By
noeleenm on June 15th, 2007
The Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults training course is over, the General Elections are over, the appointment of a new Government is over – even the good weather is over, at least temporarily.
It’s a soft grey day today, and it feels like the beginning of a weekend in November, rather than the middle of June.
Since my last April post right up to General Election day in Ireland (which also happened to be the final night of our CELTA course), I was so busy that stories of a changing Ireland just got squeezed out of my schedule. Then, in the immediate aftermath of the Elections/course, I went on an ‘after-school’ binge of being out of doors in the sunshine and air I’d missed so much in the previous weeks.
I’ve climbed Bray Head in the evening, absorbing air, beauty, and bird-song in a heart-gladdening mixture, and gardened at the weekends, with dollops of talk and laughter and catching-up with house-family and family of origin and friends in between. That the end of all this busy-ness coincided with the return to our house of a beloved ’son’ – Jan from the Czech Republic – added to the contentment.
Our ‘family’ seems to be going through one of those patches where it gathers other people up as well – Alba’s parents from Spain, briefly, and her Irish boyfriend, more long-term; Kasia’s friends from Poland, also briefly; now Jan’s girlfriend, Letti, who has come to stay in Ireland (not in our house, but hopefully nearby) for a few months; while Gint, our longest resident, has been increasingly busy in his new career laying timber floors.
For me these past few weeks have been a quiet ‘honeymoon’ period in a very busy life, but already things are moving again. I was lucky enough to do well in the CELTA course, and luckier again to be offered two nights a week teaching English in International House, where I did the course. It started last Monday, and it’s nervewracking, stimulating, and fun!
With the election of a new Government, and the appointment of new Ministers, it’s time again to pick up the battle to keep our floodplain free of high density building. With the Green Party going into coalition with Fianna Fail, and a Green Minister for the Environment, we need to make the most of these few weeks before the Government goes into its summer recess.
…Especially as the otherwise excellent flood defence proposals being put forward seem to suggest that, with these in place, there is no need for the floodplain to be preserved… With the news of drought and flood from Australia over this past week, and the extreme flooding much nearer to home in Donegal in the past few days, it’s hard to believe that anyone can seriously moot this argument any longer – but they do.
So, on with the warpaint again and out with the English language text books, but in between there will be some time for working in the garden, walking in the hills, and coming home to Gint, Kasia, Alba, and Jan in this changing Ireland of ours…
Posted in Czech Republic, Flooding, Friends, House Family, Ireland, Latvia, McManus Family, Poland, Spain | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on February 12th, 2007
Last night my home was filled with live music. As Rasa, Maria, and then Wojtek, left, I deliberately did not replace them in order to have some space to get the entire house cleared back to its bones, including my own room. I wanted, too, to have room to decide what I want to do next, with my house and with myself.
But, because of Christmas, New Year, and then my 60th birthday celebrations, family and friends seem to have flooded into the space left by my young foreign friends. On Saturday night, for instance, we had a ‘Carcassonne’ reunion with the friends with whom I went to France, and on Sunday night Gerti, Eoin, Oliver, and Nando, Gerti’s German Shepherd, came to dinner to celebrate my birthday a month late, and brought music with them…
Gerti, who is from Germany, lived in my house sixteen years ago, and we became – and have remained – close friends, despite the fact that months often go by without our seeing each other. Since Gerti met Eoin, her husband, we have gotten to know each other, especially since I designed a web site for his business last year. And Oliver was a friend of Gerti’s when she lived here, and has remained a friend of both Gerti and Eoin since. Although we see far less of each other, Oliver is the kind of person you can pick up with just where you left off.
When they arrived, bearing gifts of food, Eoin said: “I brought the piano with me”, and I laughed. I’ve always felt that the only problem with that lovely instrument is precisely that you can’t bring it with you to a party. But he had…
He produced, and assembled, a full-size Yamaha keyboard, that he played later in the evening. It has a beautiful sound, and Eoin knows how to produce it. He played classic old Irish airs, like Carrickfergus, the Sally Gardens, Danny Boy, and newer Irish songs like those of Jimmy McCarth, before going on to his own kind of favourites - ranging from Gershwin to the Beatles – and some of his own compositions. He kept reminding me, as we sat around the blazing fire, drinking a mixture of beverages of the song ‘The Piano Man’, despite their drinks being non-alcoholic. Then, to my surprise, Gerti stepped up and announced that she was going to sing a song with him, and that she had written the lyrics herself to the air of an old German folksong.
It was a song for my birthday, describing ‘my friend’ (me!) as Gerti sees me, with all the bias of an old close friend. It was about the flood campaign and about family and friends and living and loving life and about language and about passion, and it reduced me to tears. It was perhaps one of the nicest gifts I received for my birthday – the gift of loving words, wrapped up in music. And I am grateful for it.
