So there we are! Sorry for all the doom and gloom, but that’s January for you. And let’s not forget that spring is just around the corner.
Happy New Year!
First published in Irish Tatler, January 1998.
Have You the Green Food Colouring?
Standing in the perishing cold, half a lawn hanging out of the lapel of my good coat, unable to see over people’s heads as yet another pipe band marches past – what else could it be but Saint Patrick’s Day!
During my childhood during the dim and distant sixties and seventies, when we had to make our own entertainment, Saint Patrick’s Day was almost as good as Christmas. OK, so we didn’t get presents, but we got little gold harps to stick on our collars. And fair enough, no one liked having to go to Mass and sing ‘Hail glorious Saint Patrick, dear saint of our isle,’ but on the good side we got the day off school. And even though the parade never really delivered – not enough Disney characters, none in fact, and there was always just that one brass band too many – I still got excited.
Of course, it’s different now. During the eleven years that I lived abroad, the Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin underwent a fundamental metamorphosis and became a reconstituted, rehabilitated, international extravaganza. Instead of the interminable ranks of khaki-clad army brass bands, there are now crews of dusky young girls from the Notting Hill carnival, shivering past in spangly bikinis and elaborate head-dresses, doing a lack-lustre wine’ in the inclement March elements. (Unfortunately, they couldn’t upgrade the weather in the same way they did the rest of the parade.)
And instead of the one crappy float with a banner saying something like ‘Buy Our Bread’ (let’s just say) and some poor mortified eejit dressed as a loaf of bread, half-heartedly waving to the masses below, there are now elaborate mini-worlds passing by on each lorry. Music and good-looking men and jugglers and fire-eaters and… oh… all kinds of things. Although to be honest, the thing that got the biggest cheer at the parade last year was when a French fire-juggler dropped one of his torches on his leg and the bottom of his trousers went up in flames. The frenzied dance that he did to put himself out was greeted with raucous laughter from the crowds of spectators lining the road, who then attempted to mimic him. But even though Saint Patrick’s Day is the annual twenty-four hours when we celebrate our Irishness, ironically enough, the most memorable and enjoyable ones I’ve ever had were when I was living and working in England.
There were two other Irish people working in the same office as me, and every year we tried and every year we failed to convince our boss that we should be allowed to have the seventeenth of March off – in order to go to an Irish pub in Kilburn or Cricklewood that we’d never usually go near, eat free bacon and cabbage, smoke twenty Major, get mouldy drunk, give out about England, sing maudlin songs about how we wished we were back home in the Emerald Isle, and generally savour our Hibernianness.
‘It’s our right as Irish people,’ we complained bitterly. ‘Jewish people get Jewish holidays off. We’re being discriminated against.’
Then my boss gently explained that if any Jewish employees were missing in action on Jewish holidays, it simply meant that they were using up their annual leave. ‘You’re perfectly welcome to take a day of your holidays,’ she said. Which we declined, while we muttered darkly amongst ourselves about invoking the ancient Irish tradition of throwing a sickie.
But the self-same boss who wouldn’t give us a free day off made every other effort to make the occasion special. She had been brought up in Columbus’s Circle in New York, which was full of Irish people, so she knew the drill. Without fail, on a Patrick’s Day morning she’d arrive in with enough clumps of shamrock, green rosettes or little tricolour ribbons for everyone. We never knew how she’d got her hands on them – such articles were like gold dust in central London. We could only presume that as she lived near the Archway, she was well in with someone who was able to see her right. ‘Ask no questions,’ she’d say, tapping her nose.
But we did, anyway. ‘Have you the soda bread?’ we’d demand, looking at the parcels under her arm. ‘Did you bring the decorations? I hope you didn’t forget the cassette player? Have you the tape of the Kilfenora Ceili Band? Did you remember the red lemonade? Were you able to get the carton of Tayto? Have you the green food colouring?’
The badges would be distributed amongst the staff, who were a bit of a multinational crew – Irish, American, St Lucian, Australian. Even one or two English people often ended up sporting a tricolour ribbon with a gold paper harp glued to it. (We enjoyed that, so we did.)
Then we set about turning the office into a little corner of Ireland. Green, orange and white streamers festooned the walls and computers; Irish reels and jigs played all day – or at least until someone decided they couldn’t bear any more and hid the tape; visiting colleagues had red lemonade or green mineral water pressed upon them; or were invited to have a slice of soda bread or a packet of Tayto. Then when they’d eaten it, with traditional Irish hospitality we’d insist that they have another, that there wasn’t a pick on them, that they were fading away before our very eyes. And then we’d try to force one more on them.
The atmosphere was absolutely fantastic. Anyone who came in left in great humour. No mean feat, as we were an accounts office, whose duty it was to ruin people’s lives by telling them that we’d lost their expenses claim or put them on an inhumanely punitive tax code, or whatever.
And when the whistle blew at six o’clock, the cans and bottles were hauled out from under the desks, where they’d been biding their time since early morning. And so, some hours later than strictly preferable, we all proceeded to get mouldy drunk, smoke twenty Major, give out about England and sing maudlin songs until the porter begged us to leave. All together now! ‘Hail glorious Saint Patrick, dear saint of our isle…’
First published in Irish Tatler, March 1999.
Thanks, Mam
Mothers’ Day wasn’t invented when I was small. Or if it was, I didn’t know about it. But suddenly in my early teens it seemed to appear out of nowhere, and everyone blamed the Americans. ‘A load of cod,’ one of my more curmudgeonly schoolteachers pronounced. (He was a man.) ‘The bloody Yanks with their Starsky and Hutch, and their pagan feasts. There’ll be Uncle’s Day and Third-Cousin-Twice-Removed’s Day and Pet Rabbit’s Day soon if we’re not careful.’
He urged us to boycott Mothers’ Day, to take a stand against cultural imperialism. And because I wanted to preserve my pocket-money for the truly important things in life, like fizzy cola-bottles and Creme Eggs, I was happy to go along with him.
Except peer pressure was too great. Oneupmanship among teenage girls is vicious and I was interrogated repeatedly. ‘What are you getting your mum for Mothers’ Day?’ Reluctantly I realized I’d better get with the program.
But I just wasn’t into it. I was selfish, self-obsessed and astonishingly ungrateful for everything my mother had done for me. After all, I was a teenager, it was part of my job description. So on the appointed Sunday morning, when I appeared at my mother’s bedside and said, ‘For feeding me, clothing me, minding me, worrying about me since the day I was born, for the eighteen hours you spent in labour with me, when epidurals were still only a twinkle in a scientist’s eye, here’s a £2.99 bunch of daffodils,’ I felt that she was getting the better part of the bargain. That I was the one who’d been ripped off.
Over the next couple of years, Mothers’ Day quickly became part of the landscape. Except my brothers, sisters and I were never prepared. In the week before it, there was always a queue of us sidling up to our mother.
‘Mam,’ we’d wheedle. ‘Can I have some money?’
‘What for?’ she’d ask suspiciously. ‘Money doesn’t grow on trees/I’m not made of money/Who do you think I am – that fella Onassis?’ (Tick as preferred.)
‘It’s for you,’ we’d say huffily. ‘For Mothers’ Day. To buy you a present.’
‘No. I’ve advanced you your pocke
t money until next September. Enough is enough.’
‘Janey! Talk about ungrateful.’
And then, of course, there were the Mothers’ Day lunches. Which, naturally, for a celebration of family gratitude and unity, caused a huge number of passionate rows. The big problem about Mothering Sunday was that it very inconveniently fell on a Sunday. Which didn’t suit at all in my late teens, when it was my habit to go out on a Saturday night, get jarred, stay the night in a friend’s house and only be able to get the bus home when the nausea had subsided, some time on Sunday evening. In the days running up to the lunch, my poor father, with a mixture of threats and pleas, was like a sheepdog trying to round up my four siblings and me. And in fairness, we did usually turn up. But, gracious to the last, someone always said, thirty seconds before we went out the door to the restaurant, ‘Mam, will you iron me something to wear for this Mothers’ Day lunch yoke Dad is making us go to?’
