Keep A Diary And One Day It'll Keep You

Andrew didn't come to bed til late one night last week, because he was too busy standing in the kitchen, reading old blog posts of mine on his phone. "You wrote 364 of them in 2008!" he said "but only 44 last year". I think he feels responsible and, in a way, he is. I was busy in 2008, probably busier than I am now, out too late and drinking too much, falling in love, frantically documenting every minute of it because sometimes it seemed like so much was happening all at once that I could only get my head around it by writing it down and sharing it with strangers offof the internet. By late 2008 some of those strangers had become friends, Andrew and I had become lovers and the frequency of my posting had declined dramatically. Maybe leading a good life is better than keeping a good diary.

I still want to write. I haven't started that novel, nor my memwah for the Fish contest, but I still wake on weekend mornings with a garrulous itch. "Been ages since I heard from you" wrote Conortje in the comments on my last post. You and everyone else, Mister! I thought, so I sat down and wrote him a letter.

Well, an email. My handwriting would break his heart.

Hello there!

Sincere apologies for not having written in so long. You know when you start to compose a reply to someone's email and then work gets in the way and you save it to come back to because it's already epistolary in length and you'd like to spellcheck it before you send it and then it gets relegated to your drafts folder never to be seen again and it's only weeks later when you think "funny I never heard back from Conor, I hope I didn't offend him in some way with my inane ramblings because sometimes I just let my mouth run and run with no consideration for other people" and then you get a comment on your sorely neglected and consequently little-read blog and you realise that that email you sent has been mouldering away in your drafts folder like that cat chew stick that you found down underneath the cushion of the armchair.

I am sorry I didn't reply sooner, I had the best of intentions. I also discovered a couple of weeks ago that the texts I had sent to you inviting you to a party and wishing you a happy Christmas were not in fact sent to you at all, but to some random number that I had saved as yours (Catherine put me right). So I also need to apologise to you for making a balls of inviting you to the party, though there will be others and I'll make sure I get it right next time. I trust you didn't have an unhappy Christmas as a consequence of my neglecting to wish you a happy one? Do let me know if that is the case, as the power to influence the lives of others by way of omission on my part would be awesome (though obviously I'd only ever use it for good).

All's well with me, life is tipping along at an amicable rate here in Stoneybatter. Catherine has invited me to go for a cycle in the park with her this morning but as it's approaching 11 and I've not heard from her, I am guiltily hoping that she's forgotten, as though I am happy to cycle to the park and even around it a little bit on my own, I'm not sure I'm quite ready for anyone else to see how much I huff and puff with the shameful exertion of it all. If we do end up going for a cycle, I will make doubly sure of it that she comes to yoga with me this week so that I can exact a sweaty revenge. Andrew, his brother and I have started a new class with a woman who lives around the corner (she does the classes in her front room, but it's not as odd as it sounds) and I am determined to rope Catherine in too. Last week's class was so intense and the room was so warm (though it's not a bikram class) that I almost fainted. Luckily, we were engaged in a complicated pose that involved standing on one leg and keeping your trunk horizontal and parallel to the floor at the time, so everyone else was falling over too and I'd have gotten away with it.

Apart from yoga classes and imaginary cycles in the park, life at the moment is mostly consumed with work. From now to April will be my busiest period (though I recall saying something similar in September about the stretch from September to December...) and I'll be on the road a bit more than usual, working on the talent contest I run for secondary school kids. Woe is me. At present I've no plans to travel to Kerry but rest assured, should work take me in your direction you'll be getting a call! I was sorry to hear that the job you'd interviewed for didn't work out, it must be very hard to keep the chin up. It's been a while since I've been in your position and for all I give out about my job, I count myself lucky for it. It's not so long since Andrew was where you are though, and I remember how tough he found it. I'm still keeping an eye out for anything I think might suit you, though I suspect I might be looking in the wrong places. I hope something comes up soon. I'm thrilled to see you back blogging in the meantime, I may not have written in a while but I think of you often and your writing always makes me smile. Keep up the photo archiving too - and be sure to take some photos of Kerry while you're there. I used to holiday there every summer as a kid and even now when I think of holidays I long to go back to the Glen, to spend long days indoors, looking out at the rain over the top of my book and talking about holidaying somewhere sunny.

I don't really like the sun. Kerry suits my demeanour and complexion.

