All Creatures Great And Small

Named not for the breakfast cereal but for the brave hound of an Irish legend, Bran was my first love. Fionn Mac Cumhaill had two, of course, but we couldn't pronounce Sceólan and so reckoned Bran to be a noble name for a brindled, snappy mutt. Once we realised what dad had brought home in the box, that is - my brother's first guess was a bat. Bran bit me one day (I was trying to feed him an apple) and shortly afterwards went to live on a farm down the country, where we couldn't visit. I was fifteen, traipsing around Superquinn in Sundrive with my mother, when I realised what this was a gruesome euphemism for.

We continued with the Fenian theme with the budgie, Oisín. Not a friendly sort, Oisín would complain all day, snap at small fingers and smash straight into mirrors upon release, leaving the house in a mess of shit and feathers. I loved her (yes, her) and didn't notice for a good four days that she'd died. "Where's Oisín?" I asked, over cornflakes. "Have a look in the shed". So I did, and there I found an empty cage. I'd missed the funeral. "But I loved her!" I wailed, fooling no one.

Dinny ran away. Named for Joe Lynch's character in Glenroe (we were big fans - to this day, Fáinne Gheal an Lae is the only tune I can play on the tin whistle) he couldn't run terribly fast, so I was bewildered as to how he'd staged this escape. When Storm ran away too, I wondered if we should tighten up on security. (Storm was panther black, with a jagged lightning strike of white across his shoulders. Truly a rock-n-roll rabbit). To lose one bunny had been unfortunate but to lose a second in the same manner simply seemed careless. Both breakouts had occurred on cold winter nights - my dad suggested that they might have been tunnelling. When Tupenny the guinea pig (named for the one in Beatrix Potter's The Fairy Caravan) "ran away" even though she'd been poorly for a few days, I wondered if there was maybe some conspiracy afoot. There was, of course, but not of the Sylvanian sort I imagined (where my rodents had set up a commune on the far side of the field). No, dad just got up earlier in the morning than I did, and put their stiff, cold corpses out for the binman before I could get upset.

Thing and Eclairs were different though. Thing was a long-haired guinea pig with dandruff, so the Addamsesque moniker was apt, and Eclairs had come in a purple Cadbury's Eclairs box - both from the pets' corner in Dublin Zoo. When we knocked on their hutch one winter's morning to find them cold and unresponsive, we learned an important lesson about the fragility of life, the finality of death. It was some years after the emotional funeral (buried side by side in a shoebox under the lelandia) before we heard that guinea pigs hibernate. What gruesome, crushing guilt.

Of course, I didn't have teh internets then. I've just asked google, and google says that they don't. But that hamsters do. So it's a comfort to know that I may have buried Fidget and Heimlich alive instead. It makes no mention of gerbils, however, so little Earl Grey may rest in peace.

I've made no mention of my fishy friends, but to be honest I found them difficult to bond with. Dead goldfish are too easy to dispose of, I think. You don't find them cold, just floating. There's a comic element to their tragedy. They flush.

All bar Dennis, that is. Named for Dennis Taylor, he was one of those googley eyed goldfish which are probably illegal to breed now. Huge bubble eyes which looked up rather than out, and a comically small body in a lurid shade of orange. He lived a long and happy life until dad dropped him in the sink while cleaning his bowl, he lived a little longer after that but it was a lopsided existence - one of his bubble eyes burst so he swam in a permanent sidestroke. We were sad when Dennis died. Still gave him a flush over a funeral, though.

Final Boarding Call

Dublin Airport must surely be one of the worst places on earth to endure with a hangover. Everyone there seems overexcited or just plain anxious, Hustle is running around, tripping over suitcases and dragging Bustle by the hand. I am struggling to muster the energy to breathe.

I go to the bathroom, too dehydrated to have any need of it but seeking some sanctuary regardless. My reflection shocks me - I am barelegged, and too pale. Underneath my glasses I look like I have been crying.

I feel like I might yet.

I make my way up to the departures lounge and visit the pharmacy there for eye drops and Lucozade. The cashier looks disapprovingly at my mirrored shades and then reminds me that I will need to finish the 'zade before I go through security. Fuck. I think about going back to the fridge and choosing one of the smaller bottles, but thirst and thrift win out - this one has 25% extra free.

I crack the bottle's seal as my troubled thoughts and I glide back down the escalator. And drink deep, they will not take it from me.

Only then do I remember that I'm not flying anywhere today.