Posted in Friends, Germany, Ireland | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on November 21st, 2006
If I’m ever going to tell stories about a changing Ireland again, I’d better finally finish with my photos of New York…
Mostly these were taken in Central Park, all 843 acres of it tranquil in October colours. The photos include two statues that set me off on the trail of a Polish King – and Alaskan huskies.Â
First, though, a bronze cougar crouching menacingly over a trail, seals being fed in New York Zoo, and Turtle Pond, a place where even music is banned in this varied Park – a ‘quiet place’.
 
 
These next three sent me home to demand news from Wojtek of this Polish king, and to the internet for the story behind Balto, the husky…
 
 
Getting news of Jagiello turned out to be easy. He was the Lithuanian King who, by marrying the young Polish Queen (she was eleven at the time of the marriage!), united those two countries and brought Poland into what was considered to be its Golden Age. I found this interesting because of Grazine and Ratsa from Lithuania, and Magda and Wojtek from Poland, all of whom lived/live in our house.
But the story of the incredible race by teams of huskies across Alaska carrying antitoxin to the town of Nome, stricken with diphtheria in 1925, turned out to be even more fascinating than the inscription on the statue. Balto, the dog who led the final team into the town, became a popular hero – and rightly so, as were each of the 100 plus dogs and twenty drivers who carried the life-saving medicine for 674 miles in less than five and a half days in conditions so cold that planes couldn’t fly in it.
But http://www.njsdc.com/history.html tells the story of the dog who was the greatest hero of all during that incredible mercy run. Balto ran the last fifty miles, but ten year old Togo had led the team for 340 miles - just over half the entire journey, and was left permanently lame as a result. His name doesn’t even appear on the inscription.
Bravo, Togo!
Now, Turtle Pond from another viewpoint, the fountain, and the boat lake in Central Park…
 
…Fifth Avenue reflected in the huge mirror at Rockefeller Square, a door near the square with figures representing the workers’ guilds of America, and Rockefeller Square.
 
 
The explanation of the motto above the workers’ guilds emblems on the door – ‘Dieu et mon droit’ is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieu_et_mon_droit and there’s a far better photograph of the same door at travel.webshots.com while at aviewoncities.com you’ll find a some interesting background on the Rockefeller Center.
Below, the UN building in New York, a demonstration on the opposite pavement, and an old church near Ground Zero…
And, finally, the endlessly fascinating juxtaposition of building to sky, building to bulding to sky, and my two shopaholic friends outside Macy’s store…
Because my camera battery ran out, I’ve no pictures of Washingston Square in Greenwich Village, where we spent a magical Sunday afternoon, listening to sixties music played by people who just wandered along, took out their instruments and joined in the sessions; watched street entertainers juggle and listened to a brass band; and found two real vegetarian restaurants within a door’s space of each other. I’d strongly recommend a visit to it though - it’s my kind of place…
Posted in Friends, Holidays, Ireland, USA | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on September 22nd, 2006
Last night storms lashed Ireland. Today they have abated, but only in the way a small, fierce terrier will retreat when threatened, darting stubbornly back in to attack as soon as he sees an opening.
Torrential rain and gusting winds are coming in fierce, sporadic bursts – while in between a weak sunshine reveals a dripping-from-the-bath world.
It’s autumn.
Sometimes this season can be one of the most beautiful of all, with leaves changing the ‘forty shades of green’ to forty shades of brown and russet and gold and yellow, and the subtle translucent light of autumn skies.
It’s as if all the hard work and energy usually needed to grow and be fruitful can now be converted instead to one last great burst of sheer colour and exuberance.
Retirement can be like that, too.
The need to work for a living should, at least, be finally over, and there’s time to follow all the dreams you never had the time to indulge – until now.
Last Sunday, I met with three friends for lunch. Our friendship goes back some forty years, when we were all involved in Guiding. Breda is the first of us to retire, and over our own celebratory lunch we looked at photographs of the retirement parties they had organised for her in Cappagh Hospital (where my sister-in-law, Marie, is now recuperating from a replacement knee operation).
Breda worked in Cappagh as a nurse for over thirty years, the latter part of them as head of the recovery unit, where patients arrive after surgery. She was a dedicated, compassionate, intelligent nurse, and, from the photographs and gifts and accounts of the parties, it’s obvious that her colleagues appreciated it.
It was, and is, an emotional time for her, but she’s looking forward to her own autumnal display of colour.
Breda has always been an academic. I’ve often felt that the mortar cap and gown would have suited her constantly enquiring brain better than a nurse’s uniform – but that would obviously have been a loss to a great many patients who benefited from her comforting, expert care.Â
Instead, she kept academia as almost a hobby, attending university at night to gain an excellent primary degree in Philosophy a few years ago.
When asked what use philosophy would be to her, she looked as if she’d been asked about the usefulness of a beautiful view from her window.
“I just like it”, she said, in bewilderment.
Now: “I’m not into sports, I can’t grow a plant to save my life, and I’m not artistic – though I’d love to be.”
So she’s returning to university to complete a Master’s Degree in Economics. And she can’t wait…
My cousin, Betsy, also retired this month, and tonight I’m joining family and friends and ex-workmates at a restaurant to celebrate it.