Andrew sends his love, shouting it from bed as he loves a lie-in on a Sunday morning. I get restless (but not restless enough to want to go cycling) and these days the Glenroes (a paralysing fear of Monday mornings precipitated by hearing the Glenroe theme tune on a Sunday evening) start from the moment I wake, so I spend the day busy, batting them away. I'm off now to make some porridge and think about what to do with what's left of my weekend. Give my love to B, you must miss him like I can't even imagine what, and I hope you've plans to see him soon. Keep in touch, remind me publicly when you haven't heard from me for a bit (maybe I should kill two birds with one stone and post my emails to you on my blog, a la C and L on Right Now, Forever which I think you'd really like) and do think about coming up to visit us some weekend, the bed is always there for you and the kettle is always on.

love,
Rosie
x

Even Rocky Had A Montage

I've Other Work I Want To Get Done

November was busy too. The short days seem to leave me with little time to do any of the things I'd like to. "I'm going to make all my Christmas presents this year!" I boasted to my colleagues over lunch. "Wow!" they said. I should eat lunch alone, under my desk. To prove that I was serious about it, or at least more serious about it than I was about knitting a scarf for Andrew last Christmas (I got ten rows done, one plain, one purl, one plain, then I forgot overnight how to do purl...) I bought 10 kilos of wax and a spool of wick and two teacups with saucers. I bought 6 yards of floral fabrics and some fat quarters, I borrowed my mother's sewing machine and I spent an hour collecting pine cones (in the pitch dark) on my way home from work one evening. I've been collecting jam jars since the summer. I have more of them than you'd think.

Any of you on my Christmas list should lower your expectations accordingly.

I said that I am left with little time to do any of the things I'd like to, but that's not strictly true. I have little time to do the things I aspire to. I seem to have found enough time in November to read 3 novels, a book of short stories and the whole of the internet. I found the time to watch countless hours of television; countless only because I tell myself that it doesn't count if I only watch programmes that I've recorded. Documentaries. Subtitled crime thrillers. The Big Bang Theory.

I haven't found the time to write anything.

"Can I refurbish that old computer and take it home?" I asked my boss on another lunchbreak. "I want to write a novel." Sure, she said, just don't write it about us. I took it home and set it up in our converted attic, where it keeps the sewing machine company. I visit them both occasionally, when I'm hanging up the washing. "As soon as I have a bit of time to myself" I whisper to it, and the half-hemmed skirt on sewing table heaves an exaggerated sigh.

Haven't Seen You In Quite A While

October was busy. We went to Colm's birthday party. I love him, his lover, their dog and their friends. They have an extraordinary talent for celebration that I feel I lack. I drank wine and smoked 'til my feet felt funny and my tongue got thick, then asked Andrew to bring me home. "Need a seat for the lady!" he bellowed, steering me towards the couch. "I'm not disabled!" I hissed. "I'm not pregnant" is what I meant, but my words weren't coming out right.

I went to Holles St. later that week to have blood tests done prior to our appointment with the fertility clinic. I was shown to a waiting room full of heavily pregnant women queueing for weigh-ins and widdle tests. "What week are you?" asked the nurse. "I'm not" I said. So I was sent to another waiting room across the hospital where nobody was pregnant and two of the waiting women were crying. "Where are you in your cycle?" the nurse asked. "I don't have one" I said. I can't win, is what I meant.

The following weekend, Andrew and I spent the Saturday taking care of my two-month-old niece and I thought "I could do this!" and I looked at myself sneakily in the mirror as I cradled her, trying her on for size, trying to imagine myself as a beautiful young mother. I am not young to be a mother any more. We spent the day cosseted in the sitting room, making Tilly burp and smile and watching television when she slept. That night, I asked Andrew if he thinks we'll ever have a baby. The "ever" makes me sound like I'm impatient to be a mother. I'm not. I am just so tired of thinking about it all the time that I just want to be told, one way or the other, so that I can get on with everybloodything else. "I don't know, my love" he said.

Andrew turned 30 and I felt better for it. It bothers me that I'm older than he is. I used to tell anyone who asked that he was only 4 months younger than me, but I'd counted backwards instead of forwards and I'm actually 8 months older than him. I am not good with numbers, even the single digits. "Who do you think looks older?" I ask small children whenever I have an opportunity to. They invariably say that he does. They are smart enough to recognise that I am needy and that he has the thicker beard.

His grandfather sent him some silver serving spoons in the post as a birthday present. I am charmed that George bestows practical heirlooms upon us on significant occasions, and that he thinks to post them with a letter. His great heart and good manners are inspiring. Since moving to our new home this summer, we've been able to employ all of the chattels we'd been gifted when we married; cutlery and crockery, crystal and candlesticks, all of it pleasingly old-fashioned. I feel like I have arrived in the world, now that we have a spare bedroom and eat with our own cutlery. We have a happy home.

