A Cure For Ennui,Blame and Blue Funk

Sometimes things just get on top of me. Work can be difficult sometimes, as it seems to me that my role includes soaking up all the responsibility for things that go wrong. Guys - sometimes I screw up and sometimes you do too. I don't want to be the Designated Blame Monkey any more.

Hannah threw a little farewell shindig for the lovely Mel on Friday for she is going to Australia for a year. Many moons ago this gathering was supposed to be a demure little tea party with cucumber sandwiches and iced buns. Then 'The Trouble' came along and I got distracted from Nigella recipes and entertaining. Hannah and Raymond Party Planners stepped into the breach and my cucumber sandwiches were replaced by spicy party food from Iceland and my iced buns by something far more potent and the Earl Gray and Chardonnay by Buckfast and Carlsberg.

Mind you the guests were ever so, ever so... including primary school teachers, assorted geniuses, two people with firsts and two people related to people with firsts. Educated people - so rough and ready these days. You cannot take them anywhere! I blame the universities.

Before we got thoroughly drunk I took The Genius Dougie out to see the wildlife. I showed him the Bad Bees, one of which came up and hovered nastily just six inches in front of my midriff giving off buzzy fuck off vibes. I totally respected it and fucked off and it respected me by not stinging me. I then showed Dougie the Nice Bees and we were able to get proper close up to them and view them through the glass crown board. Then we viewed Pearlie through the front windows and she glared at us but luckily no stings or stinging remarks were made when Mel and Hannah ceidhlied with her later.

Saturday - clean, clean, clean. Buckfast everywhere. These geniuses and intellectuals throw more drink around them than they actually imbibe. Perhaps it's for the best. I wouldn't lip the stuff. It's worse than Lucozade (Pearlie's current poison). I'm sure I visited Matty at some point but I disremember the details.

Sunday was Aunt Mary's month's mind and I was halfway home when I turned and went home to bed. I was feeling rather unwell, suffering from ennui, cystitis, depression, the blues, fever, tiredness, blue funk, blame, guilt and a cold in the nose. Later I also suffered from regret. I should have went to Aunt Mary's month's mind. I had an awesome outfit consisting of a Primark vest, a Monsoon jacket, a Fenn Wright Manson skirt and Diesel courts. I was mixing it up. I was so ready for Tannaghmore except for the blue funk, fever etc. Still - Ganching went, worked the room, represented the family and sure I'd only have been in her road.

Monday - Duvet day. I was far too blue to go to work and I still had enough symptoms left to justify it to myself. Then in the afternoon - along came the cure for it all!

A Cure For All A Granny's Ills

After a lovely afternoon spent in the company of Miss Martha and her people and dogs I was ready to resume all my responsibilities.

A Tale of Two Mothers

Bert was out at Matty's today fixing a leaky radiator. It's been quite a few weeks since he'd seen her so I wondered if he would have seen much of a change in her.

So you got that rad fixed?

Aye.

What did you think of my ma?

She looks well.

D'ye think?

Aye. She's a good bit thinner than she was but she was sitting there, her hair done and all dressed up like the Queen.

Aye. Not like your one - the oul scruffbag. Like mother like son!

Mine sat about all day with a pair of knickers on her head.

Whaat! What for?

Said it was to keep her curlers in place. Said them ones did it.

The carers? Dear God!

But she still kept them on her head the whole day long.

A Happy Time

When I first heard that Matty had cancer I was devastated. She was more pragmatic.

I have to die of something you know.

The first few weeks were completely unreal as we tried to absorb this dreadful news while waiting, with a mixture of awful dread and crazy hope, for the results of the tests. The first diagnosis was bowel cancer, the growth apparently in a ‘good place’, and her surgeon confident that it could be removed safely. Then came some other results which showed another separate cancer. This one was in her ovary and likely the one that had been giving her the pain and the swelling in her tummy. We were advised that treatment would do her far more harm than good.

The waiting had been tough and especially so for Dede and Trish who were with her during that time. Every day saw her get weaker and more nauseated and her belly grow bigger and the rest of her thinner. She could not eat without vomiting and the very smell or look of food made her sick.

Everyone came home. Not all at once but there was lots of comings and goings. She had to go into hospital so that the sickness could be dealt with and eventually it was.

She is at home now, able to eat again, if only little bits and pieces. She is delighted to be back in her own place and have everyone she cares about around her and helping to look after her. She said today,

This is a happy time for me.

Father's Day

Seamus, originally uploaded by triciamorimori.

It would be hard not to give a thought to this old fellow today.

Sixth Father's Day without him.

Take Me Drunk, I'm Home

About this time 23 hours ago I awakened from a brief nap on the sofa saying to Bert,

Is it not time we were away home? Who's driving, you or me? How did I get here and where am I anyway?

