JFK and a Mahogany Table

It’s just as well that my furniture restorer guy isn’t there when I see the mahogany table that he has restored for me. He has left it in a safe place for me, lovingly wrapped in a wool blanket. I remove the blanket and the efforts of his work are revealed. The table looks more beautiful than I ever remember it.  I lay my head on it, inhale the glorious smell of varnish and wood, hug this inanimate object and have a little sob.

As a child, my memories of this table are all from the underside and I can’t say that I ever remember sitting at it. The table was in the sitting room and not really used, maybe because the table leaves were always unsteady, as one of the support hinges was missing. The table was in our sitting room. Weekends and rainy afternoons were spent sitting under the table, making dens. The table was draped with heavy wool blankets, creating a dark, but not scary environment. The weight of the drapes dulled the sounds of The Duke of Hazzard on TV and smells of my mother’s baking in the kitchen. Caution was required when crawling out of the the den, as there was usually a scattering of Lego on the carpet.

Looking at it now, I wonder if my memory has deceived me about the number of children that could actually fit underneath this modest table, that really only seats four people. When I picture myself there, I’m on my own, with my baby doll, Susie. I’m wearing my wine velvet trousers and cream fair isle legwarmers, sitting crossed legged there, my long hair clipped back with purple hair slides. I like playing with the drawers underneath the table. The wood is thinner than the rest of the table.  Not varnished. The drawers make a hollow rattle as I slide them in and out. In one drawer is a newspaper, with a photograph of John F Kennedy, with his wife Jackie. As I remember it, it is a commemorative paper, in honour of his visit to Ireland in 1963. I can’t remember what they are doing in the photograph, but I can see, the vivid inks of blues and orange of the print and smell of must that says ‘old’. 

When I was involved in making a film, relating to a JFK conspiracy all of these years later, the image that first came to my mind is that yellowing newspaper.

At some stage, the table was relegated to under the stairs and stayed there until I brought it to Kildare about 14 years ago, for the apartment I had just moved into with my husband to be. My father wasn’t that happy that I was taking the table ‘out of Milltown’, but I reassured him that it would be loved.  When I moved into Poppy Cottage, the mahogany table seemed too small and again found itself relegated, this time to my shed, replaced by a glass and chrome piece. When my father asked about 'the antique', I did

my best to change the subject.

As my marriage fell apart, I discouraged visitors from coming here and the house that was often filled with people, was reserved for myself and my children.  Anything that resembled hospitality now seemed like hard work.  Furthermore, I couldn’t manage to man oeuvre the heavy glass table on my own and it didn’t take kindly to being shifted around.

Since my father died, I was bothered about the 'antique' and was keen to live up to my promise to take care of it. My brother pulled the table out of my shed during the summer. I was horrified at the state of it. Heavy equipment had been thrown on it over the years and the frame was warped.  A tin of bitumen, or something similar, somehow made its way into the shed and was poured all over the table. One of the legs had begun to rot. The JFK newspaper, long gone.

My furniture restorer, Brian, declared it a ‘very sick table’ and scheduled it in for repair in November. The cost of repair probably cost more than it is worth, but I don’t care. The damage incurred in my shed is gone, with no sign of either the bitumen, or indeed, the ink stains that were there since I was a child. The missing hinge was replaced. The drawers now sport fancy porcelain knobs, but I’m pleased that they still make that hollow wood sound when I slide them in and out.

My children have yet to see the newly restored table. I know that my boy will rub his hand over the smooth surface and have a good sniff of the varnish. My daughter will be charmed by the pattern on the porcelain knobs.

My mother will come to Poppy Cottage for Christmas Day this year, her first Christmas away from Kilmainhamwood in over 40 years. We will have dinner at the table and we will raise a glass to my Da. I’m looking forward to that.

But if truth were told, I’m more excited about draping blankets across it and crawling underneath.

POSTSCRIPT So much for my ideas of making a den : My children arrived home and spotted the potential of the table as a clip board for a lighting rig for making a video for their Youtube channel ... 