Betsy had a very different life from Breda. She worked in a laundry for most of it, and her nursing consisted of taking care of both her parents at home.
Uncle Willie, a funny, loving and hard-working man (Betsy resembles him in his humour and his hard work), smoked all his life, and the last months of it were spent at home, following the amputation of one of his legs.
He was my mother’s youngest brother, and they maintained a close ‘big sister, little brother’ relationship till the day he died.
Aunt Julia was Willie’s quiet, smiling counterpart, made more quiet by the deafness that plagued her for a long part of her life, despite hearing aids. After Willie died, Betsy became her mother’s ears and conduit to the rest of the world, as well as nursing an increasingly crippling deterioration of Aunt Julia’s spine.
When Aunt Julia, too, had gone, Betsy changed jobs, and went to work in a factory where most of her workmates were younger – and the funny, fun-loving person that is my cousin came out to play.
Her retirement parties, as well as her birthday parties, seem to be stretching over at least a fortnight, as her young colleagues organise a fitting farewell.
Her retirement plan is seemingly to take it easy enough to have plenty of energy for the trips and the parties she intends to go on enjoying until she is at least 80. Then she’ll see…
I hope for her, and for Breda, an autumn full of colour, with very little rain and only enough wind to fly a kite.
Posted in Friends, Ireland | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on September 13th, 2006
Yesterday I met my friend, Maureen, for lunch – eventually. The difficulty wasn’t that Maureen lives in Australia. She’s home on holiday in Ireland at present. The difficulty was that we had arranged that she would phone me on my mobile when she was in the approximate neighbourhood of my office so that I could then give her directions.
I had left my mobile at home.
Not only did I leave it at home, but I didn’t even realise that I had done so, and was watching jealously the parking space I had reserved for her arrival. We were to go to lunch at two o’clock and as the hour came near with no phone call I thought she’d been delayed. Then I thought perhaps she’d lost my mobile number and so I checked my home answering machine. Nothing.
By the time the complete absence of my mobile anywhere in my vicinity dawned on me, it was already past two. I rushed frantically to the restaurant, thinking she might have gone there (she hadn’t, as she didn’t know where it was), waited there half an hour (while she waited further up the road from my office, telephoning my mobile constantly), came back to the office and checked my car (still no mobile), went back to the restaurant (still no Maureen), and eventually went home for the mobile. Not only was the mobile waiting for me – with six missed calls – but a note from Maureen, who had gone there in desperation, was waiting, too.
It says a great deal about our friendship of over forty years that she not only didn’t murder me when we eventually met up, but that we managed to have a lunch together that went right through the afternoon till seven o’clock in the evening, and we were still talking as she prepared to drive away…
Maureen was a year behind me at school, but her older sister, June, and my older sister, Sally, were in the same class and so we knew each other’s families. In our late teens, Maureen stopped one day with some friends to watch a ceili (Irish group dance) being held on Bray seafront. I was already in love with the whole Irish scene, but Maureen…
“Next thing I knew, someone pulled me into a dance, and I never left.”
That group of friends went to ceilis together all over Ireland, took part in competitions, talked and sang and danced till the early hours of the morning, and fell into work, still on a high, the next day.
Among the ’stalwarts’ were Maureen, Cliona, Patty, Dermot, Kevin, Willie, Paddy – and myself – but the circle rippled outwards into wider and wider friendships all over Ireland. At the heart of the group were Sean and Eithne, in whose home we practically lived, while Sean encouraged the Irish language, music and dancing, and Eithne encourage confidence and friendship and romance.
It was a great time, a great way to grow up, and it forged friendships that lasted all our lives.
Eventually, of course, we went our different ways, and Maureen’s way took her to Angola to work for two years. There she met Dobri (short for Dobrivoje), from the part of Yugoslavia that is now known as Serbia. They fell in love, and came back to Ireland to get married before emigrating to Australia and a new life.
Their children were given the Catholic faith and Yugoslavian names, and Maureen and Dobri worked hard together at rearing them and at running their family construction business.
Dobri was the eldest of four children, unusual in Yugoslavia, and his brother, Vlasta (short for Vlastimir) went out to Australia also, where he married Helen.
Life was good for them in Australia, although they lived in fear of what was happening to Dobri and Vlasta’s father, aunt, and two sisters who remained in a Yugoslavia ravaged by war and ‘ethnic cleansing’, as the fall of the Soviet Union led to the break up of the former republic into Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia and Montenegro. Some 250,000 people died in the process.
Ten years ago, the idyll that was Australian life for their extended family was also shattered.
Dobri was diagnosed with a brain tumour, and it was twisted about a major artery in his head. At the same time, their family firm was taken to court in a case that they rightly won, but which almost destroyed them at the time.
Maureen is a great believer in the power of prayer, and she stormed heaven at that time. Dobri survived the operation to remove the tumour, and slowly began to learn again to walk, to talk, to function as an adult human being. The court case was resolved and it seemed as if their troubles were behind them.
