March 2012

Happy St Patricks Day!

Prodijig!

Coloured hair!

Himself is rude to a priest!

Hello, hello, didn’t I tell you I’d be back soon. Happy Saint Patricks Day to everyone the world over and I hope you enjoy it and if you dye yourself green that you don’t have an allergic reaction. In keeping with the Irish theme, an Irish group called Prodijig won Got to Dance (so sorry for people not living in Ireland or UK that you didn’t get to see it and that this news isn’t really relevant to your lives.) All the same, you could try to see them on YouTube or the Got to Dance site. They’re Irish, they’re sexy and fabulous and amazing and brilliant. Will you try to watch them? I promise you they are very very special.

Now, do you remember a couple of posts back, I mentioned Katy Perry’s blue hair and how much I love it and would I be able to get it? Well, I went to my hairdresser Grace (who is round the corner from me in the Hairbox in Dun Laoghaire. Himself goes to Dan and I go to Grace, we’ve been going for years.) So I said to Grace, “Grace,” I says, “You know Katy Perry’s hair?” And Grace looked a little wary, I could see she was thinking, “Where are we going with this?” And she said, “Yeees.” And I said, “It’s blue.” And Grace says, looking even more wary, “Yeees.” “Well,” I said. “Could I have mine done like that?” And Grace looked me in the eye and said, “No.” She explained all about bleaching and damage and it was grand because I sort of knew that I would never be able to have Katy Perry’s hair. But then! Grace came up with the most unexpected solution! Extensions. Coloured ones! Purple. I LOVE.    Here's a video:

Right now, will I tell you about Himself being rude the to the priest? Okay, it was Monday, early evening, about 10 to 5 and Himself and myself were doing what we always do on a Monday at this time, an activity that involves exhertion and getting sweaty, something that we would prefer would remain private – he CERTAINTLY won’t be happy about me outing us.* Anyway, there we were, sweating and going for it and the bell on the gate rings. “Leave it,” I said, but no, he couldn’t settle, so up he gets and presses the buzzer and opens the gate and as it happens it was Ljiljana (sister-in-law, married to Niall, just keeping you in the loop.) She was returning a key to something or other but she takes one look at Himself, gets the whole situation in an instant and is gone in a flash. So Himself comes back and off we go again. And then, not 2 minutes later, the bell rings again. “Leave it,” I said. But no, he couldn’t. He’s too conscientious. So up he gets and presses the buzzer to open the gate. He opens the front door and finds a priest ambling up the drive, ambling as if he had all the time in the world (pass-agg act, in my opinion, he – the priesteen – was trying to exert control of the situation by making Himself wait.)

“Can I help you?” Himself says.

“Mmmm, yeeess, yeeees,” the priest says, continuing to amble at a snail –like pace up the drive. I realise I’m making our drive sound like Downton Abbey’s but actually it’s about 4 feet long.

“Resssssiddddddennnnntiallll?” The priest says.

“What?” Says Himself.

“Residential oooorrrrr business?” The padre was continuing with his stroll.

And this is where it gets HYSTERICALLY funny (in my opinion.) Himself, normally the mildest-mannered, most polite person you could meet says, in a loud voice, “Look! Could you hurry it up here! I’m in the middle of something!”

The priest was so utterly aghast, he put a hand to his chest (fecking dramas queens, the lot of them, with their embroidered frocks and their incense and their am-dram poncing about on altars. I think masses should get rid of those tinkley little bells and instead have the three drumbeats that happen at the end of Eastenders to punctuate their many dramatic moments. ) Himself said that the priest had clearly never been spoken to like that before in his life. From the depths of his belly, the priest drew forth a fire-and-brimstone voice. “ARE YOU A CATHOLIC?” He bellowed. (Clearly about to excommunicate Himself.) And Himself said, “No, actually. I’m an atheist!” And slammed the door! 

Okay, maybe he didn’t slam the door, but he did close it without further engaging. I mean, really. The fecking priests! Who do they think they are? Haven’t they learnt ANYTHING about humility? Haven’t they realised that everybody knows the badness they’ve been up to, both as individuals and systemically. Don’t they know they we’re not scared of them anymore.

Okay, okay, of course, no doubt there are some good priests, they’re not all child molesters and sadistic monsters. But if a person wants to do good in the world, I can’t understand why they’d become a Roman Catholic priest. Why can’t they just, you know, do good? Because even the most well-intentioned Catholic priests are footsoldiers of a tyrannical regime. They have to entirely believe and implement a hotch-potch of bizarre rules that are misongynistic, rigidly patriarchal, enthusiastically judgemental, breathtakingly cruel, harshly doctrinare, then unexpectedly capricious when it suits them, anti-semitic, anti-every other religion, obscenely  wealthy and obsessed with sex (not just their own, but everyone else’s.)