Holding Hands in the Countryside, Part II

I’ve conceded. Feckin’ Fecker isn’t going to contact me again. I’ve stopped checking my phone in case he has sent me a message, any message at all. I’m not quite ready to delete his number from my phone and I can’t say that I’ll never pimp at his handsome face on Facebook again, but I’m getting there. But I need to give myself a chance – After all, it has only been 18 days and 10 hours since I have seen him last (not that I’m keeping track or anything). Looking back, I can see that his assistance on bringing nice wine on our date, was his premeditated way of issuing me with an alcohol soaked P60.

The fallout from writing the feature about online dating in The Irish Examiner continues. Guys joke that they would be afraid to ask me out in case they appear in my writing and I neither neither confirm nor deny that possibility. I am accused by a keyboard warrior of being a ‘man hater’. Instead of ignoring him, I reply, trying to justify myself and barely sleep that night. I try to conjure up all of the positive feedback to the forefront of my mind, but the nasty comments have caused me to question everything that I do and who I am.

I distract myself thinking nicer thoughts. I can remember what The Creative was wearing and what he was doing the first time we met. It felt like meeting an old friend. I can talk to The Creative about anything and I fill him in on my dating adventures, amongst other things. He tells me that I’m ‘a babe’ and that I shouldn’t have any trouble meeting someone. When I am in his company, random strangers mistake us for a couple, although we barely speak. I ask him if he will come back in another life and marry me. He says that he will. He thinks I’m joking, but I’m not.

As I type, a message pops up on my phone. No, it’s not Feckin’ Fecker. Sure, I knew that before I read it. It’s from I’m Starving. I haven’t heard a dickey bird from him, since he let me down on our dinner date arrangement last August, other than a sheepish text the following week to say he was sorry, siting ‘Dutch Courage’.

I’m Starving wishes me ‘sweet dreams’ and I just don’t know what’s going on …

Holding Hands in the Countryside

It’s a while now since my piece on online dating was featured in The Irish Examiner. My initial chuffed-ness at getting published soon gave way to panic about what people would think of me. I remind myself that I am doing nothing wrong, that online dating is normal in today’s society and that it’s what all the singletons (and some of the not so singles) are doing these days.

I worry what my mother will think about her darling daughter writing about online dating. I needn’t have. She is pleased that I got published, thinks that I look lovely in the photos - real Irish mammy stuff. She has been speaking with my aunt, her sister. They are claiming my writing ability for the maternal side of my family, tracing it back to our blood line that includes Brendan Behan and Peadar Kearney, who wrote the National Anthem. My aunt tells me that she laughed so much, that, in her own words, ‘the tears ran down her legs’. Yes, there is a boldness in my family.

Commentators compare me to the character Carrie Bradshaw in ‘Sex and The City’, writing about her relationship dramas and cried out for more. Obviously there’s many difference between myself and Carrie. Carrie is a TV character, as are her dates. My prospective dates are real life people with feelings and I have a public profile that I need to protect. Anything I write about it will be a sanitised version of the truth. Anyway, being Irish and born Catholic, my version would be less about fornication and more ‘Holding Hands in the Country'. I covet Carrie’s wardrobe and watch her on TV, writing on a keypad, alone, steaming cuppa in hand, sitting at a window overlooking Manhattan. Meanwhile, I catch moments to write here and there, often late at night, begging the nocturnal nine year old to go to bed.

An unexpected consequence to getting the article published was that guys who read the article found me through social media and asked me out. Bright fellas who read broadsheet newspapers, including Playing Hard to Get. There’s messages to-ing and fro-ing from Playing Hard to Get, who is in touch every day, but says very little. He doesn’t make any effort to compliment or otherwise woo me. He tells me that he ’doesn’t give a fuck’ about my writing. He is dark, handsome and totally and utterly irresistible. After our date, Playing Hard to Get disappears without trace and doesn't contact me again, not even to say that he isn’t interested. I torture myself checking to see when he is online, knowing that he has read my messages. The last time I felt this hurt was in secondary school when the guy I fancied for years changed schools at short notice. I had no way of contacting him and felt like my teenaged heart was torn out, never to recover.

i decide to rename Playing Hard to Get as 'Feckin' Fecker'. I’ve broken my promise to Feckin’ Fecker that I wouldn’t write about him, but I feel that when he went AWOL, that the gloves were off.

