"They either don't know - or they're lying"

Listening to Joe Duffy - for once. Normally, I don't get to hear it, cos I'm at work, but I'm at home today.

There's a man on talking about leaving for England. He calls himself 'a survivor'. Fair play to him. He reckons that there's something very wrong here. How perceptive of him. they don't have the money to get driving lessons - especially in rural Ireland, so he's going.

He said "They either don't know - or they're lying". That's the most perceptive statement that I've heard in a long time.

My brain is in a kind of paralysis. Between the Politicians and the Meeja, both are complicit in sucking the oxygen out of the air - at least that's what it feels like to me...

I'm off to read a historical novel... a bit of alternative perspective would be good

Grieving for 'da boooom'?

What stage are we at as far as the grief for our lovely and ever-so-defunct (ka)boooooom? I looked up the 7 stages. According to one source, they are:
1. Shock and Denial
2. Pain and Guilt
3. Anger and Bargaining
4. Depression/Reflection/Loneliness
5. The Upward Turn
6. Reconstruction and Working Through
7. Acceptance and Hope

I wish these stooopid politicians would STFU and leave us grieve at our own pace, for heavens sake. They keep on mixing the messages - once minute feigning shock, the next trying to tell us that reconstruction is immanent. Yah-right!

I've had my fill of them - all of them.

Anyone for participitative democracy - anyone? Anyone at all?

Pension Blues...

The other day, the guy from the company that handles my PRSA came to meet me. He's very personable and agreeable. He's a brilliant salesman - and not in a shark in a sharp suit kind of way. More the old-fashioned way of telling you what he does, what the benefits are - and he's believable... boy, is he believable.

I checked on a savings-cum-life assurance policy that I've been putting about €60 a month into since about 1988 the same day. About €20 of it was 'savings' and the balance was life cover. It was some quare scheme of a thing whereby the savings allowed you to claim tax-relief I think. I never have claimed the tax relief though. I remembered that it was meant to 'mature' when my daughter went to college, so I asked what the value was. I am now the proud owner of €85 savings. Imagine that - after 20+ years of saving! We wouldn't want to be breeding doctors, now would we...?

So, I don't believe in PRSA's. I still have one, mind you. It's a Pascal's Wager sort of thang. (And no, I don't believe in that Catholic God that I was born and bred on either, but...) I reckon that I'll have about tuppence-ha'penny when it comes to that PRSA, but the company pays € for € what I put in, so I keep putting it in.

I'm probably fairly representative of about 95% or more of this 'society' we live in. I love my family. I work hard. I care for my neighbours. I contribute as much as I can. I will NOT retire at 55 - not if I have a choice. I do NOT break the law in any significant way (said she, as she remembered that the tax is up on the car since the beginning of April...) I will NOT have Directorships and Memberships of Boards etc. being offered to me. I'm not important enough.

I don't want to sound self-righteous, self-congratulatory, or smug. But here's the thing. I LOVE my job. I KNOW that I do it well - well parts of it anyway. I KNOW that I've earned my salary when it comes through - my record is 36 hours straight through without a meal-break to get my stuff done for a deadline. I KNOW that I contribute to my community by doing this job. I KNOW that there are 45+ people who are working, who more than likely would not be in that position but for the work I put in. I KNOW that there are 250+ people who benefit directly from the work that we do, day-in, day-out, even if most of them don't know about the background work that has to be done.

I often wonder what my life would be like now if I had taken another path. If I'd put in this much effort at a business of my own, or another 'big-business' of some kind, would I have developed the skillsets, ruthlessness and instinct for the carotid necessary to get to an equivalent position. I doubt it, but who knows. I've known a few of them, and they are utterly alien to me.

I will probably regret not having spent more time with my children - the old adage of people never regretting that they didn't spend more time in the office. It might sound resentful and jealous, but it's the truth - I KNOW that I can sleep at night. When I wake in the morning, I might dread looking in the mirror, but that's an age thang. It's not the little imps of conscience knawing at the synapses behind furtive eyes.

But there are pensions and then there are Pensions. Some Pensions are worth multiples of an ordinary joe's salary. Some might have to be stalked and pestered into giving - sorry that should be 'Gifting'them back.

