It's one of those nights

It's one of those nights, summer turning to autumn, when the sun sends sideways glances at the earth and turns the day's heat into shades of pink and gold. We are walking on the cliffs at Garrarus and at each further climb towards the top field we stop and watch it disappear to the west.

The small details catch my eye but it is the larger sweep of things that I am more concerned about for once. Bits of me are blending into each other. Parts that have been kept hidden are bubbling to the surface. Work merges with life. Art merges with hope. While the light is fading on Ireland a ferocious determination is rising in me.

Rose tinted spectacles and all, I write three orders in my diary for September, Engage, Reach out, Enthuse.  The words come from somewhere, a powerful energy.

O I don't have all that lingo of dreaming and journeying, concepts in some foreign language, or maybe in code. I only have a simple phrase which says, life is short.

~ Mementos ~

I'm in Micky Macs place. It's been disturbed by party goers, doors open to the yard, a gentle sea breeze blowing through windows, cracked and broken. I once visited him here in his smokey room, walls blackened from the wood fire. I sat on a settle bed in a wollen blanket while he sat on that once pink arm chair with a once yellow cushion.

Even on the beach where he used to sit on summer evenings, he wore the whole kit; a long great coat, a flat cap and black boots. Surrounded by picnics and bathing families he stayed shyly at the edge, chatting to anyone who lingered.

His neighbour, used to wave down cars by standing in the middle of the road. A tousled head would peer through the window, asking mysterious questions;

"Have ye any cigarettes?"
"No we don't smoke"
"Well have ye any kittens?"

They are both gone now as are most of the older generation of my own family. Flimsy remains of curtains and occasional memories all that's left.

A way of life is dying out too. Small farms are being swallowed up and old walls, lanes and streams, absorbed into lawns for horses and feed for herds. No more cattle roaming freely along roadside verges, grazing the long acre.

At the top of the lane is another collapsing cottage. There's an eery emptiness there, a tweed jacket on a hanger in the bedroom, a candle on the kitchen table. The next neighbours, three stoic older siblings, recently lost their fine thatched cottage in a horrible blaze that took all they had. Everything seems vulnerable.

My Dad used to talk about the old days around here and return in his mind to the lanes of Kilkenny where he grew up. He could still feel the hunger experienced through the War. He remembered feet crossing the footpath windows above his grandmother's basement kitchen. The smell of laughing gas from his Father's primitive dental surgery. I have some audio of him singing every word of Run Rabbit Run which he learned as a small boy. Precious mementos.

Today I step into Micky Macs little house, falling down and forlorn without him. My strange ambition to become even more eccentric isn't any wonder, because for a lifetime I have studied the elders. I have loved them, admired their depth, questioned their mysteries, witnessed their fading. And I know that as they disappear I am an elder apprentice, creating my own mementos as I go.


PS To honour Micky Mac a plaque was erected by his friends right on the wall at Garrarus beach where he used to sit.




The Bealtaine Festival celebrating creativity as we age

Also posted today on Vision and Verb a global gathering of creative women sharing words and images.

Inner warmth and woolly hats

She and I ran around a field excited by our newly wellied feet. We climbed to the top of a hill liberated from tartan skirts and white socks. We went "skating" on a frozen lake in our first corduroy jeans. She fell through the ice. I brought her home, shivering.

She and I went climbing trees. We were swinging from an old Elder, hanging upside down from the branches. I fell onto my back, winded, unable to speak. She screamed the place down and ran to get help.

She and I were wrapped up warm to go on a train somewhere. I held her hand and carried the suitcase. We went out through a gate bewildered, no clue what was happening. So we made pink and yellow tissue paper people and chatted to them for hours on end.

And here we are with woolly hats, crunching around in our boots on the shaley strand. Bonded by our shared youth, forever.

She points her camera everywhere. Look at this, look at that!! She especially likes a harp shaped hole in the cliff, her own unique take on the world, a great eye. She takes a picture of me and I take some of her.

It's never long enough and after a few days she returns to her life in the icy northern city of Stockholm. The woolly hats and her inner warmth must come in very handy up there in that freezing cold archipelago.

My typical Irish summer snaps.....

Well it wasn't a summer of sunny swims or shady meadow picnics. But in our typical Irish summer there were golden days in spite of that.

That's the thing about looking back, we somehow manage to find the sun in it. Like the day the little girl in pink wellies flew her kite on Tramore Beach, the day the neighbours' geese made a run for me, or the perishing Sunday I saw my elders swimming happily during howling gales in Garrarus.

The way the local girls exercise their ponies and manage to chat about Justin Bieber at the same time. Paddy's delight when he finds something lovely for me to photograph. The screams coming from the disembodied legs at the amusements "down around."

Those cloudy grey skies and the very occasionally visible western sunset which would have me running up to the highest point on the hill. The way that little pools of dreamy coloured rain settle in Hydrangea flowers.

Perhaps one of my favourite sights this summer was of the French couple snacking on the Copper Coast bench at Annestown beach. Wrapped up warm, a nice bottle of wine, a pint of Guinness and a selection of cheeses, all while staring into space and an onshore breeze.......A great example of what we would call "getting the best from the day." Here's to a few more weeks of the typical Irish summer!

The sea o the sea.......

Sunny Sunday drive. Around the winding coastal tracks checking out each of the beaches along the route. Garrarus, Kilfarrasey, Annestown, Benvoy, Boatstrand, Kilmurrin Cove........

Swims had here earlier in the year are discussed. Cliff erosion is inspected. Winter storm damage assessed.

Some slight afternoon sunshine warms the rocks. The Atlantic, full of energy and diamond lights, is a dazzling presence. We sit in silence soaking in the salty air. We are giving the old brain cells a strong dose of ozone and crashing waves. Cobwebs are instantly cleared from the brain.

A wet dog, head cocked to one side, stares at a black stone, and whines at his owners, but today this performance all goes unnoticed.

Things change but Garrarus thankfully remains the same

I swam here yesterday in Garrarus on the Copper Coast in Waterford. In under an hour the day went from blue sky, to a large front approaching from the south west, to grey and overcast. As you can see the ocean was flat calm and ideal for lolling about in. I am essentially a lazy bather rather than a big swimmer. I consider that a dip in the sea is better than the best spa in the world!

There is a plaque on this beach to the memory of a man who used to come down from his cottage on the lane, usually in his wellies and overcoat no matter what the weather was doing. He would sit and enjoy the view and always had a chat to anyone who engaged with him. He was certainly loved, and it's nice to see his memory commemorated, by his friends.

My children, their friends and cousins have all spent so many happy sunny days here. There have been lovely picnics, snorkelling adventures and all weather outings here and at the other local beaches. Generations of my family have done the same.

We change as the years pass, and the weather changes every few minutes, but thankfully the views in Garrarus are always the same.





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