Then Vlasta was diagnosed with the most malignant form of leukaemia. At first the doctors held out no hope at all, but eventually they tried chemotherapy, three times. It failed miserably.
“Vlasta would normally be around 13-14 stone in weight”, Maureen explained. “He went down to 7 stone, and he looked like a skeleton.”
With the help of the Red Cross (”they were fantastic”) tests were carried out on Vlasta’s father and aunt and sisters in Yugoslavia to look for a bone marrow match.
…But it was the slowly recovering Dobri who turned out to have the perfect match for his brother.
“They injected marrow into him first”, Maureen explained, “and that was very painful. Then they drew the marrow out and put it into a bag to be taken up to where Vlasta was waiting in the theatre above. But Dobri’s marrow seemed to ‘mature’ so quickly that it was ready long before Vlasta was prepared and I had to keep the bag warm against my body, and jiggle it, till they could take it!
“When they put the marrow into Vlasta it was like a miracle. You could actually see his face colour begin to come back straight away. He immediately began to get better.”
The doctors told the family that if the leukaemia recurred within a year, they would not put Vlasta through the procedure again. If it recurred within two years, they would consider it. If he lasted three years, they would definitely repeat it.
That was nine years ago, and Vlasta is healthy and happy, as is Dobri…
“If Dobri had not survived the brain tumour, neither would Vlasta have survived the leukaemia. None of the others were a match.”
The trauma and the near loss of both brothers made the already close family rethink the amount of time devoted to business. For the past five years, Maureen has come home to Ireland for four weeks to see her own siblings – and her friends.
She is shocked sometimes at the changes she sees in Ireland when she comes, and maybe that’s one of the reasons we’re comfortable together, because we were reared with the same values and have seen no reason to change them. She is comfortable too with the atmosphere in my ‘new family’, as she always was with the family in which I grew up.
“We get a lot of Serbians over to work in Australia, and it’s hard for them at first. It was the same for the Vietnames people before them, and they’re doing really well now in Australia, especially in the restaurant business.”
 She looks approvingly around her: “We all need a chance…”
Posted in Australia, Friends, Ireland | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on July 26th, 2006
The night before last, my friend, Frances, phoned me from hospital in Bristol. Her voice came strong and clear across the wire as she said: “I thought you’d like to hear from me this time. I’m not better, but I’m getting there…”
On Friday, she had spent six hours in surgery as fine wires were inserted deep into her brain to carry electrical impulses to stimulate the production of dopramine, the chemical lacking in people suffering from Parkinson’s Disease.
The day before, she had spent four hours in surgery as a metal cap was fitted to her skull to help pinpoint where the wires should go.
‘Deep Brain Stimulation’ is still at the developmental stage, and, although the hospital in Bristol has a very high success rate (the operation isn’t carried out in Ireland), it is still a terrifying prospect. Frances, though, had reached the point – after twenty years of battling with Parkinson’s, since she was 28 years old – of feeling it was worth the risk to stop the downward spiral.
And she came through it all with the kind of courage that left room for worry about how family and friends were feeling at home.
From Friday to Monday had been a rough time for Frances, and, consequently, for all of us, particularly Kevin, her husband. He had not only to watch Fran go through it, but was then expected to pass on news of her to all of us at home.
The brief ‘honeymoon’, when the brain swollen from the operation actually produces more dopramine, hadn’t happened for Frances. Instead, she had only the reaction that one would expect after spending over ten hours in surgery in two days – tiredness, weepiness, some anger and depression.
Despite Kevin’s calm tones – a rocklike characteristic that has probably kept them both sane during these years of fear – the news on Sunday night wasn’t great. My own reaction was as mixed as Frances’ – sorrow for them both and for all of us that depend so much on Fran’s courage, anger at the injustice of her courage and patience not seeming to evoke its just reward, fear for Fran’s future…
When the phone rang on Monday night, and I saw the English number come up, I was afraid of what change there might be… Then Frances’s voice came over the phone, stronger and clearer than I’ve heard it in a very long time, and with the usual concern that nobody should be worried or upset on her behalf.
Over the past few years, when Fran has telephoned at times when her medication just wasn’t ‘kicking in’, her shaking hands and weak voice made it difficult to understand her: this time it was my hands that were shaking, my voice that wasn’t functioning properly, and my eyes that were full of tears.
Last night I was able to phone her. Despite the fact that her voice was just as clear and strong, she wasn’t as well as the night before. She’d had a bad afternoon of cramps in her legs, and was waiting, again, for the medication to ‘kick in’.
“I won’t be coming home tomorrow after all”, she told me. “It’ll probably be the weekend before I’m released because they need to fine-tune the stimulator and the medication more before I go home.
“They say it could take up to a year before I get the full benefit out of all of this.
“But I’m getting better…”
It’s a typical declaration of faith and optimism from Frances, and, please God, it’s well founded. Her brain will produce more dopramine, her medication will work more effectively, the times when her limbs shake because there is too much chemical in her system or her body seizes up because there isn’t enough will get further and further apart…
But get better…? You can’t get better than the very best.
