There was a whirling growl and grumble across the echo chamber of the Bog this week as Róisín and I strolled out in the Spring sunshine, trying to avoid the strings of dead frogs scattered across the lane.

Flattened frogs, dark green, spotted, outstretched limbs, arms  and legs with tiny fingers, big hooded eyes. Or they lay on their backs, as if on a rack, pinned for dissection, pale yellow, bulbous bellies, burst, blood and guts tangled with loose lane gravel. I think, occasionally, one or two of them must die of fright as they sat upright, eyes closed, motionless, statuesque, but dead.

I tend to keep my eyes on the road these days as I am on crutches and the lane is full of dips, subsidence, pot holes (it is a little like walking in the crazy cottage of my fairground youth) so it was Róisín who noticed the slurping and bubbling of the pooled water in the drain or shuk of the ditch.

The dank dark water was covered with a green blue frog spawn and frogs were bubbling beneath and multiplying. They were everywhere, clambering over each other, slippery, big, slimy, small and slithery. Ribbit, ribbit. We watched entranced. They were gross but sublimely beautiful.

“The noise is amazing,” said Róisín

“I think that’s some kind of agricultural machine in the distance,” I responded.

“I don’t think so, listen.”

The whirling rumble actually sounded like a small helicopter or thresher but it wasn’t. It was the millions of frogs spawning across the bog. Snippets of ribbit, ribbit flying on the air, tumbling through the bog holes, rising and lowering, leavening the earth, falling away as we walked higher out of the bog, me trying to dodge their dead or leaping bodies on my sticks. It was amazing. I hadn’t seen anything like it before. I hope Róisín, who sadly left the next day to live and work in London as part of the current swarm of emigration, hops as high and soars like those ribbits.

When Roisín told me she was going to London, I found myself struggling with a mix of emotions. Delight that she had an interesting, well paid job, sad at her departure, envy at her going to live in the exciting home city of my youth where I fell in love (a fair few times), learned my politics, and sprouted my strong stubby wings which I felt were now clipped right back with age and jade. She is the new season, I am the old, I thought. Then, last night, as I sat on the bench by the kitchen door, watching the fire of the pink evening sky glide through the grey clouds, I thought, now I am free as a bird, well, maybe I can’t fly but I can hop away, like the frogs…ribbit ribbit ribbit!

The Problem

I know I am getting better because my hip is now sore. Ten days ago I couldn’t move, bend, or really feel my leg after my hip op. I was operating on a timetable of pain killers between the chair and the bed. Now, the staples are out, and I only nibble the paracetamol, it hurts more! Yes, admittedly, I can escape the living room orthopaedic chair (with my side table of water, pills, cigs, books, pen, paper, phone) with relative ease, even cook on one leg. I can hop around the shop so it’s all good. I know it is all good but I have a problem. Now, I am better, I want to do more but I get easily tired. Usually, I love being tired. I love that feeling of exhaustion, the glory of stretching out in bed, curling up beneath the duvet after swimming, walking, working, but you have to have done something to be tired in order to luxuriate in it. If you don’t the bed becomes an irritant. The sheets seem to be full of crumbs and the duvet gets tangled up in your legs and arms, the mattress is lumpy. Your bottom is sore from lying on it so much (I am unable to wallow in any foetal position). And I have become cross eyed with general irritation. But, I digress. I wanted merely to set the scene about my problem, not go on a rant.

So to get to the point about problem solving. This weekend my daughter brought home a book by an American author, Bernard Roth, called The Achievement Habit. I sighed wearily, and commented that these self-help books are irritating in that they were rather half arsed in their human psychoanalysis, and it was all common sense. Yes, she agreed, but there were some interesting bits. I promised I’d skim it while she went out zip lining in Leitrim. So I returned to the lumpy bed, read it and decided to do a Bernard Roth exercise. I have to share my discovery with you all. It seems you can make your problems disappear!

