Friday, 1 February 2013
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
Girls on Girl. Walking slowly for help.
"But....but I walked away so slowly... to get help ....and I walked so slowly back, " the boss uttered in anguished tones as she describes a dream to me where a school friend threatened to take her own life as she walked into the bathroom, and when the boss returned with a teacher " it was too late". All my children give me a premiere viewing of their dreams. I am expected to interpret. Some are memorable, some frankly disturbing like this one. The boss dreams clever and true. She provides an interesting inside track, almost, to family matters. This one though is easily connected to a school drama, when such a threat was made by a girl who is, I suspect, being given a bit of hardship by the group. "Oh, she 's just looking for attention" one of the boss's friends said sagely, after this was said, but the boss mulls over the matter obsessively and tells me more than once that she and her friends are still, always, "nice" to this little one.
"Nice" is a killer word here. I had heard these girls talking with positive relish, as to how annoying and different the unfortunate one could be, though "still and all " they would never dream of being other than "nice"to her. I don't know about that. The girl seemed refreshingly herself to me, and was the boss's absolute best friend some weeks before. I know those female waters of old, and struggled often myself to swim in the slippery, deceptive deeps and shallows, as girl and woman. Being on the inside of an excluding group exerts a powerful glamour , an intoxicating poison. There seems to be a dynamic at work between the "nice" girls and the scapegoat which draws her to shipwreck , as surely as any sailor was lured to the rocks by siren call in the myth. There is danger here and self awareness is the only antidote..
The Boss slept little after the dream, was pale and drawn as she recounted it to me. . I advise her to talk to her class teacher, which she does. An approach is made to the child's family, and the girl in question fiercely reproaches the boss and her friends because she says "you made my mother cry". Ah yes, as I believe I may previously have mentioned, dear reader, sometimes its hard to be a woman. Anyway, the boss is much chastened by the entire affair and assures me shudderingly that she intends "never to talk about ANYONE to ANYONE ELSE in school, EVER again, and ALWAYS to treat everyone exactly the same". She hasn't missed the icy wind threading through this girlhood tempest then. Her dream has served its function, I think.
"Nice" is a killer word here. I had heard these girls talking with positive relish, as to how annoying and different the unfortunate one could be, though "still and all " they would never dream of being other than "nice"to her. I don't know about that. The girl seemed refreshingly herself to me, and was the boss's absolute best friend some weeks before. I know those female waters of old, and struggled often myself to swim in the slippery, deceptive deeps and shallows, as girl and woman. Being on the inside of an excluding group exerts a powerful glamour , an intoxicating poison. There seems to be a dynamic at work between the "nice" girls and the scapegoat which draws her to shipwreck , as surely as any sailor was lured to the rocks by siren call in the myth. There is danger here and self awareness is the only antidote..
The Boss slept little after the dream, was pale and drawn as she recounted it to me. . I advise her to talk to her class teacher, which she does. An approach is made to the child's family, and the girl in question fiercely reproaches the boss and her friends because she says "you made my mother cry". Ah yes, as I believe I may previously have mentioned, dear reader, sometimes its hard to be a woman. Anyway, the boss is much chastened by the entire affair and assures me shudderingly that she intends "never to talk about ANYONE to ANYONE ELSE in school, EVER again, and ALWAYS to treat everyone exactly the same". She hasn't missed the icy wind threading through this girlhood tempest then. Her dream has served its function, I think.
Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Faithful Departed. Waking the Dead,
"Isn't it so strange to see some folks in the day light?" I observe to my husband, both of us standing at the back of a circle of mourners, who await the emergence of the coffin from the deceased publican's house. We have come, being fond of the deceased man and his mourning wife, to this inward facing circle of local people variously related, neighbouring and pub clientele, who wait patiently in the crisp cold day for the publican to come out of his house one last time. Time slows down as we wait, pick out people we know from the pub, until at last the coffin emerges high on the shoulders of the men. Three women walk pale and steady behind it looking neither to right or left, and the crowd fall in after on the short walk to the church. Every soul here knows exactly its place behind the soul departed.
"Are you going to look at the body" the Boss asked the evening before when we told her we were going to the wake. As we laboured to explain I thought of how this ceremony would have vanished by the time she grew up and must bury her dead. I remind her of how she had been brought when younger to my brothers wake where she and the other two had indeed clamoured up on the coffin to look at the body of my dear brother, who, reduced to his essence, was childlike and safe . "It's to say goodbye" I offered. "To offer sympathy to the living family" my husband added. "To.. to...um..um.. see that the person is dead.....".(to look at the body). Its all that, yes. .
"Do you think that's who he really was all along" I whisper as I clutch my husband's arm against the strangeness of being in the intimacy of someone's house, the bedroom, containing only this coffin, this man, whose face looks stern and fine, the care and the blurring of illness, age and trouble melted down, fallen away from his face . At my father's wake his coffin, lying high on the bed, was circled by our best sitting room chairs on which sat people, some solitary, silent, some in little groups, talking, softly laughing , drifting in and out over two days and nights, until at last they took him out to be put in the ground. The bringing in to the living breathing house of the lost one breaks the heart quite as much as his last going out. The graveyard in front of him, a mountain of used tea cups, empty glasses, residue of cake, sandwiches behind him in the gutted house.
a href="http://www.hotvsnot.com/Add-Site/Add-Site.aspx">submit site</a> t" You are not telling us he is dead..... I said" His wife stands, surrounded and isolated both by the mourners, and tells her tale for the umpteenth time. . "I mean, you know, they said he was better, could go home soon. So we left. And they phoned And they said we should come up so we did. And they called us into a room, and we knew. It was serious. But then they said..they said... they did all they could, And. And... We hugged the widow long and hard, and took ourselves off to the end of the bar, opened to cater for this crowd, clutching our proffered drinks, loosing ourselves in the soft voiced crowd.
"You know I'm being cremated myself" I tell my reluctant husband, on the way home. He tells me to shut up, and when I assure him that he can go first, he tells me firmly that he would not do that to me. As we gently argue this point I bat away a memory of my mother, alone, pale and quiet in her house, absently sipping a solitary cup of tea, where I found her that evening after my father's funeral. Crockery, glasses all washed and put away, floors swept, priest paid, her husband waked and most thoroughly buried, three miles down the road in the silent graveyard.
"Are you going to look at the body" the Boss asked the evening before when we told her we were going to the wake. As we laboured to explain I thought of how this ceremony would have vanished by the time she grew up and must bury her dead. I remind her of how she had been brought when younger to my brothers wake where she and the other two had indeed clamoured up on the coffin to look at the body of my dear brother, who, reduced to his essence, was childlike and safe . "It's to say goodbye" I offered. "To offer sympathy to the living family" my husband added. "To.. to...um..um.. see that the person is dead.....".(to look at the body). Its all that, yes. .
"Do you think that's who he really was all along" I whisper as I clutch my husband's arm against the strangeness of being in the intimacy of someone's house, the bedroom, containing only this coffin, this man, whose face looks stern and fine, the care and the blurring of illness, age and trouble melted down, fallen away from his face . At my father's wake his coffin, lying high on the bed, was circled by our best sitting room chairs on which sat people, some solitary, silent, some in little groups, talking, softly laughing , drifting in and out over two days and nights, until at last they took him out to be put in the ground. The bringing in to the living breathing house of the lost one breaks the heart quite as much as his last going out. The graveyard in front of him, a mountain of used tea cups, empty glasses, residue of cake, sandwiches behind him in the gutted house.
a href="http://www.hotvsnot.com/Add-Site/Add-Site.aspx">submit site</a> t" You are not telling us he is dead..... I said" His wife stands, surrounded and isolated both by the mourners, and tells her tale for the umpteenth time. . "I mean, you know, they said he was better, could go home soon. So we left. And they phoned And they said we should come up so we did. And they called us into a room, and we knew. It was serious. But then they said..they said... they did all they could, And. And... We hugged the widow long and hard, and took ourselves off to the end of the bar, opened to cater for this crowd, clutching our proffered drinks, loosing ourselves in the soft voiced crowd.