Reader's Choice #2

On Medication

for mysterious Billy, who likes pharmacists too

I've mentioned before that I have quite a close relationship with my pharmacist. He's short of stature and bald as an egg, with a winsome demeanour and creepily small hands. I entertain his awkward flirtations, he fills my lengthy prescriptions. We make it work. So imagine his surprise and delight this morning when I hobbled into his shop and hoiked up my skirt. Did I say delight? I meant horror. He licked his eyebrows for a second or two as the hem lifted but when he saw the state of the thigh I was proffering for his inspection - puffy and swollen with a nasty red bite - there was a flicker of revulsion before he forced his solicitous face back on.

The bite in question was not from an adventurous lover, but a midge. A common-or-garden in my fucking back garden midge. I am n'allergick to the little bastards and am usually careful (that intoxicating fragrance? It's deet, darling...) but in a fit of overtiredness and hangover I shed boots and tights when I got in from Cork on Monday evening and sat bare-legged in the garden, eating my dinner. When I woke yesterday morning, my thigh had swollen to the size of a tree trunk (and okay, it wasn't that far off it to begin with, but at least it was pleasantly milky in colour). I stuffed myself with antihistamines and slathered on the cortisone before heading into work, where I divided my day between whiny complaining and narcoleptic napping.

Determined to rid myself of stumpthigh, I shambled stiff-legged into Pharmacist this morning to demand that he make it better. I showed him my grievous injury (much to the amusement of the mean lady pharmacist*) but all I got was sympathy, an ice-pack and more fucking antihistamines. Unwilling to suffer another dozy day in work, I took some Pro Plus to counteract their soporific effects and found myself wide eyed and knackered, cranky as a crack addict for the morning (and with a freezing cold, massive and still red and itchy thigh).

Good times.

My sympathetic co-workers suggested that I shut the fuck up whining about it and try a poultice when I got home. I reckoned it couldn't hurt, so I've replaced the ice-pack with some warm soggy bread, and made quite the mess in the kitchen. Honestly, I don't think I've ever looked this fetching - in my pants, covered in sog, living in squalor, wild-eyed with itchy distress, and blogging about it.

*I've just realised that that post is dedicated to Billser too. People will think we have a problem.

Reader's Choice #1

A Time Before I Was Old

for B, the cheeky little Longford bollix

Looking back, I am mature enough to recognise that my greatest success during my teenage years was not the 8 As and 2 Bs I got in my Junior Certificate examinations, but the acquisition and retention of a boyfriend.

I was not an early bloomer by any means, so it was quite the unexpected coup when I managed to land myself a fella at 15 and hold on to him for two and a half years. It remains my record, which is something I am both disappointed by and embarrassed about at my now tender age of 27 (I know that I shouldn't be, and that makes it worse).

Our romance began as most do - with a little cack-handed help from a friend. One of his mates told me that he wanted to meet* me around behind the school, so I broke away from the herd and went to wait for him - I had to go first, because he was more popular than I, and couldn't be seen to wait on me (yes, even then I was the submissive). But I was thrilled. Thrilled that anyone liked me, but more particularly him because he was popular, and when you're 15 that's pretty much all that matters. He eventually sauntered around the corner and without so much as a how's-yer-father proceeded to wear the face off me for about 45 minutes straight. It was crap; messily uncomfortable and magnificently exciting. He asked me to "go out with him" about a week later (it was all very formal back in the day) and I became, for the first time, a girlfriend. We broke up after two years, but got back together again for a miserable six months during which I tried desperately to please him, and failed. He had noticed that there was greenish grass on yonder hills and fancied a roll in it, and nothing comes between a sexually confident teenage boy and his egotistical imaginings. I remember the agony of the aftermath, the crushing defeat. I cried for the longest time, sure that my heart was broken beyond repair. I didn't sleep or eat for, oh, two days. I ached physically with gut-wrenching sorrow. I wanted to die, and everything was in italics. SOMETIMES EVEN IN CAPS AND ITALICS.

Such melodrama is mortifying to remember. I was as tempestuous in my love as I was in my loss, and for the longest time I couldn't even think of him (or more specifically of me with him) without wincing. But now that I am contemplatively meandering through my twenties I have come to realise how much that relationship has given me. I was happy through the toughest times of my teens, happy and secure. I felt attractive, confident and occasionally even loved. Sure, I got a knock, but I've managed to carry that self-assurance into my relationships and though my love life may be an unmitigated disaster for the most part, my friendships endure. He was a bit of a gonk, but I have to give him some credit for who I've become.

Because she's not that bad.

*it was Clondalkinite for "shift" back in 1996.