Okay, rant over! Can I also say that I know a very very nice Presbyterian minister and he really is a good person, he really does walk the talk. He really does do good in the world. When our car was stuck in the snow, he came with a shovel and helped dig it out! I mean! Such decency. I can’t imagine a Catholic priest lifting a shovel and digging snow. He’d probably yell at me that it was my own fault that the car was stuck because A) I was guilty of the sin of CRAFTY CONVERSATION (Job 15: 4-6) Yes, I had a long conversation with Cathy Kelly about felting versus knitting, if that’s not crafty conversation, I don’t know what is. B) I was guilty of the sin of worrying (Phili 4.6) I mean, in fairness! Who doesn’t worry? C) I was guilty of the sin of reading my horoscope. According to Deuteronomy the penalty for astrology is DEATH, not just getting your car stuck in the snow! I found all of this on the marvellous interweb site amazingbible.org. Over 600 sins, many of them HILARIOUS, including Murmuring, Tattooing, Scoffing (Oh, I do so like to scoff…) Smoking, Wearing gold – lucky there for me, I prefer silver.

So have I any other news for you? Well, thank you so much to all the people who are buying Saved by Cake and I hope you’re having fun and no fear, while baking.  I’m still watching a phenomenal amount of telly. Tried the new Danish thing People Who Kill but I haven’t really taken to it. There’s a female heroine, which is a good thing of course, but she’s no match for Sarah Lund or Birgitte Nyberg sadly. However, I love the sound of Danish, though, just hearing it soothes me. Same for Swedish. Watched a Wallander last night, but I’m terrified of running out. I think I’ve only got 6 episodes left and I don’t know what I’ll do when they’re all gone. Move to Sweden maybe. And loiter around a police station. Maybe I could get a white car and stencil POLIS on it and wear a dark blue uniform and one of those funny sideways hats (like they wear in American diners) and just try to ‘blend.’ When I see the squad cars racing off to a crime scene I’ll follow along and then stand around the yellow-taped site and say, “Hey, tak, hey, bro, bro.” And for when I’m in Denmark I’ll write POLITI on my car and say, “Fah-vell, fentestish, fentestish.” Fentestish is my VERY FAVOURITE WORD. I’m probably spelling it wrong, but you might have guessed it’s Danish for “Fantastic.” And, “Bro” (again spelling may be, doubtless is, incorrect) but it means Good in Swedish. Another word that crops up in BOTH Swedish and Danish shows is, “Feste” which means party, high-jinks, general good times. At all times I’ll carry buns with me and share them around with the other police officers so that even if they find themselves thinking, “You know, there’s something just a tiny bit odd about our very short, stout, purple-haired colleague,” they’ll be so grateful for the buns that they’ll let me hang around with them.  “It’s a murder,” they’ll be thinking. “What’s so fentestish about a murder? Surely it’s a rather sad occasion? But all the same, the buns are lovely…  Say nothing, let it go, we all find our own way of coping in this tough job we do.”

So what else is going on? Mental health wise, it’s all a bit up and down. I’ve had a very bad time recently, where I’ve been both catatonic (it takes me forever to wake up and I feel like I’m made of stone, trying to get my limbs to get me out of bed is next to impossible) but I also feel horribly, horribly uneasy , like everything is distorted and unfamiliar and terrifying. But I’m functioning, which I’m very grateful for. I managed to finish the major editing on the novel, which is a massive relief because I was really worried I was going to spiral into the pit before it was done. (A title still hasn’t been decided on but one currently doing the rounds is The Mystery at Mercy Close. And then in smaller letters, ‘A Walsh sisters novel.’)

I was hoping to be able to do some exercise when I’d finished the book, but apart from sitting on the couch and watching the new Davina McCall exercise DVD with great admiration (God, I love her), that hasn’t come to pass yet. Small jobs take me a very long time – like yesterday afternoon I had to go to the dentist, only for a checkup, nothing unpleasant – but it was all I achieved. The day before I went in to talk to Ema and Luka’s classmates - here's me before I went:
 and like I said, it’s the first public speaking I’ve done in 2 and a half years! But they were all lovely and they asked great questions (including, “Did you have a pet when you were growing up?” Which was so nice, I’ve never been asked that before. And no, I didn’t have a pet. I was scared of animals. Par for the course, I was scared of everything!)

So there we are. I’m so sorry I haven’t managed to get a handle on the twitters yet, but I WILL, I promise, it’s just a question of time. The thing is, I miss US, I miss YOU and ME. I miss being able to communicate with YOU and it would be great if we could do it that way. But in the meantime we’ll try this new path of small frequent posts, and see how it goes.

Thank you for all your enquiries and kindnesses

With lots and lots of love

Marian

*We do pilates. Often I’m not up to it, but we’ve kept it as a regular thing anyway.

PS Here's a video of me making chocolate brownies: