She thought that I was nothing but a house
wife and a frump; thought she could take my man
from me and I’d stay silent as a mouse.
That I’d fight back was never in her plan;
and yet how could I not when all I knew
was heading West with Laura and her hair
of yellow and her sparkling eyes of blue,
her scarlet nails and fashion savoir faire.
But then she learned: You cannot run in heels,
as I slid up the gear lever to “Drive.”
It took me hours to scrape her off the wheels.
Laura’s no more; this mouse is still alive.
She lies beneath the sod, and moulders now;
But then, she always was a rotten cow.

Dad’s birthday.

Jade’s 18th.

The discovery that most of my family are on Facebook and therefore likely to see this.

Thought I’d share something from a couple of years ago, just before my 40th birthday and a Gammy ankle; and an inability to tell a Samba from a Cha Cha Cha) came and tore away my last hopes of winning the World Under 40s Latin Championships…

01/ I’m the first person in my family to have been given my first name.

02/ My middle name was given because it was my grandfather’s name. It’s an old testament Biblical name, and used to embarrass me. I love it now, and love the way it links me to a man who was dead long before I was born, but who’s still a part of me.

03/ I grew up in Dublin, in a small (two rooms downstairs, two upstairs and a loo out the back) terraced house.

04/ I’ll be 40 on the 3^rd of July 2008.

05/ I was one of twins. The other twin died before birth.

06/ I still don’t know if my twin would have been a boy or a girl.

07/ I have one brother, who’s younger than me by 18 months.

08/ Neither my brother, nor I, has very traditional Irish names.

09/ I grew up in a house that was directly opposite the one my father grew up in. My paternal grandmother lived opposite us.

10/ I can clearly remember several mornings creeping down the steep, narrow stairs of the silent little house, in the dark; the feel of the plastic patchwork pouffe beneath my feet as I stood on it to pull the cord on the wall lights; hunting Fry’s Chocolate Cream Bars on the bookcase.

11/ I loved books and reading as a kid; I still have vivd memories of walking, hand in hand with my dad, along the canal on the way to the library. That might be my earliest memory. That and the way his beard scratched when he kissed me goodnight.

12/ And the fact that my mother had, at some point, a nightdress that was vivid orange (possibly synthetic, though I don’t know why I’d think that) with black lace trim.

13/ My parents work: Sense memories more than anything. My Dad’s job at Freedex being a bright shiny big and modern place; my mothers job at Dillons as a dark, sweet-smelling, quiet, almost cathedral-like place of red brick and, always, the scent of old oak and port wine.

14/ I’m told I spent a lot of time in hospital as a child; I don’t remember much of it, although I do remember a ukulele I got once, which I loved, and a desperate rush to the emergency ward with suspected appendicitis, which resulted in my receiving a series of rather shocking inspections, a kidney x-ray,  and, eventually, the hospital releasing me with “We don’t know what was wrong with him, but he seems to be over it now…”

15/ I went to primary school a few weeks after my 4^th birthday – which was younger than many of my contemporaries.

16/ For the first three years, I was taught almost exclusively by nuns.

17/ At school, I was a bit of a child prodigy. My parents were called to school by the head nun. Fearing that I was in trouble for some infraction of the rules, they were met by an amazed woman declaiming me a miracle ‘cos I had a very very advanced reading age.

18/ I was a small and skinny child, and am still short and (usually) slim. Not big, just clever

19/ Note to all child prodigies: Keep it under your hat. Kids don’t like smart kids, and the adults soon get bored of your precocity. Plus, accept this: It’s all downhill from there.

20/ I didn’t have many friends at school.

21/ At least I wasn’t Iber Johnson. Iber was a kid whose mother had never cut his hair. He was a total mother’s boy. He wet himself in class. Frequently. Sometimes, one thanks providence for the Iber J’s of this world.

22/ I remember a Miss Fitzpatrick, who had very angular glasses, a soft cushion of tightly waved/styled white hair, a narrow, lined face, and sensible tweed skirt. I was a teacher’s pet for her, although, now I think of her, I seem to be recalling Agatha Christie.

23/ I was never taught by Agatha Christie.

24/ I also remember a Sister Anthony, who was very petite and had the full black dress and wimple garb. I always wondered what was under the wimple: Did they really shave their heads, I used to wonder?

25/ I was lucky not to have one of the nasty nuns. My brother was left handed, and had a nasty nun who tried to force him to write his letters right handed. Stupid ignorant old bat.

26/ Two of my uncles and aunts on my dad’s side of the family had bungalow summer homes down by the sea at a place just outside of Dublin which we called Rush, but which was really Rogerstown: I close my eyes, and I’m back there again with sand; green fiields filled with tomato-packed greenhouses, sandwiches filled with salty thick cut ham and those tomatoes that, on their own, make a meal, so meaty and sweet and tasty are they; chocolate biscuit fridge cake; super 8 movies filmed in the afternoon by my uncle Sonny, and screened to a room filled with laughter and love in the evening; the same films, moments later, being played backwards to screams of hilarity by the kids; lying in the grass, reading and dreaming; sitting in the deckchairs at 4:45, when the sun was at it’s most golden, the heat gone, and a feeling of glorious, still, eternal summer exhaustion settled over everyone and everything; Knowing that this was always going to be my most favourite part of the day.

27/ My family has always been close, and every Sunday we’d go on outings – to the Botanic gardens, or to Saint Stephen’s Green Maze.

28/ My Paternal grandmother: Sugar sandwiches. The huge oilskin-covered table; the monolith dark wooden sideboard, and the two straightbacked armchairs. Climbing through a window to find her having fallen, and being shocked that she had long white hair.Til then, I had only ever seen it in a tightly coiled bun or under a hat. Sitting in our bedroom watching Scooby Doo on the TV with the curtains closed when her funeral cortege went past our door; my father having decided that the whole thing would be too upsetting for my brother and I.

29/ My Maternal grandmother, a big country woman with an almost constant floral pinny, who’d peel apples, and give the peel to me before eating the apple herself.

30/ We had “Irish Dancing” classes at school. They started, every morning, with the whole class marching around the long assembly hall / gym to a scratchy 7” recording of Sandly Shaw’s “Puppet on a String.” I still can’t hear that song without wanting to put on blue shorts a white vest and march with a stiff back round a square room. Very music & movement.

31/ I was pretty shite at Irish dancing. My mother still reckons it’s a miracle I learned to count beyond eight (Irish dancing joke). You could always see my lips counting the beat (“Onetwothreefour, Onetwothree(pause) Onetwothreefour, Onetwothree(pause) Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneight Onetwothree….”)

32/ My earliest memory of being on stage is being dressed as a bunny rabbit with a little bonnet that sprouted bunny ears and a fluffy sheepskin tail pinned to my navy blue shorts. I remember being afraid someone would stab my butt with the pin when they were putting it on. I was a spectacularly worried child

33/ I almost fell of the stage. Martha Grahame never called again.

34/ When I went to ‘Big School,’ I swapped Nuns for Christian Brothers, with Lay teachers.

35/ I went home for lunch each day, convinced that, if I was fast enough, I’d catch my dad changing out of the costume he wore to be my teacher. Does that make any sense? Even after I realised how unbalanced this idea was, I still entertained it from time to time.

36/ My dad was unemployed for a long time when I was younger, and my mam worked while he stayed at home and looked after us.

37/ My dad made me Vesta Chicken Chow Mein. I’m still a fan of those crispy noodles, although they’re as much to do with authentic Chinese cookery as Graham Norton has to do with Oscar Wilde.My dad also took me to my first proper Chinese takeout – Tony Choys in Camden street. I loved bamboo shoots and water chestnuts.

38/ My ‘Big School’ was a two-storied square block of a building, with two prefab classes on one side of the schoolyard. The other side of the schoolyard had a long shed-like structure, partially open to the elements. This was the school toilets – dimly lit cubicles and urinals in constant twilight. The place was always freezing, and I always waited til I got home at lunchtime to pee.

39/ Every lunchtime, I’d listen, with my dad, to Halfway Hotel – a radio soap that featured a supercillious assistant manager nicknamed “Shiny Shoes.”

40/ My mother always took great pride in ensuring that my brother and I were immaculately dressed, had clean school uniforms and decent and polished shoes. I hoped I’d never turn into a supercillious assistant manager nicknamed “Shiny Shoes.”

i’m going home to do my banking / balance my cheque account (be easier to balance Brazil’s account to be honest) and watch a 1970s Doctor Who.

cos I is a big gayer, innit

and from him?

“You? A gayer? I think the c*ckcsucking sort of gave it away before the Pertwee obsession.”

