At the risk of repeating myself, this is to state that I am not and never was a religious person. There was nothing religious in my childhood home.  For a few years when I was in primary school, I went to church with my sister. Our school was a country school and going to church on a Sunday was part of the way things worked. My parents did not go. My father would wait for us in the sitting room before Sunday lunch, asking questions about the sermon, ready to ridicule every word, but we never remembered much. The sermon was the boring bit when I had trouble staying awake. At the church door on our way out, the kids all received a little magazine with stories about black babies in Africa and picture puzzles. I liked the picture puzzles, they had to be coloured in just so to reveal the solution. Also, there were these two seemingly identical drawings with ten hidden differences and for a while that was challenging.

Over the years, we all went to the instruction classes for (Lutheran) holy confirmation. Again, this was the way things worked and my mother would show up in church on the day. Mostly, it was all about the dress (black) and the shoes (heeled) and my first make-up and getting money presents. Only, my grandmother insisted I should get silverware for my future dowry. That was a huge disappointment to me as two years earlier, my sister had received enough money to buy a sophisticated reel-to-reel tape recorder/player, which I was not allowed to touch. Lately, I have started to look at the price of silver with the intention of finally selling my incomplete set of 63 or so knives and forks and spoons.

Then there was the youth club on a Friday night, where we would play table tennis and later had a disco, with secret stacks of beer and cigarettes, supervised by a trainee vicar who wanted to be cool and looked away. I remember watching the local male heartthrobs jumping up in the air to "Satisfaction" and also, my first time getting drunk. At midnight, we had to clean up and put everything back as it was for the ladies' coffee morning on Saturdays.

A few years later, I went through a very brief spell of infatuation with the Baptist church but soon lost interest when real adult life beckoned. 

Also, the children of god drifted by, all tambourines and long skirts, for a few weeks outside secondary school. A handful of Hare Krishna's at university. And then I met R's parents. Ardent catholics. I came into their lives shortly after the Polish pope had been to Ireland in 1979,  which was a massive, massive event, and every time I sat in the car of my future father in law, he played the tapes of that mass, watching me in the rear view mirror.

When after three years of unsuccessful attempts of their gentle proselytising I refused to have the first (and much loved and cherished) grandchild baptised, they went on a pilgrimage to Lough Derg which involved three days of fasting and endless hours of kneeling on concrete slabs day and night in the rain. One day, I may write about how I felt when they returned from that dreadful island in Donegal, bleeding and feeling cleansed, as my mother in law assured me.

But basically, I kept well away from all that. And yet, nothing I have since learnt about the catholic church in Ireland and elsewhere has come as a surprise. So when was the first time I had it spelt out that this church was teeming with child abuse? I tell you when, it was when Sinead O'Connor tore up that picture of the pope on US television. And let's not forget, she was/is almost universally treated like a crazy person who had said something bizarre and unforgivable. Did you think she was mad then, too?

happy 73rd birthday Van Morrison

There are many rumours about Van the man, especially in Ireland. He's said to be reticent, bordering on rude, a loner, mysterious. Today is his birthday.

This one's a true story, I swear. A cousin of a friend of a friend told me this many years ago. And he must know, he's from Belfast:

Before he became famous Van Morrison once met said cousin in a local pub and the two started talking about a tricky boiler repair job when they were interrupted. Van Morrison left the pub and subsequently his career took off, fame etc. Many years later, said cousin met him by chance at a function and Van Morrison's first words were "About that boiler . . . ".

Anyway, in my family, we have favourite songs.

This used to be my daughter's favourite when she was a young teenager, becasue she always likes a good story and as usual, there's a story behind this song (beautifully explained in Thom Hickey's blog):




This is R's favourite because it brings back memories, he says, of listening to the radio while waiting at the hairdresser's as a secondary school boy:



This is my favourite because it reminds me of a special day in Connemara:



And this is an extra just for the fun of it:

catch the heart and blow it open

Picture credit: National Archives of Ireland/The Irish Times

Yesterday, the brand new amazing wonderful exhibition of Seamus Heaney's archive was opened in Dublin.
Today, I had a gastroscopy plus colonoscopy.
These two events are completely unrelated. However, I could do with a drive out to the west, the salty wind from the Atlantic blowing away the fog in my brain.

