Highlights this month
- Tadhg and Susan get engaged!
- New nephew born!
- Ema and Luka visit!
- Plan my mother’s funeral!
Hello, hello, hello, yes, hello. First of all, can I thank everyone who wrote to me, sharing your ‘blackbird pain’ and telling me how you dealt with the problem. It was a great help, not least because every time something bad happens to me, I think I’m the only person in the world it has ever happened to and it’s a great relief to discover that it’s not just me. Thank you for that. I’ve enclosed a picture of the pesky little blighter that’s the source of all the trouble just so you can shake your head and go ‘tsk, tsk, tsk’ (Only if you’d like.)
Right then! Tadhg and Susan. Getting married. (Tadhg is the youngest brother, twin of Rita-Anne.) This is extra wonderful because Tadhg has always insisted he would never get married, and not that people need to be married or anything to show their commitment, but a wedding can be a great day out. (Also a reason to have a nervous breakdown if you were planning one anyway.) The only condition Tadhg (pronounced Thige. It’s my favourite man’s name in the whole world and I’d love to write a hero called Tadhg but no-one outside of Ireland would be able to pronounce it and it’s hard to warm to a hero if you don’t know what to call him.) Anyway, yes, the only condition Tadhg has put on things is that he doesn’t want the big, traditional wedding and this is fine by me because they’re planning to get married abroad and we’ll all get a holiday out of it. Initial talk was of the Caribbean but some older members of the family began cribbing about long flights, so that plan has been abandoned and now Italy is the word on the street. I’ve never been to Italy, so I’m extra-thrilled but then yesterday my mother came up with some nugget of information that Irish people have been banned from getting married in Italy because they’ve been causing ruckus and commotion. I don’t know if there’s any truth to this rumour but in fairness there might be because a lovely woman I know says that at any Irish wedding the most important question you must ask is, ‘What time does the fight start?’
Then on Saturday 28th baby Gabriel was born to Caron, partner of Chris, Himself’s brother. This is thrilling, thrilling news. (I may have already told you that they’re the parents of the beautiful Jude (2 and a quarter)) and there are celebrations all round. You can’t beat a new baby for cheering everyone up.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, we had an unexpected visit from Ema (almost 7) and Luka (5). Niall and Ljiljana had to come from Prague for a funeral and Himself and myself were put on child-care duties while they went to the funeral. And of course it’s a bad business to profit from someone else’s misfortune, but we had such a lovely time. I had great middle-class plans for the day, a brisk bracing walk down the pier, pointing out educational things (‘did you know 4000 tons of rock were blasted to build Dun Laoghaire harbour?’ and other such boring facts), a healthy home-cooked lunch, educational games in the afternoon, followed by 10 minutes of Nick Junior, if they’d eaten all of their organic beetroot. Sadly it didn’t work out that way. First of all Ema tried on all my shoes and went away with a pair of my very highest and later I got into trouble with Ljiljana about it, then she tried on all my lipglosses and later I got into trouble with Ljiljana about it. Then, after Luka nearly killed himself messing on the treadmill (Ljiljana doesn’t know about that but if she had, I would have got into trouble with her about it), they watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail and learnt many new words (notably ‘fuck’). Then we got into the car – carbon footprint, carbon footprint! - and – yes! where else? – went to McDonalds, where they had – yes! – Happy Meals, with crappy toys, then Ema put a bag of excessively smelly fries into my Balenciaga handbag (which she had commandeered) and we traipsed desultorily around Dundrum shopping centre, buying things we didn’t want and didn’t need (except for my jacket, see below,) then we went to see Meet the Robinsons and bought loads of sweets. I suppose this is the modern way. In fairness I had a GREAT time and bought my new jacket. I’d been looking for a jacket and had drawn a blank and then there it was! It’s very nice. Navy, mid-thigh, canvas. My only anxiety is that it has 2 rows of buttons and I look a bit like Sergeant Pepper. However, it is very nice, so nice that when my Dad saw me in it he said, “That’s very nice.” Which was highly unexpected because he is a) blind as a bat and b) a man. He called my mother into the hall in order for her to admire it alongside him and she looked at me doubtfully and said, “Has it an awful lot of buttons?”
Then Niall and Ljiljana came home from the funeral and Ljiljana and I sat on the couch for about 10 hours and discussed all the different vitamins and supplements we take every day. I know it sounds odd, but it was HUGELY enjoyable.
Then they went back to Prague and – I suppose triggered by the funeral – my mother and I got into a discussion one night on the phone about her funeral. She is incredibly specific about what she wants. She listed out a whole load of yokes – she doesn’t want earrings while she’s ‘laid out.’ She does want lipstick but she doesn’t want blusher. Or maybe it’s the other way round. Christ! I was meant to write it all down and she’ll come back and haunt me if I get it wrong. Honestly, there was a load of specifications, she wants to wear blue and white, she wants her ‘good rosary beads’ wound through her fingers and she doesn’t care what shoes she wears because apparently your feet are covered so no-one will see. She doesn’t want a biodegradable coffin because she’s afraid it would be too flimsy and that while she was being carried down the aisle, it might give way and she might topple out on top of the mourners and the shame of her bare feet would be there for all to see. Although she is a humble woman she was quite definite that she wanted ‘a decent coffin.’ Not necessarily made of ‘endangered species’ she said, but something ‘decent.’ THEN we had a discussion about who she wanted to carry her down the aisle, she thought the undertakers would have ‘lads’ to do it but I suggested that having family members doing it would be nicer. We tussled a little and then I got to use words that you don’t often get to use in their correct context, which are, of course, “Well,” (heavy sigh), “It’s your funeral.”I know it sounds horribly morbid, but it was actually very funny. ‘Uplifting,’ was the word my mother used. Odd, no?