Picking Scabs

Other women (I'm told) daydream idly about meeting the man of their dreams and falling madly in love with him. The object of their affections is a shadowy figure, half imagined and eminently possible; being a man very much of the future. I, on the other hand, have an unhealthy tendency to find myself very much mired in the past. Mucked up to the oxters in coulda-woulda-shouldas, poring over every little thing I did or didn't do and generally assuming the blame for any and all of my failed romances (presuming that if it wasn't something I did or didn't do, then it must be something I am). I daydream about ex-lovers suddenly repenting and declaring their undying affection for me. As I've said, it's unhealthy.

I keep letters, emails, texts. I've maintained platonic relationships with some - or tried to - but what betrays my imagined feelings for them is the presence of their friendly messages in my various inboxes long after I've replied, when normally I would delete them. I don't reread them, that would make me feel worse. But there is comfort in knowing that they're there. Occasionally I will be tempted to follow one up, suss him out, revisit familiar territory, scratch at old wounds. It invariaby ends in disaster.

So today I decided upon a purge. Wiped the archives clean.

Midway through my deletathon I got a text from someone I haven't been in contact with for more than a year, someone I had had a brief affair with and (unusually for me) I decided that I didn't want to see him anymore. He was getting very involved very quickly and talking about making some pretty big decisions based on a three week casual affair and I just wasn't interested. I told him so in no uncertain terms; I was very nice about it, but firm. I balked at his suggestion that I forget about it and we go back to something casual ("if that's all you'll allow me, well it's better than nothing..."). When all I'd said seemed to be falling on deaf ears I broke all contact. And now an innocuous text a year later, to ask me how I am and to let me know he's in town. All I could think was seriously, fuck off, wouldya?

There is no surer sign that I should quit flogging my dead donkeys. I don't want to be anyone's seriously-fuck-off-wouldya.

Fat Bottomed Girls

Like many if not most women, I'm insecure about my shape. My teenage preoccupations were with my feet and my teeth (I still tend to hide my smile when I can) but these days it's all about my size. Small breasts, a soft belly and a lardy bum. My weight is one of the few taboo subjects I have. I will occasionally joke about my fat arse and will often joke about my non-existent diddies but I find I can't speak to anyone about how I really feel about my looks without getting teary eyed. It's embarrassing that at 27 years of age I am still so insecure about it.

Twice recently I have raised it in a very matter-of-fact way with friends and I got the impression that both of them were shocked by what I said. The Jock and I were out carousing and she was telling me about a friend of hers that she wants to set me up with for a blind date. She reckoned we'd be a great match, I wasn't so sure. I was pretty confident that I'd like him, but terrified that he'd meet me and wonder why she had set him up with some fat bird. So I said as much. She looked appalled. The second instance was in a text I sent to GingerBeard; I was smarting from another little disappointment and his sympathetic "his loss" text message elicited an angry "why it's really not his loss" response from me (centering around the fact that I think I'm fat and maybe mental). He got angry with me, disgusted that I'd say such a thing about myself.

I paused in front of the mirror this morning as I dried myself after my shower. Let the towel fall and took a long look at myself. Not posed, not poised, just nude. Drank in the curves, the paler-than-pasty skin, flushed with the heat of the shower. Thought of all the lovers I've had who were less than perfect physical specimens but whom I've lusted after regardless and tried to see myself as a lover might see me.

Letter To An Older Rosie

I Even Stole The Major's Picture

Rosie, a chroí,

How's 35* treating you? I'm writing to you on the eve of your 27th birthday, looking for some reassurance: That you kept up the jogging and that you still pronounce it yogging, in homage to Ron Burgundy. That you've published your novel, and that someone's read it. That you've still got so many good friends. That you've grown out of jaegerbombs. That you've found a better cure for your black days than hot chocolate. That you've gotten a haircut that doesn't make you look like George from the Famous Five. That you've sorted your shit out, stopped having short-lived affairs with men who are plainly not going to fall in love with you and found one you're mad about who will. That you're healthy. That you're happy.

Ag súil go mór le do fhreagra,
R

*Inspired by the Major's Letter, it was originally to be to Rosie aged 30 but the chances of me having my shit together by then are slim to none.

When There's Fuck-All On Telly

Sometimes I long for my own space, for solitude, for the complete absence of other people so that I can have room to breathe. Sometimes I crave a lack of company.

Not all the time though.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that being at home on my own on a Sunday evening and feeling a little bit lonely is not the end of the world. That the walls are not closing in on me, that I am not going to be left on my own while the rest of the world goes to a big shiny party to which they forgot to invite me. That being on my own does not equate to being Alone.

Tomorrow will be Monday. I'll spend the day distracted, surrounded, animated, happy; I'll forget all about the creeping disquiet of this Sunday evening.