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.

... 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. 

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

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

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.

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.  

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’