We took a holiday from it to celebrate Andrew's birthday and since our return, Biscuit, our half-baked cat, has started scratching at the bedroom door at night. Every night. At 5am. Scratching and crying and then running away to hide under the bed in the spare room or halfway down the stairs to the kitchen. I chased him off last Wednesday night and he smashed a sinkful of crystal wedding-gift wineglasses in the kitchen in retaliation. At 5.15am. I hauled on a dressing gown and stood barefoot on the cold kitchen floor, surveying the damage and feeling every minute of stolen sleep seeping out through the soles of my feet.

"Do you want a cat?" I asked Gimme in the pub the following Friday night "because I'm going to put him in the fucking Buy & Sell". "You don't want kids" said Gimme. "No" I said, and I lifted my pint, pinkie extended.

Of All The Gin Joints In All The Towns In All The World

I ran into an ex boyfriend in Whelans last Saturday night. I hate drinking in Whelans for a multitude of reasons, one of them being that it's just the kind of place you might run into an ex boyfriend. I've only got two ex boyfriends, but they are both the sort you'd expect to find drinking there; square indie types called David (yes, both of them) who were always louder than they were funny.

It was David the First I ran into on Saturday night. I had seen him prairie dogging through a doorway a few minutes before he sauntered over, not to talk to me but to drape a proprietorial arm across my shoulders and ask the three men I was with for their permission to "borrow" me for ten minutes. He was met with blank stares and a hostile silence. How I love the three of them for that! “Five minutes?” he asked, still not acknowledging my presence other than with his request to appropriate my person temporarily, for reasons unspecified. His joke was wearing thin now, and his confidence waning. “Two minutes?” he said. I’d have said you could hear a pin drop, but we were in Whelans, so all you could hear was shit indie and shouting culchies. “Rosie’s very famous, you see!” he said, still looking expectantly at the three men, who were, to their credit, still staring stonily back. “Hello David” I said, sighing like I do when the cat trails shit from his litterbox across the kitchen floor. I introduced him to Andrew and he made exaggerated “I’m impressed!” noises before exclaiming “In that case...”, grabbing the woman standing behind him by the wrist and pulling her forward to introduce her to me as his wife. I shook her hand. “We were talking about you on our honeymoon” he said, and I felt her toes curl. He made more shouty noises about me being famous and asked again if he could “borrow” me. I asked him what he meant by saying that I was famous and he said “ah now, I think you’re exaggerating a bit there! Famous!”.

Sweet Jesus.

Feeling sorrier for his wife than you should for someone you’ve just met, I tried to instigate some kind of normal conversation. The what-are-you-up-to-these-days sort. He hadn’t rehearsed this, though, so he just stood there, braying like a donkey and farting like a dog after a chip-shop curry, while his wife gently tugged at his sleeve, saying that she’d lost her handbag and that they needed to go and look for it. “Give us a hug” he said, so I gave him a pat on the back. “A proper hug!” he said. “I’m holding a pint” I said “but it was nice to see you.”

“You don’t mean that” he said. “Not really” I admitted. I don't think he even noticed. He still had an inane grin plastered across his face. As his wife pulled him away, he leaned in close and whispered conspirationally “I bet you thought this would go better than it has”.

I'll admit that I indulged in revenge fantasies for a time after he broke up with me. Ones where he asked me to take him back and I dismissed him with a tinkling laugh (in my fantasies, I had a tinkling laugh and twinkling eyes and big breasts and a small waist and a pony) and strolled off on the arm of my handsome black fiancé. I was 17 at the time, and such was the scope of my ambition. Within a year of us breaking up, however, I'd moved on to David the Second, and though I thought him a vast improvement, he was alarmingly similar to David the First and thus not really anything to boast about. Our relationship didn't last long, and my revenge fantasies post David the Second changed to reflect my newly adopted sense of myself as an independent woman (basically the same fantasy, minus the handsome black fiancé. I still hadn't come to terms with being a husky, small-breasted, thick-waisted woman - that came later). I didn't have any more boyfriends til Andrew, and my revenge fantasies these days largely feature heavy plant pots falling on the cat (because the little fucker keeps knocking my potted herbs from the window sills).

