Tag Archives: life

A woman

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I know a woman in her mid-30s concentrating hard on reconciling herself to a future without children. In forfeiting the path more trodden, she directs her energies to the endless possibilities available through travel. She is relieved at the prospect of entering worlds unknown; of infinite corners up ahead. She never wants to stop turning into them, they are all she has ever known.

I know another woman who spent the bulk of her child-bearing years trying not to get pregnant. She craves a child as the final curtain is lowered on her fertility; uncertain who the victor will be – chance, or the clutch of luck.

I know one woman who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy. In choosing a termination, she rationalises the biological status of twin blue lines in the context of her body and soul. She also reasons that it is the end of a potential dream in another place and time. She perceives it as the end of potential life. Of something. Of conception. She says she would do it again but thinks the question daft. The present cannot be re-written.

I know a woman who struggles against the odds to cling on to potential life that threatens to slip away along with two blue lines a few short weeks after they first appeared. Hope began before conception. Biological truths mean nothing to her in the context of her body and soul. Of what could be one week; of what might not be the next. The lines disappear the following week.

I know a young woman standing on the precipice of the grown-up world.  She is looking down trying to locate her potential place within it. She casually predicts the number of children she will likely have once she gets the hang of it. Her audience is her best friend who is just as fond of inhabiting the role of clairvoyant to herself.

I know a woman with a young child who points to the luggage under her eyes reminding her of her advanced maternal years. Too advanced to chance a punt on luck for another.

I am all of these women.

Since they’ve been gone

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Scuttling through the door famished from swimming finding me pretty much where they left me. Folded in three on the sofa with legs under knees peeping out from beneath the paper lowered in surprise at their return. So soon. Already?

What they don’t know is since they’ve been gone, I have given air-guitar career defining performances. Scaled the dizzy heights of lip-syncing precision. Had all the dolls and teddies eating out of the palm of my hand. Oh yeah, baby. In a drab housing estate in the North of Ireland where beige is the new rock ‘n’ roll, boundaries of domesticity have been pushed to the outer limits with a bog standard sweeping brush. Stand aside Tinkerbell, there’s a new diva in town.

Family members fixed me with framed smiles as I navigated abandoned Lego like a swirling dervish reaching crescendos along with a feverish Patti Smith. Tinkerbell toppled over in ecstasy from almost knocking herself out with head-spinning punk pirouettes to New Order’s Ceremony. She’s no match for me.

“I know who I am, I’m not who you think I am.”

I’m rock

I’m roll

I’m in Dexy’s giving it Northern Soul

Stopping briefly in Japan…

Looking for angels with David Byrne

I’m Polly Jean Queen

Free for another fifteen

Mere minutes till they’re back

And I would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for the pesky volume button left at top tonsil to scare the bejaysus us out of all.

Warning: The news was not made to be played loud.

tinkerbell

 lightweight

Preview: Thursday 11th February

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The  cosmos returns tomorrow with another dazzling line-up that promises to deliver the usual swag-bag of fist-clenching crackers. First up are The Managers. The elusive group make a rare appearance for one of their tumultuous live performances. Expect plenty of baseline data and drumming of fingers.

Going forward into the afternoon The Two Loud Fuckers Upstairs have been kicking off recent appearances with a parade of tracks from their Greatest Hits album. The duo is currently working on new material with Do You Fancy a Wee Tray-bake with Your Tea? getting a test-run last week. They’ll be followed by dilettantes Some Pair with an abundance of catchy frivolous pop including new single Look At The State of Yer Wan (Eye-roll).

Hyperbole springs eternal when it comes to the description-defying M1. Few resist the charms of perennial crowd-pleasers such as All Pile Into Apple Green, I Must Have That Cigarette Lighter With My Child’s Name On It, and the mournful Burger King It Is Then.

In the ten years since Friends Reunited got together, they have been thrilling each other with special requests. How Much Did You Lose This Week is a dead cert for the encore before the headline act responds to their self-consciousness with a carefully crafted lack of any. AKA Róisín Murphy.

She was brilliant, probably.

Observations of a Dublin taxi driver

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Often the best tippers are the ones who can afford it least.