The Banker has read the article too. I had chickened out of a date with him a few months ago. We decide to meet. He suggests somewhere close to where he lives. I get lost while driving and am in a flap by the time I get to the hotel where we are meeting. I expect him to be standing outside waiting on me, but he’s at the bar drinking and it looks like he has had a bit of Dutch Courage already. Turns out that this place is his local. After a pleasant lunch, I leave. He doesn’t walk me to the door. He’s ordered another pint. There's no kiss goodbye, like there was no kiss hello. He says that ‘next time’ we will meet closer to where I live, but we both know that there won’t be a second meeting. I realise that old fashioned chivalry is more important to me that I thought.

I chat to Super Sleuth online. After some time, he sends me a message saying that he knows that I have an illness. He feels that I have been dishonest in not telling him. Truth is, the fact that I have MS just didn’t come up in conversation. I feel so well these days that I don’t feel like I have an ‘illness’, but rather a ‘medical condition’. I feel at pains to tell him how fit, healthy and energetic I am and he says its fine. But in my heart, I wonder if it really a big deal for him, or other potential suitors, who with a quick Google search will know of my diagnosis. I curse the fact that I have MS, and the fact that I have been open about it, written about it and but also feel a sense of gloom that for some guy, it might just be a deal breaker.

The Elected Representative seems keen to meet, but doesn't confirm arrangements with me, leaving me unsure if I should make alternative plans. Eventually he texts me, inviting me to lunch. I text back saying, 'you are as interested in me as you are in potholes in Mayo'. 'I'm not from Mayo', he says. 'Exactly', sez I.

In the middle of it all, I meet ‘Maybe in Meath’, who is actually from Dublin. He is one of the nicest men I have ever met. Handsome, thoughtful, intuitive, kind, funny. Maybe in Meath soon becomes The Date. We have the loveliest of times. Maybe it's all too much too soon. In my heart though, the va-va-voom just isn’t there for me and we part company. He is so nice that he makes breaking up really easy for me. The gal who falls for The Date will be a lucky one indeed. In the meantime, I’ll keep looking.

PS Feckin' Fecker, if you accidentally read this, you still have my number

The Date

I was feeling a bit fragile in the run up to the August Bank Holiday weekend this year- My recently deceased father’s birthday and the Blessing of the Graves.  On the Saturday, as I leave to travel home for the weekend, I got an-out-of-the-blue text message from The Architect. 

‘Can we talk?’ 

I panic, assuming it’s an arts emergency, probably related to concrete foundations. 

‘Yes, what’s up?’

‘I think you're lovely’, beeps the reply.

I’m simultaneously relieved that the concrete has set and feel slightly queasy at the unexpected content of the message from someone I have known for a very long time.

A few more messages back and forth and he has asked me out on a date.  To a really nice restaurant with fabulous vegetarian food, that Bank Holiday Monday.  I’m in shock.  On mature reflection though, I think, ‘Why the hell not?’  We are two free agents; we get on well and can talk about the setting time for concrete, if nothing else.  I get excited at the idea of getting dressed up and going out somewhere, anywhere grown up, without two children in tow. 

I don’t hear from The Architect the following day, or on the Monday.  

I sit in by myself on the Bank Holiday Monday, half watching rubbish TV, nursing a very bruised ego.

The Architect sends me a sheepish message a few days later apologising, admitting that he had had ‘Dutch courage’ when he contacted me, and signs off saying, ‘I still think you're nice’.  And then nothing.

I dust myself off and hope that we don’t have an arts emergency anytime soon.

My luck doesn’t improve when I impulsively decide to try my hand at online dating.  Sure isn’t everyone at it?

Finance Guy seems keen until I try to confirm a specific time and location to meet him.  He phaffs around so much that I decide to do him a favour and call off the date.  I don’t hear from him again.

