Jerusalem

The quietness was the first thing that struck me.  I’d been here before, but I had forgotten how silently beautiful it was, this chapel.  ‘If this was in France, there would be paid guided tours to get in here, with queues of people outside,’ I thought, wondering how many local people even knew it was here, never mind visit. 

I found it hard to concentrate on our Tour Guide’s facts and figures, reassuring myself that I am a visual person and needed to see it all written down, or illustrated on paper to retain such information.  Or maybe I just retain things that I consider useful?  If I need to find out more, I can always consult with Google after all.

‘That balcony was built for John Paul II’s visit to Ireland in 1979’, the Tour Guide said and suddenly, I tuned in.  The year that Eoin Paul Russell was born, while the Pope was in Drogheda.  I was a 5 year old, bored to tears in Mrs Mc’s house with nothing on TV, except yer man, smiling and waving to the joyful crowd.   I was raging that I didn’t have a new sister.   Meanwhile my Dad trying to convince the security staff in Drogheda Hospital that his wife really was having a baby and that he wasn’t just blagging a much sought after parking space to go and see the Pope.  My mother queued for the pay phone in the hospital.  She had to interrupt my Nana retelling details of the Pope’s visit to announce that there was a new grandson, before her coins ran out.  My illusion of how innocent and holy the Papal visit was, was dispelled many years later when I heard about a teenage encounter, underneath a currach en-route to see the Pope in Knock.  I guess it was the nearest thing to a music festival in the ‘70’s.

The Tour Guide pointed out the Stations of the Cross.  They seemed to be hand painted directly on the walls in pastel shades.  A few extra stations had been added, beyond the usual twelve.  'To prolong prayer?  To fill the wall space ?', I wondered.

A lot quieter than usual, probably because of the unfamiliar company, he eventually whispered,

 

‘Mam?’

‘Yes?’

‘You know Jerusalem ?’

‘Eh, yes ?’ I said, hoping that there was no accurate geographical information required in what was to come next.

‘Can we go there ? Jerusalem?’

‘Maybe, some day.  Why Jerusalem?’ I wondered how his holiday destination of choice had jumped so drastically from Disney Land.

‘I’d like to go and see Jesus’s grave.  But he’s not there anymore.  He went up to heaven. ‘ I smiled and nodded, going along with this familiar story as if it was the first time that I had heard it.

The Tour Guide moved us along.  I regretted that I hadn’t more time to take it all in.  I had one of those familiar Greta Garbo moments, where I realised that I wanted to be alone. 

Password Overload

Although I use t’internet daily for work and personal reasons and have a very smart phone, I am pretty much a techo dinosaur.  I’m so bad, or lazy, that I haven’t quite sussed the music downloading thing.  Maybe it’s because there is no space left on the afore mentioned smart ass phone, because I haven’t figured out how to move them to a fluffy cloud in Internet Land.  It’s driving me crazy, as I’d love to experiment further with Instagram, which, I expect would make me feel like a complete and rounded human being.

Right now though, I am struggling with passwords.  Passwords for flipping everything.  I got a slap-on-the-wrist email from the IT department at work this week. They did a security check on the organisations email passwords and found that ‘some’ members of staff were still using ‘PASSWORD’ as their, well, password, which represented a security risk.  Moi included.  Morto.  Slap (rather than public flogging) accepted. Password changed.

Truth is, I’m struggling to keep up.  I don’t think that I can take ONE more password.  To enter the building at work via the back entrance, I’ve to enter a code.  To enter the office via the café, there is another code.  Assuming that I have remembered these, I have a password to turn on the computer and, as mentioned above) a different one to access email.  I’ve to use another system, with unique password, to approve staff requests for annual leave and a different one to (mis)manage my own.  To approve payments, there is a whole other system, with, of course, a sequence of magic numbers.  It’s a wonder we get anything done at all. 

I’m an approver to authorise weekly wages for a work related venture.   When I see the email coming in, I hide under the desk until my co-approver does the approval.  I can’t be dealing with the three stage approval thing.  It is the same system for my personal bank.  I’ve changed my password so often now that I regularly draw a blank and have to get the password reset.  My kindly on-line bank person recently told me now that I can do all of this through their automated service.  I think that they set the new system purely to cut down the workload of having to deal with me.