The people who inspire me most are not the rich and famous that I’ve met but ordinary people who struggle daily with the burden of sickness; their own, their children’s or their parents but can still manage to smile and ask about you.

Good manners are not dependent on higher social class, education and money. The most unmannerly people I’ve met often have all of these while the most polite often have none.

Nothing defines the Irish more than their sense of humour. All through the recession we never lost it.

A few hundred years ago somebody said of the Irish people that we suffer most from         “…..too much drink and lack of moral courage”. I think this is still very true today.

The Irish make great friends for at least two hours in a pub.

There is a significant number of racist Irish people. Most of them have never lived and worked abroad and know nothing of the difficulties involved.

The Irish love sport and sporting success whatever else is going wrong in the country it’s the great opium that soothes us all.

The golden unspoken rule of the Irish is never take yourself too seriously. If you do, you’re doomed to be a victim of your family, friends, work colleagues or worse still; Mario Rosenstock or Oliver Callan.

The new young Irish offer so much hope. They are so well educated, so creative, full of confidence and no longer carry the inferior baggage that previous generations carried.

From a Ranelagh rank regular

 

Password protected

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Hi ho. It’s back to full-time work, I go. This time to one of those large organisations with its own IT Department. Gotta love those IT guys. Every day is a no-uniform day, another opportunity to remain nonplussed with head down while all about them are losing theirs. And go by the name of Gary. Usually.

Gary set me up on the system on my first day before sauntering back to his mothership with an over-the-shoulder warning I’ll need to change my password regularly. It took a nanosecond to lash in the first: my Daughter’s name and birth year. There was a time I would’ve approached the task by having a generous stare into space before being jolted back into real time with precisely the right song title for there and then, only for it to be rejected for not containing the requisite mix of numbers and letters. Napoleon36. A historic figure and a few random numbers to you, an Ani DiFranco song and the year of my Mother’s birth to me. [“Everyone is a fucking Napoleon”. Except you, Ma, you’re just naturally short.]

Passwords represent rare opportunities to smuggle a teeny wee piece of your heart into a soulless workplace. The hidden bit of you for when a framed photo or potted plant won’t do. When the frame is empty, and you couldn’t give a fuck about plants. The password protects those cordoned off files and feelings you can’t share with anyone.  Except on the rare occasion a Gary needs it, and they’ve probably heard them all.  I wish I could remember all of mine and print them off like the keyboard-track of my life.

I’d forgotten the scale of my Ani DiFranco habit back in my 20s. Her middle finger was perpetually aloft to the latest man who’d broken her heart, and to The Man who breaks millions to make millions. Notsosoft – the first, and sole remaining, password from an early email account. A relic of me as the idealist, brimming with enough angst to take Him and his sort on. Like many of us thundering up the highway towards World Change, I was seduced by a boy down a back alley where we both overstayed our welcome. Subsequent passwords from that love affair: firedoor00, untouchable02 (as in Untouchable Face), and thereyougo04 (..”swinging down the boulevard..” I was well into Katell Keineg territory by then)

Damestreet08 didn’t expire till ’09. Scene of my first kiss with my now husband up against a fancy streetlight outside the Brian Boru Pub on the corner before you cut down to Burdock’s. We parted an hour after it started from where I floated back to the car-park. It was locked so I had to cough up eighty quid to get my car out. I’d have cheerfully paid double that. Fakeempire09 and Slowslow10 came later followed by the date and place of our wedding. Now I bring our little one in to work every day. All kitted out in lower and upper case accessorised by a one and a two. Till home time, when she comes running towards me with her lopsided ponytail and Minnie Mouse t-shirt giving me a few ideas for the next password.

There’s a change in constellation. Something’s been re-arranged. Even Ani is lighter of step..

Update: Since this was originally posted, I’ve gone through..

Numptynuts15, Shitebags15, and Saveme16.

Got a password story to share?

Who’s gonna ride your wild horses?

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Who’s gonna drown in your blue sea?

Smart arse.

How d’ya mean?

Answering a question with a question.

We’re in this boat together, baaaaaaaaaby….

That reminds me..

What Happens When the Heart Just Stops?

Hmm. You become a Mumford & Sons fan. Vote Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, or Labour. Casually wear navy with black. And use parenting as a verb. In random order, obviously.

