected representatives, while attending events with me and can see that they are accessible.  He knows the President is in that pool of people and doesn’t see why we can’t just knock on the door of Aras an Uachtarain and say ‘how’s it goin?’ when we are at the Zoo. 

The children didn’t have to be asked twice if they wanted to come to the exhibition launch in Farmleigh with me.  The Boy wanted to know if he needed to ‘wear a suit to meet the President’.  ‘You do’, I said, seeing this as an opportunity to upgrade his bland wardrobe.  50% off the Paul Costello communion/confirmation range at Doon-A’s Boutique, and he was suited and booted.
 
Over excitement on the day and not liking change, The Boy had a meltdown getting on the suits and boots.  Moving from beige chinos to suit trousers was a step too far and we compromised with grey chinos.  The jacket and suit were non-negotiable.  The Girl, usually glued into black leggings, thankfully didn’t resist her guna deas.  They brought pens and paper to get autographs for their friends.  I had the usual interrogation in the car journey. 

‘What does the D in Michael D stand for?’ ‘Where is his real house?’ ‘How small is he?’ 

The pair of them said that I was ‘embarrassing’ as I walked to Farmleigh, with my heels-high in my hand, ‘the guards are looking at you’.  ‘It’s my job to embarrass you, I’m your mother’, I said in defence, and ‘the Gardai are only admiring my dress’.

The exhibition was fabulous, but also jam packed.  Guest speaker was gastronome-turned-preservationist and Chairman of Hyde Park Lloyd Grossman.   The chances of meeting the Pres were looking slim, never mind the Q&A’s or the autographs.  After the speeches, I made a bee-line for the Pres, who was surrounded by people.  I patted nice-OPW-person on the shoulder and pointed to the two expectant faces.  ‘They’re only 9.  Would love to meet Michael D’.

Handing my camera to a random stranger, I introduced Michael D to the children.  He shook their hands and we got a rushed photograph, with little time for small talk – everyone in the room wanted a part of the President.

We meet Jack L and I tell him that the first event I attended at was an amazing concert with Jack and the National Concert Orchestra - It was part of the launch programme for Farmleigh, when the public were complaining that the State had bought and refurbished the facility, somehow missing that Farmleigh was for the public.

On the way home, the children agreed that Michael D wasn’t as short as they had expected. Disappointed that they didn’t get the presidential signature on paper, they discussed faking his signature,but decided against it.  

The Boy said ‘I don’t think he really remembered you Mam’, further deflating my delicate ego.  ‘Doesn’t matter son, I’ll immortalise ‘‘us’’ in a blog’

Wednesday 19 April 2017

I Believe in the Easter Bunny


I was patting myself on the back for being organised for my Easter Sunday Hunt this year, while also adopting a new what-will-get-done-will-get-done attitude.  As a result, I decided against cleaning under the beds and washing the windows.  I resigned myself to the fact that my garden was overrun with dandelions, reminding myself that a ‘weed is just a flower in the wrong place’ and that there was only so much grass mowing I would get around to.

The main tasks got done though.  An almighty stash of chocolate, sweets and goodies for a clatter of children were purchased in dribs and drabs to ease the financial outlay.  My glamorous assistant, My Girl wrote out the list of invitees and counted out the number of attendees, if everyone invited came to the Hunt.  88 children, not including adults.  I only have one toilet.  And a Hobbit House.  And rain was forecast.  I breathed a sigh of relief when the ‘regrets’ came through and the expected number of guests halved. 

I brought my Mam from Co Meath so she could see what it was I was doing and to meet my ‘Athy friends’.  Easter could have been a lonely time for her.  Her sister Aine always came for dinner in my parents’ house on Easter Sunday, my Dad and herself sniping at each other over the roast, Mam keeping the peace in the middle and somehow, each of them enjoying the day.  Wherever their spirits are now, I’m sure they looked down on my Mam on the day, Queen Bee in the middle of the madness.

The night before, I was wrecked tired and knew I had to be up at the crack of dawn to do the last few bits of preparation.  Mam, as Guest of Honour, was promoted to my bed and I slept in with My Boy.  My Girl, with her friend on a sleepover, shared the bunks.   It was a proper Walton Family set up.  ‘G’night Jim Bob’.

But My Boy was having none of it.  It was Christmas Eve déjà vu, when he had a wibble over another hairy lad, Santa creeping around the house, but this time, it's the feckin’ Easter Bunny.  Thing is, I have never mentioned the Easter Bunny in the house and never ‘encouraged’ notions about him/it.  