There it is again. That amazing urge to be alive. I wake up and walk through the garden.  Eight different roses are in bloom. After breakfast, I carefully go through the motions to get the dreaded sick cert and R walks me back from the surgery under the flowering linden trees and briefly, the scent reminds us of a visit to Paris many years ago with a moody teenage daughter and everybody arguing for a while until life/love caught up with us. A scent bringing back tiny sparks of memories that mean family and us and always and wide open hearts.

There it is again. The realisation that this memory sits inside our cells and all we need to do is lift our heads to the trees and say, Paris, laughing quietly.

To say that my health is rapidly improving would be an overstatement, but often within overstatements are kernels of truth and frequently at the nub of a kernel can be found the essence of possibility. See, I actually have the energy to type out such a convoluted drivel of a sentence.

Like so many people attached to Ireland one way or another, I spent a good part of the last two days on various news and social media sites following the run-up to the referendum. It's a lot more than voting for the right to have an abortion and I won't go into it. There's others who have done a great job explaining this.

As with the same-sex marriage referendum of 2015, tens of thousands of Irish people working/living abroad travelled home to vote (there is no postal vote for Irish citizens abroad).
Following #hometovote can restore your idea of dedication and may even make you cry.

But then this: Yesterday, a train service from London to meet the ferry in Fishguard (Wales) crossing to Rosslare (Ireland) was experiencing some hold-ups and delays. A considerable number of Irish people were on that train who would now miss the boat and thus their chance to vote in the referendum. Several passengers used twitter et al. to alert the railway co. and the ferry operator and both responded, providing a bus to bring the passengers to the boat, while the ferry operators agreed to wait until everybody was on board.  There were massive cheers from the other ferry passengers.

Life is a string of anecdotes that keep me afloat.

Irish word of the day

Iarmhaireacht 
the loneliness felt at cock-crow
(pronunciation here)


I cannot speak a word of Irish, which is the official language of Ireland, in use - so to speak - at least for the last 2,500 years, outlawed by the British in the 19th century, an act that eventually, during the fight for independence in the 20th century, lead to the modern era Celtic Revival including a sudden deep interest in the Irish language. So, thank you Britain.

All I know is trivia, that there are no Irish words for yes or no, but at least three for woman. Also, three different sets of numbers, one for humans, one for non-humans and one for the maths.

My Irish family can speak Irish, some better than others, some mumble along if need be. Most of them have complicated Irish names like Caoilfhoinn, Rionagh, Eavan, Aoife, Oisin, Tadgh - and these do not even include what my man's R stands for or our daughter's S, but both are equally mysterious.
My Irish family has a great time listening to non-Irish speakers trying to pronounce their names. They all hated  - more or less - having to learn Irish at school and university where it was compulsory. R had to sit his Irish exam twice before he was allowed to teach science.
My Irish family couldn't give a damn whether anybody speaks Irish or not as long as they speak up and share what's bothering them.

As for cock-crow, this is the time in very early morning when it begins to get light.  Just in case.

Whereas loneliness is up for individual definition.
But when you bung it all together, cock-crow, loneliness, early morning, a distant single bird waking up with a chirp, your lack of sleep, the human silence everywhere, that big knot of fear in your stomach, an inconspicuous little box of dreadful drugs on the bedside table, there's that one word for it in Irish. Just in case.


Ancient Irish traditional tune in support of my post:

to expand the definition of ‘us’, and shrink the definition of ‘them'

When Bill Clinton was elected for the first time in 1993, a friend from the US sent emails to everyone she knew.  She wrote that this was a new beginning after years of darkness and that she was so delighted. When Bush was elected eight years later, she wrote emails again, expressing her dismay. When Bush was elected the second time round, she apologized to all her foreign friends for letting the free world down.

In 1999, I actually shook Bill Clinton's hand. Nothing to get excited about, I was part of an invited group of onlookers (the things you do on a Saturday afternoon) and he decided to mingle unexpectedly. He was much smaller than I had imagined, his nose was big and red and I didn't think much of the speech he gave. In fact, I had come to listen to another speaker.
Anyway, I am neither here nor there as regards Bill Clinton.