Posted in Friends, Ireland | 1 Comment »
By
noeleenm on July 19th, 2006
Last night I called to the house of Bernie and Mick Barry and their family, who live in the ‘flood basin’ of Little Bray. I was rounding up collectors for a door-to-door collection in aid of our ‘don’t dam our flood plain’ campaign, as – to our great relief – we’ve just been granted a permit by the Gardai.
Bernie is in a wheelchair, but had told our core group that, if we wanted newsletters, etc., dropped into houses around their area, their boys would be glad to do it. I wasn’t sure of the ages of the lads, and I wasn’t sure if Bernie and Mick would want them collecting money, albeit producing a permit and handing out receipts, so I went rather diffidently to the door.
When I’d beaten off offers of tea, and explained my request, Bernie looked at me as if I’d two heads, and said: “Sure, they’ll go in and ring the doorbells and I’ll do the talking from as near as I can get to them!” (I’ve realised all over again how wheelchair unfriendly most of our homes are since John Doyle, also a wheelchair user, joined our core group. Even my garden, with paved stepping stones, is a nightmare for him to cross.)
Initially I refused a seat, as well as tea, because I’d several other calls to make that evening. Three-quarters of an hour later, I realised I was sunk deep into their settee, and sunk just as deeply into conversation with Bernie and Mick. We talked about the flood plain, about bureaucracy, about campaigns…
“Did you see my car outside there?”, asked Bernie. “It’s adapted for disabled use, and I’ve been driving for so many years that I refuse to admit it because I’d give my age away. A few weeks ago my licence came up for renewal, and they insisted I have another medical. Now, I’ve the same condition I’ve always had, and it’s not going to change, but they insisted, so I went.
“I duly sent in the medical, which said exactly what my last medical had said, and I got back my licence telling me I can now drive a car, a motorbike, and a tractor…”
She threw back her head and roared with laughter. “I can’t even put one foot in front of the other! Wouldn’t I be great on a motorbike!”
Mike reckoned she’d be quite nifty on a tractor, too.
As we talked, and laughed (”sure, if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry”) about the strange ‘logic’ of bureaucracy, especially the kind that encourages high density building on flood plains and wheelchair bound ladies on motorbikes, the talk went on to fund-raising…
“I’ve done a bit of fund-raising for our archery club”, she told me (I checked – she could hit a politician at forty paces, and a planning official from even further away), and I also did a bit of fund-raising for ‘To Russia with Love’.”
‘To Russia with Love’ is a charity set up in 1998 by a Dublin housewife, Debbie Deegan, to improve the lives of the young children who live in Hortolova orphanage in Western Russia. Debbie had first gone there because she – and her family – had fallen in love with a little Russian girl from the orphanage who had spent a summer holiday with her family. The conditions she found at the orphanage appalled her…
Bernie, watching a documentary about the orphanage on television in Ireland was also appalled.
“I decided there was no point sitting here crying, so I organised an archery shoot, and I raised between five and six thousand euro for the charity. Then I had a big-blown up photograph of the cheque made and I wheeled myself all around the place displaying it, so that people would know their money really had gone to a good cause!”
I was still smiling, at her courage, her compassion, and her humour, when I finally managed to leave the house another half hour later.
It always amazes me what good company some people are who have what I would consider very strong grounds for being total moaning minnies…
One of them, my friend, Frances, is a particular case in point. Fran has had Parkinson’s Disease for twenty years now, since she was 28 years old, and has reared two children, walked – and at time hobbled – the Wicklow mountains with me, and is always the first person to support our ‘don’t dam our flood plain’ campaign, even though she lives on a hill way up our town, and will never suffer from the flooding this campaign is all about.
But, after twenty years of increasing medication, even courage and humour and flag flying stubbornness haven’t been enough to stop a deterioration that brought her this year to finally opt for brain surgery, that is still at the developmental stage.
Parkinson’s Disease occurs when the brain can no longer produce the chemical ‘dopamine’. This can be replaced, to some extent, by medication, but the medication produces side-effects, and, in addition, the body becomes used to the medication so that it requires more and more in order to function.
This still experimental surgery places fine wires deep in the brain, attached at the other end to an electrical stimulator inside the collarbone. When activated, this will send electric impulses to the brain to stimulate its own production of dopramine, hopefully enabling an improvement in the condition alongside a reduction in medication.
Frances was admitted to hospital in Bristol, England, yesterday, accompanied by her husband, Kevin, where she underwent a series of tests, which were filmed, while still on her medication. Today, off medication completely since yesterday, she will have repeated those tests, and again will have been filmed.
The results of those tests will decide whether or not she will go into theatre tomorrow morning to have a metal ‘cap’ or frame fitted to her head to prepare for the following day’s surgery. From the time she goes into theatre tomorrow – if she ‘passes’ the tests – until she comes out of recovery will be four and a half hours. Then she’ll have to try and sleep with the frame on her head, and face the ‘real’ surgery the following day.