It was a great relief to me when I realised that my bed was only one short stairway away.

Faith

You know I have a great belief in the power of prayer.

Indeed. Prayer is a wonderful thing.

It can move mountains for sure.

You are right there.

I have great faith in the prayer to Saint Peregrine.

I must admit that Saint Peregrine is a new one on me.

Saint Peregrine is the patron saint of cancer.

Is that so?

It is. And I have prayed to Saint Peregrine for an awful lot of people.

Sure it can do no harm.

There was this young fellow I knew once whose mother was a great friend of mine. She was a cousin of John MacQ - the same John MacQ whose sister was married to Pat Joe Dobbin who you’ll mind living at the junction.

I can’t say that I know him or his people.

Anyway he had cancer and I prayed steady for him for he was only a young man in his forties.

What was the outcome?

Sure didn’t he get better. The doctors tested him thoroughly and couldn’t find one trace of cancer left in him. It was a miracle. He died three weeks later from a heart attack but clean cured of cancer!

Remembering Rosie

Rosie, originally uploaded by NellyMoser.

When I look at pictures of Rosie I remember how she felt. She was a dog that loved to be cuddled, petted and handled. She was the sort of dog that crept on to your lap so that you wouldn't even notice she was there until you looked down and realised that you were rubbing her head and stroking her silky ears. She was the sort of dog that helped to calm you.

I also remember how she smelled. She smelled of good clean earth with undertones of dog. She loved to be nuzzled. I loved to nuzzle her head, that flat hard part between her ears. Behind her ears was a good part to knead and rub. We both liked that. It was also good to play with her feet. Some dogs don't like that but Rosie did. She liked to have her toes separated and gently massaged. She liked the rough pads on her paws to be scratched. She liked to be rubbed under her chin. And I liked to do it. She was the most tactile, sweet-smelling dog I've ever known. I loved to rub my face on her head and smell the sweet hayish, grassy. earthy scent of her.

Bert had another name for her. He called her The Bitcher and she knew that was her name. She knew that Dirty Rotten Scunging Devil Dog was her name. She knew she was Rosie.

Kerry sister has a new pup. It's a Kerry sheep dog. I have envy.

Our Ones

His Ones

My Incredibly Clever Sister and Other Animals

Such a lot has happened since I wrote last. Matty is still in hospital, Katy has got married to Mark and I have, in this past week, spent time with nearly every single member of my immediate family.

Here are two of them.
The incredibly clever Mrs D McC (B.A. Honours, First Class) and the incredibly clever Miss M. (arm-waving and saying 'agoo')

Off To A Wedding

Off to Katy's wedding tomorrow. I was speaking to her today and she tells me she is nervous. I'm pretty sure she'll go through with it though.

I'm nervous too. I'm not a frequent flyer these days and haven't been on a plane since they started this utter nonsense about toiletries and liquids in transparent bags. I'm convinced they'll not let me on the plane for some spurious reason. I wish we were driving. Boats are much more user-friendly.

Matty is in hospital and it feels really strange to be going off on a jolly at this time. But I know that as soon as I set foot on English soil that I'm going to take a deep and relieving breath and I'm going to concentrate on having a happy time.

There will be plenty of time for sadness when we get home.

Thanks to Dee Mac for looking after the dogs, Young Lovehart the cats and Clint the hens. Damn stingarees can look after themselves.

Looking Forward

Matty took some time out this morning to write Katy a letter. This letter will, God willing, be read out at Katy and Mark's wedding next Thursday. For Matty cannot come although her plane ticket has been booked for months and her accommodation long arranged and paid for. The only thing not done was her rig-out chosen. She said she had plenty of nice clothes and would wear something she'd worn before. This was not like Matty for she loves clothes and she loves to look well.

This day next week the wedding will be over. We'll all be back home again. What bright occasion, or happy distraction shall we look forward to then? I do not know. But I do know that someday we will look forward and that is what Matty will want us to do.

Is it a bird?

Is it a bird?, originally uploaded by triciamorimori.

With all the sad and worrying things that have been happening recently it is good to have little dogs and babies to cheer us up.

Is it a bird they're looking at? If so, it was probably a damn buzzard as a nesting pair have ousted our long-eared owls from the Scots pines and are flying around Nellybert's like they own the fecking place. In their piercing, glinty little eyes they probably do.

And Katy....they're not called buzzards because they make a buzzing noise. That's bees.

Aunt Mary

Aunt Mary, my father's last surviving sister, died yesterday evening after an illness so courageously borne. She will be very much missed by all of us. It is the end of an era.