But when I listened (on the radio) to his eulogy at the funeral of Martin McGuinness a few days ago in Derry, he got to me. It was a moving speech, full of humour and great feeling, personal and honest. Not some scripted garble read from a teleprompter. It's only 11 minutes long but worth listening to. And I couldn't help but compare. With that nasty excuse of a president across the pond. Whom I cannot imagine spending sleepless nights on peace negotiations in a small country across the pond, whom I cannot image to even have respect for someone like Mandela. To work for a future where we need to expand "the definition of ‘us’, and shrink the definition of ‘them'". 

For the record: I have never been a friend of Martin McGuinness, have no great sympathies for Sinn Féin or the IRA, be it historic or recent or any of the splinter groups. But I have even less sympathies for the loyalists, the various protestant parties and paramilitary groupings and ancient orders.

Info on strange words in the eulogy:

• Taoiseach (pronounced: teeshock) = prime minister of Ireland
• President Higgins = Michael D. Higgins, current president of Ireland
• Gerry = Gerry Adams president of Sinn Féin, life long companion of Martin McGuinness, both were active leaders of the IRA during the Troubles in Northern Ireland
• First Minister Foster = Arlene Foster, leader of the (protestant) Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in Northern Ireland. Both her father and herself as a teenager survived bomb attacks by the IRA. 
• What the sitting Taoiseach said in the US  = St. Patrick was an immigrant
• Ian Paisley = Protestant religious leader in Northern Ireland, life long active (and vicious) opponent of any peace process in Northern Ireland became friends with Martin McGuinness when they were both elected as leaders of the Northern Ireland government in 2007. 
• John Hume = former leader of the Northern Ireland Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize.

Ireland is a tiny country, somewhere to the west of the UK. No matter what, the number of people who think Ireland is just the same as the UK, who think it is actually a part of the UK, baffles me still.
So do the romantics, the people who have visited to see the land of their ancestors or the concept sold by Irish pubs worldwide or whatever, and found shamrocks and strange dark beer with creamy tops and maybe some deep Celtic mystery, but more likely leprechauns and jolly dancing and all the other stereotypes.
I was one of them, many years ago. Now, I only want to visit and when I do, I fall in love with it, landscape, people and all, and want to move back, immediately. But my Irish man will not hear of it.  He does have the bigger picture. Believe me. He loves Ireland, too.
Ireland is complicated. But Ireland is European, fiercely European. And Brexit is not. And that is going to be a huge problem. Something to be afraid of. Because there is the matter of Northern Ireland, that small upper right hand corner of the island of Ireland. And I ask myself these days, does Theresa May actually have any idea?

To illustrate my point, first Seamus Heaney (Nobel Lecture 1995)

One of the most harrowing moments in the whole history of the harrowing of the heart in Northern Ireland came when a minibus full of workers being driven home one January evening in 1976 was held up by armed and masked men and the occupants of the van ordered at gunpoint to line up at the side of the road. Then one of the masked executioners said to them, "Any Catholics among you, step out here". As it happened, this particular group, with one exception, were all Protestants, so the presumption must have been that the masked men were Protestant paramilitaries about to carry out a tit-for-tat sectarian killing of the Catholic as the odd man out, the one who would have been presumed to be in sympathy with the IRA and all its actions. It was a terrible moment for him, caught between dread and witness, but he did make a motion to step forward. Then, the story goes, in that split second of decision, and in the relative cover of the winter evening darkness, he felt the hand of the Protestant worker next to him take his hand and squeeze it in a signal that said no, don't move, we'll not betray you, nobody need know what faith or party you belong to. All in vain, however, for the man stepped out of the line; but instead of finding a gun at his temple, he was thrown backward and away as the gunmen opened fire on those remaining in the line, for these were not Protestant terrorists, but members, presumably, of the Provisional IRA.

Second, Martina Anderson, Member of the European Parliament, today (I am generally not a friend of Sinn Féin, her party, but she does have a point):




,

First things first: 

Thank you, thank you, thank you, wonderful readers. Thank you for your supportive and kind comments, for your suggestions and your encouragement, for reading and letting me know that you are there.