What about voting Sinn Féin?

That’s not a lagitamit…

Fucker

Do nat interrupt me. I did nat interrupt yew now, did a?

How Soon Is Now?

Somewhere between after a while and a wee while ago. I love this game.

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Erm. Nothing, I guess, when you put it like that…

Where Did Our Love Go?

I dunno. You were the one who questioned it in the first place. I’m happy to move on.

Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?

*pitiful look*

Where Is My Mind?

Exactly

What’s The Matter Here?

Let’s just get back to the questionnaire

Isn’t She Lovely?

Lovelier than two lovely things stuck together with Huberman endorsed angel wing encrusted adhesive. Dusted with glitter.

Why Does It Always Rain On Me?

What difference does it make?

*arched brow*

Who’s That Girl?

*incredulous* Jean Byrne

What’s Goin’ On?

Scattered showers, red mist. Thunderbolts and lightning.

Don’t…

Gallileo..GALLILEO…gallileo

…You Want Me, Baby?

I Want You. You’ve had your fun you don’t get well no more.

What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?

Elvis Costello

Who Wrote The Book Of Love?

That’d be Stephin Merritt

Wouldn’t It Be Nice?

To hear it again? OK, hang on til I get it..

Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?

*shrugs* Self praise is no recommendation

 

 

What happened next? Blogging 2015 re-visited

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Was someone foolish enough to offer me a new job? Just how was that gig I rhapsodised over? Did my mother-in-law hear about my court appearance? What was with the weird name change?

Prepare yourself for an eyelid-droop-inducing revisit to those riveting cliff-hanger blog moments of 2015 to find out what happened next. Insert dramatic violin music here.

Coincidentally, it also covers top five things I wasn’t proud of this year, and the top jerk of the year (in a recurring role).

January

Post: The revolving door

Our girl turned three.

three

What happened next?

She turned three and a half a week later, and remained that age until she turned four.

Post:  Personal specification

Job interview season returned as my contract neared an end. Willpower competed with ambition in the race for last place. Some finer interview moments revisited.

itsover

Except it wasn’t

What happened next?

Last minute stay of execution. Within days of the excruciating whip-around and proverbial last supper. Not as close as the time it was granted after those very events took place. Mind you, that was one of the better leaving bashes. And would’ve been perfect had I not returned to my desk the following Monday. Awkward. Am back in the same position this year. Thrilling seat-of-the-pants stuff. I’ll warn them to hold back on the fake gushing this time lest their insincerity be tested.

February

Post: Gaol Bird

A short secular prayer service for Patti Smith in anticipation of her impending June gig. pattismith

Brilliant gig, probably.

(image: entertainment.ie)

What happened next?

I forgot to get the tickets. People have the power… to be almighty arses.

March

Post: Scenes from a court summons

Random snapshots from my self-inflicted brush with the law.

courtroom

No laughing matter, obviously.

(image: southuniversity.edu)

What happened next?

Amnesty took on the case. Consequently, the local newspaper received dozens of shrill letters from a protesting public.

OK, OK. I learned my lesson and received a new driving licence with two points knocked off for bad behaviour.  On the plus side, my hair looks alright in the photo. No discernible difference in the reactions from my mother-in-law. But our wedding photo still hasn’t made it to the sitting room gallery. My paranoia levels remained consistent with pre-court appearance.

March 

Post:  Places I’ve lived

A postcard from the hedge written as part of an exercise to loosen up the sharing muscles in a new writing group I joined.

pub

Virgin Mary not featured

What happened next?

The writing group met for a further four sessions with the aim of facilitating participants to share their abortion story. Which it did. Folk responded kindly to the results here, and I was very grateful for that.

On a side-note, I eventually gave up trying to out-stare the Virgin Mary and fled to the city after three of the wildest years of my puff to date.

April

Post: Tagging along

Where I celebrated a year of blogging and vowed to bid farewell to it for a bit.

blogging

It’s this or…running? I think not!

What happened next?

Following orders from my impressively weak will-power, I returned the next week. Shrugs.

