Hugs

By noeleenm on July 31st, 2006

If you are feeling tired and run-down, take vitamins. If you’re feeling anchorless and a bit lonely, hold a baby or a very small child close, or cuddle up to a dog. It’s a prescription that works for me always, and it did again this weekend.

<Fran arrived back in Ireland on Friday night, and I spoke with her by phone on Saturday to make sure she had enough energy for a visit. When I called in the late afternoon, the tiredness of the trip on top of her surgery was affecting her mobility quite badly so that she was sitting in the wheelchair that she will only use indoors and as a last resort. “I keep having to remind myself that I can’t afford to fall just now”, she admitted, shamefacedly. But her voice was strong and clear, and she was eager to show off how the gadget that triggers the electric stimulator in her body works.We were interrupted frequently by her little grandson, Aidan, who at five years old naturally wanted to play with the chair and naturally wanted the visitor (he knows me well) and his grandmother to play with him. Fran wasn’t able for play, or even for interruptions, and I was worried he would topple the chair – and Fran. So he ended up being tempted off to another part of the house by his mother.>

Ages later, when Kevin (also exhausted until he took a nap) had somehow taken a now mobile Fran’s place in the wheelchair to chat with us, as his wife stood waving her arms victoriously in the air, and Aidan’s mum sat beside me on the settee, a sleepy little figure reappeared in the room. He had fallen asleep in his Grandad’s ‘den’. He headed, naturally, to his mother, crawling in between the two of us on the settee, but, to my delight, chose to rest his head on my lap. Automatically, my arm went around the warm little body to cuddle him, but then I withdrew it gently, thinking he might not like to be confined, and worried that I’d frighten him away. Immediately a little hand came up, caught my arm, and wrapped it across his body again. If someone had pinned a medal on me, I wouldn’t have been more honoured.We remained like that, four adults talking comfortably over a resting child who somehow linked us all in a safe place as we discussed our various reactions to Fran’s surgery and rehabilitation: it will take roughly six weeks for the swelling in Fran’s brain to reduce, according to the hospital, and up to a year to get the full benefit from the Deep Brain Stimulation. When I finally left, Fran walked with me to the garden gate, with a small limpet firmly attached to her hand, fearful that she would disappear again, even for a little while. I carried the picture of the two of them in my heart as I headed off to meet two other beloved ‘children’. Edel is over thirty now, but will always be a child to me at some level, as will the rest of my nieces and nephews. If someone has been an integral part of your life as they grow into teenagers and then adults, there’s a part of you that always regards them as a child, I find. Her little girl, Hannah (also five years old), and Edel and Paddy (daddy/husband) had all been living with Paddy’s parents in Dublin for the past few months as an extension was built on to their Bray home. I had missed them, badly, because the necessary changes in their routine, as much as in their location, as the work progressed, meant we kept in touch by e-mail only. You can’t hug properly by e-mail.