Woke up at 3 am tossing and turning with aches and increasing pain and after that, little sleep and working hard on keeping all that miserable worst case scenario thinking out of my mind. I eventually settled on the theory of the two steps forward, one step back recovery road and argued for a while with my impatient self. In the end, I saw my daughter's feverish face, aged 9, during a week of a nasty childhood illness, and I could hear her tiny voice whispering: right so, I have to get through this and then it's over, yes?

She doesn't remember but I do. She did say this.

I took one ultram from the emergency pack they gave me when I was discharged and it had no effect, which is a relief in a way. It is not a nice drug. 

The snow chaos has not (yet?) happened. My man went to work coughing. Life goes on.

When R was 20, his mother, my beautiful future mother-in-law, had a terrible accident. Her car was hit by the delivery van of her local grocer and pushed against a wall. She just about survived it and spent six long months in traction, unable to move, staring at the ceiling.

Many years later, when I had become a member of that family, I was told various versions of this time, bits of memories here and there. The main story was always that her hair, her beautiful thick dark brown hair, after it was shaved off grew back white. She had just turned 51.

Whenever I ask R about the time, he tells me that his memories are all very vague, hazy. That he was busy being young and wild, ready to move to England for the summer. I ask him if he spent time with her in hospital and he replies, Oh I'm sure I did, and I love the certainty in his voice. 

And occasionally he mentions her shaved head with the holes in it for the traction cables and how close she was to being paralysed. He also remembers quite vividly the white leatherette sofa in the grocer's sitting room where they all sat that evening, crying, the two families, neighbours, a priest. Imagine, white leatherette, R says, shaking his head.

I always have a hard time imagining this. My wonderful mother-in-law was such a lively and energetic woman, talking, laughing, singing, dancing. And playing. On the rare occasions of actual snow in Dublin, she had us all, dogs included, tobogganing on bin bags and dinner trays down to Saval Park Road from the Killiney Hill car park, with a massive snowball fight at the end. 

Six months in traction. What have I got to complain. 

I loved her dearly, she changed me, she helped me, she loved me back. She died much too young. That bastard, pancreatic cancer, swept her away in three short months when she was 67.

Jitterbug with George Michael

We are upstairs in the cozy room with the woodburning stove. The little black and white portable tv is on the desk chair. We are dancing to Top of the Pops. My toddler is doing elaborate jumping moves on the big sofa while I display my repertoire of shakes and fancy steps. Together we clap and snip our fingers and sing along at the top of our voices:

WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO GO!!

Downstairs the big front door bangs shut and I can hear A walking upstairs. He leans on the door frame, hands deep in the pockets of his corduroy pants watching the scene and when I see the smirk on his face I call, hey what?
Agh, he says almost angrily, here is another one who has to pretend, another one of the millions who won't dare to come out.
But his feet are quietly tapping.
The music is crap, he mutters and with a sudden smile he turns to the jumping toddler, did you leave any dinner for an old man or do I have to come up on the sofa and dance for it? And S explodes into giggles.

After a lifetime of proper German holy xmas, all the beeswax candles and playing the recorder in the family carol quartet, the hushed atmosphere of quiet rituals (no tv, family only, classical music etc.), I walked into the hurricane of an Irish xmas.

The first thing that threw me was the tree. In my future in-laws house, the tree was situated in the corner of the front room. The front room, decorated in my mother-in-law's favourite pink, was only used for special occasions. For everyday family life there was the cramped tv room - or 'den', as it was renamed after  my future in-laws had visited the US.
From the first of December, however, the front room was opened and remained so in order to allow visitors to view the tree. This was a small white plastic affair, hastily decorated with blue, red and pink tinsel, gold baubles and a couple of ancient play-do decorations from R's distant childhood. A string of multi-coloured electric lights kept on flashing irregularly and on my first viewing, I suspected a faulty connection somewhere - which was received with great laughter all round.

Throughout December, the regular string of visitors to my future in-law's house increased dramatically, and every visit included a viewing, a glass of sherry, a mince pie, the exchanging of xmas cards and the placing of a wrapped gift parcel under the tree. By mid December, the tree was more or less covered by parcels. These were daily lifted and shook by passing family members to guess their contents. Even bets were placed.