She will remain in hospital for at least ten days, as they ‘fine-tune’ the procedure, provided they carry it out at all.
“I don’t know whether I’m more afraid that they’ll say I’m suitable for surgery, or I’m not”, she told me with a tremulous smile on Monday night, when I dropped up to wish her luck.
“What do you really want to be able to do again if it works well?”, I asked her. She looked at me for a moment, remembering. “I’d like to be able to walk in the hills again”, she told me…
You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if she met Bernie Barry on a motorbike.
Earlier this week I was working on an interview about my blog for Wicklow.com. The webmaster had sent me a list of ten questions, to which I had to reply. One of them was: ‘Who are your heroes?’
I named Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, and the Dunnes Stores workers who stayed on the picket line for two and a half years in support of the ban against trade with South Africa under the apartheid regime.
Today I realised I left at least one person much nearer home, and much closer to my heart, off my list. Next month I hope I’ll be walking with her in the Wicklow hills.
Posted in Friends | 3 Comments »
By
noeleenm on July 18th, 2006
Wojtek’s uncle’s name is Mariusz, known to family and friends – especially those who drink his wild rose wine – as Marek. The Korean girl who came to dinner is Eunkyung. I still don’t know how to spell Dong Kwang’s Chinese girl friend’s name.
…But it’s no wonder I had trouble with the young Polish couple’s names: they are Anna and David. Ouch!Â
Posted in Friends, House Family, Korea, Poland | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on July 17th, 2006
Last week I spent much of my normal ‘writing time’ thinking about trackbacks and pingbacks, and trying to understand how they work, with the very able and compassionate assistance of Mike Fox of Radicalbright.
Then on Saturday night, we had a ‘going away’ dinner for Gint, who left Ireland on Sunday to return to his beloved Latvia for two months. I listened to English, Polish, Russian, some Chinese and Korean, and a little a bit of Irish being spoken around the table. (’Slainte’ or ‘Good Health’ was the word most frequently used in Irish, I admit, but we also somehow got onto the subject of the ‘gluaistean’ or car. Maybe we were discussing ‘bling bling’…)
The following day I was strangely incoherent, which helped enormously when saying goodbye to Gint, but I’m not sure whether it was the cocktail of languages or the wild rose wine made by Wojtek’s Uncle Mateus that did it.
We were in ten at the table eventually, although we only started out with six – Gint, Dong-Kwang and his Chinese girl friend, Doee, Wojtek and his Korean friend who is also a girl, but seemingly not a girlfriend (an important distinction) – Iongchan – and myself. Now I must point out in the interests of linguistics that I had no pen and paper at that dinner, and, besides, it’s difficult to hold a pen and a wine glass at the same time.
So, even though I had met all of these people before, I hadn’t heard their names enough to remember them through Uncle Mateus’ wine. Dong Kwang’s girlfriend, for instance, had been known as Judy, up to then, but we converted her that night to our house tradition of giving her name in her own language, and letting the ‘foreigners’ pronounce it as best they can.
Iongchan I had met, briefly, on a few occasions, but hadn’t seen her name written down, and, besides they were discussing at the table the difference between her name in Korean and in Chinese…
So I don’t pretend to be reproducing either girl’s name accurately, or even remembering it very accurately, only as well as I can remember through Uncle Mateus’ wine. And I’m not sure he was really Uncle Mateus either. I must remember to ask Wojtek.
Anyway, the six of us were together at 7pm, unsure whether Grazine and Eddie were definitely coming to eat with us at 8pm, but knowing that – unless we ordered our take-away promptly – Gint, who wasn’t interested in take-away but had bought two enormous pizzas to share, would cremate the pizzas while waiting for us. We decided to go ahead and order, on the grounds that there would be enough to go round anyway.
We had agreed on take-away for most of us because our taste in food is so distinct right now. There’s an excellent take-away service in nearby Shankill village, called ‘Let’s Eat In’, which offers cuisine from Italy, India, China, or Thailand. We had used it before when Elke was leaving the house, and found the food excellent, and the helpings very substantial indeed.
So Wojtek and Iongchan chose an Indian and a Chinese dish each to share, Dong Kwang and Doee ordered a Chinese and a Thai dish each to share, and I ordered Vegetarian Balti, while Gint put on his first pizza and opened the first bottle of red wine.
Unfortunately, the pizza he cooked had meat on it, so I couldn’t eat it, and was forced to just drink wine.
Forty-five minutes later the second of Gint’s enormous pizzas was cooked (this time the vegetarian one, but it was too late), the first bottle of wine was inexplicably empty, and the doorbell rang. Amazingly, the delivery man turned out to be a very good guitarist and singer of Irish rebel songs, Vincent, who has promised to play at a fund-raising ‘gig’ next month for our flood campaign. He couldn’t be persuaded to abandon his delivery round, though, and come in and have a sing-song with us, so we waved him off with mutual goodwill and settled down to dish out the food.