How to solve the problem

The first chapter discussed problem solving. I had to choose a problem. Being somewhat preoccupied with my own position, I chose the problem of being one legged, unable to walk properly, swim at all, and feeling tired and frustrated. Bernard Roth suggested that rather than posing a question about what to do about this problem, I look at the benefits that I would feel if the problem was solved. So, the benefits of not hopping around on one leg and getting tired would be feeling constructive, and able to do things.  I would cook, and work (read and write). But, I am cooking, reading and writing, just doing it with irritation discomfort. But his argument is that  if I am already experiencing the benefits of the solution, there cannot be a real problem! Eureka! I admit that made me feel less self pity, but I still felt suspicious that problem solving was that easy. Let’s try another one, I decided.

What do I do about the problem of not having a paid job? The benefits of the solution to not having paid employment (i.e. getting a job) are money, comfort, mobility, less worry, more confidence and status. Again, I already experience the benefits! I have job seekers which I can just about live on with the support of my family, I have a car to get around, have worked long enough in the past to have a comfortable home I have paid for, and I am old enough to know that if I wasn’t worried about money, I would worry about something else! And I write and publish poetry which gives me confidence and status. Hey presto…. No problem! Is this man a genius?

Ok, I thought, let’s make up a really difficult problem. Maybe I am fortunate that mine are not sharp enough. I have no money. I am being made homeless by the bank in three weeks and the council cannot house me so is putting me on the street. The benefits to me of the solution of a home is warmth, and security (to name just two biggies). Indeed, yes, I could find these benefits elsewhere, in a hostel, with the homes of friends, in a pub. Problem solved? I think not.

Fortunately, skimming Mr Roth didn’t take long. But I have been doing a lot of reading in this tangle of sheets and in my uncomfortable orthopaedic old person’s chair. Here are some books I do recommend. I finished the Gilead trilogy by Marilynne Robinson which was really thought provoking. It got me ruminating on predestination and existentialism.  I loved all four Eleni Ferante novels about friendship set in Italy. I am particularly enjoying the latest edition of Stinging Fly, In the Wake of the Rising. I must confess, I have been dreading the commemoration year a little but I have found this edition riveting.  Excellent articles, stories and some excellent poems.

So…feeling better this morning. The sun is up. I can now bend my leg so I don’t have to sleep like a corpse in a coffin and I start workshops this week. Yee hah. And, as Mr Roth, would say, I guess a positive perspective does help.

I’m just out of hospital after my total hip replacement (THR is scrawled in thick ink marker across my right leg so the doctors didn’t carve up the wrong thigh by mistake.) I was in Our Lady of Lourdes in Navan, operated on last Tuesday and crutched up and out on Friday.

I had a spinal anaesthetic (not a pleasant experience) which is supposed to numb the lower part of the body. The doctor flicks ice cold water over you to test it has ‘taken’ and I can tell you it is ice cold as that pesky hip simply did not take. “Ah well, you can’t interfere with nature” said the anaesthetist apologetically (initially, I was confused at this comment as it seemed to me that anaesthetics are supposed to do exactly that), how and ever, as a prone, scared body on a trolley, I wasn’t in a position to argue, particularly as it seemed that he thought a general anaesthetic  would be necessary.  I thought this an excellent idea as I had forgotten my ipod with its play list of heavy rock and roll and techno to drown out the sounds of the sawing and tugging of my precious hip out of its nesting place. Yes, I nodded, a general, good idea.

At first I thought I was being murdered as he pressed a face shaped transparent plastic object over my mouth and nose with vigor. A sweet old lady leapt to mind. I hope Miss Marple is knocking around Navan, I thought. “Breathe!” he commanded in a raspy and evil voice. I breathed in deeply and woke up in the recovery room, a corridor full of box files, trolleys and nurses. Coming out of a general and a spinal anaesthetic isn’t a bad experience, particularly when there is a bed, a bell, a bed pan and beakers packed with painkillers to hand.