While the tree as such had been a slight disappointment in comparison to my mother's, I was more baffled by the card business. This is how it looked to me (and still does): People write seasonal sentiments on xmas cards and then proceed to exchange these cards in person while verbally repeating the exact same seasonal sentiments written on these cards.

I was told that there would be no stockings on xmas morning as these were reserved for small children only. It took me a while to get the hint and we provided one small child two years later.

There was also no chance for breakfast in the morning as all female members of my future family-in-law, in their dressing gowns, were working their way through items on a secret task list in the kitchen, before getting dressed in splendid finery and leaving the house, in stages, to work their way through more secret tasks, such as going to mass, chauffeuring old folks to church, singing carols in some hospital ward, buying more cream (shops were open!!) and dropping off last minute presents and, yes, personally handing over more xmas cards.

By midday, the family was once again at home and for the next two hours or so the house began to fill up with a seemingly endless stream of coming and going visitors. Neighbours, colleagues, cousins, friends, friends of friends home from abroad, and a couple of priests. I was sent around with plates of canapés and R was taking orders for drinks. There was laughter and gossip and singing and yes, more xmas card exchanges.

When the last visitors had left, the family sat down for xmas dinner.

The menu:

1 smoked salmon on soda bread
2 soup with Melba toast
3 turkey and ham, stuffing, gravy, mashed and roast potatoes, celery (boiled, unfortunately), Brussels sprouts
4 sherry trifle
5 xmas pudding - with flambé whiskey (?)

Before the trifle, strange longish parcels wrapped in shiny paper were held in a complicated cross-over chain of hands around the table and pulled resulting in small plops (or not). This produced great hilarity with funny little trinkets and small slips of paper, which were unfolded and found to bear important jokes to be read out loud.

By now I was totally lost.

After dinner all proceeded to the front room and after much debate a Santa was chosen, who, wearing a Santa hat of course, would spend the next hour lifting one parcel after another from under the tree, reading the gift tag and throwing it across the room to the recipient, while the dogs tried to catch it midair.

Parcels were unwrapped immediately with much shouting, running or crawling across the room and hugging etc. while the dogs sniffed their way through the growing pile of torn wrapping paper in the middle (the coffee table had been thoughtfully removed).

That over and done, it was now time for a good cup of tea and the last mince pies.

After a brief interval, glasses of bubbly were passed around and the birthday cake for R's sister (who for obvious reasons is named Noelle) was carried into the room and the next party began. You know, candles, singing, cheers, presents etc.

This is only a glimpse. There was much more, incl. charades, reciting, singing, children dancing and crying. But this should give you an idea.

What are days for?
To wake us up.
To put between the endless nights.
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They flow and then they flow.
They come, they fade, they go and they go.

(Laurie Anderson)

A calm day, a pleasant, wonderful day. A day like an anchor. In the morning I faint after the shower and R runs up the stairs with a cup of strong tea. Based on this past week, whatever recovery I am expecting, it is going to be very slow. I spend large parts of the day in bed where I carefully select a podcast to listen to and soon fall into a floating dreamlike state, voices inside and outside of me fading through the open window and up into the sky. I like to think of it as meditation. 

Eventually, some part of me wants to get up and, dutifully and carefully, I move around, almost sleep walking, deadheading flowers, rinsing the tea pot, hosing down the patio, changing towels, until I am breaking out into a sweat and my heart starts banging with an angry fist. 
After my lunch time cup of milky coffee, I fall asleep for a while. Later, we watch Heart of a Dog, R leaning over the edge of the sofa holding my hands. In paradise, we often played our Laurie Anderson tape in the evening after sunset, sitting on the stairs with the dogs, chatting with passing neighbours, all the kids running around under the mango trees, singing O Superman.

Meanwhile, our daughter, our married grown up daughter is in Ireland, with her man and her friends, retracing our steps from the summer of 1979. They send little snaps from Connemara, smiling in the rain, running along windy beaches, like tourists in their tweed caps, cycling on Clare Island.

Turning time around
That is what love is
Turning time around
Yes, that is what love is

(Lou Reed)

Waking, I turn my face to the open window. Blue sky. Someone is opening a car door, encouraging a small child to come on out. Sunday sounds.