"You know I'm being cremated myself" I tell my reluctant husband, on the way home. He tells me to shut up, and when I assure him that he can go first, he tells me firmly that he would not do that to me. As we gently argue this point I bat away a memory of my mother, alone, pale and quiet in her house, absently sipping a solitary cup of tea, where I found her that evening after my father's funeral. Crockery, glasses all washed and put away, floors swept, priest paid, her husband waked and most thoroughly buried, three miles down the road in the silent graveyard.
Friday, 4 January 2013
Pub Talk. A kiss before dying.
"MY friends are down under THERE, or d'you think I'd be bothered talking to you"? Old Eithne stabbed a finger downwards as she spoke to us, in the pub where we washed up one evening at the fag end of Christmas. Her strong boned face under the still dark hair twists between grin and grimace, as she launches into a story, sucking up whiskey as she talks, about how THEY wouldn't serve women in Dublin pubs when she was a young woman, and she called them on it, banged out a deal with the manager of her (soon to be) local, whereby she and her friends would be served provided they pay for their own drink, and so they were for many a year. But friends are all gone now, and only she has lived to strike terror and awe in the hearts of locals in her home place. She turns her gargoyle face on me as we leave. "I knew your father, Oh I could tell you things. I knew him allright. I LIKED your father. Did I tell you that I knew her father".(to my husband). Yeah, Eithne you told me, every time you catch us in the headlight of your ferocious attention, you tell me that.
I have a regard for Eithne, I tell my husband on the way home. My first experience of her was of a disembodied corncrake voice soon after I returned to this part of the country, in what has become our local.
"What's YOUR problem with my fxxxing coat, YOU BET I 've had this coat for years, this is a good fxxxking coat and I fxxking like it. So fxxxk you and the horse you rode in on, I'll wear this coat to the fxxxking grave I can tell you". I like it that she is a woman who does not care to appear civil or nice, . that is rare, admirable in a woman I think. Also, she is one of a legion of elderly stalworths, in and out of the pub, who take it on themselves to tell me they knew, admired, were deeply fond of my father, now dead for twenty years,. My edgy husband from edgy Cavan says I should go beyond a benign smile to these constant, relentlessly admiring offerings, and tell them. I too knew my father, .
http://www.blogtune.com/Maybe. In some black winter's evening I might speak, might stir up the quieted stock of the past and say....yeah he was....., he used a brutal clever tongue to hold in submission, and control his children, imposing a suppression of Taliban like proportions on his daughters, and keeping his sons on the march in a docile line. When I was nineteen, I was reluctantly hauled by an unaware boyfriend over to speak to him, to greet him, in one of the many pubs he patronised, and he , when he saw me, froze, and later cast me from the house. And then there is the sibling, a tall strong man now middle aged. who has nightmares about him still, and the one who asked me why on earth I was crying, me of all people as she was not, at his funeral.
Or I could tell them maybe about the joker man, who sat with us on Sunday afternoons to watch Little House on the Prairy, amused, engaged, interactive as the rest of us. Or the one who was to be found in regular pockets of the day, sitting in his large shabby arm chair in a scattering of cigarette butts, laconic, vague and bantering with my mother, who bantered with him till the day he died.
I could say how he, disconcertingly, first began to give me fatherly advise on week end visits home, when I was quite grown up and his health failing fast. Both of us drunk more or less on a Saturday night. He mumbled, almost toothless, drink sodden, about men to be avoided, and how he had, and I might, handle relentless banks, financial pressures, that sort of thing. I strained to understand him, beset by some stray sense of urgency about him (and the charm of being talked to, at last) whilst thinking to myself, Stable door, horse bolted etc.
I could say that the only time I ever kissed him was on one of those nights, before I left him for my bed. I don't know why. Something in the way he ducked his head, something scared and asking in his eye. Anyway I did, and squirmed in the morning at the recollection, as though both he and I must think how foolish that was , in the sober light. He died a week later.
I sometimes extract a nugget from his mumblings now, that has sustained me in adversity, shown me a cock eyed slanting way out of a fix, financial and otherwise. Brought me home. I could say that.
I have a regard for Eithne, I tell my husband on the way home. My first experience of her was of a disembodied corncrake voice soon after I returned to this part of the country, in what has become our local.