And this

PAC-MAN

Internet users wasted almost five million working hours playing the Pac-Man that appeared on Google, a study revealed yesterday. The web version of the classic video game was put on the site's home page on May 21 to celeb rate 30 years since its launch in Japan.And the study claimed workers hooked on the gamecould have cost bosses around £83million in lost productivity.

Oh really? So what would the workers have been doing with those five million hours had they not been playing Pac-Man?

They would have been -

• Facebooking
  
• Blogging
  
• Watching You Tube videos
  
• Internet shopping
  
• Yawning
  
• Drinking Coffee
  
• Scratching their asses
  
• Playing solitaire/tetris
  
• Making personal phone calls
  
• Discussing the final episode of Lost
  
• Engaging in a few moments of paid employment
  

And that millions of pounds worth of lost productivity. I'm not much of an economist but, if companies lost  £83 million then, someones, somewheres must still have that £83 million in their jeans pocket, so it's not really lost is it? Or is that not how it works? 

Obviously (goes without saying) I didn't waste one second of company time playing Pac-Man for I don't actually understand the rules.

The Things She Left Behind (continued)

I first came across this abandoned and derelict house over a year ago but on that occasion I didn't have a camera with me. I had always intended to go back and document what I saw there. Last week I finally got around to it, despite one of the fellows from work, a local man, telling me to be careful going poking around old houses 'up there'.

Them boys up there would be straight out blasting at you with a shotgun and ask no questions.

But I do love a long lane and a derelict homestead and it is even better when there is enough detritus left behind to get some idea of the person or people who lived there. The house itself was not that old. The buildings around it, many of which had been dwelling houses, were a lot older. I'd say a number of folk had lived there at a time. Over time their dwellings had become sheds or were simply left tumbledown.

She was rightly on in years when she left. But she had been active. She liked to sew, she liked to keep herself smart and she was a keen baker. She laundered the old-fashioned way with a boiler and a mangle and she did her laundry in a wash house. She cooked on a range. Her big kettle sang on the range from morning to night, always ready to boil for a pot of tea should visitors call. She admired the Royal Family and had a soft spot for the Queen Mother and she loved flowers. She liked to keep in contact with the outside world. Her house was neat and tidy. There was a place for everything and everything in its place. She hadn't much time for reading but there were a few books around, old-fashioned children's books by R.M. Ballantyne and Captain Marryat. Perhaps they had been Christmas presents for children long grown old themselves? The books were mouldering to dust when I first saw the house, and gone by my second visit.

All this I know from the things she left behind. They were the things that no one else wanted. No one wanted her shoes, her great ancient kettle, her mangle or her boiler. No one needed her 1950s patterns or her telephone. No one had any use for her baking ingredients or her musty books. No doubt her good delph and china and linens and ornaments found another home and hopefully, her personal photographs and other knick-knacks were taken and treasured by someone close to her.

I see her in my mind's eye. She would have been strong, a well-made woman but nifty with it. She would have bustled and busied and kept herself active. She would have been hospitable and kind. In early summer, twenty-three years ago, for reasons I do not know, she left her home up that long lane and she did not return.

After The Fall

If Miss Martha looks a little bit sombre in these photographs it is because she and her mummy have just broken the rope swing in the garden. Bert said it wasn't safe but Zoe said he probably meant it wasn't safe for me. Does she think I'm some sort of lardass? Martha was having a wonderful time sitting on Mummy's lap when suddenly the rope snapped and down they both came! That rope had only been round the beech tree branch for twenty something years. You just can't get quality materials any more.

A Swarm In May

My life right now is so layered, so rich and so real that I cannot listen anymore to In Search Of Lost Time, for that would be far too much cream in my coffee.

At this very moment I am, or I was, revising for my preliminary beekeeping exam, a few moments ago I was weeping with Pearlie and in the next room Brendan Quinn, star of Irish country music, is holding a masterclass with Bert on clarinet and guitar. I've just put the hens in and said individual good nights to each and every one of them and then indulged myself in a bit of howling at the moon.

Our darling Matty is very sick (she told us she was sick) and my darling Katy is getting married in a few weeks.

And did I mention that those damn bees swarmed today. I missed it (no photographs) and Bert didn't catch them. It all happened within minutes.

Wish me luck with the beekeeping exam.

Happiness

Matty reading email from Hannah, originally uploaded by NellyMoser.

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

Marcel Proust

The Things She Left Behind

I said to my sister and daughter today,

"I'd love to be bored. Maybe sigh a bit. Be idle."

Well - after I'd gone to work (six hours) I visited a hospital, had my tea in a traditional fish and chip shop in Randalstown, visited yet another hospital and did some beekeeping revision.

Then I found my idle moment and made this set on Flickr.