My back hurts like fire and hell and I am expecting the end of the world any minute. I decide to go back to work tomorrow, to sort out the most urgent stuff and then call R with my whiniest voice to pick me up. But. If I cannot handle a full day at work (a full day is 5 hrs) I also will need to go back to my GP and I am already rehearsing my apologies for taking up more of her time (- which of course is borderline pathetic). I won't use my whiniest voice, no. I will make myself sound jocular and confident and I will shrug my shoulders slightly, indicating that shit has happened again and that it means nothing, really.

In my darkest self pity moments I am contemplating the next scenarios incl. herniated discs and permanent nerve damage and the worst case, namely that all my remaining teeth are quietly rotting away underneath and behind their shiny white exterior and that any moment, they will all crumble and explode with endless excruciating pain, simultaneously of course.

21 years ago, we crashed the car on the motorway driving west into the sun during a sudden and unexpected snow shower. Nothing too dramatic, slow moving rush-hour traffic, crawling along. We were on our way home from my grandmother's funeral. She had died just short of her 103rd birthday. The funeral was a brief affair and we left early to get home before dark but also because S was getting bored and cranky. 

The car - cheap, small, second hand, French - was a complete write-off, and after the police had been and gone, when the tow-truck had dropped it and us at a garage (closed for the night), we stuffed what we could carry into our bags and slunk away like thieves. Running along the dual carriageway towards the nearest railway station, mother father daughter holding hands and laughing hysterically. Always the lucky ones, we were. Fearless, we were. Oh yes!

Three weeks later, I woke up one morning in pain with a paralyzed right leg. 

Six weeks after the surgery I was running along Brittas Bay as if my life was always worth having. As if everything would always turn out well in the end.

I cannot remember when it stopped, my confidence, my ignorant belief that all will turn out well.  Maybe because it was too easy and I am fed up with easy.

happy 70th birthday Neil Young

It seems I have been humming and singing this song under my breath all my life. Long before I could understand the lyrics.

Right now, I remember singing it at the top of my voice while painting the walls of the former industrial school in Letterfrack in bright purples and reds. At the time, I didn't know a thing about the horrible history of that building. I was a clueless student of theories and ideals.

But I was happy, really happy. I had just fallen in love, I had met wonderful people and together we set out to make this place habitable again. We had grand ideas involving woodworkers, weavers, potters, children, gardens. You know, the whole shebang.

Today, my paintwork is long gone. Instead, it has become "a place of excellence".
I am still in love. 

 Sheep's Head peninsula Co. Cork, Ireland (July 1983)

My world is no longer turning. That's actually quite a beautiful improvement. While the ground beneath my feet remains unsteady, I no longer need to hold onto walls when I walk and the staircase has become once again just a means to move from one floor to the other. In fact, I can look into the rainy garden and notice the wind in the wisteria and tell myself that this is just wind and not a mean trick of my damaged balance organs. But this is all surprisingly tiring. As I walk past the big mirror of my great-grandmother's wardrobe in our bedroom I stop for a moment to take a look. You are not well, I tell the person staring at me, don't fool yourself, you are sick. 

Last night in my dream I explained to my GP that I wanted to sleep for about three months, and she wrote an elaborate prescription on thick cream paper and handed it to me but I was too tired to take it and instead just curled up on the floor in front of her desk. I must have fallen asleep because I don't remember what happened next.

When I blow my nose in the morning, an impressive amount of blood appears probably from deep in my sinuses and inside my mouth, there is a spectacular number of open sores. 

The blessings of cortisone. Possibly. Hopefully.

Of course, this is all old hat.

Only this time - oh, I have no idea and I try not to speculate. Obviously, I have been pretty ill and have gotten better before and there is no reason to think that it won't happen again. Eventually. And as it stands, no vital organ damage looming on the horizon, just a somewhat major spot of bother in the ENT department and all sorts of accompanying odds and ends incl. exhaustion and the usual stuff like gastritis and so on. (But try and tell this to the scared wimp in my bed at 3 am.)

To drown out the double bass players in my ears I have been listening to some very interesting and downright lovely podcasts. Earlier today, I was back on the sheep's head peninsula, which has been one of our favourite places for many years, listening to gorgeous sing song West Cork accents describing the time in 1979 when the writer JG Farrell lived and died there. 