Dong Kwang was the only one who was disappointed, as rich spicy food appeared with two different kinds of noodles (as per our order), delicious Nan bread and sauces, but only two helpings of rice – as per our order. Dong Kwang feels about his rice the way Irishmen used to feel about their potatoes: a meal just isn’t a meal without plenty of it. He departed to the kitchen to put on a saucepan of rice while we continued to open packages like children at a party.
We were happily tucking in to our dishes when the front door opened, and in came Grazine and Eddie, bearing a delicious Lithuanian chocolate cake, of the same feathery sort of lightness as the honey cake Grazine had brought home before. We bore it to the kitchen for later, pulled one of the kitchen benches into the dining room, everybody moved up a bit, and – deciding it was too late to order a take-away now for them – we agreed it was best that they start with Gint’s second pizza, while Dong Kwang’s rice finished cooking. There was quite a lot of my vegetarian balti left (just because of the size of the helpings – it was delicious) so they weren’t going to go hungry, just vegetarian.
Watching them from the opposite end of the table to ensure they were both comfortable, I suddenly realised that Gint and Eddie were deep in animated conversation. Gint being deep in conversation isn’t unusual, but I had never seen Eddie chattering away before, except in Lithuanian with Grazine. I cocked my ear and then called up to check it out. They were speaking Russian, their common language since both their countries had been part of the Soviet bloc. Eddie spoke it for another reason, too, though. “My mother was Russian”, he explained. “I like Russia.”
A few minutes later, I thought that either Latvia or Poland (it was unlikely to be Lithuania beside him) had decided to wreak revenge for years of occupation as he turned scarlet in the face and began to snort. It was the Vegetarian Balti, which Grazine was enjoying composedly beside him – until she started to laugh at his reaction. Other than that Gint is very blonde and Eddie is dark, it was a perfect replica of Gint’s reaction to the spicy food in the Indian restaurant three months ago. We poured water into him, as well as wine (I had ensured he wouldn’t be driving that night), and he gradually returned to normal.
Then the doorbell went again.
This time it was the young Polish couple – friends of Wojtek – who had been leaving their tent with us all week during the day as they saw some of Ireland, and then returning to collect it and pitch it at the foot of Bray Head each night. I still haven’t memorised their names at all.
Wojtek was at Primary School with the boy, and had met them coming over to Ireland when he was coming home from Poland last week.
They are extremely polite, but quite shy, and were reluctant at first to come in and join us. Without the excuse of a delivery round, though, they hadn’t a chance, and the second kitchen bench was pulled in, everybody moved up some more, and Grazine cut the Lithuanian chocolate cake and the Vienetta ice-cream, and Uncle Mateus’ wild rose wine was opened to toast Gint on his journey home.
I don’t know how to describe this wine (I think Uncle Mateus will just have to send another bottle and I’ll try to do better next time) except that it was dense and sweetish and very strong. Wojtek said his uncle was very proud when he heard his wine was coming to Ireland. We were glad too. We toasted Uncle Mateus several times that night, in every language we knew.
By then, a Polish conversation had broken out to my left, with sporadic bits of Russian still coming from the top of the table between spicy coughs.
But, by the end of the night, the young Polish couple had lost their shyness and were joining in the conversations with great gusto – especially the lad, who turned out to be reading Political Science at university, with the wish to get into journalism.
Ireland is his favourite country, he informed us, and I knew he would go far. It turned out that he had seen ‘Michael Collins’, dubbed in Polish, and had followed its political nuances very well. I recommended strongly that he watch ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’, too, and – after a brief debate until a satisfactory translation of the title was reached, and recognised – he agreed he would.
His girlfriend (who, at some stage, appealed to me to back her up that women’s brains are developing faster than men – I thought everybody knew that – causing Wojtek, for some reason, to accuse me of ’solidarity’) is reading law. And she speaks Russian, as well as Polish, and English, and French…
It was a good night, we all agreed sleepily, as Dong Kwang walked his Doee safely home, Grazine and Eddie headed off on foot for the seafront and fresh air, Wojtek smiled and swayed and allowed himself to be persuaded by Iongchan that she would be perfectly safe to walk to her nearby house alone (to my strong disapproval), and we then persuaded the young Polish couple that our attic was a better bet than trying to pitch a tent at the foot of Bray Head.
At least I hardly felt the pain of saying yet another goodbye the following day. It had too much competition.
Posted in Friends, House Family, Ireland, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Wine and Some Spirits | 2 Comments »
By
noeleenm on July 5th, 2006
I caught up with both my families this past weekend.
Dong Kwang came home on Friday from what sounds like a whirlwind tour of Ireland. He hired a car with three friends, but Dong Kwang was the only one who drove. They visited Belfast, the Giant’s Causeway and Carrickrede Bridge, all up north, the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands on the west coast, and Cork, down south, between Sunday and Friday – and that’s only the places Dong Kwang had time to tell us about! We’re not a big country, but that’s still a lot of driving on our roads.