May

Post: The Professionals

In which The Professionals got themselves careers.

professional

“Don’t worry about your annual performance review. He just rabbits on about targets and work/life balance like he actually gives a toss”

(Image: mark-1.com)

What happened next?

Another nauseating board-room meeting. Just for the sake it.

June

Post:  Yardsticks

A visit to a primary school eerily similar to my own, and the introduction of our girl to another.

school furniture

Does my arse look big in one of these?

What happened next?

I cried looking for my mammy. Sigourney kicked me up the arse.

July

Post: Squalor Victoria

We visited an abandoned gaol and spotted some famous characters in the Orange March.

What happened next?

We eventually made it home to a frazzled man worn out from trying to convince our three-year old her Ma hadn’t really been incarcerated.

prison

Oh no, is the Wi-Fi down again?

(Image: designyourage.com)

August

Post:  This writing life

A whistle-stop tour through my life with some of the prominent pens and keyboards that have featured in it along the way. In response to a nomination for the Irish Blog Awards lifestyle category.

lifestyle

Jesus wept. That would’ve been the Irish in him.

What happened next?

A lengthy, and incomplete, meltdown over the creeping invasion of the limiting notion of ‘lifestyle’ blogging. To be continued. Probably.

September

Post: Did you read Róisín yet?

A reflection on the connection my mother and I have had with Róisín Ingle’s weekly column over the years. It ended with a phone-call in which I told her I also had an abortion following Róisín’s public disclosure of her own.

irishwoman

Oh Holy Mother of God she only went and had an abortion

(Image: Irish Times)

What happened next?

I told her I was only joking.

Only joking.

Some reasonable questions followed along with assurances that she would’ve supported me without judgement had I gone to her. I knew all that all along. And had long dismissed the stereotypical image of the rosary-bead wielding older woman apparently found everywhere beyond The Pale.

Post: Births, deaths, and marriages

Where I visited the top fromage in the Norn Iron Humanist Association with a view to giving serious consideration to training as a celebrant. With a straight face.

funeral

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. Electric word life. It means forever. Oops. Sorry. Force of habit. “

What happened next?

Periodic chin-stroking. Like this, look *me chin-stroking*. My fella has a beard so I picked up the habit unconsciously. Handy for chin-hair watch.

Also, did the sums and couldn’t justify the spend on a massive gamble with no guarantee I wouldn’t fall at the first hurdle. Realised that while aspects of humanism are consistent with my outlook,  I’m not ready to surrender the life-time war against being labelled in any walk of life. More questions than answers linger. To be continued. Sorry.

October

Post: The green of Ireland

Brief exchange with a taxi driver who collected us from the cinema after seeing the brilliant Queen of Ireland. Not very funny retort included.

What happened next?

“And SHE must’ve thought it was some film, wah?”, chuckled the taxi-driver to me in reference my 80 year-old mother sitting in the back seat.

My mother and I whipped off our seat-belts and Hong Kong Phooey’ed the fuck out of him.

panti

Panti is left discombobulated after hearing about the incident

(Image: irishcentral.com)

Actually, my mother railed against the display of casual ageism by quietly pointing it out to me when we got out of the car. Oh, right. That’s another thing that’s all ahead of me.

November

Post: Running to stand still

Our house went up for sale.

estate agent

Heeey, how can I annoy the hell out of you today?

(Image: dezrezblog.com)

What happened next?

The house was tidied for the first time in five years. In a manoeuvre comparable to immersion-left-on anxiety, I pulled a dramatic five-point turn a mile out the road and ran back into the house to hide the furry Celtic F.C. Santas before the prospective buyers arrived. Estate agents replaced Bono as the new receptacles for my affection.

December

Post: What to give the special blogger in your life this Christmas

Where I was unequivocal in my hints for potential presents this year.

What happened next?

Ignored again. But I did get this lovely coaster.

elvis costello

Very handy for cups and glasses of all sizes. A blogger’s must-have.

OK, you can turn back to Come Dine With Me now.

No more heroes anymore

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It’s a low point for indulgence when you’ve only a handful of crème-egged sweets and mild temperatures left to work with. You should never mix your confectionary seasons anyway. It creates an unsettling cognitive dissonance. I don’t ever recall tucking into a chocolate Santa on Easter Sunday morning. But I wouldn’t be averse to the idea if it can be arranged.