Despite this, earlier that evening, My Girl had wondered aloud about what the Easter Bunny might bring.  I discouraged her, saying that the Easter Bunny would surely know how many sweets we had in the house and would pass us by (yes, Dear Reader, I had 100% forgotten to buy anything worthy of the EB).  She put on her strong-sense-of-injustice face and said ‘The Easter Bunny wouldn’t be THAT mean.  Most of what YOU bought is for OTHER children’.  Darn it.  Fair point, if you believe in the Bunny.  I could see by her face that she did.  I left the children in the care of their Nana and scoured the town looking for cheap, but fabulous eggs for my pair and the sleep-over-friend.  The only decent eggs left were e18.  I wasn’t feeling that generous.  I scrapped up a random selection of bits, buried them in a bag and headed for home.

Back to My Boy.  It was obvious that he too 100% believes in the rabbit.  As soon as the lights went off, the tears started, in the belief that soon after his eyelids closed, that a furry animal would be breathing over his head.  Two glasses of water, four trips to the toilet, multiple hugs, back massages and random stories later, My Boy was becoming more distraught.  The rest of the house meanwhile, was filled with peaceful sleeping sounds.  I too was getting distraught as I craved sleep.  I thought about spilling the beans on the Tooth Fairy/Santa/the Bunny there and then, but of course I didn't.  In the end, I told him that the Easter Bunny only wanted to make children happy and that the Bunny had made a deal with parents who knew their children would get upset with his visit - He had given the goodies to the parents for distribution instead.  For the first time in two hours, My Boy appeared calm.  ‘Really Mam?’ ‘Yes, really son’.  ‘Show me’.  I pulled a bag out of chocolate out of the cupboard and he helped me to display them on the table. Within minutes, we were both fast asleep.

On Easter Sunday morning, the children arose to see what treasures had been left for them.  The Boy marveled at the miniature golden eggs, wondering if they could be eaten, or if they were metal.  It was as if he was seeing them for the first time.  He told the girls that ‘The Easter Bunny is magic’. I look at him and see, that despite our discussion the night before, that he really believes too, or perhaps, has chosen to believe. 

There wasn’t much time to think about our overnight visitor after that.  By 11.00am, 40 children and their grown ups had descended on Poppy Cottage and are hard to contain.  By 11.05am, they scatter to every nook of the garden.  By 11.20am, the clothes line of popcorn packets was empty, the candy canes whipped from the fences, the marshmallow sticks, plucked from the ground.  The various tins dotted around the garden, emptied of their wares and the sherbet string jellies, no longer dangling from the trees.  Even the rain had disappeared.  The kettle was boiled and reboiled.  The smell of coffee wafted.  Cups washed and rewashed.  The trays of homemade cookies and cupcakes brought by friends wolfed down, with the croissants and pastries.  The recently scrubbed kitchen floor and bathroom floor now scattered with cut grass. No matter, clean dirt.  By 1pm, the visitors have said their goodbyes, heading off to family dinners and other celebrations; I make a Loaves and Fishes dinner for my mother, brother and family and we do a post mortem on proceedings.

My little, falling down Hobbit House is a testimony that it doesn’t matter what the bricks and mortar look like, just what you create with them.

Friday 14 April 2017

A Game of Two Halves: The IFTA's and Croker

Mr Private has the privilege of spending Friday evening with me wrapped in a towel, smothered in fake tan and walking around like John Wayne until the lotion dried - A sight that my new squeeze could probably have done without seeing, now, or ever.  I break it to him on Thursday, that not alone am I working on Saturday morning, I will be abandoning him that evening, as I, quite frankly, got a better offer -  a much coveted, last minute, ticket for the Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTA’s).  He won’t be home alone though, as a carload of Kerry men are due to arrive, in advance of the Dublin V Kerry Football League Final the following day. 

Saturday morning, I have booked a hair and eyebrow appointment before I go to work.  I arrive at my meeting with a group of teenagers with ringlets a la Shirley Temple and eyebrows on fire.  I feel as self-conscious as the 15-year-olds look.  We discuss that we have to discuss and I vamoose, my curls starting to flop already. 

Mr Private encourages me to place a bet on the main race in The Grand National.  I go for the horse trained by Lucinda Russell, my nemesis of sorts, as my forename acquires that sneaky ‘D’ as least 3 times a week. I'm disappointed that I won't get to watch the race with Mr P, but my posh do awaits.