I was enveloped in her usual satisfactory bear-hug by Edel, but greeted more shyly by Hannah, who is going through a slightly self-conscious stage, according to her Mum. I had missed Paddy, who’d gone out for a drink with a friend. The grand tour started with Hannah’s room, basically unchanged in architecture but decorated in the pinks (psychedelic pink curtain rail and tie-backs!) and lilacs and lavenders that she loves and that match her beloved My Little Pony toys. When these had all been satisfactorily admired, we moved onto Edel’s ‘toy’ – her newly fitted, much more spacious, kitchen. I was allowed to see, touch, admire, and even open cupboards to my heart’s content, but as soon as I attempted to help with even washing a cup, I was ordered out and told: “This is MY kitchen!” A nice big dining room has replaced their old sitting room downstairs, and their new sitting room is now upstairs. Edel and Paddy’s bungalow, as it was then, was built on a height overlooking Bray seafront. Even from their ground floor the view was great, right over the sea and strand, and with Bray Head barely visible to the right. Now, from their big upstairs window, it’s magnificent. Directly in front, waves rolled in from the horizon to a silent (from here) shore, to the left the coast was visible right up to the Pigeon House at Ringsend, where Paddy’s parents live, and to the right walkers could be seen resting at the foot of the cross on Bray Head. Later, when darkness fell,  the big Ferris Wheel remaining from the Summerfest, lit up the Head, moonlight made paths across the sea, and soft coloured spotlights set into the maple floor of Edel and Paddy’s new sitting room gave the whole room a feeling of magic.The new big spare bedroom to the back of the house, despite its view over Bray Head, barely got a glance from me after that view, despite the fact that an extra bedroom was the ‘raison d’etre’ for the extension in the first place.When Hannah had been tucked in to sleep, with a promise extracted that she would make no more than five minutes of ‘phone calls’ on the toy mobile I had brought as a gift (in colours and with sequins that even Gint would consider ‘bling bling’), her hugs and goodnight kisses wafted into the sitting room with us where we drank some wine, ate some garlic bread, and talked and talked and talked…>Oddly enough, the following morning – Sunday – I met another of my most beloved nieces, Bernadette, with her three teenagers after Mass: Roisin, not yet a teenager, had gone around the side of the church to meet her Dad who sings with the choir at the 10.30am. family Mass. Bernadette hugged me as Robert, Kate and Aoife all grinned amiably down from their teenage heights: teenagers don’t do hugs with aunts, generally, except on special occasions like Christmas, although they all seem to do that rocking bear hug thing with each other that we wouldn’t have dreamed of doing with each other as children. It’s nice…“Why don’t you come up some evening, if you’ve time”, asked Bernadette, “now that the children are all off school?” Conscious of an approving warmth from the three friendly lighthouses above my head, I happily agreed.Who needs vitamins, anyway

Posted in Ireland, McManus Family | No Comments »

‘Anchors’ in a Changing World

By noeleenm on July 28th, 2006

I’ve been thinking a lot about community, and connections, particularly in Ireland and even more particularly in Little Bray, over the past week.

We have a door-to-door collection going on all week to fundraise for our flood plain campaign, so an ever-widening circle went out from our core group through some thirty collectors to every house in the ‘flood basin’ or lowlands of Little Bray. That’s some 450 homes. Many of the people living in those homes have been through two floods – 1965 and 1986 – while the older people in the area remember the flood of 1932 as children.

People who have moved into the area in the last twenty years, though, find it harder to imagine the devastation caused by flooding happening in their neighbourhood, and that a proposal to put high density building on the flood plain downriver from our community would be even considered if it’s as dangerous as we (and every hydrologist all over the world) say…

So the door-to-door collection is also an information session, knocking on doors and telling new people stories of floods and flood plains. It has meant the usual chats with neighbours, but it has also turned up some surprises…

My collection area was our road of twenty houses, and I called at the house of Tom, who moved in about five years ago (a newcomer in our area!), expecting to have to explain all the background and stories of the floods. Tom has the kind of accent that tells you straight away that he has lived most of his life in England, like many Irish emigrants before him, but he surprised me by explaining that he is originally from Bray, knows all about the flooding in Little Bray (digging into his wallet as he talked), and – when I established his surname for a receipt – it turned out that he is a brother of my sister-in-law’s stepfather. Marie’s father died when she was a little girl, and John Whiston, Lord rest him, was a loving replacement all through his life. Tom is his brother.

It shouldn’t have surprised me because I had told Magda when she moved in to our house over a week ago that: “You can’t throw a stone in Bray without hitting a relative.”

Magda had explained, when she came to see the room, that she had been living just up the hill from us, and wanted to stay in our neighbourhood. It turned out that she had been living on the same road as that same sister-in-law – Marie – and her now grown up children, whom Deirdre, the housemother, knows well.

Bray’ population in the 2002 census was over 28,000, and it’s growing at an enormous rate. Thousands of new people have come from other parts of Ireland – generally to work in nearby Dublin city – and have become committed members of our community. But there is still a strong core of families who have lived in Bray for generations.

I hoped that the realisation of this close-knit community might help Magda to settle into our house after what was obviously a traumatic move.