"What's YOUR problem with my fxxxing coat, YOU BET I 've had this coat for years, this is a good fxxxking coat and I fxxking like it. So fxxxk you and the horse you rode in on, I'll wear this coat to the fxxxking grave I can tell you". I like it that she is a woman who does not care to appear civil or nice, . that is rare, admirable in a woman I think. Also, she is one of a legion of elderly stalworths, in and out of the pub, who take it on themselves to tell me they knew, admired, were deeply fond of my father, now dead for twenty years,. My edgy husband from edgy Cavan says I should go beyond a benign smile to these constant, relentlessly admiring offerings, and tell them. I too knew my father, .
http://www.blogtune.com/Maybe. In some black winter's evening I might speak, might stir up the quieted stock of the past and say....yeah he was....., he used a brutal clever tongue to hold in submission, and control his children, imposing a suppression of Taliban like proportions on his daughters, and keeping his sons on the march in a docile line. When I was nineteen, I was reluctantly hauled by an unaware boyfriend over to speak to him, to greet him, in one of the many pubs he patronised, and he , when he saw me, froze, and later cast me from the house. And then there is the sibling, a tall strong man now middle aged. who has nightmares about him still, and the one who asked me why on earth I was crying, me of all people as she was not, at his funeral.
Or I could tell them maybe about the joker man, who sat with us on Sunday afternoons to watch Little House on the Prairy, amused, engaged, interactive as the rest of us. Or the one who was to be found in regular pockets of the day, sitting in his large shabby arm chair in a scattering of cigarette butts, laconic, vague and bantering with my mother, who bantered with him till the day he died.
I could say how he, disconcertingly, first began to give me fatherly advise on week end visits home, when I was quite grown up and his health failing fast. Both of us drunk more or less on a Saturday night. He mumbled, almost toothless, drink sodden, about men to be avoided, and how he had, and I might, handle relentless banks, financial pressures, that sort of thing. I strained to understand him, beset by some stray sense of urgency about him (and the charm of being talked to, at last) whilst thinking to myself, Stable door, horse bolted etc.
I could say that the only time I ever kissed him was on one of those nights, before I left him for my bed. I don't know why. Something in the way he ducked his head, something scared and asking in his eye. Anyway I did, and squirmed in the morning at the recollection, as though both he and I must think how foolish that was , in the sober light. He died a week later.
I sometimes extract a nugget from his mumblings now, that has sustained me in adversity, shown me a cock eyed slanting way out of a fix, financial and otherwise. Brought me home. I could say that.
Friday, 21 December 2012
Blessings and Felicitations.
The boy sits on beds edge ferociously strumming his guitar, his eyes channelling something feral and intent when I tap his shoulder. But he is content. All he wants for Christmas, sorted. A good camera for shooting wild life , in the bag. Subscription to an X box site, not. But he is working on it. . A copy of the Beano Annual, yeah, granny Oonagh never fails him. . Presents for family, done. CDs all round from the bargain basement and first burnt onto his own I pod. So, OK, made to contribute some of his cash for the camera, and some serious lectures from the boss about the CDS, but, you know, Duck's Back. Water and God 's in his heaven.
The gorgeous girl whirls through the house on her way to choral performance, girl shopping, hanging in the Vault listening to music, eating talking dancing with her friends, dressed in dark teeshirt, black jeans encasing giraffe limbs and a mere hint of jacket against the winter, because everything is shiny and speeded up as the great day approaches and there is no time to waste on chill or rest..
My husband and I watch the Boss in a row of hopeful soulful teens, as they bounce and thrill through all the Christmas carols at her school concert. Her eyes shine, her beautiful face serene. She has wrapped and tagged every Christmas present in the house for us, written and posted all the Christmas cards, given and received cards from a multitude of girl friends. In the wardrobe her fine new outfit hangs for her (first) teenage dance tomorrow night, white lace, brief black skirt, silver pumps (and stout seventy denier black tights at my insistence.)