Cheek!

Tip! The perfect is the enemy of the good. When you spend so much time looking for the “best” choice that you never actually do anything, you’re sabotaging yourself. And an ideal solution that you don’t follow through with is worse than a good solution that you’ll actually use. Choose a good option and act.

Wise words indeed.

And, back available online forum, I recall a friend of mine asking Why? I was, effectively, keeping a public diary.

“I mean,” he asked, “Why would you want to share every single aspect of your life – every thought and deed with the whole world; and why – more importantly, perhaps – why on earth would they want to read it?

It’s a good question (or two). Not that I have any answers. I used the site to write about how David and I met, about our courtship, about the build up to and the aftermath of our wedding. I used it, in the leadup to my 40th, as a way of chronicling my life to date (which, written like that, sounds as though my struggle to avoid pomposity and self-importance has not quite been won yet). I wrote commentary on the world around me and the life I was living; on the books, music, TV, theatre, film, clothing, that was, at any point influencing my life, and I did it so that I could look back, from time to time, and see “Ah, that’s where I was.”

Then, last year, I stopped.

Not completely – there were a few postings over the course of the year, but by and large I stopped writing.

Not because there was nothing going on; not by a long chalk. There was too much going on, to be honest, and all of it seemed to be bad. But none of it was mine. Everyone – dear friends, my husband, family – seemed mired in illness or stress or work shit that just filled the year with one drama or tragedy after another. And at the centre of it all was me.

But I didn’t write about it, because in the past, when I have written about how I’ve felt when bad things have happened, they’ve been my bad things, happening to me. But this past year, they’ve been filling my life, without me having ownership of them, and thus without my having the right to share them with a world full of strangers.

And then, this past weekend, whilst updating my diary, I went through last years diary and was amazed at how much good stuff I’d done, and how much had slid past without comment – some fantastic trips, meeting enw people, seeing places and things I can’t believe I finally got to see and meet; amazing concerts seen without me even putting a note down here about them; records (or digital downloads) that rocked my world and shot to the top of my charts.

It was a year when – interestingly – I resumed my voracious reading habit, working my way through a number I loved, a few I adored, and a handful that convinced me I could do better in a coma. As I child, I’ve come, lately, to realise, I read to escape. To get away from situations I didn’t like, or to get to places or feelings I did, to escape the seemingly terminal boredom of waiting for ones life to begin, to escape from being me, and become, for a while, someone else.

And, of course, as I’ve said before, I do think I got to be the creature that I meant to be: Not an enlightened being by some way yet, but happier.

Perhaps, as an adult, I write a diary to strangers as a way of making a mark of saying “I am / was here.” Perhaps, by blogging, I’m trying to escape the inescapable; for one day – no matter how many friends or followers or readers or commenters we have, we will Not be here.

But, for now, what’s not here is 2009. It’s gone, and with it has gone much of the grief that filled last year. I’ll try to do better in 2010; I’ll try to keep some record of what I’m doing, of where I’m going so that, when I look back in January 2011 I wont say “How could so much good stuff have happened last year yet it still felt so bad?”

I’ll live more, love as much as I always have, and learn to let things that I can’t change be. But I’ll try to stop, from time to time, to look at my life, to see the individual flakes of good and bad and to consciously review and comment on them, ratehr than just letting it all – all this living¬ – just wash over me.

Already it’s shaping up to be a great year.

My mam has been admitted to hospital.

I spoke to her a couple of hours ago (Praise the mobile phone), and she had been out of bed rooting around for a switch to turn on the light above her bed so she could read the latest goings-on of the celebutardii, which she refers to as “The poor girls,” which, when you think of it, is quite sharp of her.

“You’re not well,” I said, “haven’t you got a button to push for a nurse?”
“Well, I didn’t like to bother her,” she replied. “It’s only a switch.”

“Jesus, woman,” I remonstrated, “They’re called nurses for a reason. You’ve spent your life slogging your guts out. Let someone else do the work.”

And there we are; my mum is ill. But still my mum. Still slogging.

Still reminding me that it’s almost exactly a year ago that we were all in New York.

“Of course, I don’t remember much of it,” she said; “Only, I loved dinner on that roof top, and the lovely trip around the bay. And that brilliant street fair on Broadway. And the look on your father’s face when we announced that he hadn’t missed Borders books, ‘cos it would be open til midnight. But other than that, I can’t recall a lot. ‘Twould be lovely to go again, though….”