In hindsight, it all started to go horribly wrong when security was hiked up across t’internet and 1. You had to use eight digit codes, with at least one capital letter.  2. You couldn’t reuse a password that you had used previously.  Messages flash across the screen warning you not to write the password down.  You tell yourself that this new password is so clever that you couldn’t possibly forget it … at least until you log on again anyway …

In setting up this blog, I inadvertently linked it to my Google account, where I also inadvertently set the security settings to ‘Fort Knox’.  For convenience, sometimes I write blogs on my phone.  In order for me to upload a blog, I enter a password and then have to enter a code sent to my mobile phone.   It seems that my Google account doesn’t like my iPhone and won’t let me upload photos to the blog, hence my sadly-lacking-in-photos blog.  It's not really very 'convenient' at all ! You are lucky to be reading this at all.

And as for bills.  This go-green, save-the-planet, no-paper bill thing is good for me, but every month, I get a stream of emails advising me that my bill is available to view online.  Simple !  If only I could remember the fricking username and of course, password.  Sometimes, I can’t cope with the logging in.  So, sometimes I guess how much the bill is, fire a few euro in, via my eight-digit-three-stage-online-banking-system and hope that the Sheriff’s Office don’t come looking for me.   I don’t know that the big deal is about security around bills anyway.  What’s the worst that will happen ?  Someone has a Bill Fairy Moment, goes online and pays a bill for me ?  I could live with that.
I was terribly excited about getting a new laptop recently.  But the initial set up and inevitable set up codes almost had me in tears.  No, I do not want to enter the name of my first pet as a reminder if I get locked out.  I lamented the passing of the good old days when you just plugged it in and away ya go.  I’ve just about conquered Word, t’internet and I’ll leave it at that.  The other new fangled functions can wait until my seven year olds figure them out and show me.

It’s always the simple things that get you in the end though, isn’t it ?  I stood at a checkout in LidldAldi recently.  The children swinging out of the trolley.  Huge queue behind me.  They all looked like Russian body builders, who would open their beer cans with their teeth.  My new shiny bank card wouldn’t work.  My mouth went dry, wondering how I had the wrong password, despite using the same number for years.  Worried that I would block the card and have to wait a week while it was all sorted out.  Morto, I left the trolley aside and felt mild panic that MAYBE someone had accessed my bank account, despite my three-stage-security system.  Thankfully, it was much simpler than that.  My credit card company had also sent me a similarly shiny new card and I was using it by mistake.  Phew.   

Passwords to download apps, assuming I have enough space freed up on my phone.  Passwords to turn on my two phones, for Facebook, Skype and Twitter.  To access my two personal email accounts.  Remembering the passwords for the three work related Facebook accounts, never mind updating the content.  Did I mention the code for the photocopier ?

I guess this high security thing is here to stay, but if someone offered to surgically insert a chip in my arm to avoid all of this password malarkey, I’d be first to hop on the operating table.  Because I can’t be doing with this.

NCT Calling

Latest Blog Post : NCT Calling

My Ford Mondeo is up for its NCT at 8.40am in the morning.  Genius that I am, when I booked it weeks ago, I thought that I’d get it over and done with - to get a clear run of the day afterwards.   I wasn’t thinking that I might be banjaxed after a weeks work and that I would have to haul two seven year olds out of bed to come with me.  Too late now.  I’ll be damned if I am going to loose my booking fee.

I got a puncture last week.  Mr Tyre Fixer gave me a lecture about getting my tracking tested every six months, to prevent the same thing happening again on fairly new tyres.  Forking out €220 for two new tyres and tracking was enough of a lesson for me, to not allow that to happen again.

Other than that, I didn’t do any mechanical prep for tomorrow.  But that’s not to say that I haven’t prepared for it.