Lots of guys say an online ‘How’ya’, but don’t actually get beyond that.  I loose patience, and confidence, very quickly.

Just as I am about to give up hope with the online thing, I can see that someone, who looks half decent, is looking at my profile.  But he hasn’t actually contacted me.  I send him a message.  He tells me that he thinks I may be ‘too refined’ for him.  I relay this to my work colleagues later, who almost fall off their chairs laughing at the possibility of me being polished.  

We chat.  He is relieved to hear me curse (only for effect though, I’ll have you know).  Notions of my possible refinedness are soon dismissed.  We arrange to meet.  In Hollywood.  Sure, where else would you have a date? 

The idea of a meeting The Date gives me a pep in my step.  I have a strange urge that I haven’t felt in a long, long time.  Yes, a desire to clean my house.  Soon I am cleaning windows to beat the band. I also have the inclination to take out my sketch books and to start painting again too.

A few days before we meet, The Date falls and breaks a bone in his foot.  We postpone Hollywood and arrange a lunchtime date, somewhere convenient for a Dub with a ski boot and crutches.

In the middle of it all comes unforseen news.   My long standing American boyfriend, Brad Pitt has just announced that he single again.  I don’t know what that means for me/us long term.  I had such high hopes for Brad and I, him being so good with clatters of children and all.  My two would be a walk in the park for him.  But it may take Brad a while to extract himself from his missus, so for now I’ll focus on The Date.

The day that I am due to meet The Date is the day when Today FM Radio is encouraging their female listeners to wear their wedding dresses to work, as part of the station’s ‘Dare to Care’ fundraising project for the Irish Cancer Society.  I wonder if The Date would think I was jumping the gun if I wore mine to meet him.  I decide against. 

I’ll taking a half-day from work to meet him and I really wish I had paid more attention to those office-to-evening fashion features in the glossy magazines.  I text The Date that morning, saying that I am running late, such was the dilemma of what to wear.  He text me back saying that he was wearing a tracksuit.  I’m sitting at my office desk in my carefully accessorised baby pink Karen Millen silk dress and he is wearing flannel.  I think I might cry.  Over a piece of synthetic fabric.  Or in my mind, the message that his effort level was ‘ZERO’. 

He redeems himself, explaining, very reasonably, that the trackie bottoms are convenient for his appointment with his osteopath and that he would change his clothes before we meet.

And there he is, spruced up, sporting a protective boot that wouldn’t look out of place in Star Wars. The music in the pub is too loud.  The music in the restaurant that we go to is blaring too.  I wonder if all of the natives were deafened from shouting during the recent All Ireland final, or if it’s just me.  The waitress brings me a meaty pizza and doesn’t apologise that she got it wrong.   The Date’s Star Wars boot looks cumbersome and awkward, but he doesn’t complain.

The Date looks different in real life, more three dimensional.  Obviously.  And handsome.  We have nothing in common and everything in common.  He tells me that he likes my freckles.  I blush and suddenly feel self-aware, like I did as a child when an adult would bend down to me and ask me, in a kind voice, ‘Where did you get those big brown eyes?’ 

Four hours later and it’s gone in a flash.  I have to go. 

Later, I look in the mirror and observe that indeed, my face is scattered with little brown speckles, probably recently enhanced by a sunny weeks holiday in Wexford.  I stand there and watch this stranger in the mirror and realise that it’s been a long, long time since I really looked at myself. 

Another date?  

It would a shame to quit while I’m ahead, wouldn’t it ?

Frazzled Momma Prepares for Birthday Party

Frazzled working momma has one of her worryingly frequent 'moments' a month ago and thinks that a double 9th birthday party for twinnies at home, in October, is a good idea. FWM resorts to grass cutting with a post-christening hangover and to washing windows in the dark, because let's face it, they are the type of things 9 year old guests remember. She hopes they notice the freshly cleaned drains too and that the tomato sauce on the penne pasta is home made.

Thoughtful friend offers to drop his uber funky caravan into garden to up the party cool stakes.