And then we got back to the business of her being unwell, and I was assured that she’d be well. Again.

And I felt less unsure.

So, backtracking: prior to this conversation, I’d been feeling a little tense. A tad unsure of things; and so I did what my people always do when we need to let the bad go and embrace the good. And by “my people,” I mean the people who are, historically, predisposed to expecting tomorrow to be worse than today; the ones for whom untold wealth and perfect happiness is always something others have; the folks who refuse to believe – until it’s too late – that life can sometimes be actually perfect.

I did what they do, and have always done: I cooked.

I made Torte de Bergere Americaine.

You’ve never heard of it? Unsurprising, really. I made it up.

Back in March D and I were in NY to see our dear friend Whit, and her parents were also in town, and they had pre-requested us to advise them of our favourite Kansas City BBQ sauce, which they had then handed to us in vast quantities.

 And I had chosen Bryants, which has a grittiness and spice lacking from some others (though I’ve since found that its absence of honey, sugar, molasses or God’s Gift to American Cuisine High Fructose Corn Syrup makes it a little thin when subjected to high heat), and which I have been using –slathered on chicken, poured onto pork chops, and, when I got the hang of it, rubbed slowly and sensuously into a couple of wonderful steaks which were then quick grilled on the garden barbecue.

And tonight, there was a few spoonsful left, which were added to the last of a beautiful bounty of Herbes de Provence which the lovely Julie had given me a long time ago (I know: they’re supposed to go ‘off,’ but you try making dried rosemary and lavender lose their scent), a pack of minced beef, two and a half onions, three carrots, a few handfuls of frozen peas, salt, pepper, passata, some leftover dolcelatte melted into the mass (not kosher, I know; so sue me) and a topping of mashed potato with grated parmesan and cheddar.

It’s Shepherds pie, made with gifts from people who gave the ingredients with love, and cooked at a time when we needed a hug.

And it was a great big hug.

And it was eaten – flicking through a Dan Brown, as the sun went autumnally golden behind next doors fence (can you tell I’ve been reading Dan Brown), and we listened to bits of Young Frankenstein, and we remembered last Autumn in New York, before the financial industry collapsed.

And then I called my mother, fearing the worst, and ended up laughing with her as she discussed my husband’s propensity for drama, justified her own semi-nocturnal treasure hunt for the Missing Light Switch (“I’m sure I’ve just switched off half the incubators and two thirds of the dialysis machines in the place, and I still can’t see what Cheryl Cole’s wearing on her feet this week!”), and avoided the future potentialities of her prognosis (“They say I have a disease,” she said, in the same tone she’d use if someone suggested she had, say, a knockoff pair of Gucci sunglasses:  We don’t do cheap, vague or mundane, in my family. It’s all Drama! Explicit! And Receipts!!!)

Summer’s ending. Winter’s coming. But, between it and us, we have a potentially golden autumn, filled with new births (hello Pat), hugs scented with Barbecue and Rosemary, hope (It’s only a disease ferchrissakes), memories of golden autumns past and anticipation of great times to come.

I started working out seriously about three years ago.

My mother once - famously, to those who know us, and somewhat paraphrased - said “Derek, rich people have Therapy. Poor people have confession. And occasional outbursts.”

And to that, I’d add: The gay children of the working class, having attained middle-classdom, retained their ability to talk incessantly about themselves, and yet not managed to shed the fear of facing the nugget of sadness deep in their history, have drugs. Or Three years of Working out, with a small series of epiphinae along the way.

I know why I hated sports as a kid: ‘Cos I’d be crap, and people would laugh at me. And Death would be preferable to mockery.

I’ve worked with a couple of trainers in the time, and I’ve learned from them – the same way I’ve learned from some managers in my professional life; just when you think “I Can’t…” you probably can. Just once. Or twice. But you can. You. Can.

Last week, I was placed in front of another man and told to “Punch him.”

No headguards. No coppers waiting to nab me if I, by some fluke, paralysed the fucker.

And I wanted to walk away. Wait; I wanted to RUN away. Cos this was gonna go bad; He’d punch my lights out, or I’d fall over, or I’d go all “Oooh, I broke a nail.”

But I stayed, ‘cos, really, running away wasn’t an option.

And, after one hundred and twenty seconds of the two of us waltzing in double time around the floor, contacting occasionally, and ducking – simultaneously at times – it was over.