I wrap a frozen limb around my good husband's sturdy Cavan legs afterward, as we chat under the duvet about missing addresses for cards recipients , vegetables still to be got for Christmas dinner, whether we might get Port as well as Sherry for the great day, when oh when he can decently remove the flashing garish Santa clause the boy has proudly placed in our front window, and he tells me that he is this year truly happy, and will be so on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day.
The gorgeous girl whirls through the house on her way to choral performance, girl shopping, hanging in the Vault listening to music, eating talking dancing with her friends, dressed in dark teeshirt, black jeans encasing giraffe limbs and a mere hint of jacket against the winter, because everything is shiny and speeded up as the great day approaches and there is no time to waste on chill or rest..
My husband and I watch the Boss in a row of hopeful soulful teens, as they bounce and thrill through all the Christmas carols at her school concert. Her eyes shine, her beautiful face serene. She has wrapped and tagged every Christmas present in the house for us, written and posted all the Christmas cards, given and received cards from a multitude of girl friends. In the wardrobe her fine new outfit hangs for her (first) teenage dance tomorrow night, white lace, brief black skirt, silver pumps (and stout seventy denier black tights at my insistence.)
I wrap a frozen limb around my good husband's sturdy Cavan legs afterward, as we chat under the duvet about missing addresses for cards recipients , vegetables still to be got for Christmas dinner, whether we might get Port as well as Sherry for the great day, when oh when he can decently remove the flashing garish Santa clause the boy has proudly placed in our front window, and he tells me that he is this year truly happy, and will be so on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day.
Tuesday, 18 December 2012
Doctors prosper/ Patients die.
"DO YOU KNOW I have, (A) , a MORTGAGE to pay, (B), THREE children to support, (C), a household to keep afloat, and this is.... this is... is......" words fail me. Earlier I stared stupidly at a snotty faced minion in the blood testing department when she advised me that I had better hand over €110 euro, or no blood test for me. I have a medical condition which, while it can be treated, can' be neglected. Having in fact neglected it for some time, due to the expense, I had submitted my self to scanning and consultant, a few weeks past, paid €500 for this, and he, the consultant, decided on a cunning plan to put me on a regime involving fortnightly visits to a nurse to titrate medications upwards, following on a blood test. I learned, after the first visit that the NURSE cost €50. On this the second visit, I learned that the preliminary blood test was €55, and that they forgotten to tell me last time.
A total then of €155 this time, and €105 hereafter, with a further €50 for medications, EVERY TIME. The figures danced about in my brain as I scrambled over to the nurse, who harangued me for tardiness. (I had rushed to the hospital during my lunch hour) leading to the above outburst ( spluttering, as you see to an exhausted and disgusted halt)
The thing is that I have no choice. I have medical insurance, rapidly becoming unaffordable, which offers no contribution to this. My salary is average, I am not eligible for medical cards or any other sort of contribution. These people simply milk you for cash for necessary treatments. Doctors fees were always high and they have reduced not one whit in this recession. There is no attempt to look at a financial plan for the unfortunate sick person. . Payments for doctor visits, tests, are applied without discussion or estimate. The stark fact of the matter is that medical doctors accept a far smaller fee for patients with medical cards, place these at the end of the list when it comes to necessary hospital treatments, and hold the rest of us to ransom, with medical care that is unaffordable.. Or at least I would like to know how it can be afforded, and who can afford it?
There is no attempt by our quite quite hopeless government to rein them in, to control prices, and working folks skimp on necessary medical care, because it is over priced. This information is perfectly clear and available to they medical establishment when they apply these prices. A case of indifference then or good old fashioned opportunism. .
Anyway, I dismissed the nurse, I intend to thrash something out with my GP re prescription and surgery blood tests in the future, and will return to the consultant when I can afford it. I am saving up.
And as to value, the nurse was patronising, adopted a one size fits all approach. In fact you might have been eight or eighty and a little slow to boot, for all the distinction she made. And repetitive, with largely redundant advice. To justify the cash extraction? I left each time feeling diminished, worried, broke and extremely irritated. The consultant will charge the same sum every three months if we adhere to the cunning plan. It is hard indeed not to feel frisked, turned over, mugged almost, and that, my friends is so not therapeutic.
