Illegal Trading at Poppy Cottage

Following a recent case of illegal selling of lemonade in East London by a 5 year old girl which lead to a £150 fine (that was later overturned), a further related incident was reported in South Co Kildare, Ireland.

At a special sitting of Kildare District Court, on Thursday July 20th 2017, a 43 year old woman (although 'fresh looking for her years', all of the male Gardai present agreed), Lucina Russell, appeared on charges that she had facilitated the illegal sale of fruit smoothies at her home in Poppy Cottage, Co Kildare, on Wed 19th between the hours of 4pm and 7pm.

Also in court were her two children, a boy and a girl, both aged 9 years of age, who cannot be named for legal reasons.  Both children looked disheveled and appeared not to have had a decent wash since school term ended.  Ms Russell was dressed in black, with traces of pancake mixture and Nutella in her hair.

When questioned by Judge HeeBee GeeBee, Ms Russell denied resisting arrest, stating that she ‘just wanted to put on me lippy and change my t-shirt’.   Arresting Garda Seamus Mc Sean presented the t-shirt as evidence in court.  Ms Russell was quick to point out that the red splatters on the garment were ‘only strawberries’ and denied there could be any blood present, other than that of her own, from the over-enthusiastic chopping off ‘the green bits’.   She admitted to not wearing a hair net while preparing the smoothies, but insisted that her hair 'was clean as disinfectant' and ‘so full of peroxide and head lice shampoo that you would eat your dinner out of it.’

Also presented in court were photographs of the illegal selling operation.  Ms Russell admitted to taking and posting on Facebook to ‘drum up business on a quiet road’.  Other evidence included a fistful of receipts for plastic cups, straws, frozen fruit, yoghurt and fruit juice.  Judge HeeBee GeeBee put it to Ms Russell that she ‘was the adult’ and could easily have refused to purchase the items for her children.  An emotional Ms Russell said, ‘Your Honour, you don’t know what it’s like - being eye balled by twins for days.  The Death Stare and silent treatment was killing me’.   In response to the Judge’s question ‘are they identical twins?, Ms Russell  replied that ‘they can’t be because he has a willy and she doesn’t’.  The Judge then witnessed the Death Stare first hand when the children looked at him and his ‘stupid question’ and he openly admitted feeling ‘The Fear.’

Reviewing the receipts presented in court and the homemade sign made by the 9 year old girl, the Judge chastised Ms Russell, stating that she had ‘spent a fortune’ on ingredients and that the 50cent and 1euro prices charged would ‘never recoup costs’.  She confirmed that she was not registered for VAT and did not have a Traders Permit.  He suggested that passers-by could have felt harassed and intimidated by the aggressive manner in which the children waved the sign around to encourage sales.  He accused her of ‘reckless trading’, stating that the activity would not stand to her children in the ‘real world of commerce.’  Ms Russell tried to justify her behaviour, saying that she wanted her children to have a ‘better childhood than she had.’  Attendees in court were moved by her harrowing account of a farming childhood of standing in gaps, de-maggoting sheep and picking stones.

There were emotional scenes when the Judge said that he had no option but to sentence the children each to one month without WiFi access.  Ms Russell received a one month jail sentence, with no option of bail.  Being led away from court, Ms Russell thanked the judge for his leniency and said that 'after a month of the children on holidays and two foreign students staying', that the sentence sounded like ‘heaven.'  She shouted to her children that there were ‘some left over strawberries in the fridge.’

A Beautiful Affair: My Mate Al Gug

My earliest memory of Allen Gogarty is when we are both 12 years of age.  We share questionable short haircuts, very possibly administered by our well-meaning mothers.  Our ‘dos are accentuated by green uniform jumpers and yellow shirts (I kid you not – yellow), that are most unbecoming to Irish teenage skin.  We are standing alone in P3, a prefab where we have English class and the sun is shining  - The salubrious surroundings where Ms Greaney inspires me with her enthusiasm for literature.

Allen and I have some sort of disagreement.  For the life of me, I can’t think about what.  We exchange insults and he calls me ‘Russell’.  It is indeed, hate at first sight.  I want to box him in the head.

After that though, I only remember Allen as one of my best friends.  In the whole world.  Ever.  He gets promoted to the Band of the Chosen Few who are allowed call me 'Lucy'.  Throughout our years in secondary school, he has the unenviable task of being my male ‘go-to’ friend.  He hears my woes and I, his.  Acne, homework, boyfriends, girlfriends, parents, art and music.  Teenage angst overload.

Aged 15, we go to see AC/DC in The Point Depot.  We travel to Dublin by bus and are met by Allen’s Sophisticated Older Sister near UCD.   She knows that I am a newbie vegetarian and brings us to a veggie restaurant.   It’s 1989 and vegetarian food in North Co Meath consists of meat with two veg, but without the meat.  In the restaurant, I order a vegetarian strudel, as if I know what I talking about.  There’s puff pastry, cheese, pine nuts and spinach, as exotic as I ever had.  But I don’t reveal the limits of my diet to date, nor do I disclose that I haven’t been on the South Side of the city before, for fear that I’ll show myself up as the culchie I am.  We meet Sophisicated Older Sister’s friend and he enquires, ‘so, you are Allen’s girlfriend then?’  I retort indignantly, ‘No, I’m just his friend who happens to be a girl’.  He smiles and nods amusedly.

