From Bath to Cork with baby Grace

Lying in bed at 11:20 am is an un-pleasant thing to do on a Saturday morning.

I slept over eight hours last night, my Snore Lab App shows I snored 30% of the time.

I want to stay indoors all day.

My daughter wants to go out and play a hockey match.

The Wiffe wants to buy logs for the fire in Middleton.

I don’t know what the dog wants,

The cat will find a way to be satisfied.

There’ll be nothing lyrical today. Everything in the minor key.

Discontent

Dissonance

Destroyed

Disconsolate.

I have nothing to contribute out of this empty shape. All energy lost. If I’m not kind to myself today, who will love me enough? Who will pamper me enough?

I have responsibilities.

There is audio from The Talk Show for Talkers” to edit.

There is “The Spy and the Traitor” to finish.

There is the coaching poem which is in draft.

It would be irresponsible not to have a cup of coffee with a friend

Irresponsible not to shave.

Irresponsible not to spend a few minutes thinking of my extended family.

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What an excellent way to capture an unfolding day. Your mention of a day in D Minor especially caught my attention. There are so many beautiful music compositions in D Minor you could maybe play to alleviate the day’s discordance.

— Tara Breslin (@stationarygypsy) February 16, 2019

Back in Café Beva for a quick slurp with Roger Overall at 9:07AM.

He’s gone now – off to see a potential new client for Show&Tell Communications.

(Maybe there’ll be more work for us in March.)

Baths

I was meant to dash home to let a bathroom-transformer in to our house.

When’s the last time I had a bath? How many baths have I had since 2007?

How many times will I climb over the side and practise the first part of what Archimedes did?

Which came first – the bath or the shower? Which is more popular in Siberia?

Coffee

Thank goodness I got a text from the Wiffe – “take your time, I’m home.”

That’s why I’m sipping a black Americano at a square table which has a Formica top.

A Thursday morning at 10 am, I’m having breakfast in Café Beva in Glanmire. Eating scrambled eggs and sausages, drinking a black Americano.

In front of me the Irish examiner newspaper.

It’s a dry cloudy day, less damp than usual.

I put a vase containing a small bunch of two red roses, one white rose, and three sprigs of lily in the kitchen.

Louis, our English setter, is in the car. I’ll take him for a walk when I finish here.

Thinking back to 2005, when our daughter was born, and we came to Cork, from BathWith baby Grace – that was another age.

I started blogging, often daily. The good old days when blogs sometimes attracted long conversations on text.

In those days I grew new friendships via the blog, by commenting on other people’s blogs and a few times meeting bloggers face-to-face.

I remember JL Pagano, Paige Harrison, John of Dublin, Sinead Gleeson, Conn O Muíneacháin. I’ll remember more later.

The best way to start blogging is to read the blogs of other people, and connect with them on their blog. I left a lot of comments. It didn’t matter very much to me how many people read my blog posts.

I had an audience. I wrote for my daughter knowing that she would not be interested in anything I wrote for maybe 25 or 30 years.

It’s important to have a focus. It was also excellent writing practice.

Today I find it hard to recognise my own writing. Sometimes I say “how did I write that? Where did those words come from?”

Maybe I was a better writer then.

The words came to me as if they were an organic extension of my daily life, and thoughts, and feelings.

Sometimes poems came. sometimes political invective came. Other times observations about this new country I had returned to.

In February 2019, I don’t know what will come out.

We’ll see.

Falling apart

One day you’re fine,

you’re on top of the world,

full of wonder, purpose, design,

and enough energy to navigate

on an ocean of beckoning life.

Like a cormorant that dives deep

and surfaces with a beak full of fish,

like a hawk that swoops

and rises with the food that matters,

yo u’re in love with the melody of every day life.

Until the day you wake

with a tetchy throat,

raw retching cough,

a nose that dribbles,

and you’re streaming down

into a conviction

there is no way back,

there is only one highway

to the other side,

and the road is rough enough

to erase the memory and melody

of a life you used to think was grand.

A broken wing, a blinded eye,

a crippled hunter,

all paradise lost,

the wilderness of unrelenting self pity.

And you know it will have its way with you,

And you know there’s no fighting back,

no resurrection overnight,

but hours to wait, and drugs,

the chemistry of recovery.

And you are left looking

through the only question

that matters to you,

the only mystery that matters any more:

When will I fall apart and lose my heart,

again.