Well, my life may not be that luxurious, but I can still only wear one set of clothes at a time, or eat one meal at a time, or sleep in one bed at a time. And that sleep - short and all as it is usually - is precious to me. That might not be good enough for the buiceanna móra making "gifts" of their pensions back today.
No, not good enough for them - but 'tis good enough for me.

Post NAMA Depression - the Remedy!

I realised on the 4th of April - Easter Sunday - that NAMA-paralysis had taken control of my brain. I woke up with the word Anglo seared onto my brain, honestly. I had spent the previous three days following every post, tweet, radio and TV interview on the subject.

I had dragged myself out of bed each morning, since I was off work (not by choice I might add). I dragged myself from my PC at 2 am, 3 am, even later... I had calculated and recalculated how much I would end up paying for Anglo, for NAMA in general. I had day-dreamed about what tortures I would inflict on Seanie (Fitzpatrick), Patrick (Neary), Fingleton, Drumm, Cowen, Ahern, Linehan, the list goes on and on and on and on... I was burned the hell OUT.

To make matters worse, I had promised my little boy that I would take him, and his two best friends, out for the day on that particular day - Easter Sunday. Well, the state of the economy, the world, the political landscape, are inconsequential trivia to a nine-year old boy. And so they should be. So off we went to Cool Wood in Killarney.

The drive was fine - not too long. The children didn't know where they were going so I kept the conspiracy up til we arrived. The lads ran after geese, who ran back at them hissing like mad. They searched for eggs and got tons of treats. The emus looked at me in that vacant supercillious way they have. The lama patrolled his patch with the watchfulness of a presidential bodyguard. The sun shone briefly. People nodded to each other and smiled to themselves while they watched the childrens' delight in finding a little plastic egg... and eggs means T R E A T S !!

When the rain started it was just a sprinkle, not a downpour. We were ready to leave in any case, so we made our way home and I fed the lads before taking them home. By then the rain really was bucketing down, but we'd had a good day, they were happy, and my brownie credit points were at Anglo levels.

Arriving at one of the boy's houses, I missed the turn and had to reverse... BAD MOVE. Distracted by the fog from the hot little lungs that had been screaming in the back of the car, the drivers side of the car went off into a shallow ditch on the roadside. It wouldn't have been a problem except for the rain.

I was stuck in mud as slick as an estate agent. Now this should have been when my depression, which had lightened during the time with the boys, should have kicked back in. Normally, if something goes wrong with the car, I'll sit in the driver's seat and bang on the wheel in frustration. But somewhere during the manoevering myself out of the car and knee deep in cold mucky water, gathering stones to shove under the wheel with cold mucky fingers, I started to giggle.

I called my husband when it didn't work and I dug myself deeper. My daughter sent me a text saying "What's up, what's wrong, r u OK? /" I sent a message back - "I'm fine, car stuck in the mud and me covered in it!" with a picture attached of me complete with mudpack. The giggling got worse, and I thought it was hysteria, and tried to hold it in. But when I slipped and got my bottom thoroughly soaked as well, with the concerned Mom of Boy 1 looking on, I just started to laugh properly.
What else was there to do...!

D'you know, that belly-laugh did me the world of good. The depression lifted. I'd still love to engage in a little light torture, but I'd do it through ridicule rather than red-hot pokers - and that's progress in my eyes.

Do-the-(re)-Shuffle

"Shuffling is a procedure used to randomize a deck of playing cards to provide an element of chance in card games. Shuffling is often followed by a cut, to ensure that the shuffler has not manipulated the outcome" - from Wikipedia

To be honest, I think this image here is a bit more appropriate for todays events in Kildare Street...

http://www.4to40.com/images/games/fun/musical_chair.gif

but hey - who am I?
A lowly Worm is all...
Still, there are a lotta lotta Worms out there.
In all sorts of places.
Doing all sorts of jobs.
And if we're cornered - who's to say?
The Worms could turn...

Lá an Mháthair (not Mothers' Day - Mother's Day)

Ok - it's just a pesky apostrophe... what I mean is - this is not about Mother's Day, it's about the Day I became a Mother.