And he loved it.
Wojtek went home to Poland on Monday, but we’re picking him up at the airport tonight, as his flight is due in around midnight. He was appearing as a witness in a court case back home, and was both nervous and looking forward to seeing family and friends at the same time.
Gint is increasingly delirious. In a week and a half, he will be home in Latvia for two months. And before he goes, Elke will, hopefully (she started a new job on Monday in Scotland and will have to request those days off) be ‘home’ for a colleague’s birthday party on Friday, 14th, and for Gint’s ‘going-away’ dinner on Saturday, 15th July.
Grazine and Eddie will also be there, we established with much nodding and smiling.
I met up with all of them over the weekend between forays to the cemetery to tidy our family graves for Sunday’s Pattern of the Graves, visits made and received between family and friends, and finishing wallpapering and starting painting in the attic.
Janeth’s visit had propelled me into doing up the attic, which was extended last year. I gave Janeth my room while she was here, and I ascended to the attic, which is big and bright, but the access stairs aren’t as easy as I’d like.
Elke is more than twenty years younger than either Janeth or myself, so I don’t worry about her on the stairs, and hope that she will be the first of many friends to sleep in its lofty brightness.
Thinking about her coming made me realise how much I miss the company of another woman, with whom I can talk, in the house. Grazine, apart from spending most of her time with Eddie, simply doesn’t have enough English – nor I any Lithuanian – for us to hold a real conversation. She’s a lovely person, who communicates with a radiant smile, but – because her boyfriend is also Lithuanian and she speaks little English in work – the few conversations we have about even factual things are slow, never mind abstract philosophy
I loved having Janeth in the house, not just because she’s an old friend, but because she’s a woman friend and I can talk about things with her that men would simply not get… And I loved having Gerti and Nayra and Lucia and Gail and Elke, among the succession of young women who lived here, for the same reasons.
The other day I came across an article by a woman called Pagan Kennedy, on a site called MSmagazine. Written five years ago, it describes two straight women – herself and a friend – sharing a home.
Ms. Kennedy calls it ‘a Boston marriage’, which I had always thought meant a lesbian live-in relationship, but she says not necessarily so…
She describes, though, the dynamics of sharing a home – and the needs that must meet – extremely well, and also catches many of the nuances of female friendship in a way I particularly liked.
My choice would not be hers: I would miss the ‘otherness’ of male company around the house as much as I now miss female company there, I think, especially the company of females who have become soul friends.
That’s why I’m looking forward so much to seeing Elke, and that’s why I’m very glad indeed that Gint is only going home for two months.
His pleasure in his homegoing, and in Elke’s forthcoming visit, manifests itself just now in non-stop chatter. The lads were glued to the World Cup matches on Saturday, but we met in the kitchen at half-time and between the England/Portugal and Brazil/France matches.
I teased Gint about his bad predictions (he bet 20 euro on England to win the World Cup, and he forecast confidently that Brazil would beat France, as the French team were “too old”). On one of his sorties, he had an excuse for getting the England match wrong…
Popping his head up like a manic jack-in-the-box through the opening in the attic floor, he asked me solemnly did I know who Wayne Rooney is… The day before, he had prefaced the information that Wayne Rooney had been sent off during the match against Portugal, leaving England one man down, with the announcement that Wayne Rooney is Irish, but plays for England.
I have since looked Wayne Rooney up on the internet (I am a sporting illiterate, in case you haven’t already guessed this), and find that he is an extremely talented young man, compared to Pele (even I know who Pele is), but has problems with keeping his temper. He comes from ‘Catholic Irish roots’, according to one site, but I couldn’t even establish how far back those roots are…
Not knowing this at the time, I simply reminded Gint what he had told me the day before.
“Do you realise that he is part of a conspiracy?”, he added now. “A conspiracy…?”
“Yes. He is Irish, and got himself sent off, so that England ended up playing ten men and lost. Bertie Ahern (our Taoiseach or Prime Minister) has been negotiating with Gerry Adams, and there will be General Elections soon. Now Bertie can say that he was Taoiseach when England lost in the World Cup.”
(Gint has not only learned how to pronounce ‘Taoiseach’ remarkably well, but has also cottoned on to the fact that most Irish people, disgracefully, I admit, will support any other team against England.)
He described a triangle with his finger: “Gerry Adams, Bertie Ahern, Wayne Rooney”, and nodded sagely, before racing on to make an even wilder theory about how England’s defeat in the World Cup would affect Irish interest rates…
“But you told me that England played better after Wayne Rooney was sent off”, I retorted, refusing to be distracted by the finances. “They were beaten on penalties, when Wayne Rooney was long gone.”
“Yes, but if there had still been eleven men, it might not have gone to penalties. So it was politics, not football, and I couldn’t predict that…”
Logic is not necessarily Gint’s strong point. Mind you, neither, it seems, is soccer: last night he said Italy didn’t stand a chance of beating Germany…
Posted in Friends, House Family | No Comments »