I’ve only had my new-to-me-car since last Hallowe’en, courtesy of the Credit Union, bless their cotton socks.   Until tonight,  I haven’t had a reason to open the bonnet … Okay, I probably should have been checking ‘car stuff’ regularly, but I haven’t.  I’m thinking of doing a wee crash course in ‘Servicing One’s Own Car For Plebs’ to help me in this problem area.

For the life of me, I couldn’t find the lever to open the bonnet.  I consulted the car manual.  From the diagram, I still couldn’t figure it out.  A good twenty minutes I was, fumbling around the steering wheel.  Before consulting Google, I asked the children to figure it out.  Mya was thrilled with herself when she spotted it, on the passenger side of the car.  Since when were yokes like that moved over that side of cars ??? Just as well that it wasn’t an emergency. 

Bonnet opened, I set about checking the oil.  Note to self : Never try to check engine oil with two seven enthusiastic seven year olds, thrilled with the dipping and wiping and fighting over who does it, while also swiping my top with a good glug of oil.  GIVE ME STRENGTH !!  Turns out the Mondeo needed a good glug of oil, so off we went to the garage.   The children reckoned that we should buy an air freshener.  A Simpson’s cartoon one.  ‘We could be on to something here’, I thought.  Maybe nice Car Tester Man likes fragrance other than 'wet dog' and surely he gets humour ?

‘We should get the car washed too’, piped up Leon.  ‘Agreed’, I thought.  Car Tester Man will see that I’ve gone the extra mile.  He might have a touch of OCD around car cleanliness.  Let’s hope so.

Back home and the still enthusiastic children, who are usually allergic to housework, wanted to help me to clean out the car.  At this stage, it was almost 9pm and I actively encouraged them indoors to play on any electronic device they wanted.  ‘NOOOOOooo Mam, we are helping you !’.  It was not negotiable.

Mya got into the car boot and started hoovering.  She was having a whale of a time.  Meanwhile, Leon undid all of the nice car wash shininess by hand washing the windows.  As I pulled out the children’s car seats to clean behind them, I realised what total mingers my children are.  I’m a minger too for not noticing the various decomposed organic matter shoved into the crevices at the base of the seat belts.   I tried not to wretch.  An entire stand-alone eco system living in my car.  I could almost run a travelling science show in it.  I could charge in and recoup the money spent on my new car tyres.  I temporarily reclaimed the hoover from my daughter to clean this organic matter out.  A very strange noise ran up the hose.  The dull thud of thick organic stuff, amid the rattle of metal.  I wondered if it was my long lost earring, or two euro coins.  But it’s never a TWO euro coin though, is it ?  It’s always just coppers for me.

Leon suddenly turned into the OCD project foreman and began giving me orders.  ‘Get those shopping bags out of the boot Mam !’.  ‘I don’t like that cream in the door’.  Cream ?  I had a look – It was anti-wrinkle cream.  Car Tester Man does not need to think of me in that light.  I agreed with my boy.  It has to go.

I began to think more strategically.  Maybe I should try to get Car Tester Man to feel sorry for me.  A casually placed bank statement left on the passenger seat perhaps ?  My laminate from the MS Patient summit that I attended recently, accidently ‘dropped’ on the car floor ?  Medication alongside ? Two bed head children standing by my side, looking all street urchin ?  Note to Self 2 : Make sure to muck up their faces in the morning.  I was also wondering what nationality Car Tester Man would be, as, to date, I’ve never met an Irish born tester.  I wondered about having a strategically placed music track in his native tongue on the CD as he turns the car on, to get Car Tester Man in the mood for passing my wee motor, a bit like baking fresh bread for a house viewing and hope that no one notices the damp on the ceiling.

Will I wear a shorter skirt/tighter top/redder lipstick ?  Whatever it takes to get it over the line.  I suppose there’s a bit of technical stuff thrown in there too, but you hardly expect me to know about that ?

Home with a capital 'H'

I always like driving home, especially after a long day in the office, but I really love driving Home. To the one with the capital ‘H’. Milltown, Kilmainhamwood, Co Meath. A place that lots of people haven’t heard of. ‘Ah, Brian Stafford country’, some people say and I wonder is it really that long since we have had a GAA legend in our midst. ‘Near Gypsum Industries’. Or mention Cabra Castle, outside of Kingscourt and someone says that they have been to a wedding there. ‘Oh, to be in Dun-A-Ri …’, the song goes. (Although one must emphasise that Kingscourt is in Co Cavan, albeit only two miles away, and therefore is a different republic altogether … obviously).

