Sleepyhead, Get Out Of Bed

I still wake at nine on Sunday mornings. I don't mean to. When he's hungover, I think he thinks I do it just to annoy him. But I don't. Sunday mornings are too good to waste. I lie in my lovely bed and think of happy things. It's a four-poster bed, an antique, wrought iron and narrow. One of the brass bedknobs is missing; I've put duct tape over the sharp edge and trailed plastic flowers from the hollow.

The bed is lovely and warm. The window's open to allow any fetid farty smells to float free. It's chill outside and my nose is cold, it thinks it can smell the autumn. I can still taste the tea I drank earlier, pressing my nose to the mug between sips to warm it. Thinking about it makes my tummy rumble for its breakfast. I'll make porridge soon. Microwaved and made with water, it sounds like prison fare. But I'll add berries and honey, and savour every spoonful before tracking it in my Fat Fighters food diary. I'm nine and a half pounds down. It doesn't seem like much to me as I survey my still muffinlike midriff, but nine and half pounds is a fine-sized baby or a fair-sized Yorkshire terrier.

Upstairs, the other Rosie's wide awake and waggling her tubby bum. She's a wet-nosed chocolate-brown labrador, and the sound of her fat and giddy skitterings across the neighbour's wooden floor is a cheerful reminder that on sunny days like today, there's a whole world waiting out there. Like her, I can't fucking wait to get out for a walk. On rainy days, Rosie snuffles under the net curtains and presses her nose to the window upstairs, doleful eyes pleading with passers-by.

My love stirs and mumbles in his sleep. "Give him half an hour more, then whip off the covers and put his shoes on" advises Annie, a braver woman than I. But my pitter patter pottering at his laptop piques his curiosity. "Are you writing a post? What's it about?" "Sunday mornings". He snuggles in closer, sandwiching my cold feet between his thighs. "Is it the longest post in the world about Sunday mornings?" It might be. I've been awake, like Rosie upstairs, for some time, luxuriating in his warmth and dreaming of a gambol on the beach. We'll go to Bull Island today. I'll bring my kite, my aeroplane one with the tail that makes a propeller sound. He'll hold my hand and tell me that I look pretty in my red coat, and my cheeks will redden to match it. I'm glad of the cold as I'll have an excuse to wear my woollen hat - it's red too, with a knitted green stalk and two leaves sprouting from the crown. Apple-cheeked and Rosie. It's going to be a good day.

Fievel Goes To Portobello

The Gerbil We Found By The Canal - Artist's Impression

We were walking by the banks of the Grand Canal on Wednesday night when the Jaffa Cake stopped dead and pointed to the base of a tree. "Look at the little mouse!" There, stopped dead and staring back at him, was a blond, fluffy gerbil*. We crept closer and the gerbil stood on his hind legs, sniffing the air. He looked lost. Someone's pet, escaped or, more likely, "set free". Poor little skite. His treeside urchin act hinted that he might not be too adept at fending for or feeding himself. Never mind the neighbourhood cats - canal rats are mean.

"Have you any chocolate?" I asked the Jaffa Cake. Rodents love chocolate. He rummaged in his coat pocket and came up with an orange creme. I broke off a few crumbs and scattered them on the grass in front of the gerbil, clicking my tongue to call him over. He wasn't scared, just wary. The Jaffa Cake was all on for taking him home. "He'll bite" I cautioned, "and we have nowhere to keep him". I sounded like my mother. I sounded like everyone's fucking mother. So we fed him the orange creme, and left him be. A man cycling by stopped and asked what we were looking at. We must have looked odd, crouched over by the bank, clicking. "It's someone's pet gerbil" I explained, "a cute little fella". "He won't last long with the rats" the stranger counseled. "I know that, fucker!" I said, except I didn't because that would have been rude. I wanted to. "I know" I said, "so we're giving him a fine last meal". He cycled on, and the whoosh of his wheels on the tarmac sent the gerbil scuttling off into the rushes.