But worse than being ungracious about Mothers’ Day is when you totally forget about it. You’d wonder how anyone could, when there are so many reminders of it, but people do. One Wednesday last year, when the restaurant I’d booked to take my mammy to on the big day rang to say they were full after all, Himself took the call. As I watched him talking, I wondered why he’d gone so pale. The minute he slammed down the phone he announced he was going out.
‘Where to?’ I asked.
‘Card shop,’ he gasped. ‘How many days does it take to get a card to England?’
At least he’d remembered on a Wednesday. Woe betide the poor misfortunate who doesn’t remember until Saturday evening, when it’s far, far too late. Normally you can hardly get up Grafton Street on a Saturday, what with flower-stalls waylaying you and dogging your path. But on the eve of Mothering Sunday, not a single flower is left in the whole of the Western World. Flower shops turn into a wasteland. An overturned bucket or perhaps a scrap of cellophane is all that remains after the hordes have been through.
And don’t think you’ll get away with buying chocolates instead. Oh no! I know several people who, with a flourish, presented a box of Roses, only to be told, tight-lipped, ‘I’ve given up chocolate for Lent,’ Mothers’ Day usually being awkward enough to fall during the Catholic version of Ramadan.
But I’m no longer a selfish teenager. I’m in my thirties now and my mother is my friend. So I’d just like to take the opportunity this Mothers’ Day to say, ‘Mammy, for feeding me, clothing me, minding me, worrying about me since the day I was born, for the eighteen hours you spent in labour with me, when epidurals were still only a twinkle in a scientist’s eye – thank you.’
First published in the Sunday Independent, March 1998.
Time’s Arrow
Getting old – it’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. And the honour, this month, has fallen to me. It’s my birthday, d’you see? And actually, considering my great age, I don’t feel too bad. Birthdays (mine anyway) have traditionally been a time of great weeping, gnashing of teeth (the few I have left) and pulling out of hair (ditto). When I take stock and find myself very, very wanting. Like New Year’s Eve, though probably not as bad.
Past birthday celebrations have been rather mournful affairs. ‘Happy birthday!’ friends and family exclaim rather hysterically, in an attempt to cancel out my incessant intoning of ‘I am a fat, useless failure.’
‘Did you get nice pres– ’
‘I am a fat, useless failure.’
‘That’s a lovely card. Who’s it fr–’
‘I am a fat, useless failure.’
‘Well, not exactly fat. Just very pear-shaped.’
‘Fat. Don’t patronize me, not on my birthday. I am a fat, useless fail…’
But in the last few years, for some unfathomable reason, birthdays haven’t triggered my usual suicidal despair. It seems I might be feeling my way to becoming – God forbid – content. There was a time when I thought that contentment was one of the worst things that could happen to me. Acute, confused unhappiness seemed far preferable. Edgy angst was the province of the young, as opposed to calm serenity, which smacked of plump, aged complacency and the desire to garden. (Let me stress that I’m not very calm or serene, but all these things are relative.)
It sneaks up on you, this ageing process. Once I knew and loved every song in the Top Twenty, but now I’m lucky to know even one, and I’m bound to think it’s shite. (I mean, that S Club 7 – crap or what?) I don’t know when this change happened. I’ve been going around, foolishly assuming that my finger is still on the pulse, but with each second that passes I’m inexorably slipping away from the centre of all that is fashionable and youthful. Becoming more and more marginalized and on the edges. There’s nothing I can do about it. And the worst thing of all – I don’t really care.
To show you how bad I am, I will readily admit:
a) My ears are the only parts of my body that are pierced.
b) The last time I was up at five in the morning was after seven hours of sleep.
c) I know very little about the Chemical Brothers.
d) I have only ever said ‘Having it large’ as a joke.
But this contentment wasn’t easily won because being a thirty-something is like experiencing adolesence in reverse. Your body starts behaving in all these strange and outlandish ways and you’re powerless to prevent it. Like, out of nowhere, your body starts wanting to stay in sometimes on a weekend night – and it’s horrifying. Nearly as bad as when I started to grow hair under my arms. Not caning it on a Saturday evening seemed like terrible, shameful, aberrant behaviour. So if I succumbed and stayed in, I made millions of not-very-convincing excuses – long week, late night the night before, early start on Sunday, no clean clothes, pain in stomach, yadda yadda. But, even as I barricaded myself in with a video and a carton of Ben & Jerry’s, I couldn’t really enjoy myself. Convinced that everyone else in the whole universe was doing tequila slammers with dangerous men in ear-bleedingly loud nightclubs until five in the morning. That I was the only oul’-wan-before-her-time.