I’m of that rare breed that Home is actually the house where I was brought up, the expectation from a farming background that Home is a constant. I love driving up the Milltown Glen, the steep incline, the final furlong on the drive home. If you blind folded me, I think that I would know when I arrived in the Glen. It’s a damp woody smell. The sound of the river. The temperature a degree or two lower than on the main road, the overlapping trees keeping the sun out.

I come from a large family, many of whom still live in proximity to where my family live, the Russell family home. The children get confused about who-is-who. There was a stage when I could fob them off with the blanket explanation, ‘he/she is your cousin.’ Not anymore. The first/second cousin/second cousin-once-removed craic is so confusing, that I get confused myself.  And that's before we even mention my Mam's family, the Bellews.  Can we not just say that we are related ?

My parents' house is sometimes like a train station. When the word gets out that someone is ‘home’, random rellies can pop in at any time. I spent four rare days there recently, with the children. At one stage, so many school friends/cousins/uncles/aunts had called in that Mya, eyes wide open said, ‘I wonder who will walk in through the door next ?’

Two uncles happened to arrive at the same time last Saturday. Between them and my father, they discussed/ranted/cursed about Greece, the Euro, the Angelus, milk quotas and GAA. The language was colourful. Uncle James told a tale, as only he can, about a fella he knew. It was probably half true, although I’m not sure which half. The grown-ups laughed. My children sat watching this mini drama unfold before their eyes, not really sure what was going on, but amused by it all.

As children, the gatherings usually included myself and my three brothers, my cousins that lived across the hedge on one side, and other cousins who lived on the other side, with just a field in between. We could run safely between the houses. Our cousins-cousins came along.  And sometimes kids from ‘the town’ came along too.  And if you were lucky, the Bellew cousins.  To bring the cows home for milking along the dry mud tracks or to pick stones from newly ploughed fields. The more the merrier. Summers seemed endless. The sun always seemed to shine. Spontaneous picnics with cream crackers and diluted orange. Maybe even a sugar sandwich thrown in there too. It was one big adventure. Gradually, we started to grow up and move away and while it is harder to get us all together, the family connection and the importance of the Gathering of the Clan has always remained strong.

I’ve spent a lot of time at home this year. Mostly to help heal my little heart. Although I am 41-and-a-half and really should be pampering my Mam, she is spoiling me. Homemade bread and tea in bed. Minding the children, so that I can have a lie-on, listening to the river. Doing my laundry. Praying for me. Listening. We hop in the car and go visiting. Chatting in the car, where all life’s problems are solved. Delighted that I made the effort to visit someone, but then feeling guilty about those I didn’t. There’s never enough time and too many relations. Next time. Uncles don’t ask me how I am, but squeeze my hand, or hug me a little bit harder than they normally would, or throw me a wink and I know that they are thinking of me.

The Gatherings now centre around the next generation of cousins and second cousins. And our cousins-cousins children. My cousin Anthony’s 40th birthday party last weekend was one such example. Everywhere you looked, there was a clatter of children, running, laughing, tousling. Red cheeks, snotty noses and wet socks. Admiration for the latest arrivals and marvelling at how they have progressed. Watching your cousins grow into their roles as parents. Messing and craic. Slagging – leave your sensitivity at the door. Tea and wine. Home baking and cooking. All Russell specialities.

A walk to Ervey Lake and I head back to Kildare tired, but recharged. Always glad that I made the journey, but happy to be home (small ‘h’), to unpack my freshly laundered clothes. I flick through the radio stations a few days later and I hear Hector Ó hEochagáin and his thick Meath accent and the slagging. And I feel a little pang as I think of Home.