In fact, I just realised that on the day he died so dramatically, on Saturday August 11, 1979, we were travelling (on foot, hitch hiking and by boat) about 350 km north along the same coast, eventually reaching Clare Island where we struggled to pitch a tent in the evening, there was fierce wind and rain. I had met R seven days earlier.

Anyway, it's a sad story (the one about JG Farrell, not the one about R and me) but worth listening to. (Here is the link. And here another account of events.)

Sheep's Head 1983

Some days are better than others. What am I saying? Some days are simply beautiful. I know what I am talking about, I am married to a gardener.

However, today is not one of them, despite the elegant long shadows on the lawn, the clear October air with flickering clouds of tiny swarming insects, ripe figs and a hedge full of blackberries.

While the gardener is clearing and digging, I update my list of medications and symptoms as required. I make a list of the latest publications on autoimmune inner ear diseases and multiorgan involvement of c-ANCA antibodies hoping that I will find the courage and self confidence to hand these to the expert I am due to meet tomorrow.

Last night while I was waiting for the dramamine to kick in and relieve me from drowning at high sea, with R sitting beside me working on the coming week's teaching plan, I closed my eyes and climbed Mount Eagle on the western shore of the Dingle peninsula in Co. Kerry, Ireland on that balmy summer's day thirty years ago. The evening air was simply gorgeous and my arms and neck were still hot from the afternoon spent on a sunny beach. 

We had decided to come here on the spur of the moment, still in our summer clothes with a woolly sweater for later tied around our hips and hastily put on walking boots. My pink sleeveless sundress slightly billowing in the breeze I tried to keep up with R who was striding up ahead of me, steady as ever. And as always, he had found the best path up the rocky slopes just by looking towards the sun. Up on the top, sitting in the breeze, we looked out over the silent Atlantic and all was well with the world and our lives and our totally uncertain future.

Without that man gently coaxing me to climb so many seemingly impossible paths I would have missed the most splendid views. 

I showed this to R because it's the 150th birthday thing all over the Irish media and also because, well there is a fire in my head at the moment.

So, he watched it with the usual slightly bored yet generous patience he reserves for people who go all ooh and aah and generally fall over themselves gushing about Ireland as if it was a place of poetry and music and artists, many with red hair etc. But at about 1:38, he got all excited. Oh look, he called out, Ben Bulben in winter. Must climb that one again.

Ireland gay marriage referendum result: Yes vote certain

This is about decency, generosity, love and getting rid of a lot of negative morals, it's about moving out from the shadow of an oppressive church or to quote the Irish minister for equality:

Ireland hasn't just said yes, Ireland has said Fuck Yeaahhh!

This is also in memory of Marcus who in 1985 could no longer face the bullying and abuse from family and colleagues, who slipped out of our reach one tearful night to jump into the river. His body was found a week later.

some background here

I am asking for quite a stretch in imagination and compassion, but isn't that what being alive is all about?

This morning I was sitting in my kitchen with my head under a towel, breathing in the supposedly healing vapours of thyme and sage, listening to online radio. As my luck would have it I had tuned into one of my favourite Irish stations just as the news came on. Or rather: nuacht, that is news as gaeilge/in Irish. One of the charming little rituals that probably mean very little to most and an awful lot so some people in Ireland. Like the Angelus at six pm, still live on radio every evening.

I can understand three words in Irish: agus (and), buíochas (thank you) and grá (love). When I listen to someone speaking in Irish it's all mystery to me, like an ancient chant.
And then suddenly I heard the word Kathmandu. Another massive earthquake. Oh dear, oh saints in heavens and people on this planet.
Of course, we will all and everyone try and do what we can. Surely. It will involve money. The media will supply us with enough horrific evidence to imagine a fraction of what is happening.

And here comes the stretching because I am now jumping from Nepal to the Indian Ocean. To a place hardly anybody knows. A most beautiful place, paradise. I can honestly call it that because I have lived in a very similar place for a couple of years not too far from there. It has been the best of times for me and for my man and our child. The very best of times. And although we have all had many more best of times since, 25 years later we are all three still homesick for it. 
Which is why I can feel some of the sadness (sagren in Chagossian Creole) you can see in these faces if you please take the short time to watch:

Let Us Return - The Story of the Chagos Islanders - 2015 from Evoque on Vimeo.