The only time I had been in hospital before was when I had Roisin in The Wittington in London (I got a parking ticket and the car towed away for parking on a yellow line). I stayed there 24 hours (the birth taking 18 of them) before signing an I Am Leaving of My Free Will form with a flourish. This was very different. It was as if I had moved into an alternative world which gently bobbed along, just a little higher and above the surface of my old one. I met lots of interesting people: patients, nurses, physios, care assistants, the odd doctor, dinner ladies, visitors. The food was wonderful and the service simply marvellous. The ward even seemed to enjoy my bed ridden rendition of Mary Poppins. A captive audience! I am signing up for my left leg next year before the hard slog of the next six weeks colours my enthusiasm.

Our Lady Of Lourdes you rock!

It was a brilliantly sunny day in London last Saturday, the sort of brilliant day only London has. High blue skies, full of jets and jet streams, a wonderfully sharp, crisp yellow light that flooded through the High Street darting in and out of the shop windows,  lifting the step of Saturday morning shoppers, tickling the ruddy red cheeks of people clad in winter hats, scarves, and prompting smiles of greeting and laughter. Sunday was completely different. It was grey, studded with black figures scurrying around, dark and stilted. The buildings were sombre and bore down on the day. The bare trees were menacing and the traffic growled and groaned. That is London for you.

Yes, I was in London visiting my mother last weekend. It was her 88^th birthday. It is interesting but slightly scary to watch your mother evolve into a fragile bird like creature, tiny, bobbing head, crooked step with claws for hands that gesticulate horror and fear at finding herself so. A creature with skin so delicate and transparent you can see its inner workings. Anxieties and distress leak from its pores. She is like a hunched root of power and anger brimming with indignation and frustration, sitting in a blue chair.

However, the birthday event was charming. It was the first celebration that has gone well in the family for many years. When we go out, she usually can’t hear, can’t smoke, gets irritated, is uncomfortable and insists on leaving half way through the meal, muttering with fury. So the brother insisted we stay in and he would make a meal of her choice in the safety of the house. She chose a menu of Sorrel soup, paté fois grás, fillet steak with homemade chips and coffee éclair with crème pattissiére.  My brother went to much trouble to source, prepare and cook. She was able to smoke between courses and we were all able to shout so she could hear and she could be as rude as she wanted without embarrassing anybody, and of course, it went very well. A great success!

But families, well they are distressing, aren’t they? In spite of being a well matured woman of 57 who has successfully settled in another country, developed a flourishing career, managed her own business, raised two fabulous children, been an active participant in her local community and even got a book of poetry published, it seems that when she is in the breast of her London family she becomes a quivering wreck of nerves and fears, anxious to please…a blubbering child!

Over the weekend I was also reading Ann Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread.  It was unfortunate really, as it threw into sharp relief our own familial dysfunctions. If you are into family dynamics, A Spool is for you. Ann Tyler is a master at portraying the tensions between family members, drawing out their niggling habits and characteristics until breaking point, just like in real life. The story is written out of sequence which works well. At the appropriate moment in life, she shoots the story of the family member into the puzzle which is actually how life works, isn’t it? It is only when I go back into my family from my o life that I can see (if not understand) a little more of my origins. I quite like Ann Tyler, but I could have done without reading it when I was spending time in London.

Finally, I popped down to see the David Bowie memorial in Brixton. Personally, I would no more lay a bunch of flowers, or a symbol of my heart on a wet South London pavement in tribute than apply for the next British or NASA space expedition but I am truly glad others do. Not only was there was a wonderful explosion of colourful carnations, tulips, roses, freesias,  lilies, geraniums, irises, pictures, and personal messages beneath the mosaic of David Bowie, but also objects of  significance: amongst others two perfect, red dancing shoes and a grinning goblin (I didn’t get the meaning of him). How lucky I am to be able to be supercilious about sentiment and hypocritical enough to draw pleasure from the sentimentality of others, for I too loved David Bowie. He was almost a member of our family, but luckily for him, not quite.