When The Cupboard is Bare

School’s out, uniforms are in the bin and routine is out the window.  I’m loving it.  I can cruise into work, shaving ten minutes off my travel time, without the heaving school traffic congestion in Newbridge.  My dog is delighted with his longer walks in the morning time. The children and I are enjoying a reprieve from the school year clock-watching in the morning time.

The school year routine meant that the fridge was always full of whatever fickle lunch requests my children had on a given week.  No sooner that one of them decided on their ‘most favourite thing for lunch ever’, a week later, there was a change of mind to ‘I’m not eating that any more, it’s disgusting’ and it was back to the drawing board.

The children were pretty banjaxed last evening after their first weeks’ holiday of sun, fresh air, athletics and late nights.   After a trip to the newly renovated playground in town, we made a quick trip to Lidl to get some essentials – cat food, vegetable stock cubes and cat food – and we headed home.

I could tell from the tired faces that tea was going to be a battle.  Leon spread eagled on the couch, wanted a big glass of milk.  I, his obedient servant, obliged in pouring a glass, but also emptying the carton.  I stood in the kitchen offering suggestions about what the pair might like to eat, sounding like a broken record saying, ‘I’m not standing here all night’.   I had déjà vu, remembering my mother saying the same thing when I was a child.  Sorry Mammy Kay, I was a pain in the ass.

Mya, curled up like a cat, said that she wanted pasta and pesto, Leon, pancakes.  Sorted, thought I, two fail safe options.  Except when there is no pasta in the cupboard or milk in the fridge to make pancakes.  How did I manage that ?  I NEVER run out of pasta.  Ever.  Except today.  Just ten minutes previously, I was standing in a shop, laden down with milk and pasta.  On other occasions, I could set up a pasta shop, with my ‘just in case’ supply of the non-perishable.  The observant among you will have noticed that both menu options were sadly lacking in vitamins, but I can verify that the children got their quota from the heap of strawberries on Thursday.  They ate them so fast that I got none of them.  Not one lovely fresh Wexford strawberry for me …

No milk last night, meant no milk for breakfast this morning and I intended today, Saturday, to have the laziest of starts.  There was no option, but pile the two of them back in the car and drive down to the shops.  Except my little woman was so exhausted that she begged me not to put her in the car again.  Her tired, pasty face put the guilts on me.  Little man, on the other hand told his sister that she was ‘a big meanie with a lazy bum’ and ordered in the car.  Still in her feline curl, Mya gave him a look that said, ‘I ain’t going anywhere.’

Stand-offs between two strong minded seven year olds can be trying and I wasn’t in the humour for refereeing.  I chatted to them to about what compromise was and suggested that they come to a mutually agreeable solution. Car ? No car ?.  Choose something else for dinner.  I showed them four different frozen veggie options.  ‘No’, they said in unison.  ‘They are all DISGUSTING.’   One of their favourite word these days.  Funnily, I remember my baby brother Eoin as a child, using the same word regularly, often in reference to new clothes that he didn’t fancy.  Maybe the use of certain words are hereditary.  

I advised the children to hurry up with their decision as I was opening my bottle of wine any minute. They huffed and puffed from their couch throne.  I opened the wine.  I cooked some risotto rice and thought about drinking the wine directly from the bottle.

I put the pesto into the fluffy cooked rice.  It looked good.  Real comfort food.  ‘That’s what people eat in Rome, you know.  I ate it there and it was yummy,’ I said, hoping that somehow this statement would conjure up an exoticness in their little tired, grumpy heads and encourage them to eat.

I put two bowls in front to the pair and disappeared into the bedroom to take a telephone call.  ‘It’s DISGUSTING Mam !’, the boy roared from the sitting room.  I knew rightly that he hadn’t even tried it.  Phone call over, I noted that my tiny girl had eaten both bowls of rice.  Not a scrap left.  A 50% success rate.  Not bad. 

The boy announced that he would like French toast.  Maybe all that talk of Rome had made him feel continental.  ‘I thought that you didn’t like French toast any more Leon ?.’ ‘I changed my mind Mam.’  I was wondering if he only wanted it so that he could crack the eggs in the bowl.  But no, he horsed into three big slices of the eggy, bready mix.  Mya decided that she wanted a slice too, despite her recent declaration that she won’t eat eggs in anything unless she ‘can’t see them’, because guess what ? ‘They are disgusting.’

