Oh yes indeed, it is the last week in August, time's up for the teenagers, school's open for business. I told them this day would come, but still, oh still, oh lord where did the holidays go? Three whole entire months gone gone and gone, the days speeding up till August is sprinting past in a blur of images, bombardment in stereophonic;
waving goodbye to a distracted boss at the Gaeltacht in Carraroe, as she wheeled round to join the ecstatic disco queue; collecting the same heartbroken girl from the train station on her return home, listening to her sad description of the three rail carraiges of home bound adolescents breaking into renewed weeping at each train stop ("what! the boys too!", my husband can't resist); stumbling by painful degrees on the party carnage in our house after the beautiful girl's illicit unparty, cue emotional (her) enraged (us) scenes with the beautiful one, leading to niagerous weeping (her) and recidivist smoking (us): the same girl tenderly cradling her newborn girl cousin, breathing reverentially the baby essence from the downy fragile skull through her edgy ring pierced nose:
the week just past in Ballymoney Wexford, a nostalgic sandbuckets and spade holiday snatched at the scrag end of summer, though we have no builders of sandcastles now to speak of, soft sunwarmed sand under grateful bare feet, dog (we brought the dog) darting delightedly in and out of curly waves, wasps bomb diving past your nose for sandy sandwiches, a million lady birds caught on the car windscreen, sticking in the children's hair; guffawing teens sprawled watching dodgy dvds at night, sniggering at eachs others red faced contortions to preserve modesty under towel at the beech;
"It's Enid Blyton, picture perfect, beech world this, complete with rollicking waves, incidental caves, the blue sun sky" I tell my Cavan husband. She used to hope for smugglers, adventure, mysteries down here when she was a little girl "and now I know that's like never actually going to happen" the boss chimes. But I don't know dear girl. The smugglers maybe not, but looking at your dazzled daffy grin these days, I can't discount the rest;
that picture in the newspaper of the Carlow man, murderer of his two young sons, handcuffed to a guard, two men head bowed in tandem looking helpless into some abyss. You think of those others who dispatched themselves successfully, so that they might never again see daylight, endure a conscious knowing what they had taken, snuffed out as though it was their own to take.
waving goodbye to a distracted boss at the Gaeltacht in Carraroe, as she wheeled round to join the ecstatic disco queue; collecting the same heartbroken girl from the train station on her return home, listening to her sad description of the three rail carraiges of home bound adolescents breaking into renewed weeping at each train stop ("what! the boys too!", my husband can't resist); stumbling by painful degrees on the party carnage in our house after the beautiful girl's illicit unparty, cue emotional (her) enraged (us) scenes with the beautiful one, leading to niagerous weeping (her) and recidivist smoking (us): the same girl tenderly cradling her newborn girl cousin, breathing reverentially the baby essence from the downy fragile skull through her edgy ring pierced nose:
the week just past in Ballymoney Wexford, a nostalgic sandbuckets and spade holiday snatched at the scrag end of summer, though we have no builders of sandcastles now to speak of, soft sunwarmed sand under grateful bare feet, dog (we brought the dog) darting delightedly in and out of curly waves, wasps bomb diving past your nose for sandy sandwiches, a million lady birds caught on the car windscreen, sticking in the children's hair; guffawing teens sprawled watching dodgy dvds at night, sniggering at eachs others red faced contortions to preserve modesty under towel at the beech;
"It's Enid Blyton, picture perfect, beech world this, complete with rollicking waves, incidental caves, the blue sun sky" I tell my Cavan husband. She used to hope for smugglers, adventure, mysteries down here when she was a little girl "and now I know that's like never actually going to happen" the boss chimes. But I don't know dear girl. The smugglers maybe not, but looking at your dazzled daffy grin these days, I can't discount the rest;
that picture in the newspaper of the Carlow man, murderer of his two young sons, handcuffed to a guard, two men head bowed in tandem looking helpless into some abyss. You think of those others who dispatched themselves successfully, so that they might never again see daylight, endure a conscious knowing what they had taken, snuffed out as though it was their own to take.
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