What else? I had a dinner party, not something I often (ever) do, for Debbie Deegan, the fabulous woman who founded To Russia With Love, the charity that I’m patron of. As luck would have it, she had just been presented with the Russian ‘Medal of Mercy and Compassion’ which had never before been presented to an Irish citizen. I know I’ve talked about the Debbie before on this site, but really she’s unbelievable. She was a housewife and suddenly she’s this dynamo who’s embroiled in Russian bureaucracy (spelling? Sorry) and has raised funds to completely transform a horrible
Russian orphanage and entirely alter the lives of all the children in it, treating them as the individual people they are. Nearly ten years on, she’s involved in 12 orphanages and works so hard and she doesn’t take a penny in salary and she’s over and back to Russia and her husband Mick holds the fort while she’s gone, cooking dinners and being made to wear pink shirts by his teenage daughters and other difficult things. She’s AMAZING. She makes me have faith in human beings. We are capable of astonishing things. If you’re interested take a look on the site www.torussiawithlove.ie. Now that really IS uplifting, much more so than discussing your own funeral.
Then on the 17th I was on the Paul O’Grady show and it was FABULOUS. I love that show and he was so nice and funny. I have to tell you something. Dad watches Paul O’Grady and loves, loves, loves Buster the dog. I also (even though I fear dogs) love Buster the dog. (Buster the dog is Paul O’Grady’s dog.) Anyway, when I heard I was going on the show I said to Dad, “And I’ll meet Buster!” “Yes,” he sez, “And the other dog.” “What other dog?” I asked. And he said, “The other dog, there’s another dog that’s on sometimes.” “Is that right?” I said, suddenly going patronising and like I was talking to a small child. That is because poor Dad sometimes gets the wrong end of the stick, that and the bad eyesight made me conclude that ‘the other dog’ was a figment of his elderly imagination. So on I go to the show and I’m telling everyone behind the scenes that Dad loves the show and is a great fan of Buster and then someone said, “But it’s not Buster who’s on today, it’s Olga.”
“Olga!?” I said.
“Oh yes,” they said. “There’s another dog. Olga.”
The mythical ‘second’ ‘dog’! I was rightly humbled! Rightly! Dad was right and I was wrong.
In the meantime I’m still writing the book. Now and again I think the end is in sight and I get all excited, then I realise it’s not. Have I said this already? I feel like I’m studying for exams. I’m working day and night and seeing no-one and dreaming about the book and Himself has to make the dinners and I’m knackered (not looking for sympathy, simply saying) and I feel a bit like those soldiers you see in films coming home from the American Civil War, staggering along a dirt path, missing half a leg and an eye, leaning on a stick, their uniform ragged and filthy, a comedy diagonal bandage across their head, wearing an eyepatch, trying to keep going for the last few short miles until they reach home. And then they get to their house and say to some women, “Hello, I’m your husband, let’s have a welcome home ride” and she says, “Feck off, you are not! My husband has two eyes and isn’t smelly.”
Another month should do it. I know I keep saying that. (Or do I, maybe I just keep saying it to myself.) Yes, the end is in sight and it’ll all be worth it!
However, it’s not all doom and gloom. I got ‘face-mapped’ by Dermalogica and I’m AWASH with Dermalogica products and I’m so in love. Even though I currently look like a corpse because I haven’t seen daylight in so long, when I do have to go out into the world I apply their Day-bright and it makes me look dewy and undecomposed. Also I’ve been using their Multivitamin power firm for eyes and lips and it’s hard to convey why this product has such a hold on me. Lovely smell (riddled, mes amies, simply RIDDLED with essential oils) and wonderful texture (thick but without sliminess) and spectacular effect (the little lines which had started appearing above my lip, like fag-sucking lines, which is very unfair because I don’t smoke, have disappeared.) Then their Super Rich face-cream is the business. I have no truck with light lotions, I like my face-creams like I like my men: nice and thick. (Just a joke. Himself is very brainy.) Anyway, Dermalogica has kept me going and apparently they do foundations which I’m going to find out about.
Much happening in May. On Thursday I repair to EuroDisney with many, many members of my family (Caitriona and Sean are home from New Yark in honour of it.) The ‘excuse’ is Ema’s 7th birthday but Himself is so excited I’ve had to give him Ritalin. Then around 22nd, I go to Stockholm, where I am hoping to inspect many Rondelhunds. (‘Roundabout dogs.’ Home made dogs, constructed from a variety of materials which respectable-by-day Swedish citizens have been constructing under cover of darkness on traffic roundabouts.) Yiz anarchists! And God knows I’m in the mood for a couple of anarchists. A general election has been called in Ireland for May 24th and every time I look out the window, 49 posters of Fianna Fail candidates are clustered together on the lamppost, jostling to gawk in at me, their expensive foundations unable to mask their glow of smug corruption. Will socialism ever be fashionable again? I worry that it won’t.
Anyway! Let’s not think of depressing things! It’s been abnormally sunny here in Ireland. So sunny that people are taking it as a sign of the end of the world. I’m going to put on my coat of many buttons and my Dermalogica Daybright and embrace the end of days.
Have a lovely May, mes amies and I will report at the end of the month (unless the world has inconveniently ended, in which case it might be difficult) and hopefully by then ‘the shagging book’ will be finished!
Thank you for reading this
With lots of love
Marian