*To be fair to him, you don't expect to see pet gerbils rummaging around in the rushes by the banks of the Grand Canal. He's not thick or anything. He didn't, say, suggest that it might be a vole when I shot the mouse thing down. This post and the last might suggest that he's some kind of flatulent moron. He's not. He's very clever and fragrant, and he has a lovely beard. He spent many of his formative years in Tanzania and so knows his heffalumps from his woozles, but I suspect is a bit Stephanie when it comes to domesticated vermin.

I Saw Your Reflection

There was a homeless man stood outside the shop this morning. He was stroking someone else's dog, which was tied to the post by the door. The Labrador had a sleek, glossy black coat. His was green, filthy and full of holes, it looked sick, scabbed, sore. He had a huge bushy beard, stained yellow around his mouth. The dog liked the smell of him, but people coming out of the shop started back when they saw him and sidestepped him, making every effort not to look like they were doing so. He looked up from the dog and saw me coming, then drew himself up by what was left of his lapels and gave me a big wide smile. "Hello!" I looked behind me, in case he was talking to someone else, and this made him laugh. He told me to have a lovely day.

I got a no. 15 from Nassau St. As I walked down the aisle, a man in the back seat bellowed at me. "Ah, hello!" I didn't look up. He sounded delighted to see me. I knew he meant me - I was the last to board the bus and the only one in the aisle. I had my headphones on. I pretended not to hear him and shuffled into a seat. "You're looking very well, anyway!" The woman sat beside me shifted slightly, afraid to make her sideways stare too obvious. She was looking at me, not at him. I could smell him from my seat two rows up, stale sweat and sour clothes. I didn't begrudge her the gawk, I'd have done the same. The curiosity is not the madman but the object of his shouty affections. He stopped talking then, maybe watched people getting on and off. That's what I did. He wasn't quiet. He beat an out of time tattoo on the floor with his feet, stomping to the beat of his own discomfort.

When I stood up to get off, he shouted again. Top of his lungs, which were filled with enthusiasm.

He told me to have a lovely day.

Wednesday Wears Monday's Mask

My third trip to Aldi today, and Agnetha gives me a pitying smile. Agnetha never smiles at anyone. Once, she buried her nose in a bunch of roses and smiled (to herself) before fucking them into my trolley. Two trips too many today.

I have to ask the pharmacist where the earplugs are kept. "What are they for?" she asks, because she is nosy helpful. "Snoring" I sigh, and she gives me an empathetic smile. I dislike her a little for it, and I can't help myself. "I snore like a pig. I'm keeping him awake at night". She gives me the little yellow ones that look like cigarette filters, 80 cent a pop. Instead, I spend a fiver on three coloured pairs from Paris, France, in a little box that he'll fiddle to open. I'm trying to make them look like a present.

Back on the Rathmines Road, a man in a suit lumbers awkwardly towards me, lurching this way then that, briefcase and knees grazing lampposts and pillars. He catches me watching him. I'm lumbering too, unbalanced by the messages that are hurting my hand though I've only just left the shop. His palsy is catching. I smack the shopping bag into Domino's windowledge and hear the eggs crack. "Well well!" he shouts. "Well well!"

I'm better balanced by the time I reach the canal bank. There's a guy walking towards me, brown face, red jacket, pale girl on his arm. He's laughing, and he gives me a big hello as I pass. I met him the night I first met the Jaffa Cake. I didn't think he liked me then. I wonder if he likes me now? I wondered then if it was because I'm a girl. Maybe now I get a smile because he has a girl of his own.

I step off the path onto the muddied track that leads to Leeson St. bridge, making way for a runner. He's broad-shouldered, long-legged, beautiful. I asked him out once. I knew he was heading away to Australia but he didn't use that as an excuse. He just said no, thanks. So I look to the traffic and he watches where he's going and neither of us nod. There's a sweet tang of his sweat in the air, trailing like cartoon perfume.

My bag of breakfast, lunch, dinner and tea is making my shoulder ache. I walk from bench to bench - my version of bus stop to bus stop. One bench before Kavanagh's I fade, and take a seat. My fingers have swollen with the bag, and the thick ring I can't quite get used to wearing is gnawing at me. I slide it over my knuckle and let the clammy skin breathe. There is a man I pass every day, walking his three terriers. They're old, and take it in turns to get a carry. Every time I see him I'm touched by his affection for them, but I'm scared to say hello. I don't want the responsibility of sympathy, because I'm sure that one day soon there'll be a mutt too few when they pass me.