And nobody laughed. And I hadn’t fled. And I’d hit him a few times, and taken, in return, a few enervating whacks, and I’d thought – once or twice – “Oh, that’s a bit fucking hard,” and gone right out to get him back, then learned – all this in 2 minutes – that rushing to vengeance was dumb, if it made you drop your guard; and I’d wanted, by the end of it all,  to do it again – for longer, with more at risk, with some Fucking PUNCH in it! Yes, folks, I was – in my mind for a nanosecond – Jason Statham.

And this week, on a session at the local gym, my trainer has me running shuttle runs (which, by the end, are more shuttle plods) and lifting weights I think are “Pshaw there’s nothing to this weight,” til the twentieth or thirtieth rep, when – though it’s gossamer light – the muscles are screaming for release.

And I realise how supremely happy I am.

I see how much of my life has been wasted running away from what frightens me.

I understand that confronting – and running to punch, bruiser-hug, slap, deal – with what scares me might result in horrifying embarrassment, terrible bruises, sadness, and occasionally people laughing at me; but ultimately, the sheer thrill of living with the knowledge that I can stand there – in an awful attempt to ape the classic Boxers stance – and confront the fuckers, and not go down, no matter what, is liberating and life-enhancing.

And then I went home and played Kylie at full blast, just in case I got too butch.

I drink alcohol like W.C. Fields when they’ve just called last orders. I eat what I want, when I want. I could “make so much more” of myself if I undertook some chicken and raw beef diet, but I don’t want to.

‘Cos the changes I’m seeing – and the changes I’m feeling – are enough, for now.

I like being me. It’s not bad.

Now, which of you motherfuckers wants some of this?

Oh My God!!!

Still exploring this site, but the “In the kingdom of the blind” Quote has me sold. Since I was 9 or 10 I have loved the original French version of the quote:

“au royaume des aveugles, les borgnes sont rois.”

Yes, I was a pretentious queen at nine. Sue me. Actually, there’s a funny story there. Remind me to tell you it some time.

You’re busy. We’re busy. Summer has, if you’ll pardon the expression, been a shit soup: Little nuggets of joy floating in a thick and at times impenetrable broth of shit - of my own and other peoples making.

But fall (look at me! How Americaine am I? That’s your actual French, you know!) is shaping up to be weird.

Weird insofar as, after a summer of shit, I can’t quite remember how to be normal and relaxed and enjoy - I want to run up to “good” grab it, and hug it to my breast desperately. Which makes me sound like Glen Close in that film with the Casserole du Lapin.

I need some Yoga classes, but nobody will touch me til I work out how to make my shoulders touch the floor (apparently I’m looking buff  “But sweetheart,” said one of my trainers - yes we have several; the benefits of being queens with friends in the fitness industry - “You could play Richard the third without prosthetics!”). And apparently my Chakra is all out of whack, but that’s nothing that a few Valium and vanilla smoothies can’t cure.

Have been informed by a rather odd “Psychic Jewess” at work (what is it with me and the Chosen People? I don’t know if she’s really Jewish or just psychically so, but that’s how she introduced herself to me) that I “Simply must be at least a thirty-second Jewish,” which wouldn’t, apparently, have saved me from the camps, but entitles me to a subscription to Heeb magazine, so I suppose that’s something to be positive about…

Anyway Raquel (I reckon her parents named her Rachel, but it wasn’t “Psychically Jewess-y” enough for her) reckons she can foresee futures using a mixture of Kaballa, automatic writing and Strong Psychotropic Drugs, and sees me “Living in Manhattan by the age of sixty.”

SIXTY? Jesus. I don’t wanna be Quentin Crisp; I wanna be Lou Reed.

Am I rambling? Do stop me….

Think: Eight years ago, the world was ending, and here we all are. My city of choice has changed; our lives have changed. The world is different. But we’re still here, and we still have love and respect for each other, and that means a HUGE HUGE amount to me.

Raaaaaaaaamblingg…….

Seriously; things haven’t been great of late, but the old ship has sailed the reefs, and the sight, on the horizon, of friends, Beloved people, places, memories and the knowledge that what we have, and have had – all of us, together and apart - is too huge to be anything more than scraped by the storms of the past 5 months, has kept us going.

Right. Love you.

We outta here. Peace. But Beyonce SHOULD have won that award!!!!!

Dxxx