Had I thought about it, I imagine David would have been right. I would have thought it would go better than it did. I couldn't have anticipated how badly he'd handle running into me again after twelve years, and I'd have thought that if he did, I'd feel good about it. But I didn't. I felt embarrassed to have seen it and I felt a furious pity for his wife. I felt an immense gratitude to my friends who stood by and made no attempt to diffuse his buffoon's bluff, and I felt smug that I'm not on Facebook, where hideous long-time-no-sees happen with horrible regularity and ugly photographs.

It's A Sad Sad Situation, And It's Getting More And More Absurd

Colm tells me that he's fighting with strangers on Twitter about new t-shirts in Topshop. Fucking Twitter. Fucking Topshop. Sometimes I want to punch the internet.

"Pop quiz" he says. "What's this t-shirt about?"
"Feminism?" I say, wondering if there is some new meme I missed the memo on, if it's Keyboard Cat's new catchphrase or something. I am always behind with this shit. Sure look at me, blogging, while everyone else is on Twitter. But for once I'm on the money and Twitter's knickers are in a twist because the t-shirt is proof that Topshop hates women.

Topshop hates me, I'm pretty sure of that. I feel Brobdingnagian in their changing rooms. But I digress.

Twitter thinks the t-shirt is making lame excuses for domestic violence. I'm not so sure. It's a tasteless item, sure (insert catty comment about their choice of font here) but I think the unfunny joke is doing men an injustice, not women. I think the implication is that as a man (Topman's target demographic appears to be 18 to 30-too-old-for-that-year-olds) you shouldn't need to offer any emotional motivations for unacceptable behaviour. Just get drunk, act out and offer a mealy-mouthed apology. Hell, the side of "so" served with the sorry suggests that you might not need to apologise at all, much less talk about your reasons for being a bollocks in the first place.

Statistically, men are four times more likely to commit suicide than women, despite there being a higher incidence of depression among women. Young men are consistently identified as being the group most at risk, and among the contributing factors listed is their reluctance to talk about their feelings. There's few of us who haven't lost friends and family to suicide and fewer still who don't know someone who suffers from depression. Sure, there are excellent mental health initiatives to try to address some of the problems men face, but they are stigmatised by virtue of being mental health initiatives. 18 to 30-too-old-for-that-year-olds are more likely to be influenced by fashion and pop culture than by a press release from the Samaritans. The likes of Topman and their comic sansy slogans encouraging swagger, bravado, piss and bluster do us all a disservice, whether we read the t-shirt as an anti-feminist statement or not.

Tilly Kid

My niece, Tilly, is twelve days old today.

Twelve days! You'd think I'd have mentioned her before now. I meant to, but I was a bit of a mess for about ten of those twelve and I've only just gotten around to snuffling up my snots. It's times like these I feel especially grateful that I'm not on Facebook and socially obliged to share my status updates. OMFG AM AN AUNTIE! SO DEPRESSED!!! The week I spent feeling sorry for myself because my brother and his wife have a beautiful new baby (and I don't) was not my finest one.

And she is a beautiful baby. "Gorgeous!" says my nana "I thought she'd be ugly, you know the way they are." But she has auburn hair and big dark eyes and little bow lips like her mammy's. She smells like milk, and I like that after I've held her I can smell her on my skin. The same is true of our cat, of course, but he smells of piss and catfood.

We visited Tilly the day she came home, and my brother gave her to me to hold. I fed her and winded her and tried not to look scared. She burped and I felt like a champion. I can only imagine how proud her parents must feel just to hear her breathe. "It's like we won the Lotto" my brother said, and he sounded like he still couldn't quite believe it. I called him the day after we'd visited to see how they were, and he called me back later that evening to see how I was. He knew I'd find it hard. I couldn't even begin to tell him how grateful I was that he acknowledged that, and that he found any room in his heart to feel sad for me when it must be spilling over with love for his wife and daughter.

It's an awful thing, to feel upset at the birth of a child. I felt selfish, mean-spirited, small. And very alone. I felt like there was nobody I could talk to about it, because I was ashamed of feeling that way and I thought that my friends and family would feel ashamed of me too. So I cried at home, curled up in Andrew's lap, red and angry-faced and colicky. And I hated myself for it. It was only when Andrew got upset some days later and I felt like I might burst with love and sympathy for him that I realised how my family had been feeling for me.

There's a whole lot of spilling and bursting going on here, I realise. Cut me some slack. I'm emotional.