The highlights of 2015 were the launch of my first collection of poems, AT The Edge, eating on Istanbul roof tops in sunshine with wailing Imams, the Sound of Music and Peter Pan on Ice at Bord Gais and Jeremy Corbyn getting elected. The British General election was a low point as were the flood of refugees tramping over mountains and water to get to Europe. Of course, the bombings, the wars, ISIS…the growth of corporatism, corruption and the collective feeling of worthlessness I have found to be very emotionally corrosive this year.

I have written nine short stories, so have a collection together; I have begun a novel which I will finish in 2016. I have also put together a second poetry collection and organised all of it into a wonderful electronic filing system where it now gathers the equivalent of computer dust. I have not been so successful at getting published in mags and so have a massive folder full of rejections which everybody tells me I have to have if I am to be successful. I have written a 80+ blogs, flights of fancy, reflections on writing, family, London, politics and my followers are on the rise. I have not read enough so that may be a new year resolution in 2016. Huh, I hear you think, it’s alright for some.

And here are the statistics for 2015: I have walked about 200 kms and swam about 150. God knows how many Netflix series I have watched but favourites were Rake, SLK and the Midwife Calls. And while I need to read more, I have read a number of great books, The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma, Miss Emily by Nuala O’Connnor, The Long Gaze Back edited by Sinead Gleeson, A Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami, and Gilead by Marianne Robinson and the four books (I am on the 4^th) by Elena Ferranti are the ones that stand out.

I have facilitated four workshops, including a particularly fun one on form, organised three fab AT The Edge literary nights, A fun poetry party in Cavan which was a great success, and the Cavan All Ireland Slam. I also helped the Town Hall run over 70 consecutive hours of poetry, plays, and music over Halloween.  The Town Hall is a great addition to Cavan. They are a committed, creative group of people, hard working who bring fabulous and mad cap ideas to Cavan. The opening on Culture Night was wonderfully creative  as was the Halloween Party and parade and this Christmas they supported The Strypes concert and so we were treated to Hollywood like splendour with massive rockets rising with, and giant wombs giving birth to, the fab four.

So what about 2016.

To do: sell the house, get published, run workshops, travel more, write, read, publish and enjoy the present rather than rue the future. I want to rid myself of the guilt that I feel about writing and not earning an income.

The publication of the book has been some compensation for the lack of publication in poetry outlets and competitions last year. It is strange though, before I was published, I had a simple faith in my poetry. I liked it and loved writing. The publication of a book has changed that somehow, and everything is a little more scary.  I read and know more poets and writers and it seems to be such a vast and competitive world for which I am too old and cautious.

Oh well, after the hip operation in February….I’ll be able to scale the world!

Happy New Year to all my friends and colleagues!

PS While looking through my collection of photographs to choose a photo for this blog, I am reminded of the amazing exhibitions I saw, particularly Exhibit B in Galway at the summer arts festival, and the lovely time I have had with my friends and family in London and Cavan. Thank you, everybody.

Below is a ditty for Desmond after driving into a river of water on a back Cavan road yesterday and being rescued by the Galligan boys.

Flooded

Road flooded

My heart thudded

I drive real slow

Deeper and deeper

Into depths of darkness

I can’t return now

My lights go

The windows fog

In the black river of the road

My engine stops

There is silence

Except for wind and rain

A rippling of earth

Moving gently, water

Seeping, floating

Rising, trickling in the door

I raise my feet off the floor

Knees bent against the steering wheel

Search my pocket for my mobile

The backlight glows in the dark

Contacts, twitter, face book

I hit the green receiver

Tap frantically

Search for Peter Galligan

It rings. I wait. It rings

Please answer, I think

Water rises to my shins

A guttural hello in a Cavan accent

‘Peter, its Kate, I’m stuck in a river’

‘Good for you. I’m shopping with Tina.’

‘I’m serious, I think I might drown, the water’s rising’

I laugh

A note of fear in my voice

Desperation. He says

‘But I’m shopping in Cavan Town’

So, life is normal elsewhere

‘Peter, please help me

I don’t know what to do’

‘I’ll send my son, Killian.