I get dressed for the IFTA’s in Mr Private’s house.  He’s standing at the bottom of his stairs when I saunter down in my guna nua, feeling like I’m off to my Debs, Pretty in Pink, with blushing cheeks to match as he takes my photograph and tells me that he is proud of me.  

I am accompanied to the IFTA’s by some of my best film buddies, two giants of men, in tuxedos.  They'd pass as my bodyguards, if I was a some one.  We walk up the red carpeted steps of the Mansion House in the glorious sunshine, as crowds of people and an army of photographers gather, to catch a glimpse of the Beautiful People.  The IFTA’s are MC’ed by Deirdre O’Kane and the show is super.   The Kildare interest in the IFTA’s are ‘Gridlock’, nominated for Best Short Film and Caoilfhionn Dunne, nominated for Best Actress in ‘In View’.  Neither win in their category, but the nominations are a huge boost for film promotion in the county and something that gives me great personal satisfaction.   Mr Private texts me and tells me that I have won e75 on the Grand National.  My scientific approach to gambling has paid off, go Lucinda.  Cinderella eventually leaves the ball and returns to a house full of mountain men, burning the midnight oil.

There are negotiations on the best route to Croke Park.  I direct Mr Private via my familiar haunts when I lived in Dublin.  Kilmainham, along the walls of the Phoenix Park, turning left up Infirmary Road, right onto the North Circular Road, past my old flat and O’Devaney Gardens where I worked.   No 63 NCR, my half way house for strays from Meath, en route to the airport, a concert, the Mater Hospital or looking for a flat.  The boys from O’Devaney that I tried to teach art to, but failed, mostly because their greater need was for a hot meal and a warm bed.  I think of A.C. one of my past pupils there, then a violent 16 year old.   A tall, handsome lad, who had bowel problems because no one ever bothered to toilet train him.  He couldn’t read or write either, but carved his initials everywhere.  Curious as to what had become of A.C. since those days, I Googled his name recently and found that he was doing a long stretch in Mountjoy Prison for Grievous Bodily Harm, that latent anger manifesting itself.

The Kerry men follow us up the NCR towards Phibsborough.  They phone Mr Private on the way, annoyed that there are no parking spaces available.  I regret suggesting the route and wishes that they had made their own way there.  Mr Private has lost the cool.  F’ing and blinding about Dublin and Ireland, comparing here to other European cities.  I feel like suggesting that Mr Private buys himself a one-way ticket out of ‘this shit hole’.  I retort saying, ‘The only thing wrong with the parking spaces that I suggested is that cars were already in them’.  The two-car entourage meander across the North Side and into a multi storey car park off Abbey Street.  Mr Private very nearly hits his very nice car off the very large, very yellow pillar.  He’s cursing again.  ‘It’s a pity the pillar wasn’t a bit bigger’, I quip and burst out laughing.  He's laughing now too. 

Kerry Man 1, Mr Private Junior is mumbling about a ‘better route’.  Kerry Man 2, the diplomat, says that he could see why I suggested that way.  Kerry Man 3 is smiling, keeping his head down and his hands in his pockets.   I’m relieved that we are not all sitting together in Croker.

Although we are freezing cold at the match, Mr Private has thawed out on me.  He’s tells me that he’s happy I’m there.  I’m glad that he is there too – our seats are so high in the Cusack Stand that I’m feeling dizzy and I need someone to cling onto.  Anto on my other side doesn’t look like he would take kindly to a non-Dub clutching his beefcake arm, although he is ‘bleedin’ poxy freezin’ too, wearing bleedin’ poxy shorts.  I wish he would stop roaring in my ear.  You would swear that ‘DeeeeannnnoooOOOO' was the only player on the pitch.
 
We are surrounded by a sea of uber-confident Dubs and the Kerry team needs all of the support they can muster, even from me.  The match is nail-biting til the end and Kerry get a well deserved win, by one point, 1-16 to 0-20.  I’m under pressure to get home, so we don’t get to say goodbye to the Kerry men.  Hopefully they will remember me for the Domestic Goddess breakfast I prepared for them and not our tour of Dublin City.

I text Mr Private and tell him that I am writing about cranky Kerry men and car parks.  He texts back saying ‘Will you mention how things have changed since Meath were last in a final?’  

Hit me where it hurts Mr Private, hit me where it hurts.