So I sit, there, dawdling. I miss smoking at times like this, because it would give me a sense of purpose. I don't even have my notebook. My post is written in one word sentences on the back of a Rathmines Pharmacy receipt.

I gave up on this last week. I had things to do. The internet is boring. I took a gentle poke and wrapped it up in vanity, then played a solitary game of pass the parcel until all I could see in my blog was the worst excesses of my attention-seeking. I put up a post about not putting up posts, now I'm posting about why I post at all. I want to make the minutiae of my day matter, to me.

The Odd Couple

I noticed him at the traffic lights in Portobello. It was the little bag of jelly babies that caught my eye - everything else about him was cigarette coloured. His slicked-back hair made me wipe my hands in my skirt, greasy just at the thoughts of touching it. He wore jet-black jeans in that slim fit favoured by cats of his vintage, with black loafers and a beige bomber jacket. The fag hanging from his mouth set his tone. He was the kind of ratty-faced louche I'd avoid at a bar. He looked like he might hit on you.

She had a crown of curls; thick brown ringlets that made me want to bury my fingers in her hair, that made me want to bury my nose in it to see how it smelled. She had a friendly, open face and a gloriously round, full arse. It was a pleasure to follow her up the path. She took his hand in hers and he was transformed. I was transfixed. I followed them to Charlemont Bridge. They left for the Luas, I took a seat on the canal bench. To capture their moment.

As I sat scribbling in my notebook, I saw a kid coming my way. He was wearing an emerald green tracksuit, and had ding-a-ling ginger hair. His freckles had been pencilled in, and the rosy bloom in his cheeks made him look like he'd been sketched in technicolour. The city seemed drab by comparison. Writing faster now in an effort to draw him in nouns and adjectives without losing sight of my odd couple, my script turned to scrawl. I laughed.

Go home, Rosie, you fucking weirdo.

A Little Warmth On A Cold Walk Home

As I was walking down Sussex Terrace this evening, an elderly man tapped me on the headphones. "Her feet must be freezing" he said, smiling at me and nodding at the swan. "I'd say so" I said, caught short conversationally. "I know mine are". Happy to have gotten that much from me, he shuffled on.

He had such an ease about him that I envied him. It was something my Crash Grandadicoot would have done. This Saturday we'll celebrate the 76 years of his life, and mark a year since his death. The night in James' Hospital seems like aeons ago, but I still miss him like it was yesterday.

You'd Have To Laugh

Last night he cooked me dinner and I brought him flowers; role reversal rolled over into this morning. He's never so tired as when he wakes, but this time it was I who straggled down the street, a grumpy little face and a leaden pace. He bounded along. Like I normally do. It was very annoying.

"Will I make farty sounds on your face?" he asked, before blowing a slobbery, squelchy kiss on my cheek. At Holles St. he stroked my temples with mock concern. Diddums has a sore head. "How about I numb the area?" he said, before diving into my collarbone, mumbling "num! num! num!" as he laughed at his own joke and nuzzled my neck. Well, my boobs, if I'm honest.

We got as far as Clare St. before we passed the small man who works on my street. He, like me, had a nasty cough. "See" the Jaffa Cake squeezed me "it's a very phlegmy dwarf. You don't see that every day."

A Slip And A Slide

"That'll be €9.10, please."

I pocket them and dodge the traffic, skidding across the slush on Aungier St. I'd spent so long thinking, sitting on that grimy grey couch thinking about the cigarettes that I won't have time to smoke one. So I peel off the cellophane and sniff them. Old socks.

Bás nádúrtha, a deir siad, and there is some cold comfort to be taken from that. I am a lady perpetually in search of succour. Of course, the end result is the same; he's gone. I hope that there might be reassurance for his mother in the manner of his loss. I think then of another mother, and wonder if it is any less natural to end your own life, searching for something that has remained resolutely just out of your reach.