It had seemed to do so, because last Saturday, which was the first time we really got to talk, she was bubbly and laughing, teasing her compatriot, Wojtek, who was trying, not very subtly, to establish how old she is, whether she has a boyfriend here, how long she intends to stay, and what exactly is this ‘set-dancing’ she’s doing, with the unspoken addendum ‘Can anybody join in?’!

You can’t fault him for trying…

I was further amused to discover that when Elke was leaving Bray, Magda was one of the people who applied for her job on reception in one of our local hotels. With excellent English, but without hotel experience, she didn’t get the job, but it was another one of those ‘web threads’ that seem strange looking back.

Still I was conscious all week that our house seems terribly quiet just now, surprisingly so considering there are five of us living there. The dead heat we are experiencing now in Ireland (only 22 degrees Celsius, but clammy, thundery weather that feels much hotter) is causing some slow down: everybody just wants to lie down, preferably in a hammock. Different work and social schedules – and consequently evening meal schedules, which was traditionally the time everyone met up in the kitchen – mean that there are rarely more than three of us in the house at a time, and often only two.

On Wednesday evening I wanted to do some work in the attic that involved quite a bit of hammering and sawing and drilling, using electric tools. Magda was just about to go out, and nobody else seemed to be at home – I knocked doors to check, before settling down to work without any regard to the noise I was making. Yesterday I found that Wojtek had been asleep in his room throughout it all, and heard neither the knock on the door nor the noise of the electric drill and saw! (“I told you I don’t hear anything when I sleep…!”)

I asked Magda if she finds our house very quiet, having lived with a family with small children till now. She considered it.

“I miss all the coming and going. There were always children in and out. But I’ll get used to it.!

I never have…

When my parents were alive, our house was always full of children – us, then their grandchildren, and, even after they died, my nieces and nephews and then my grand-nieces and grand-nephews came here often. But, when I lost my dog, Pal, last year, the final ‘anchor’ to a regular ‘house timetable’ disappeared for me. Too often, I am out of the house until late, and, while adults make arrangements to see each other, most of the children’s visits our house experienced was when some of the family were going by with children: “And we just took a chance and dropped in…”

They still come by invitation, of course, as I go to their houses by invitation – but I rarely seem to manage to “just drop up” to their houses, either, because my timetable is that of an adult without children. You can’t visit a five year old at 11pm at night.

But I miss them – and I miss having a dog, particularly and specifically a ‘Pal’ dog. She anchored me.

There are so many things I want to do right now – continue to fight the flood plain campaign, travel when I can, pore over blogs (my own and others), relax over a meal and a glass of wine without having to go home first – that would not be nearly as easy to do if I had a dog again, and I was tied down to the sort of routine that committing to any other living thing entails. But it’s as if not having a dog, and the routine it entails, has cut me off from the company of children, too.

Children and dogs go together, and they make a house a real home.

Last night Magda and myself sat and talked… She’s going home to Poland on holidays in August for about ten days. She’s here in Ireland, like Gint, because of work, not just to travel and see other countries. She misses home.

“I know already that when I come back, I will be sad”, she admitted.

That’s very understandable when you’re Polish and you’re living in Ireland.

…But why am I homesick, I wonder…?

Posted in House Family, Ireland, McManus Family, Poland | No Comments »

The Very Best

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 »

Dancing Ireland

By noeleenm on July 24th, 2006

Last Tuesday Magda, from Poland, came to live in our home. She has been in Ireland for the past two years, in a house in which two small children have grown into two much bigger children, and now need their own bedrooms, instead of sharing.

Magda’s house parents brought her, with her luggage, and engaged in the kind of ‘Have you got everything now?’ and ‘Try to get a good night’s sleep’ and hugging farewells that I’ve come to know only too well.

The big difference here was that the mother, Deirdre, was arranging with Magda to go set-dancing together on Thursday – a whole two days away – as they hugged goodbye.

‘Set dancing’ has been a part of Irish life since the 19th century, when it was brought to Ireland by the British. Like most things brought here, it was assimilated, changed, and turned into something quite peculiarly Irish, with the development of regional sets, like the Clare Set which is still one of the most famous, long performed all over Ireland.