But this getting-old lark happens to nearly everyone. Even men! Though maybe they’re less likely to notice immediately. There they are, blithely going around thinking they’re still a bit of a young hep cat, until a person who is legitimately young decides to disabuse them of the idea. I was over at a friend’s house, and her younger brother and a few of his mates were in the kitchen, smoking dope. Himself went into the kitchen (to make Ovaltine, probably), and when he saw the drug-ingesting that was going on there, got all excited. This is a man who, in his heyday, could roll joints with one hand. He doesn’t get much opportunity any more, because… well, I don’t know why. Because we’re in our mid-thirties, I suppose. Anyway, there he was hanging around in the kitchen, waiting to be offered a toke, smiling and nodding at the youths, thinking he was the same as them, God love him. When the next moment one of the boys flung himself bodily across the kitchen to cover a lump of hash that was sitting, exposed, on the table. ‘You should have seen their faces,’ Himself lamented in shock. ‘Like they thought I was an adult, or something. Like I was going to tell on them.’
He sat with his (grey) head in his (liver-spotted) hands for the best part of a week. ‘I’m young,’ he kept saying. ‘I’m young.’
Now that I’m past my prime, I’ve had to let go of several visions or versions of myself. Better versions, of course. I used to think that being alive was some sort of apprenticeship where I’d get to a certain age and all of a sudden I’d be able to do life. That out of nowhere I’d know how to twirl my hair into a fabulous smooth French pleat. Or that the day would dawn when I’d just somehow be able to time my leg-waxes to coincide with good weather. Or that I’d wake up one morning and suddenly be one of those people who can go out in their slip and look willowy and graceful and fey and right. But now I accept that it’s never going to happen, that I’d just look like I’d gone out without getting dressed.
As for the gym – I always felt that I wasn’t working to my
full potential, that if I could only go a couple more times a week I’d be looking like Kate Moss in no time. And that I’d get round to it as soon as the current busy/lazy/self-destructive phase passed. But now that will never be – it’s too late for the gym to give me the perfect body. All it can do is stem the Jabba the Hutt tide.
But it’s fine. The only weird thing is that, paradoxically, I still feel like a teenager. I’m still waiting to feel grown-up (as opposed to just getting old). I don’t know how they do it, but everyone else seems to have it sussed. Even though I have many of the trappings of adulthood – George Michael CDs, a copy of Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking, a monthly standing order to a pension fund, a good relationship with my neighbours, plump upper arms – I’m still waiting for that glorious moment when I truly feel like a grown-up. I suspect I’ll probably proceed directly from adolesence to the menopause. Anyway, wheel out the birthday cake, I feel a Jabba the Hutt moment coming on…
First published in Irish Tatler, October 1999.
Feeling Sheepish
One of the hardest things about working from home is not having a Christmas party. All I have now to sustain me are memories… Before I gave up the day job in the accounts department, we used to have great Christmas parties. Tears, confessions, people getting sick or insulting their boss, no one in the next morning – oh, the glory days! But one year when funds were low, we had a choice between having no party at all or making all the food ourselves. For some reason, we opted for the latter.
It seemed like a good idea because we had a multi-racial staff. Ahmed, a Moroccan, offered to roast a couple of sheep on a spit in the courtyard. Apparently he had ‘contacts’ and could get his hands on a pair of dead sheep, no questions asked. The rest of the duties were shared out among the fifty administrative staff (the hundred academic staff were let off doing anything because they were regarded as too dippy to be depended on). People were variously responsible for bread, cheese, fruit, desserts, salads, starters and wine. The Irish members of staff (all three of us) were, naturally, put on baked-potato duty. We also seemed to be the natural inheritors of the mantle of coleslaw making, because of the cabbage element.