My aunt Patricia spoke to me on the phone on the evening Tilly was born, and she heard the catch in my voice. "You know now how I felt when I heard you'd arrived" she said, reminding me that I too am special and loved, that my shine hasn't worn off. I felt a little like a child again, being consoled on a sibling's birthday, but I appreciated the kiss and cuddle all the same. I have a brace of aunties who take good care of me and I am determined to do the same for Tilly. Though I'm not sure about this "auntie" stuff. My aunt Carol has never allowed me call her "Aunt Carol" and it's only now that I understand why - it sounds so dowdy, so old. But I'll grow into it.

So here's to my good fortune and my happy family. "Tilly" (from the Irish tuilleadh) is a lovely, little-used word for that little bit extra over the standard measure. The thirteenth bun in the baker's dozen, a small, unexpected gift. I think it'll suit her.

Review: La piel que habito

Juan Gatti's beautiful teaser poster

I do like horror films that don't have jumpy bits and that have you rooting for the monster from start to finish.

Assuming you can figure out who the monster is.

And Then I'm Happy For The Rest Of The Day

We went for a walk in the park yesterday afternoon, me with my tail wagging and Andrew with his tongue hanging out. It was lovely and sunny. We walked up Chesterfield Avenue, past the entrance to the Zoo. Sticky kids spilled out from the gates onto the path, clutching parents in one paw and stuffed penguins in the other, waddling two by two towards their cars. We borrowed my brother's Zoo pass a couple of weeks ago. I thought we'd get great use out of it. I had notions of us swinging with the lemurs after work on weekday afternoons, purring at the tigers and reading the red pandas a story at bedtime. But the Zoo closes at 6, and we've been busy at weekends. So we haven't gone at all.

"What would you like?" asked Andrew, rooting in his pockets for change when we got to the ice-cream van. I would like a three-day-weekend every week so that we have more time to do nice things like eat ice cream in the park and go to the zoo. "A 99, please" I said. But we only had enough change for two small cones, so that's what we got. And they weren't small at all. We slowed our pace, the better to eat our ice creams, and wandered off the path towards the polo grounds, taking care to avoid the oddball dressed head-to-toe in khaki raingear lying in the grass a few metres in from the road. He could only be playing with himself, we concluded.

The polo was in full thwock. "Hockey on a horse!" said Andrew and we stood at the fence on the far side of the pitch from the pavilion to watch the game. An unseen voice provided a running commentary through the pavilion's PA, though the only other spectators were in a huddle of three on the upper tier. "And Whompey comes in again for a challenge... eh, do you want to come in here?" the commentator said. Attention please, a child has been lost in the tunnel of goats...

Then the rain came. We finished our ice creams and headed for the shelter of the chestnut trees that line the Avenue. Some of the lower branches had been picked clean already, even though the conkers would still be white in their shells. "Snuggle for warmth" said Andrew, and he pressed up against me and kissed me. I remembered the oddball lying on the grass (playing with himself) and looked over to see him getting to his feet, soaking wet, and picking up a plastic Tesco bag from the ground beside him. I wonder what was in it. Binoculars and cheese and pickle sandwiches, I bet.

We made a run for it then. Well, we walked. We were too far from home to run. We held hands and Andrew told me that I looked very pretty in the rain even though I knew my fringe was hanging in rats tails down my forehead and my wet summer dress made me look like a sack of spuds. The rain was coming down so hard that drops were running down the sides of my nose and up into my nostrils. Sure what could you do but laugh. We got to the Fountain Road and Andrew broke into a trot. "Run with me, Pussycat" he said, and I huffed up the road after him, trying in vain to suck in my tummy and swallow my lungs.

It had almost stopped raining by the time we squelched around our corner. We got to our door and I laid my hands on the warm red brick of the house, feeling all the happiness in our home seep up my arms through my fingers. Andrew apologised later for taking me to the park, what with the rain and the pervert and the two small cones.

Husband, you warm the cockles of my heart.

Review: The Inbetweeners Movie

Lydia Rose Bewley. I couldn't find any pictures of her from the film itself.

I spent the whole film anxiously watching to see how they'd treat Jane. The Fat Girl. Because I'm a Fat Girl. She's pretty. I'm pretty. They even put her in one of my dresses.

Jay called her a fat pig from outer space and ran away when she took her clothes off to go skinnydipping. Later, she gave him a blow-job in the toilet. He'd grown as a person! Yay! Happy ending!

I'd rather he'd given her head, to be honest.

They did manage to squeeze a fat joke in about eating out though, fair play to them. In the post-credits sequence a door opened to catch them in the act while they're in bed having sex feeding each other slices of pizza. Dirty pigs! LOL! It reminded me of the post-credits sequence in Bridesmaids where Megan talks about the open flaps on her big bear sandwich.

Big fat fucking sigh.