When I first found out that I was pregnant, the idea of childbirth terrified me. Literally a case of 'ar eagla na h-eagla'. It was the fear that frightened me. The idea of this quite large thing coming from this very small place just did my head in. About a week before my first baby was born, I was marching down Patrick St. in Cork, absolutely refusing to waddle like a pregnant woman does, when I missed the pavement and stepped down on the street. There was this sensation in my belly a sinking feeling, and boy did I waddle away after that. But as I walked on, there were a lot of people walking toward me, and it just struck me 'All of these people have been born, someone has been through childbirth so that these people could be here'. So what's the big deal, they could do it, I can do it. and from that moment, I had no fears, total acceptance, que sera sera, if I tear apart, if I break up, I will - so be it. I was told afterward that that sensation was probably the baby's head engaging, and I figure that the hormones really kicked in at that stage, and that's why my fears abated.

When labour started, a few days later, my body know exactly how to cope. It was the only time in my life when my mind and my body/brain separated and each dealt with its own priorities. The natural drugs that the body releases did their job, and my mind took off and floated while the body got on with the job in hand. In between contractions I was cold, calm, flat, white, then as the pain built up and concentrated into a hard, blazing hot, fist of pain, and then relaxed and spread out again as the contraction subsided.

Time can take on strange properties. As labour went on time stretched and stretched, and my mind searched for things to occupy it while this was going on. As the time of birth approached, I thought of my other, how she had been roughly the same age as I was then when her first child was born. But when I was born she was 43, so I had never known her as a young woman, and even though my head knew that she had once been young, I had never acknowledged those other versions of her that had preceded my birth. Sometimes when I come across someone like a teacher I had when I was very small, for a single instant, I become again that ungainly ugly, gap-toothed little girl with scraggy hair and big ears, and then my adult self slips back into place again.

But that little girl is still there somewhere inside me, and so is the smart-ass, swaggering, teenager that I was, and all the other versions of me to date. They haven't gone away - they're just encapsulated by later versions. But I had never acknowledged Mother as anything other than 'Mother' - the role. Then, just before baby arrives, there's this pause. Not a lull or a calm, but a pause full of expectation and panting breaths, and in that moment it struck me that now I was becoming Mother. and that terrified me, because Mother to me meant two things. I loved her dearly, but she was also the source of the most intense irritation to me, and I didn't want to be like her. And now here I was, on the point of becoming her, becoming Mother. And there was no way that I could change that. But also I realised that she had gone through this same process, and I felt a kinship that I had never felt before, and the fact that my baby was a little girl meant that this process was being repeated again, and again. There's a sort of mirroring of the push-pull of birth, and the push-pull of versions of ourselves, and the push-pull of the relationships we have with people.

And then these versions of ourselves are battling for a bit of territory as well. Often when we change from being one version to another, it's quite sudden. One moment you're single, the next you're married. One moment you're married, the next you're a widow(er). Other people regard you as being the 'new' you immediately, but generally we have to evolve or grow into the new version. Another image I had thought of using in this poem was immediately the new baby was born, they put her on my stomach. I could feel this wave of expectation from the mid-wives and from within myself, to go 'Ahh, isn't she gorgeous' but I just went 'Yuchh'. My expectation of a baby was soft, and warm, and pink and cuddly. But this was cold, and slimy, and wrinkly, and purple, and I thought 'Ohmigod, I am not NOT ready for this - Help' Just because I've been through the process of childbirth, that does not mean that I automatically click into Mother-mode. I still don't know how to change a nappy, I've never done it in my life. Why is it expected that I automatically know if she's sick, or dying of hunger, or choking? I don't know how to do all of this Mother-stuff yet. I don't want to be Mother - My mother. I don't know if I can be Me - Mother because this version of me is too new, the skin doesn't fit yet, I'll have to grow into it.

Then when the baby cried for the first time, I went through that same acceptance thing that I had before. This was all part of a process. The likelihood was that this baby would probably have babies too, and so on, and so on, and the parts fitted a little better together in the jig-saw which had been thrown at me, higgledy-piggledy in this maelstrom of hormones and sensations and unaccustomed events. I was just one more piece of this continuous line of mothers and daughters which stretches back unimaginable distancesWe all cry - we cry in sorrow, in grief, and we cry when growing pains and other pains afflict us, and we cry with happiness, and with joy.