Myself and Allen make out way to the front of the hairy, sweaty crowd in The Point and I get squished when the crowd surges forward.  I half-faint and scream out to Allen as a burly security guard scoops me up over a sea of heads and deposits me to the side of the stage, barely batting an eye lid.  Neither of us admitting the fright that we get and retreat to the middle of the arena.  We later lament that we don’t get one of the fake bank notes that drop from the ceiling as the band belt out ‘Money Talk’ as a memento of one of the best nights of our young lives.

Allen loves secondary school so much that he decides to stay on for an extra year.  He is worried that he will have no one to take to the Debs.   I tell him that I will accompany him if he’s stuck.  He’s stuck.  I borrow a dress and off we go.  Our religion teacher tells me that she always thought we would make a lovely couple.  I disappoint her telling her that we aren’t a couple, never were, never will be.  But for the first and only time since I have known him, I get a notion that Allen might actually fancy me  - He’s says, ‘Hey Lucy, are you coming outside?’, which, back-in-the-day means, ‘will you give me a  shift?’ 

I

NEARLY

DIE. 

I’m stuck for words.  ‘I’ve never thought of you like that before Allen’.  He throws his mop of hair back, laughing.  ‘Jaysus Lucy, I only want a smoke.  I don’t want to kiss ya.  Ya dope’.  We both laugh now and for once, I don’t lecture him about smoking.

We both move to Dublin and man oeuvre in and out of each other’s lives, with mutual friends, who often gathering for Allen’s gigs in Dublin and at home in Meath.  He tells me about the Hot Spanish Flat Mate that has moved in.  He’s wondering whether he should declare his interest to her.  At some point, he does and they are an item.  The Hot Spanish Flat Mate never had a problem with my friendship with Allen and I know she’s the one for him.  She still is.

They move to the States.  There’s marriages and babies for him and me.  I’m proud that he makes a career out of playing his music in New York.  Yet, he takes the time to come home to play music at my wedding.  He chooses ‘Black is the Colour’, as the First Dance song and I am amused now that when I hear that song, I think of Allen, rather than my groom on the day.

The years go by and the meetings are less frequent – the pressure of trying of trying to fit it all in on precious visits home.  Pints have been replaced with cups of tea in our parents’ houses. 

I get a message from Allen last week to arrange a meeting on a flying visit home.  We forget about the Dublin V Kildare football match in Croke Park when we arrange to meet last Sunday in an old haunt, The Palace Bar in Dublin City Centre, in advance of his gig in the Bad Ass Cafe.  My heart sinks as I arrive and the pub is over spilling with fellas in Dublin jerseys. 

He jumps out of a taxi, a wild head on him, with his guitar and music stand, but doesn’t see me amid the sea of blue.  I stand in the middle of the cobbled street and wait until he spots me.  The frown is replaced by the familiar dimpled smile appears and I get a bear hug that I’ve waited three long years for.  He sounds hoarse and tells me not to nag him about smoking the night before.  We retreat to a quieter hotel for a chat.

Later, he sings ‘Beautiful Affair’, by Stockton’s Wing in The Bad Ass Cafe and I want all of Temple Bar to ‘ssshhhh’ and just listen to him.  We will never have enough time to catch up, but it feels so good to see my friend. 

I love ya babe (But only in the platonic sense of course)

https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=AwrBT4Nqy3BZ9WkAqgtXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTB0N2Noc21lBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNwaXZz?p=allen+gogarty+beautiful+affair&fr2=piv-web&fr=mcafee#id=1&vid=6008787f3f4d68f1f1edb069fa278c1f&action=view

Sitting With Myself

The garden is starting to take shape in the half-tamed wilderness kind of way, my little falling-down-house is my version of clean, the children are half-reared and happy, work is hectic, but rewarding.  I’m looking and feeling better than I have in years.  Life is good.    

At the moment, I'm taking half-days annual leave from work each day, supplemented with late night emails and calls, to juggle childcare and caring for my Spanish student.  That might sound like chaos, but it works. 

On Wednesday, the Spaniard asks if he can bring a friend home for dinner.  The girls from across the road pop over.  My pair, cycle their bikes into my Hobbit House and announce that then were all hungry, pre-dinner, and want pancakes with Nutella - our traditional go-to snack when we have foreign students staying. There was a lovely buzz in the house.  I observe how the younger children puffed out their chests and act out in front of the Spanish boys who warmly go along with it.  The pancakes can’t come fast enough. The table sprinkled with lemon and sugar.  They all eat until they have pains in their bellies. 

The Spaniards retire to the sitting room to sing along to Spanish rap music and the children experiment with slime-making recipes in the kitchen.  Surprisingly, they don’t wreck the gaff.  Mixing cornflour with shampoo yields interesting results. 