FWM forgets that she promised to make birthday cake with children and settles for two slabs of chocolate something or other from LidlDaLDI.

She vows never to allow herself be distracted again, chatting to an old friend in Dealz, while the children stock up on SEVENTY FIVE FLIPPING EURO worth of shite, including cheap and nasty chocolate that will ruins any goodness acquired in the home made tomato sauce.

FWM wonders where the hell the magician is going to fit in the Hobbit House, with a capacity audience. She hopes that he isn't cutting a woman in half.

She spends the week dusting and cleaning and replacing real cobwebs with synthetic ones. The children are beyond excited, lie on the floor in the path of the woman with a mop, refuse to sleep before 11pm any night for a week and are like divils to FWM, who tries not to take it personally.

She concedes that she won't get all of the cleaning done after all and will, instead, draw the blinds on the bedroom windows (bloody bungalow) and shove stuff into drawers.

Have the kids revised for their 'really, really' important test in school tomorrow? Hell, no. Outfits sorted for Fancy Dress Day on Friday? As if ...... And of course there's no wine. She'll settle for a chocolate eyeball from a party bag, as she cries into her cold tea and types on her keyboard, avoiding floors to be washed so that children can trample wet grass into it tomorrow...

My Da and Anthony Foley

The date of my father’s death is October 19th 2015 and so, his first anniversary takes place this Wednesday.  But for me, my Dad died on a Monday, so today is his anniversary.  The day after the annual Kildare Readers Festival closes. I took a day’s leave from work today, partly because I'm tired after a marathon few days, but mostly because I don't fancy the déjà vu of being there at 11am for tea break as I was last year when I got the phone call from my brother Eoin.

The day before my father died, he watched Ireland's Rugby World Cup quarter-final against Argentina at the Millennium Stadium.  He would have been glued to the TV, with the Sunday newspapers spread across the table in front of him, providing a running commentary to my mother throughout the match.  

If he was still alive, he would have looked forward to Munster playing in the European Champions Cup match against Racing 92 yesterday.  The match was cancelled, as a mark of respect after the sudden death of Head Coach for Munster, Anthony Foley.  I only heard about his death this morning, aged 42, the same age as me.  Like many, I felt that collective sense of grief that someone really special was gone.  A true sports man and leader.  My father had little in common with Anthony Foley, except perhaps that they both put themselves under pressure and that they exited this world quickly and quietly.  

I have wondered how aware my father was in his final moments.  What could he hear? The lads hammering and the clink of machinery in the shed in the yard, Radio One wafting up the stairs in the kitchen, my mother calling to ask him to hurry up, the kerfuffle  that followed as family and paramedics arrived?  In my mind, the sound of the calming flow of the river across the road, the sound that he would have woken to and fallen asleep to, almost every day of his life, intensified and amplified to become his closing track.  This morning, watching a video online of Munster Fans singing ‘The Fields of Athenry’ in Paris as a tribute to Anthony Foley, I cried for the big Munster man, for the older men in the video, visibly upset wiping away their tears and also for my Da, who often sang that tune, and who, unlike his daughter, could hold a tune. 

While Anthony Foley was famous in his circles, my father was more of the infamous kind, being stubborn and opinionated.  I don’t know what he would have thought about all I have written about him on my blog since his death.  It's likely that he would have told me off, saying that there was ‘no need to be talking about those things’.  But if I explained the map of analytics showing the number of people who had read about him, and where in the world they are, he would have been amused.  ‘Be the hokey’, he'd say.  He then would have tried, badly, to explain Google analytics to his friends in the pub.  ‘They are reading about me in Russia and Australia, you know.  Jaysus’, shaking his head and laughing, secretly chuffed. 

Writing about my father has given me comfort in processing his death.  Others have told me that it has made them think about their own fathers, 'men of that generation', who won’t be around much longer, men that seem simple in their ways but are as complex as anyone else.  I chat with my uncle Ciaran  about how neither of us expected to really miss my father, a man who didn’t always have a lot to say to either of us.  Ciaran tells me that he sometimes walks around the farmyard, just to remember his brother.  It’s always the little things.  Today I miss being in his presence, him ignoring me while watching his beloved rugby.