My daughter’s name is - Joy.

Mother's Day

And then each second sagged on the clock on the wall,
And the pain pulled and pulled in and in to the core.
Bone will break
If it must
It'll wrench the flesh to dry dust.

Morning welled up and spilled over the window,
Drenching the cold, milk-white, walls with its light.
But I am
Full of heat,
There is blood, on the flat snow-white sheet.

I wish to dissolve in a still, dropping, pool
Of crystal and ice, to dive down to the deep.
Numb my heart
But I gape -
Blot it out - no, no, look - no escape . . .

Mother ? My mother ? Me ? My daughter ?
One more heave,
My world shifts.
But my self is the same,
Though cells will divide and they cluster and grow,
Turn old and dry wrinkle and shrivel and die

Deep in that womb, weeping that woman,
Holds baby, the beauty, the bride,
The wife, mother, widow - all cry.
They push and then pull, and they bawl.
They all cry.

Brian O'Driscoll for President !

Oh yes!
I think Brian O'Driscoll would make a great President.
He has the capacity to lead, with a disarming and honest face, and the twinkle in the eye is is bright as David Norris' for a start!
Oh yes, I'd vote for him in a nanosecond - but maybe he has better things to do.

Here's a conundrum.
When commentators talk about rugby, there's a phrase that's often overused:
'they lay their bodies on the line for the team'.
As a nation, we can produce sports people of the calibre of Brian O'Driscoll, Ronan O'Gara, Paul O'Connell, John Hayes... the young turks, Bowe, Heaslip, the list goes on. And that's just the rugby. There are stars of equal stature in Hurling, Football, Horseracing, Athletics, etc. Hurling is a magnificent game. I love that unique mixture of balletic athleticism, lightening speed and the precision of a poet. But for pure passion, give me rugby...
It's the one sport I follow.

As a small child, I remember sitting beside my father to look at matches. It's strange, looking back. We lived in a GAA heartland; my brothers all played Gaelic football; and my father zealously followed the Cork team through good years and bad. My dad was the mildest of men. Many said he was too mild for his own good. Except when it came to rugby.

My memories are filled with grainy black-and-white pictures together with strikingly colourful language from the normally calm, sombre man beside me. And this was in the era of the ban, remember! He would swear and grumble, curse the damned Welsh, call down the Ides of March, call the Scots and Sassanaigh all the names under the sun, plus some that never will see the sun. He idolised Jack Kyle, Mike Gibson, Willie John McBride. They were his heros, and he, of course, was mine - so maybe they became my heros by proxy. Whatever the reason, I still love the honesty of effort, stepping up to the mark with nowhere to hide, the craic of the third half, the brotherliness. A glimpse into an utterly male domain.

Though he died in 1983, last year, during the 6 Nations, I felt my Dad beside me as I sat on my sofa. We bobbed and weaved, we pulled, we pushed, we felt every tackle, we breathed so deep in an effort to will them the strength to go another inch, and another inch. And together we inched our way, all the way to the Grand Slam. Oh, how he would have gloried in it.

They gave every ounce they had for each other.
The trust in each other was absolute and unwavering.
The ultimate in teamwork.
And they still are -
And the new breed show all the signs of carrying the torch forward to yet another level.

So, what's the conundrum?

Well, if we can produce heros like this,
and we can produce artistry like Yeats, Joyce, Shaw,
Ó Riordáin, Kavanagh, Wilde, Swift, Eileen Gray, ...
scientists like Boole, Beaufort, Tyndall, Boyle...
Pantridge, Anthony Clare...
engineers like Ferguson, Holland, Callan, Mitchell...
and I couldn't even TRY to list the musicians, singers, dancers - think about it,
Spillane, John Field, Ó Riada, Sinéad O'Connor, U2, Riverdance, . . .

All uniquely Irish, all magnificent in their field.

So the conundrum?
If we can produce these magnificent beings, why on earth are we making do with Cowen, Coughlan, Lenihan, and though I'm convinced that Kenny, Gilmore et al would do better, I don't know how much better they would be.

We should have inspirational politicians, God knows that we need them.
We need passion. The capacity to 'lay the body on the line for the team'.

Cometh the hour - where is the (wo)man ?