Deceit

My earliest memory is of looking out of a playpen at my father. He was in the living room carrying on a conversation with my mother who was in the kitchen. She would occasionally miss what he said and would ask him to repeat it. He would rephrase what he had originally said, which i found puzzling, so I assume I had a very limited vocabulary. I knew my mother was asking him to repeat something. I knew he was saying something different the second time around. Whereas I may have been mistaken in then jumping to the conclusion that he was deceiveing her the second time around, it may have been that i could sense something unspoken in his actions. There was a large amount of deceit going on, as we found out later when he left home and married his mistress of many years. however, before this happened, my parents came to an agreement that he would continue to live with us until my sister and i were finished school, so they then cooperated in keeping the deceit going. Growing up, I never had a great level of certainty about what was really going on and who or what to rely on. I remember as a young teenager I spent a lot of time in a friends house, where the several sibling and parents were constantly having standing up rows with each other and storming out and slamming doors, only to resolve their differences minutes later in waves of laughter and hugs. It took me a year or two to figure out that my family was the disfunctional one! but the worst deceit of all took place when I was three and my granfather bought me a red drum with pictures of soldiers on it for my birthday. My parents hid the drumsticks and told me it was a stool. I sat on that drum for a year. Probably explains my distrust of drummers ever since!

pin ups

Local election fever has kicked in on the streets and the villages of Galway, even if the only feverish people are the candidates i was driving through Oranmore yesterday on a family drive (remember those?) when among the thousands of posters we passed, I noticed a one picturing a young blonde with rather scary lipstick. Underneath her name, slogan, and sundry other information in a font so small that i practically had to park the car and stand onm the roof in order to make it out was the party name, Fianna Fail(The senior party in the current government). It was the first Fianna Fail poster I had seen so far. On another poster in the city centre I spotted a nicely suited, earnest looking gentleman whose face rang a bell. Then I remebered that I had had previous dealings with him many moons ago , in the early eighties when he did a passable line in Moroccan black. Only in Ireland!!

Where does the time go?

Just about recovered from last weekend spent with 41 12 year old rugby players on a trip to London. We had a great trip, played in Ealing and at London irish. Drank much cider, met my socialist son for a few very nice hours. It was a strange experience visiting the UK the weekend after a visit to France. London and it's environs felt more different, more foreign to me than did La Rochelle. Not sure why. There seems to be a different attitude about the place, as if everybody is within their own bubble and interaction with strangers isn't part of the plan. Eye contact seems to be seen as strange or threatening. Then again...maybe eye contact from a sunburnt hungover rugby coach may not be the most welcome sight in the world. Anyhoo, off to the land of the people who come from Cork for the weekend with the Fabulous Galway Gospel Choir. Other choirs go to the Cork Choral Festival to win. We just go to spread the love and make the world a better place for mankind, while spear tackling everything that looks like another choir.