A total then of €155 this time, and €105 hereafter, with a further €50 for medications, EVERY TIME. The figures danced about in my brain as I scrambled over to the nurse, who harangued me for tardiness. (I had rushed to the hospital during my lunch hour) leading to the above outburst ( spluttering, as you see to an exhausted and disgusted halt)
The thing is that I have no choice. I have medical insurance, rapidly becoming unaffordable, which offers no contribution to this. My salary is average, I am not eligible for medical cards or any other sort of contribution. These people simply milk you for cash for necessary treatments. Doctors fees were always high and they have reduced not one whit in this recession. There is no attempt to look at a financial plan for the unfortunate sick person. . Payments for doctor visits, tests, are applied without discussion or estimate. The stark fact of the matter is that medical doctors accept a far smaller fee for patients with medical cards, place these at the end of the list when it comes to necessary hospital treatments, and hold the rest of us to ransom, with medical care that is unaffordable.. Or at least I would like to know how it can be afforded, and who can afford it?
There is no attempt by our quite quite hopeless government to rein them in, to control prices, and working folks skimp on necessary medical care, because it is over priced. This information is perfectly clear and available to they medical establishment when they apply these prices. A case of indifference then or good old fashioned opportunism. .
Anyway, I dismissed the nurse, I intend to thrash something out with my GP re prescription and surgery blood tests in the future, and will return to the consultant when I can afford it. I am saving up.
And as to value, the nurse was patronising, adopted a one size fits all approach. In fact you might have been eight or eighty and a little slow to boot, for all the distinction she made. And repetitive, with largely redundant advice. To justify the cash extraction? I left each time feeling diminished, worried, broke and extremely irritated. The consultant will charge the same sum every three months if we adhere to the cunning plan. It is hard indeed not to feel frisked, turned over, mugged almost, and that, my friends is so not therapeutic.
Thursday, 6 December 2012
Barbarians. Love/Hate.
Sometimes its hard to be a teenage boy.
Ours is under siege these days. On a daily basis almost, his sisters shop him to management. The boss: "Three hours of doing homework! huh! he was on the INTERNET". The elder "help him with his maths? NO ONE could help him with his maths, he is rude and unwilling!". A sisterly duet: "Chocolates, whole packets of biscuits vanished, devoured,! milk mess in the kitchen!, electronic stuff damaged! it was him, it was him, IT WAS HIM."
The boy keeps a limped eyed persona in reserve for when taken to task, and he has an interesting line in excuses/rationalisations. My husband particularly enjoys these, and he tells me on Tuesday, smirking, that the boy now appears to have discovered on line porn. "Whaa, but we must, I mean, I must.." "You must WHAT, exactly?" "Dunno, um establish what kind of eh porn he is looking at and..and.." "To see if its tasteful you mean?" sniggers my life's partner. So anyway, we should be concerned with quantity rather than quality he assures me, and the web has joined the X Box on the restricted list. And the boy is fast assuming an injured, harried air.
Sometimes its hard to be a second husband.
Mine took raging refuse in the bedroom on Sunday evening, after being torn from the living room where he was watching a programme on Barbarians in the Middle Ages, to mend, for the umpteenth time a TV cable for the recreation room TV yanked loose by careless young people. The fearsome threesome descended, as he laboured, to watch X factor raucously and interactively in the living room on full volume. He loathes X Factor with vim and bile along with boy bands, trash TV, the twilight movies and yes, blithe teenage insouciance when it comes to Good Manners, Doing your Chores and Waste. It's been a baptism of fire for the poor man, who begins to see that he is a captive audience.
I lure him downstairs later on with tea and apple tart to watch Love/Hate. (Barbarians dispatched to their quarters). Something in the car crash events unfolding around the hapless and mostly witless characters is irresistible. It is a comedy of horrors. It is punctuated by some quite devastatingly unglamorous and authentic looking scenes of ie, a rape, a man's brutal slaying, a woman's experience of being slammed, poked and pushed into by punters over a day in brothel. Its brow moping, shattering, insane, and hysterically funny TV. And it is NOT the sum of its parts. But it IS guaranteed to put pesky teens in the halfpenny place.://www.hotvsnot.com/">web directory!</a> for free Find sites like this in the <a
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