It’s day two from my sick bed *back of hand to forehead for fever-check* so if there is a chocolate Santa within a 200m radius, I’ll have to eat it on the sly in case I trigger a downpour of doubts over my deteriorating condition. Namely, my internal dialogue. I’m nearing Ferris Bueller levels of voice recovery but I was left alone with my own thoughts for longer than what is normally tolerable and things have gotten slightly out of hand. I can only assume a similar outbreak of solitude led to the composition of the list below and other hallucinatory behaviour this time last year.

Do too

Turns out lying down is a popular yoga position in some cultures. Damn.

I fancy a black pen this year.

In the unlikeliest of places

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She puffed up the pillow for the umpteenth time while somewhere on the periphery of her vision the clock blinked 03:30. A week had drained by since she buried her Mother but the fitfulness had taken root long before then. She tried to lay her head down on what had become a punch-bag for every disjointed thought stalking her imagination. Try as she might she couldn’t knock them unconscious.

Uncertain whether it was just the wind or an engine, she held her breath as a car slowed and rolled up over the kerb. One… two slammed doors. No click of a heel. No car-locks clicked shut. The groan from the nudge she gave her husband coincided with the ring of the bell.

“What the fuck?”

“Jesus!”

And other profane one-worded queries ushered them downstairs to the hall where they panicked themselves into fumbling for the front-door keys.

Two uniformed Gardaí.

“Are you the owner of a black Toyota Corolla registration number zero nine….?”

“Yes”, she shakily responded, her heart somewhere it wasn’t designed to be.

“And who are you, Sir?”

“My husband”, she cut in.

“What’s this about?”, her husband demanded to know, his characteristic affection for law enforcement officers waking up before the rest of him.

“Were either of you driving the vehicle this evening?”

“No”, they replied in unison, “why?”

“It was involved in an incident earlier. Can you tell us when you last saw it?”

That fucker, she mused accusingly. She was back behind the wheel of her imagination breaking the speed limit. The fucker being the mechanic she had left her car with days previously. A man she had never met before that week. Try as she might she couldn’t escape the mental leap from one heinous crime to another. Not a burglary surely. God, no. Oh no, Jesus, please let it not be a sexual assault. Or worse.

“What is it?”, they pleaded.

“I’m afraid we can’t disclose any more details at the moment. Tell us the name and number of the man you believe has the car”

They only knew him by his first name. Reluctantly, her husband scrolled through his phonebook, accidentally dialling the number as he went to read it out, the ringing tone invading the tension.

“Please. Just read the number out”

“Zero..eight….”

“Thank you. If you call the Garda Station tomorrow, they will explain what happened”.

The clock blinked 04:05. Both of them punched the living day lights out of their pillows until worry got the better of them. At 10:00, she lifted the phone.

“OK. Thank you for letting me know”, she signed off, as her husband hovered over her having given up mouthing a string of “wells?” she batted away with her one available hand.

Days later, they parked up on the kerb. Fresh flowers for her mother’s grave in hand. A cigarette ready to be lit in his. To the left of her mother’s resting place, synthetic grass lay across another freshly dug grave signalling someone’s barely born but silent grief. Tufts of lime green adorned with wreaths left by folk with whom she would form an unavoidable remaining-lifetime bond. She had already struck up a companionable silence with the mother of the teenage girl laid to rest on the right. Sudden Adult Death Syndrome. The last time she spent time in this woman’s company was in the primary school yard of their girlhood.

“Oh my God. Look”, her husband shouted inspecting the name on neighbouring grave closer. “It’s him”.

Rest In Peace.

A child of the ’80s. Date of death the same as the night she was awakened from her sleeplessness. He had chosen somewhere remote to put an end to it all. Whatever it all was.

They stood silent for a few minutes; keeping their private thoughts just that before strolling back to the car.

“It’s awful”

“Tis yeah”

“You know they thought it was you that night. They were coming to break the news to me”

“I’m here though, aren’t I?”, he wrapped his arm around her.

“Just as well. Mum would’ve twirled in her grave if she thought she’d have to lie beside you for eternity”

 **************

Based on events that happened to a friend over Christmas.