I take a cup of tea in a china cup and sit in my beautiful space in the balmy heat.  Butterflies, birds, the cat rubs by my leg, as the soft breeze hits my face.  Surrounded here by nature, family, visitors, I feel as lonely as hell.  It’s a very familiar feeling these days. 

I’ve been running on empty for about 4 years now.  Within this time, there was drama piled on top of drama.  Unpleasant as it was, the drama acted as a big roll of sticking plaster, distracted me from the job in hand – to just sit and be with myself.  The temptation is to just keep running – to help my mother, to visit a friend in need, working, busying myself, to rush into a new relationship.  I can see why Forrest Gump ran for 3 years, 2 months, 14 days and 16 hours.  It’s so much easier to run than to stop.  But now, all of a sudden, the drama is over, it seems.  I have peace and stability in my life. I thought it would bring me happiness (and it has), but overall, the feeling is loneliness.  

It’s not that I want someone to help me with my garden, or to cut my hedge.  It’s for someone to sit and admire it with me, to laugh with me about how crooked my clipping efforts are.  It’s not that I want for someone to pay for me to get my hair done.  It’s for someone to notice that I’ve had it done.  It’s not for someone to organise for my car to be NCT’d.  It’s for someone to send me a text to see how it went.  Or the important meeting a work.  It’s a bear-hug from a man other than my giant baby brother.  It’s for someone to buy me an ice-cream while I wait in the car. 

I stand in the graveyard at the funeral of my friend’s mother last week and I’m happy for him that his wife is there to support him in her quiet way and feel the loneliness come over me again that I went through my father’s funeral without that someone there for me.

All of things that I crave involve having someone special in my life.  But part of that feeling is just another sticking plaster - a quick fix remedy.  

For now, I need to dust myself off, enjoy the new found peace and just ‘be’or as Forrest's momma said, 'you have to put your past behind you before you can move on'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKKmzmeU5-0

Holding Hands in the Countryside: Going Back To My Roots

Thought I’d better ‘fess up.  I did it again.  Yes, I signed up for online dating.  Exactly one month ago today.  It is with great relief that the subscription has now expired and with immense regret that I have yet to find the man of my dreams.  If I were to grade myself on my efforts though, I would award myself the grand score of ‘half arsed.’   It was somewhat reassuring, but mostly depressing to see some familiar faces there, in cyber love land, since last year.  I wonder do some people exist here in an online vacuum forever, looking and winking without any notion of actually meeting anyone? Or maybe they are actually trapped, banging unnoticed on the laptop screen hoping to be rescued?

I chatted, and went on dates with two guys who, coincidentally, both had the same first name.  Andy1 was mad about me.  He could see us settling down together and would love me forever.  I was mad about Andy2.  I could see us settling down together and I would love him forever.  Let’s just say,- if the wrong text message went to the wrong Andy, we could have had trouble, or a trampled heart at least.

It’s Not You, It’s Me has everything going for him.  We have the loveliest of times.  But, I know when we say goodbye that night, that we won’t see each other again.  He beats me to it next morning, sending me a message confirming what I already know.

By Mutual Agreement is a sweetheart.  He is smart, handsome and kind.  He thinks that I am smart, pretty and kind.  We text the following day and agreed that there was no ‘spark’ and therefore, no point in meeting again.  We reassure ourselves that our date reaffirmed that there were decent people out there and wished that we had the patent on the ‘va-va-voom’ dust that we are all looking for.

Chancing His Arm winks at me every day.  I eventually send him a message, telling him that, as he is aged 26, I really am old enough to be his Mammy.  He enthusiastically sends me back a message saying that ‘age is just a number.’  I wonder if he would be any good at cutting my lawn, but decide against asking, for fear that I will end up in court for exploiting a child.

Adult Dancing thanks me for my kind ‘no thanks’ message and asks me if I have any nice friends who would be interested in him.  I actually contemplate setting up a match-making service for all of the beautiful decent souls I have met and the many lovely ladies in my life looking for love.  Anything that would lessen the torture. 

In the middle of it all, a pattern emerges.   Many of the guys that I have encountered have a farming background.   The last time I snogged a Farmer Boy, was when I was 17.  Farmer Boy was helping to cut the silage on our family farm.  I wiped my face after kissing him, to clear the oily/sweaty/grassy evidence from my face before going in to help my mother prepare dinner for the silage men.   Farmer Boy keeps his head down during the meal, his long hair falling against his heavy metal t shirt. 

I can’t say that that look would do it for me anymore, but there’s something about being a man of the land that is drawing me in.   I think it's because I feel like I have been floating in space for the last while and I'm drawn to that feeling of being grounded, quite literally.  There's the familiarity of my rural upbringing.  And the feeling of comfort when I shake the rough padded hand of a man that works on the land. 

AgriGuy1 still checks in with me most days, tells me that he will fall in love with me, but hasn’t actually asked me out on a date and I ain’t offering.  Meanwhile, I’m only dying for AgriGuy2 to pick up the phone and he hasn’t.  I suppose there’s a silage pit to be covered …

If yis hear of any  va-va-voom dust selling in LidlDeeAldi, will ye let me know?