From Clare, too, came the tradition of ‘battering’, which means that the men ‘batter’ the steps out on the timber or stone floors, giving sets their particular atmosphere of excitement.

When my parents, born in 1906, were young, a couple of ’sets’ would have been a normal part of any house party or wedding, but, by the time I became interested in Irish group dancing (as opposed to step dancing, which is the kind of exhibition dancing performed in shows like Riverdance, and only danced by experts), ceilis were much more popular.

Ceili dancing is still joyous and exciting, but the dancing itself is softer, lighter, and the steps resemble the basic steps of the exhibition ’step dancing’, for the jigs and reels to which they are performed.

‘Sets’ consists of four couples, each couple forming one side of a square, and there’s a break between each ‘figure’ of the dance. Most sets consist of around three figures.

A set in ceili dancing, on the other hand, may consist of two couples, four couples, five couples for the Haymakers Jig, or even eight couples in the case of the Sixteen Hand Reel. In the simplest of all ceili dances – the Walls of Limerick and the Siege of Ennis -  couples dance a pattern facing each other and then each pass on to the next couple in line to repeat it, forming a long chain of dancers down the floor.

The ‘body’ of the dance, performed by the group, is interspersed by diverse ‘figures’, in which each couple in turn steps out to demonstrate their skill, but there’s no break in either the music or the dancing: each section moves seamlessly into the next.

Ceilis and scoraiochteanna (a mixture of ceili, singing, solo playing on fiddle, flute or accordeon, and even story telling and poetry) were very popular in the sixties, even in our town on the edge of the ‘Pale’. Partly the revival of interest in Irish music and culture then was due to the establishment in 1951 of Comhaltas Ceolteori Eireann, and its revival of what became immensely popular national Irish music and dance festivals – Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann.

In our town, though, for a large group of young people, its popularity was due almost entirely to the passion of one local man for the Irish language and culture – Sean O’Briain.

Sean started ceilis, encouraged us to use Irish as much as possible – even ‘cupla focail’, a few words – and, because we associated it with enjoying ourselves through music, song and dance, we learned to love it and take pride in it, in a way we never had while learning it as a subject in school.

We started to travel to ceilis in neighbouring towns, and then to fleadhs all over Ireland, and because Sean and his bean-cheile (wife), Eithne, were with us, parents had no problem with us arriving home at 5am in the morning, or staying away all weekend. They knew we were safe, and they knew we were happy – a felicitous combination for the parent of any young person.

We danced every weekend, and sometimes during the week as well. Friendships (at home and away with groups like the Belfast ceili group), romances – and marriages – were born, and flourished. We were steeped in song and music and dance, and we loved every minute of it.

For me, it ended when I left for Ecuador in ‘72. By the time I returned, two years later, the group of friends had separated, physically, to other countries, to other parts of our own country, or simply settling down to start a family in our own place. We never, though, separated at heart, and the return of one of our gang – Maureen – from Australia, with her entire family a few years back became the occasion of a great ceili reunion.

I was caught up in other things on my return to Ireland, and when set dancing became popular in the ’80s I just didn’t take to it, although I appreciated the enthusiasm and commitment of the late Connie Ryan, who, almost single-handed, brought set dancing back to popularity in Ireland.

The bitterness caused by the revival of set-dancing, and its take-over of many ceili functions, was amazing, though. Ceili purists maintained that set-dancing was ‘barrack dancing’ (referring to the British soldiers who would have brought it here), while set-dancing enthusiasts derisorily referred to ceili dancing as ‘ballet dancing’. Ceili organisers maintained that ’sets’, with their length and the breaks in between each figure, broke the flow of a ceili, while set dancers couldn’t wait for the battering to begin.

But I was glad when I heard that Magda is going to set-dancing in Ireland (although I’m determined to expose her to ceili dancing too before she leaves us!). It’s great to see young people enjoying the music and dance of our country, whichever version they choose.

And my mother would be very glad to know that someone in our house still knows how to do ‘an oul set’.