And while I have been working too long for human rights organisations to believe that online petitions have any meaningful effect at all, I nevertheless ask you to sign here anyway and hope for a miracle. There is no doubt in my mind that these people need to return and that they can have a happy life there. Not a single doubt.
If you have a bit more time, also watch this video.

 

Almost finished packing for a short trip, just a week, to the coast. Against his usual reservations (beaches are very very boring compared to mountains) R decided I need sea air to help my lungs and in a flash, we had it booked, this being easter holidays for both of us.

Theoretically, all is well. He cleaned the car and has already dismantled and stored the bicycles in the back, the tyres have been checked and the tank is full.

Yet, in reality, I feel sort of awful with another bout of the gastritis and whatever, shakes and shivers and itches and nausea and why on earth not just crawl into bed and stay there for ever?

Well, he says, a change is as good as a rest. And having spent all his childhood right by the boring sea and never really being attracted to it, what with some of the most glorious mountains just behind you, he is surprisingly cheerful.

So I am packing porridge oats and rusks and herb tea and a hot water bottle and all my glorious medicines and one extra pair of warm woolly socks for each of us.

A last check of the weather forecast, cloudy, windy, not much sun.

Faced with her husband's retirement, which involved lots of golf and gardening, and too much energy on her part, my mother in law decided to become an artist, a painter. She joined a club and produced a variety of seminal works at a furious rate. She concentrated on copying favourite views and family photographs. Sometimes, she combined the two. Of course, we all encouraged her and she would invite us for viewings in the dining room, vol au vents, sherry and all. 

When we got married, she decided to change one of her surprisingly good pictures, originally a view of the beach at Seapoint or maybe Killiney. To mark the occasion, she inserted two little stick figures, walking hand in hand into the oncoming tide or maybe out to the outgoing tide. We called it the tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum picture and for the last 25 years it has been lovingly preserved in a black plastic bag somewhere in the basement.

Anyway, here we go, off to the seaside.

Lá Fhéile Pádraig

Patrick's day has come and gone and for an entire week this household was very busy and noisy. There was a short moment late Saturday night when I escaped to the upstairs bathroom to take a deep breath and my face in the mirror showed me this smile that was etched so deeply into my exhausted lines, I am still working on getting it off. Three days later.
Of course, I could go all what-has-become-of-me and this used to be a household with noise and music and banging doors and phone calls and pets and certainly more that two quiet persons going about their quiet little businesses.
I could, but I won't.
Instead, a little bit of Ireland. Here we have Philip King talking with a faint trace of a Cork accent and the lovely South County Dublin way of aspirating the consonants, especially the w.  It sounds gorgeous to my ears and it takes me about 10 mins to get back into it but considering the fact that I became bilingual in South County Dublin, this is my English.



Anyway, Philip is something of a very distant cousin by marriage to R. That whole six degrees of separation thing is a party game in Ireland. Not that he would know a thing about me.
And while he meanders on in this talk, showing off a bit and getting sidetracked, he nevertheless brings three gifts: a poem, music and a spectacular view.

First, the poem:

The Given Note

On the most westerly Blasket
In a dry-stone hut
He got this air out of the night.

Strange noises were heard
By others who followed, bits of a tune
Coming in on loud weather

Though nothing like melody.
He blamed their fingers and ear
As unpractised, their fiddling easy

For he had gone alone into the island
And brought back the whole thing.
The house throbbed like his full violin.

So whether he calls it spirit music
Or not, I don't care. He took it
Out of wind off mid-Atlantic.

Still he maintains, from nowhere.
It comes off the bow gravely,
Rephrases itself into the air.

Seamus Heaney


Next, the music or Port na bPúcaí (Spirit Music):



And finally, the view:

(I copied it from here.)

So many years ago, with our baby asleep with grandparents, we walked all the way up through the heather to look out over the Blasket Islands, on a mild summer's evening just before sunset when the air was still and we could hear the waves all the way down on the Atlantic.