I switch off, pocket the cigarettes and step inside.

It's snowing again when I leave work to walk home, fat flakes like the ones I've been picking from my psioratic scalp. It's been a picky day, and the thin skin behind my left ear is red raw. I remember sitting on the couch with the Leitrim Lady not so long ago. "Stop picking it!" she barked, and I paused, hand halfway to my hair. The Jaffa Cake took his finger from his nose, and she slapped her own hand away from the scab on her scar. Three guilty giggles.

I don't wonder fancifully if I am pretty as a postcard today, I just want to be home and dry. Still fingering the fags in my pocket, I nod to Oscar as I pass him on Merrion Square. A man walking towards me mistakes my nod for a greeting, and begins unbuttoning his coat. No, I think, please not today. He fumbles in his pockets, then asks through broken teeth if I might have a cigarette for him. I hand him the packet, relieved. Then continue on my way, a little motherfucking Teresa.

With Flawless Pause And Intonation

He's a classically trained Shakespearean actor, you know.

I've gotten too used to my morning natter and I've gotten too used to his late night chatter. My mother was mortified to hear that he reads to me in bed, and more embarrassed still that it was he (not me) who oh so casually revealed this aspect of our romance. Maybe she hadn't imagined that I'd allow such a thing.

Anyway, on the nights when he's not there and in the cold mornings that follow them, I've begun to substitute him with Timothy Dalton. We've spent two nights together now, Timothy and I, and he walked me to work this morning. He's reading some Benjamin Black to me and making a fine fist of it, except when it comes to Dolly Moran's name, which he makes a pig's ear of. Mor an, Timothy, not Mo ran. Potato potato, tomato tomato.

Duty's calling for my Jaffa Cake at 5am this Thursday morning; he's off to Madrid and I'd envy him were it not for the 56 teenagers he'll spend til Sunday with. I mention this as it has absolutely nothing to do with me pirating every audiobook in the Rathmines public library last night.

There was nothing on telly, is all.

First We'll Make Snow Angels For Two Hours, Then We'll Go Ice Skating, Then We'll Eat A Whole Roll Of Tollhouse Cookie-dough As Fast As We Can...

Good morning, gorgeous. There's a beautiful snowy wonderland waiting outside for you. Just don't slip and crack your skull walking along the 'nal.

He's a very optimistic realist, my Jaffa Cake. It had rained on Love Lane this morning, so I flaghopped with care down Mount St. What snow had fallen overnight was now in puddles of slush, sat like pizzas of sick in the centre of each paving slab, turning the street into a slick chequerboard of calamity. I'm clumsy in the mornings (afternoons and evenings) so having to pick my way in to work fairly cooled my heels. I'd planned to prance in my new boots. Nobody's noticed my new boots yet, but I'm trying not to sulk about that.

It's going really well.

It started to snow again, and the flakes stuck to my red coat and curls. I must look pretty as a postcard! I thought to myself, before catching a glimpse of my sodden reflection. It is only now that it dawns on me; people look pretty as pictures, places are pretty as postcards. I am all bumps and hillocks today, my tangled undergrowth stretching this metaphor further than either of us wanted to go.

I Wish My Name Was Scroobius Pip

I danced all the way in to work yesterday morning, skipping to the beats of The Beat that my Heart Skipped and laughing along with Tommy Cooper. Right up until I hit Thou Shalt Always Kill, and heard the fateful lyric.

Thou shalt not fall in love so easily.
Thou shalt not use poetry, art or music to get into girls’ pants.
Use it to get into their heads.
Thou shalt not watch Hollyoaks.

Fuck.

How Many Syllabubs Is That?

Fréamhaíonn sé mé a deir Gabriel Rosenstock agus é ag caint ar haiku a chleachtadh. Tugann sé dearcadh eile dom ar cad is áilleacht ann.