Posted in House Family, Ireland, Poland | 1 Comment »

Sleeping like a Stone

By noeleenm on July 21st, 2006

The other night Dong Kwang was talking about the difference between sleeping areas here and in Korea. Traditionally, people sleep on the floor in Korea, he told us. And the floor is made of stone, or concrete.

But isn’t it very hard – and very cold, we enquired? No, he explained. There is a hole under the floor, with a fire in it, and hot air passes underneath the entire stone floor so that it’s very comfortable to sleep on it.

“It is called ‘ondol’,” he added.

I was intrigued. Underfloor heating here in Ireland is rare enough. I first came across it many years ago when I was involved, with our local Girl Guides, in Marino Clinic in Bray, which was then a residential home for children with cerebral palsy. The heated floor meant that small children could shunt quite happily along the floor on hands and knees, or bottoms.

Then, some ten years ago, a plumber (who was installing a shower in our house at the time) told me about a new underfloor heating system he was installing for a customer, who had used it, I think, in Denmark. I haven’t heard anyone mention it in my circle of family and friends since, although I know it is available here.

I told Dong Kwang, and Wojtek, how people in Ireland and in England, many years ago, used to put copper pans of warm coals between the ice-cold sheets during the winter before going to bed. When I was a small child, we used delph hot water bottles, wrapped in towels so as not to burn our feet, and, later, rubber hot water bottles. The latter are still readily available – and used – today despite the availability of electric blankets, either by people who don’t like electric blankets and/or people who want to apply heat to a sore tummy or back. They’re very comforting, if you’re unwell…

We heated the bed always because heating the bedroom would have seemed impossible in pre-central heating winters here, I realised – especially when the floors of our working-class houses were lucky to have linoleum on them, and carpets were still a luxury.

I have a vivid memory of my father sitting on the edge of his bed, curling his bare toes into the carpet, when he had returned home from hospital, following the first of what became a series of strokes. “Ah”, he said, “the comfort…” He was obviously comparing it to the tiled floor of the hospital ward he had left behind.

Korea was well ahead of us…

“We take off shoes when we come into house because the floor is warm”, Dong Kwang continued. (I wondered if people in the Czech Republic and in Germany traditionally have underfloor heating, as they’re the only two other nations I’ve ever come across who automatically expect to remove their shoes – without replacing them with slippers – when they enter a home.)

Lying on a hard floor still bothered me, though, as I imagined with horror not being able to burrow into my bed to snuggle down to sleep. What would I do with my hip? …My elbow? …My head?

“You don’t sleep directly on the stone, do you?”, I objected. “Wouldn’t you be very sore?”

Dong Kwang looked at me in amazement. “My parents now sleep in bed”, he said, “but when my mother has sore back, she lie on floor.”

So do I, I realised then, but on a timber floor and on top of a yoga mat, generally, and even then I get tired of lying on my back and want to clamber back into my bed.

“Do you use bedclothes?”, I asked next, thinking that they would provide padding, as well as heat. “No”, he replied. “In the summer it is too hot, and floor is cool. In the winter, maybe” (and he wiggled his head judiciously) “one sheet. Maybe…”

I still couldn’t leave it be…

“Do you even use futons, or are they from China?”, I persisted.

“No”, and he shook his head emphatically. “We don’t use anything else. We just sleep on floor. Now, some people use beds, like Westerners, but many people prefer sleep on floor.

“Floor used to be made of stone. Now made of concrete. First, just hot air, then pipes with hot water in concrete, but sometimes concrete breaks and damages pipes so now pipes made of metal.”

Wojtek was horrified at the idea of having to tear up the floor every time there was a problem with the pipes (but perhaps they have excellent plumbers in Korea). I was too busy thinking how much easier it would be here, with the popularity of timber floors, to get at pipes if they caused problems. …Unless the timber would warp with the proximity of hot pipes?

I appealed to Wojtek: “What do you sleep on in Poland?” He looked at me with Dong Kwang’s amazed expression: “On beds – like you do.” Oh…

Today I went searching on the web to see if I could learn anything about ‘ondol’, and I found it in ‘Warm Welcome for Ondol’ in the Arts and Living section of The Korea Times of 10th November, 2005.