Two well fed, tired children went to bed and I had a second, peaceful glass of wine.

It’s now the day-after-the-night-before.  I’m writing this blog, looking out on my garden, through my rather fabulous window boxes.  My boy is snuggled beside me watching Minecraft videos and little woman is still in a deep sleep.  I’d love to bring a bowl of porridge into my leaba, to complete the cosy, satisfied feeling, but alas, milk hasn’t miraculously appeared in my fridge overnight.  It’s too early for wine.  Now that I’m on a roll, I might try some of that French toast for my boy and I.  Before it becomes disgusting again.  Failing that, I’m sure that there is chocolate somewhere.

When The Eagle Lands, Uninvited

If you peeped through my children’s bedroom window in the last few months, you could have mistakenly thought that we had a break in, such was the mess.  Actually, it would have been a minor miracle to even see in the window at all, until my mammoth window cleaning session last weekend.  But now that that the glass is all shiny and see through again, I was shamed into finally cleaning their bedroom this weekend.

I insisted that the pair helped me as I wanted to go through their toys for a late Spring clean.  Keep ? Bin ?  Charity Shop ?  were the three options.  It went surprisingly well.  They quickly identified toys that were ‘too babyish.  ‘Really.  Are you sure ?’, I said, hesitating on their Fire Man Sam DVD collection.  I’ve always had a soft spot for Elvis the fireman and his lovely Welsh accent, even if he is just a plastic figurine.  ‘Yes, really Mam’.  It was the Charity Shop for my mate Elvis and his Ponty Pandy friends.  Peppa Pig was charity shopped too, despite my protests about how I liked the way the rest of the characters ridiculed Daddy Pig.  Sorry piggies.  At least it wasn’t the bin.  We sorted their remaining DVD collection into alphabetical order and I wondered how long that will last for.

The children were delighted when they found some of their long lost toys, including a cash register.  ‘Awesome !’ declared Leon and off they trotted to play with it on my bed, leaving me to finish the tidying.  I wondered if the play money would be any use in Greece, if all the cash ran out.

Alone, I had the chance to make a few sneaky, but necessary, deposits of broken toys into the bin.  Taking no chances, I brought them outside and concealed them in the wheelie bin.  I chucked a large container of broken cheap crayons, feeling guilty that their educational potential and the fact that they had hardly been used.   Feck it, plenty more where they came from.

Every stitch of their school uniforms went straight in the bin.  ‘Someone’ had washed their brand new wool school jumpers in a hot wash and tumbled dried them, destroying them both just two weeks after they were bought last year.  I wanted to cry when I seen how fast e70 can be ruined.  They had been threadbare for months and I wondered if they would even last until their last day in school.  If they didn’t I was going to staple them together, determined to ‘get the year out of them.’

A few weeks ago, the children’s almost-93-old Nana gave them a bronze coloured eagle, made out of plaster.  I know it’s made out of plaster as quite a few chunks have been knocked out of it over the years.  I don't want to look a gift eagle in the beak, but it’s bloody awful.  It has evil eyes that follow you around the room.  I suggested to Nana, who is the salt of the earth, that the children would have more fun playing with it in her house and that she was ‘too kind, but we couldn’t possibly take it home.’  The pair looked at me, at their Nana and then the eagle, with faces like street urchins.  Nana adopted a wounded puppy look.   I was out numbered.  ‘Geagle the Eagle’ was spreading its chipped wings and was moving to Poppy Cottage. 