Labhair Rosenstock freisin ar an íonghlanadh intinne a ghabhann leis an haiku. Go dtugann scríobh agus léamh haiku peirspeictíocht nua dó ar an saol, saol atá níos glé agus níos glaine dá bharr. Táim tógtha leis an smaoineamh seo - go bhféadfainn machnamh a dhéanamh i seacht siolla dhéag. Ach is dócha go n-oirfeadh foirm an senryū níos fearr domsa - baineann siad le faona daonna seachas dúile an dhúlra, agus is duine daonna lán faona mise.

Trathnóna inné bhí mé i mo shuí ar bhínse in aice na canála, ag fanacht leis an Jaffa Cake le dul ag gig an Jimmy Cake. Bhí seisean ag rith mall agus bhí mise préachta leis an bhfuacht, le creathanna i mo cholainn, ar tí an chantail. Chinn mé ar haiku a scríobh; triail breith ar an nóiméad agus an ruaig a chur ar mo cholg.

ag feitheamh, foighneach,
an fuacht, láimhíní in
uachtar ar fhaisean

Dá bhféadfainn chuile éispearas a bhíonn agam ar bhruacha na canála a scagadh mar seo, bheadh suaimhneas intinne i ndán dom.

Ach bheadh easpa ábhar léitheoireachta oraibhse ansin.

A Short Post About Nothing Much Because Yesterday's Read Like A Desperate "I'm Okay! Really!"

There is something very satisfying about a hearty fart on a cold walk home, when you've your headphones on and are fully convinced that because you couldn't hear it, nobody else could either.

When I Disappoint Myself

Walking down Camden Street on Thursday afternoon I passed an elderly man, sitting on the stoop of one of the Georgian houses. He was bleeding from a cut above his eye, he looked rattled. There was a girl sitting with him, one arm under his to support him while he dabbed at the cut with a wad of tissue, the other hand clutching a mobile phone. I was, as I always am, absorbed in my own little world. It was only when I drew level with them that the scene registered with me - he'd fallen and she'd stopped, steadied him and called for help. I didn't stop. Didn't even lower my headphones.

That same evening, I turned the corner onto Mount St. Lower to see the traffic backed up behind a small green car which had broken down in the middle of the street. I watched as the driver struggled out of his seatbelt, opened the door and set himself to push it. He was in his fifties, portly, unfit, flustered. I slowed my walk, shifted the weight of the shopping bags that were cutting into my palms. Thought of the old man with the bloodied face and the worried girl sat beside him. But I didn't stop. After the longest pause, a man at the bus stop put his bag on the ground and moved towards the car to help. I didn't look back, but by the time I reached my crossing the traffic was moving again.

Karma is going to come knocking for me. And I fear he will not be wearing his kid gloves.

Pineapple Head

I dressed with careless abandon this morning. Pulled on my blue stripey t-shirt, the one with the scribbled cartoon and hurry up! break time is coming!! written in a childish scrawl across the front, which makes my colleagues laugh. Black jeans scraped from the bedroom floor; they flatter my arse and say shimmy on the label. This morning it reads like a request. Then my flowery runners, which squeak with every step. On paranoid days I blush, convinced that everyone must think I have horribly sweaty feet. Why on earth I wouldn't just assume that everyone thinks I have squeaky runners is anyone's guess, and a psychiatrist's wet and sticky dream. I leave my hair in a wet, messy tousle and my face sleepy-eyed and apple-cheeked.

I was going to dress with careful deliberation today, straighten my hair and paint on a pretty face. I was going to sit down to a courteous conversation that I'd rather not have. But I look prettier when I smile with flushed cheeks and freckles than I do when I have a powdered nose and runny mascara. My life is too short for that shite.

I saunter into work. There may even have been a shimmy to my shake - showing some spine feels good this morning. I listen to Crowded House because you can't pretend to be cool all of the time. When the lights change at Charlemont Bridge I curb my urge to sit down on the kerb. It's one thing to be feeling easy in the morning sunshine, it's quite another to share your contentedness to wait for the little green man to the point where other commuters are looking at you with naked concern. Je suis bien dans ma peau et ma tête, I think, pretentiously and in French. Because I do feel good in my skin this morning, more so than I have done in a while.