Where are you?’

I’ve lived in the

Back arse of nowhere for fifteen years

I know all of its landmarks

None of which I am near

We go through Lossetts, the Bridge

Pump Gem, the new houses

The cross, the old bog

The slight rise in the hill

The old shop, McKiernans

The old post office too

‘Ah, the old turn off

Now I have you,’ he said

‘I know where that road floods’

‘Oh, Peter, thank you’

I gush with the rain

With relief

‘Hurry because water is rising’

I could drift away, I think

But I don’t say that

It sounds too stupid

‘He’ll be there’

And sure enough

Fifteen minutes later

Head lights appear at the edge of  the water

And don’t drive away

I stick my head out the  window

It is wet, dark, spooky,  mysterious

I give a feeble wave

Feeling useless

Two lads stand there

My knights so brave

Assessing the water

They reverse the jeep

With the trailer

But there’s still a distance of 30 metres

They stride out

Up to their thighs in water

Push the car with only a  finger

I sail

I steer

The car full of water

Along the Ballinagh  road

They are so gracious, kind  hearted

Literally, lights in my darkness

‘I’m so sorry’, I say

‘Don’t worry, its okay,

The car’s probably fucked

But we’ll take it back on the truck’

And now my heart floods too

Because it was dark and I was alone

On an isolated stretch of road

In a car full of water

In the middle of a flood

And I often feel like that

But not before

Have I ever been towed out!

It is sad for us oldies who revered Tony Benn, his principles, his ability to articulate them, that his son Hillary Benn provided such succor to the wavering supporters of the British motion to bomb Syria in the House of Commons debate last night and provided the Tories with such a large majority.

Personally, I cannot understand how the Brits bombing Syria will help the situation.  It will only serve to make the life of those living in Britain more dangerous. Doesn’t Paris show us that Isil live abroad too? Has history taught us nothing?

Of course, the bombs in Paris were shocking and horrific. I shrouded my profile in the Tricoleur but as soon as Hollande started bombing in retaliation, I immediately divested myself. I love France. I was born there, but no, in answer to one MP, I would not join my neighbours in throwing stones after their father had been tripped up by the gang down the street, just because they asked me.

Of course the killing and maiming activities of Isil needs to be addressed though I am still confused as to why their attitudes are what they are? But let’s leave that for the moment. Are our intelligence agencies not clever enough? Can we not stop trading arms and starve them of resources? Are our politicians not able to address the political issues? Can we not address and re-examine Western motives?

I find it very hard to work these issues through because the sub agenda of arms, oil and western hegemony are never named. Why will we bomb but not put in boots? What are we going to do long term? What is the vision? The arguments last night were  high felutin and full of hyperbole, not to mention sentimentality. It makes it very hard to understand what is going on. And I can’t bear to listen to what looks like over grown school boys high on ego and war fever.

So I turn my back on their world. Mind you, it is not so difficult living in the backarse of nowhere where soft morning mists,  afternoon sunsets and black night skies are so beautiful and peace is so precious.

The Northern Line is rumbling three floors beneath and the jumbo jets are en route above. There is a hum of traffic, the occasional siren, and a bird outside but all these noises and vibrations serve to accentuate the early morning silence in the city. It is normal and I feel at home even though in Cavan birdsong, strange flutters and scratchings in the attic, wind and rain would be my early morning accoutrements.

Obviously, I am in London. I am visiting my mother, and staying in my brother’s lovely house in Stockwell. He is not here so I have been able to wine and dine old friends and teenage loves whom I haven’t seen for many years. It leaves me feeling unsettled. It is a little like looking at an old picture book full of people who are familiar but where the story line has gone. I know I am supposed to be the central character, but actually, I feel I have disappeared from the pages. It is most peculiar.