. 

The Mutt With The Butt

Coming from a farming home, I was used to big, shaggy dogs, usually mongrels or dolly mixture collies.  Their purpose in life was in the first instance, to herd sheep.  But I always thought of them as pets.  At one stage, we had a pet lamb called Tubby, who thought he was a dog and no one ever felt the need to set him straight (I have written about Tubby in a previous blog post.  His bloody demise is the reason I became vegetarian).  I was never fond of Jack Russell terriers that occasionally stray onto the farm and found their nippy, wicked temperament hard to accept when I was used to gentle giants who loved me unconditionally.

After that, the only dealings I had with Jack Russell’s was in relation to my surname.  My brother Derek was christened ‘Jack’ in his early days in secondary school.  When I followed him a year later, I was sometimes called ‘Jacqueline’.  What a witty bunch my fellow students were.   Although it’s now over two decades since we finished school, I expect that my brother would still lift his head if he heard someone called out ‘Jack’ on the street.

In early September, a Jack Russell dog appeared at my back door.  I assumed he was a neighbour’s dog out wandering.  The following day, he was still there.   As my daughter pointed out ‘he has a sore butt’.  I was keen to get him home as soon as possible, took his photo, posted it on Facebook and tagged all of my neighbours.  I assumed a speedy response identifying the owner, but no one came forward.  Some days later, I brought him to the local vet to see if the mutt (by now named Charlie by my son) was micro chipped.  He wasn’t. 

At this stage, panic started to kick in.  Charlie had started to take over my house.  He had evicted my humongous Labrador Hudson from his comfortable bed.  I was surprised that Hudson allowed it, as he is so big that he could have easily smothered him if he sat on him.  Instead, Hudson looked at me forlornly, not able to hold back his hurt.  The only time that Hudson stood up for himself was mealtime.  There was no way a greedy Lab would share. 

Feeding time at the zoo really became an issue - Charlie also started to upset my two half wild cats, Spooky and Sparky, belting out the back door between my legs when I attempted to feed them.  On one occasion, he dived on one of the cats and grabbed her viciously by the neck, witnessed by my hysterical daughter.  Thankfully Sparky is also spunky and escaped.  After that attack, my daughter decided that she didn’t really like Charlie anymore and stopped walking him around on a lead.  In the meantime, Hudson became a sulky teenager and spent most of his time in my bedroom. 

The only time there was a ceasefire was when I brought them both for a walk.   I only walked so far to avoid my neighbour who began to complain about ‘YOUR Jack Russell’ potentially leading her dog astray.  I had explained to her that Charlie wasn’t mine, despite the fact I was now regularly pounding the tarmacadam with him on a lead. 

Regular telephone messages and emails to the local Animal Rescue centre were not returned (I’m not complaining – I know they are extremely busy).  Charlie’s butt wasn’t getting any better and his bum vapour was like agitated slurry (townies, you may need to Google this to understand).  The end of my tether was getting closer and I knew that I couldn’t keep Charlie beyond last weekend.  Trouble was, for all his faults, I was getting attached to the little critter.  I made one last post on Facebook to see if I could find a home for him, before I contacted the dog pound, which mostly likely, would lead to a death sentence for Charlie in the following week. 

In what seemed like a miracle, a friend of a friend contacted me almost immediately.  ‘Does he had a sore backside?’, she asked.  I could hear the ‘Hallelujah’ music coming on in my head.  It appears that Charlie (I won’t reveal his real name, to protect the stinky) is a bit of an escape artist whose family were looking for him. 

The following day, Charlie was collected, with a huge sigh of relief for all concerned.

Hudson’s delicate ego is recovering.  He is sprawled out in his basket as I type.  I treated him to a road trip to Clonakilty and a walk on the beach there (thanks Marie and Andrew) to reaffirm that he was the only mutt for me.  

The cats have regained their laid back ‘‘we don’t give a monkeys about you ‘tude’’.  The equilibrium has been restored in Poppy Cottage. 

Til the next drama ….