This ain't no sea-change, I think. Not yet, anyway. But I had tired of the tempestuous puddle I'd chosen to paddle in.

Safe Keeping

Sometimes I save up all of the nice things that someone has said to me so that I can savour them as I walk to work. Especially on rainy days. This morning the sun tickled the banks of the grand canal, and people smiled. As Boc Maxima flooded my ears, I peeled off my rain mac to give my freckles an airing and cracked open my safe of warm fuzzies anyway. There's no need to keep these ones for a dark, dank day.

Here Come The Girls

I love watching breasts bounce past me on their way to work on a sunny morning, dressed in v-neck pastels and wrap-around blouses, dusted with freckles after a sunny weekend. I adore the sight of curvy hips stretching the fabric of Dunnes Stores Career Casuals trousers. Pink cheeks showing through freshly applied makeup, wafts of sweet perfume trailing in their wake and turning my head as they sashay past me on their way down from Charlemont bridge. They smell of optimism on a Monday morning.

Filleann An Feallaire Ar An bhFilíocht

I spent the afternoon out at the pier in Howth. The sun was shining. The seals were performing for the crowd, blubbering and snorting for fish, their big soulful eyes looking up my skirt. I bought some cherries at the market, I ordered a glass of wine with my dinner and spent an hour looking at it. I stopped off at a book sale and bought myself a copy of Pat Ingoldsby's Beautiful Cracked Eyes. I've only ever bought Pat's books from him, and for other people; I've always wished that someone would think to buy one for me. I got home, sat down, put on some music and cracked my book's spine.

God It's So Lovely

I am watching a gull walking
into the harbour shallows
at the edges of grey water
walking very slowly
with no hurry on him at all
the water deepening up around his legs
till a beautiful fusion of water and weight
floats him on it.
The sun comes out
and blinds silver lights across the tide.
The gull is moving one way.
The lights are going the other.

Pat Ingoldsby, East Pier, Howth, 16.40, 7-8-98

Why I Love Dublin No. #1874

The office workers crossing the lock bridge on the Canal Road remind me of ducklings, hurrying across one after the other, waddling into the waiting Barge all of a huddle. I keep walking. A flash of orange in the water catches my eye, a recumbent traffic cone lies like a sleeping koi on the canal bed. The horse chestnut overhead trails its leaves across the surface of the water and I imagine how it must feel - like fingertips skimming skin. Man, I think, I need to get laid.

The prosaic has become poetic now that I lack music for my pedestrian adventures; I dropped my i-pox on its pretty little head and it no longer trills for me. So the world around me takes on a musical air as I meander home along the banks of the Grand Canal every evening.

My imagined soundtrack is silently interrupted as I walk down Wilton Terrace; there is a man lying on the grass between the two pathways. He's curled up on his side, his arm cradling his face and his baseball cap lying comically positioned, two inches above his head. One of the new faces who has made the bank of the Grand Canal his non-home over the last few months. People stare at him curiously as they walk past (once they're sure he can't see them) but nobody stops to make sure he's okay. Something about his clothes tells them that this, for him, is normal. So they keep walking, as do I.

Down at Warrington Place there are two men and a little boy of four or five fishing, the men drinking cans of cider which are strewn around the bench where they've left their wriggling bag of bait. As they cast their lines it's unclear whether or not they're fishing for ducks; the ducks look decidedly worried. The little boy gives me a big hello when I smile at him.

Just one more bridge to Love Lane. Home.

I Can't Help Thinking It's Karma

D'fhág mé tearmann teolaí an árasáin anocht le siúl síos chomh fada leis an mbáisín. Le toitín a bheith agam. Le faoiseamh a lorg ón mbuairt atá do mo chrá le roinnt laethanta anuas, leis an scamall dubh, duairc a ghealadh ó m'aigne. Ach ní raibh mé i bhfad ag siúl sular tháinig an bháisteach agus ag lorg foscadh dom, chonaic mé go raibh mo las fágtha i mo dhiaidh agam. Tháinig deora i mo shúile ansin agus mé ag triall ar an mbaile arís, mé náirithe leo agus leis an bhféintrua.