This experience of not belonging to your familiar came up in a discussion with my mother too. She asked me whether I thought I had had a ‘normal’ childhood. I thought about it and said, no I didn’t. Ironically enough, I had two parents (my mother and father stayed together for 37 years) whereas most of my friends’ parents separated. However, my father was rarely there, he travelled a great deal throughout the world, and when he was in London, he always had meetings which meant he didn’t get home until very late. So we had the figurehead of a father but not the reality. But the ‘not’ normal thing was the political and left wing atmosphere of the family. The house was always full of discussion, political prisoners, refugees, people having meetings and drink. It was an exciting environment, but different.

“Did you have a ‘normal’ childhood”, I asked her in return. She thought about it and said, no. Mother was the product of a war wedding between a young glamorous French woman and a Welsh soldier from the valleys. Her mother moved from France to the small mining village where my grandfather taught in South Wales and the relationship was not easy. My mother was an only child and she was sent to France for her summer ‘vacances’ and to Pembrokeshire to the Welsh relatives for the Easter holidays. Her family life was not the normal of others. Her mother wore dressy hats (I loved playing with them when I was little) and well-made Parisian clothes and my mum was very aware that her mother was different. But her own life was normal to her and so maybe not normal became normal and maybe it was translated down a generation in a different way.

In turn, my own children felt they were not raised normally. Our family never fit the bill. We were English in Dublin, and then urban in Cavan, and not religious in a catholic country, to name the obvious.  I was on the dole in Killiney (according to her school teacher, Roisin had to explain to her first class Killiney friends what the ‘dole’ was) and in Cavan I worked as a consultant to the Combat Poverty Agency (Does she give out money?). Neither the husband nor I knew much about Irish country life. Actually, it was me who kept telling the children as we ran up against yet another strange, local, rural custom, “This is not normal!”

Last night I watched the documentary, Christian Dior. Back to Paris. My God, life in the House of Dior is not normal, but, I guess it is the norm in the fashion world. Nor is it normal today in Brussels which is in lock down but will become the norm as a result of Isis activity. Nothing is normal but without normality we cannot function. And often what is not normal becomes normal. It’s a wonderful vicious circle. It is an extraordinary complicated relationship we have with normal.

Last week on FB there was a quiz going round which pulled together the words that you most used on FB. Now, stemming from my Jackie magazine reading days (to go back to my past), I do love a quiz. So I clicked on it. All my FB friends were getting a colourful tapestry of words such as ‘poems’ ‘writing’ ‘edge’ ‘keen’. I clicked on the button three times before I realised it had already come up with the words I use most because I simply couldn’t believe the words were mine. They were ‘family’, ‘love’, ‘daughter’, ‘son’, ‘healthy’ ‘living’. I was mortified. Where was ‘politics,’ ‘women’, ‘writing’, ‘poetry,’ ‘protest.’

A classic example of normality changing….ahhhhhh

PS somethings never change. Waited hours to take a pic of a London bus but one never came.

I am told to do things that do not compute and to be earnest. Colum McCann told me that. Well, a facilitator gave me a hand-out that told me that. ‘Transcend the personal’, ‘make justice from reality’. My spirit was lowered as his one liners of advice continued. At least at the end, Colum wrote that he tells me this with love, so I do something else he tells me to do and persevere.

It has long amused me how successful writers discuss, pin point, and like to explain about the complexity of writing. Writers often tell us about their own processes of writing as if they have found their holy grail and are following it diligently with honour, gratitude, slavish prayer and a smug ‘fuck you’ face. Of course, as a new or ‘young’ writer (as Colum describes me despite my tender age of 56), I sup at the aspiring writers table for a few crumbs of wisdom and to imbibe from greatness, but as I do, the old curmudgeon in me says this is self-indulgent, egotistical crap and another distraction to deter me from my writing brilliance!