I thought about accidentally dropping it as I got out of the car, with the usual bundle of accoutrements, but I knew that guilt would get the better of me.  I put Geagle the Eagle into their bedroom.  ‘He would like it best in here’, I insisted.  Somehow he kept making his way onto the sitting room window.  My house has a kitschy, cottagey feel, but the ugly plaster bird was a step too far.   He was taking the look off my powder blue paint and pink geraniums.
I heard the children laugh and the cash register ping, as they played shop.  ‘It’s now or never’,  I thought and smothered Geagle in a black bin bag, alongside the myriad of previously loved toys.   With the novelty of the clear out, I could easily fob the children off as to Geagle’s whereabouts, until they forgot about him.  Just as I was bringing the Charity Shop bags out to the car, Hawk Eyed (pun intended) Mya noticed that one of the bags looked very heavy and insisted on looking inside.   ‘I don’t know how Geagle got in there’, said I, chief suspect, caught red handed and looking shifty as they come.  Mya’s knowing look led me to believe that she could have a career in interrogation some day.

Alas, the Eagle lived to see another day in Poppy Cottage.  Maybe I should point out his evil eyes and the way he follows me around the room to the children.  Plant ideas in their little heads and freak them out enough to want to bin the bird.  One way or the other Geagle gotta go.

The Space In Between

I'm a gal that finds it hard to rest. It's part guilt, part hyperactivity and part being a Mam of two energetic people.  As soon as I sit down, I'm thinking of what I should/could be doing, or responding to the children's requests ... (Actually, make that my children's 'demands').

As the parents of small children know, your previous sacred space, may specifically, the bathroom is no longer yours.  Infact, the more intimate your task in the bathroom, the more likely you are to have a break in, right in the middle of said task.  Head cocked at an angle to get the best view and face scrunched, you will hear, 'what ARE you doing Mam ?'.

There are four spaces and places where I can say that I allow myself to truly relax, breathe and have 'me' time.

1. The hairdressers.

As my previous blog posts recorded, I've only recently come around to the 'because I'm worth it' notion of spending a couple of hours and enough money to buy two pairs of decent shoes for the children on my head.  Pure decadence.  It also gives me an excuse to read magazines, the trashier the better.  On my last visit, Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge was still preggers.  I read no less than THREE magazine articles scrutinising her maternity wardrobe and speculating on the sex of her baby.  I can barely contain myself til my next hairdresser visit, so that I can get up to speed on Kate's post pregnancy weight loss/gain and Mother & baby Daughter wardrobe combos.

2.  The car wash.

There you are. Trapped.  Unable to clean the fridge, sort laundry or liquidise soup.  Okay, it only lasts long enough to read Roisin Ingle's column in the Times, while slowly eating a Walnut Whip, but those 5 minutes, with the sound and motion of the brushes and water are divine.  It's worth paying for a Super Deluxe Polish option, just to wangle a few more magic minutes.  And you get a shiny new car at the end. It's a win-win situation.

3. My Car

Only when driving on my own.  Ideally, newly hoovered.  Radio blasting.  Lavender oil sprinkled.  A take away coffee at my side.  Thinking time.  I get my best ideas for work projects when I am driving.  My employers really should send me on a round Ireland road trip.  Who knows what I'd come up with.

4. Waiting Rooms

This is a contentious one.  Depending on who and what you are waiting FOR, waiting rooms be the place of anticipation, grief or anxiety.  I've spent a fair amount of time in waiting rooms in the last few years.  Thankfully, most of waiting I do is for routine check ups that are quite un invasive and not particularly stressful.  This time is totally guilt free.  With my prescription, comes a letter from the doctor giving me permission to be there, within my working week.  My taking time to mind me.

I love people watching in waiting rooms, wondering what their individual stories are.  My neurology clinic in Beaumont is shared with one for Parkinson's Disease and oddly, a waiting area for a plaster room.  The array of breakages is a sight to be seen.

Mostly though, I love to read, or perhaps write a blog.  The longer the wait to see a doctor, the better.  I witnessed an older man verbally abusing my neurologist's secretary the other day, about the long wait.  I wanted to give him a kick up the bum and a good novel to read.

I had a glorious two hour wait to see my doctor the other day.  Enough time to complete reading 'John The Revelator', a beautiful coming-of-age novel by Peter Murphy.  It's a sad little tale, sad enough that I shed a few tears as I read the last few chapters.  I was aware of other people-watchers watching me, presuming that the tears were for me.  I kept it together.  I'm learning.

After an informative consultation with my neurologist, I was ready to return to the real world, refreshed and well read.