The ondol system that Dong Kwang had described dates back to the Koguryo Kingdom (37 B.C-A.D. 668) period, according to staff reporter, Bae Keun-min. The fire which heats the stone is also used for cooking, it seems, something I hadn’t understood from Dong Kwang.

Traditional Korean dress, with its loose pants, evolved because of sitting on the warm floor, as did traditional shoes that were very easy to remove.  Now Western influences mean that many young Koreans wear jeans and sneakers – and many Koreans sleep in beds.

But a Korean adaptation of the Western bed has become very popular among older people, and among Koreans living abroad in the United States and China, according to the Times.

`Tolchimdae’ is a stone bed, the article explains, and it is “filled with either carbon film or copper coils that are electrically heated.

“Its development was based on the concept of the ondol system.”

According to Bae Keun-min, it has become a ‘hot seller’ in the furniture market…

Posted in House Family, Ireland, Korea | 13 Comments »

My Heroes

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 »

When sober, it is our policy to correct…

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! 

Posted in Friends, House Family, Korea, Poland | No Comments »

My Wild Polish Rose

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 »

Trackbacks and Pings at Work

By noeleenm on July 13th, 2006

It worked!

I don’t know what happened last night, but today I sent a trackback, and pinged, Radicalbright.com, and I then used the RedAlt.com tool (directed there from Radicalbright) to send a trackback and ping back to my own site.

You can see the verification that ireland-stories.ie can receive trackbacks and pings under ‘Comments’ at the foot of my ‘No Change’ post below. (I didn’t realise they were classed as ‘comments’ – I thought trackbacks and pings were different animals altogether.)

My trackback to Radicalbright appears on their page, but I still don’t know how to verify that my ping to their site worked…

…So I used the Contact form on Radicalbright, along with a plea for help about what should happen when you send a ping – and about how the author of a blog responds to ‘comments’. Do you just add another comment in the same way that a visitor to your site does, or is it done internally…?

They are such simple questions that IT geeks probably don’t even think of explaining them!

I’ve noticed before in other spheres – like Irish dancing, for instance – how people who are good at something, and understand it, but aren’t geniuses at it, often make good teachers in that subject. It’s as if people who find something absolutely no problem at all, ever, cannot work out how to explain it to someone else.

A typical example was when I attended an Irish dancing class, as an adult, for a brief period of time, with some friends. The guy who taught the class had been All Ireland Dancing Champion for years: his name was Kevin Massey and he has died since, Lord rest his soul. He was one of the loveliest dancers I’ve ever seen. He floated above the ground when he danced, and he was one of the most unassuming people I’ve ever met when it came to his own dancing.

But when he taught dancing, he turned into a bad-tempered demon. He genuinely couldn’t understand that what he was doing could be difficult for anyone.

I’m also reminded of a Garfield cartoon in which Jon is studying Garfield as he sashays across the table. Jon asks: “Garfield, do you move your front right leg at the same time as your left back leg, or do you move both right legs together?” (That’s not verbatim, but you know what I mean…!)

Garfield is poised in mid-stride in the next frame, with a balloon over his dismayed face saying: “I’ll never walk again…”

Asking IT experts to explain IT in plain English can be rather like that – but I’ve just realised that I’ve implied that the guy who wrote it (who I presumed was Owen from RedAlt, but maybe not) is not a genius, but merely very good at it…

Would pointing out that he/she is definitely a genius at communicating something that most people don’t seem able to explain get me off the hook…? I hope so, ’cause communication is a rare enough gift.

Posted in IT friends | 4 Comments »

No Change

By noeleenm on July 13th, 2006

And I thought I had it sorted…

Having read Radicalbright.com’s article ‘All About Trackbacks and Pingbacks with Wordpress’, I thought ireland-stories.ie was going to be a changed site – trackbacking and pinging and commenting all over the world.

But my trackback didn’t work on Radicalbright’s site, nor did my pinging.

Hmmm…

Now I’m going to try it once more, in case I did something daft last night, and – if it doesn’t work now – I’ll have to go searching for more help to find out why…

Watch this space…

Posted in IT friends | 2 Comments »