I read recently in Stinging Fly (another distraction) essays that discussed the existentialism of writing. Hugh Fulham McQuillan (a great name) tells me that the story exists inside the writer like a ‘dream’ but when it becomes words, ‘it is transformed.’ Indeed.  I have never found existentialism a troubling philosophy. You exist, you are, you act, you are, you don’t exist and no longer are responsible (well, at least we all hope not). But it does seem rather obvious that as you write, the story changes, like life. The core refrain of existentialism (as I understand it) is the individual’s responsibility for her own actions. But indeed, too much freedom and too much choice becomes paralysing – hence the grappling with the word on the page that writers experience is explained. Da-Da! (please read as a musical triumphant flourish rather than a surrealist artist, though I like the image that his mention will bring to mind). Yes, it is comforting if not encouraging to experience that ‘light bulb’ moment when you realise that indeed you must be a ‘true’ writer if the anxiety you experience of pulling that creature of a story from your guts is in common with all writers…particularly writers such as Sartre, Camus, Kafka. But, before we get carried away, maybe it is important to remember that creature inside of you is often no good. To go back to Colum McCann: “the best work comes from outside yourself. Only then will it reach within.”

You know what? I feel the need to stop reading and start writing. Now how to inveigle that creature within out…that is the question. Maybe a drop of tea? Or maybe forget him and cast around outside. Here goes:

“Three giant green and grey slithery eels writhed incessantly betwixt and between themselves. Often it seemed they were one gross, undulating monster. One day, as they were thrashing around in my stomach, I leaned down, stuck my hand into myself and pulled them out.”

To be continued…

“So exciting seeing people in wheelchairs tying themselves to buses”

Really? This is what I hear first on the radio this morning. It is quite an image to conjure up. Fortunately, John Humphreys of the BBC Today Programme has now moved to Mars (sadly, not literally) and I can tune out and come back to my own dark, miserable rainy winter morning here in Cavan. Winter writing is far more enjoyable than summer. I love snuggling down in bed in the early mornings with pen, pad and pink netbook while outside horrible weather lashes and leers. I can indulge in flights of fancy which fly me away which is more than can be said for the holidaymakers of Sharm el Sheikh who find themselves delayed as a result of the 240 people apparently bombed out of the sky last week while the Brits make sure those pesky Egyptians re-check their security systems. I must turn down the radio. It is too much of a distraction. As I turn on my lamp, casting a soft cosy glow across my room and listen to the radiator click into operation and pipes gurgle into warmth, it strikes me how our key measurement of pleasure is, indeed, the discomfort of others. What would we do without people in need over whom to laud or strut, faun up to, or to feel sorry for or pray about? How would we feel good about ourselves or thankful without refugees, homeless, the poor, and the starving?

Enough, Kate! Back to flights of fancy.

Indeed, there were major flights of fancy in Cavan this last weekend at the Festival of the Dead. Shock and horror (of the delight and screaming kind as opposed to the political and scandalised kind) abounded as people with white faces and black eyes or white eyes and black faces boarded the Ship of Fools and sailed away to the spooky old Bishop’s Palace in Kilmore to be tormented in gambling dens, screamed at in staged gun fights, and freaked out by life sized, moving toys. I waved them off from the safe shores where I spent my time waking the town hall with poetry, plays, stories and songs written and performed by local people on the hour, every hour across the weekend! It all culminated in a wicked parade a la New Orleans through the town, a bonfire to burn the town hall coffin and a night of jazz and dance in the re-born town hall as the new arts centre in Cavan. A fanciful spectacular indeed! Flights of fancy for sure!

Actually, all I fancy now is a nice cup of Twining Breakfast Tea before I begin work.  I am putting together a collection of stories which, come to think of it, is a series of rather startling flights of fancy: a society of dead Irish mothers, a suburban woman tied to her kitchen chair by her neighbour, a girl crossing to the moon from a step ladder, a puppeteer, and the glory of a blow up doll at Christmas… Oh, the joys of the short story! But, actually, this morning I plan to write a poem about the new shopping mall they are turning the TATE Modern into on the South Bank of the Thames. Hopefully, a flight of fancy!

But, first, a cup of Twining tea while I listen to the news that liberal Sweden will be closing its doors to more refugees! So, another 100,0000 flights of fancy curtailed. I drink my tea, warm and content, grateful for my life. Good morning!