Mellow Yellow Monday

I know, I know..it's yellow AND red, but I found it irresistible.

Seen on a shop on Grafton Street, Dublin.

I didn't go in as I'm sworn off clothes shopping for a year.

Click on the link below and pop over to Drowsy Monkey if you can for more lovely photos!

Hen on a hot griddle

I'm not sure if the expression in the title is just an Irish one, but it's how I feel tonight.
Summer's over, the evenings are getting dark and cold, and, to be honest, a melancholy has descended upon me. I can't settle to anything, I'm doing a bit of this and a bit of that. I'm cranky as hell, which is not like me at all.

"The summer's gone and all the flowers are dying, 'tis you 'tis you must go and I must bide".

Those words from the song Danny Boy keep going round in my head, like a funeral lament. And I feel like crying, for no good reason. I actually feel as though someone is going from me - maybe that's it, the carefree, no-time-constraints Mimi is being replaced by a busy, not-enough-time-for-everything, hassled person. I am also feeling the loss that I know will be there of not being able to blog or read other's blogs, as regularly as I do now. Things in this house are hectic during term-time, and there's no way I'll be able to spend hours on the computer.

School is back tomorrow, and tonight is probably my least favourite of the year. I love my job, love teaching, but I just hate the going back. I'm fussing around the daughters and son, making sure all their uniform stuff for the entire week is ready, hanging in their wardrobes. They've labelled all their books and got their bags ready. There is something of an air of anticipation with them, that thing of moving on and being in a more senior year.

But the feeling I have is more like foreboding. There is no reason to feel this way, and I know that once I walk in the door and see my friends, colleagues, everything will be fine. I know that I should be glad to have a job, in a school where I'm very happy. The students will come back from their long summer holiday, refreshed, ready to start a new year's work, delighted to see their friends again.And I'll be delighted to see them again, tomorrow.

And by tomorrow night all will be well again... I think. But for tonight, I'll put it in poetry:

"Time makes its relentless march
Like sand being pulled by an outgoing tide.
I stand helpless at the shore,
watching it move away from me,
knowing that stillness is not the way of the sea of life,
that seasons and years are the ebb and flow
that without movement there is no life.

But still I do not want it,
resist it in my heart at first,

then submit in the end to its power
shake off the resistance
and move with the flow, the endless flow".

Don't shut me up or out

We were in a hospital waiting room yesterday, and overheard the following conversation, about children dying:

W 1: “I saw this 13 year-old girl outside the hospital and her 6 year-old sister had just died. She lay down on the ground and wailed “I want her back, I want my sister back!”. I kept saying “Will someone sedate that child?”, but nobody would act.

W2: “I knew a family whose daughter was dying and they asked the nurses to keep their daughter’s hope alive. That night this nurse got a book and showed her exactly, picture by picture, what was happening to her lungs, and told her that she only had 4 months to live. I’d have took that book and beat her stupit wit it. After them telling the staff to keep the worst from her!”

The grammatical and spelling errors in W2 are actually Dublinisms that I didn’t want to change.

But seriously, it made me think about how we react to death and dying, in particular when it relates to a child, or maybe more accurately, a minor.
We don’t, obviously, know the full story in either case, but in W1, maybe the girl didn’t have enough time or information beforehand to come to terms with the idea of her sister dying. And doesn't she have the right to express her emotions? Certainly the idea, to me, of sedating somebody who is expressing a very normal emotion, is bizarre. Who wouldn’t want to howl “I want my sister back!"?

In W2, perhaps the child had asked, or indicated that she knew she was going to die; in that case, what is the nurse to do- lie to her? Does that child have a right to know what is happening to her?

I don’t have any answers to these questions, but I certainly found the conversation thought-provoking.

Trip down memory lane

We had a lovely time in the UK, spent 2 days at my brother's, with the 3 adorable nieces, then had yesterday in London.
Daughter and son went to Les Miserables, which they loved!

While they were at the theatre, I had 3 hours alone, so I thought I'd go back and take a look at a hotel I worked in 33 years ago- a summer job when I was a (obviously very young!) student.

Five of us were in London that summer, the main attraction of the chambermaid job being that accommmodation was provided. The theory was that we'd make and save loads of money, because we didn't have to pay rent. The pay wasn't bad, but of course we spent almost all of it on our days off, going around London, seeing all the sights. We had great fun,have remained lifelong friends, and I remember that summer with great fondness.

So I got the tube to West Brompton, wondering if my memory would lead me to the correct spot, 33 years on. I was amazed- once I got off the train, I knew exactly where to go, and in my head I might have been 18 once again! I saw the pub where we danced to "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" and "Dancing Queen", almost every night, in spite of having to be on duty at 7 the following morning. We were non-drinkers, so maybe that helped.

The final test for me was to make my way back to Earl's Court tube station. My recollection was of a beautiful road we shortcut through; I thought I could remember where the road was, but couldn't remember the name of it. It was exactly where I remembered!

It doesn't look much in this photo, but it has some genuinely beautiful houses, and hadn't changed at all since 1976, when I received my first proposal of marriage as we walked down this road on a warm summer's evening. I can still picture the poor guy's hurt expression when I laughed it off, thinking he couldn't possibly be serious, as I had no intention of ever settling down then.

Now my own daughter is 17, I have a very different perspective on London summer jobs!

Edit- I'm absolutely thrilled to have got a Post of The Day mention over at David McMahon's amazing blog! If you've come here via that mention, welcome. If not, please pay him a visit to see his wonderful photography and other very interesting stuff.

Mellow Yellow Monday

This was along one corridor in Monart, where I went for my one-night break last week.

Doesn't it just beg you to sit down and savour the moment and the view.

I'll be away from bloggerland for a couple of days- going to visit my brother, wife and 3 adorable nieces in UK for a couple of days.

See you all soon, take care, mimi

For more Mellow Yellow Monday, click here

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Favourite piece of clothing

Getting dressed this morning, I was thinking about this top, and the number of times I've worn it.

I bought it about 1989, and it's still going strong! The label is Chinatown, which John Rocha designed for Awear at that time.

I think it has to be a number 1 in the "cost-per-wear" stakes. It cost £30, which wasn't huge money at the time, but enough. I must have worn it at least 300 times by now. It's one of the most versatile pieces of clothing that I have, can be worn on its own or under a jacket, for day or evening or work wear. It's pure linen, which has creasing issues (I don't mind that), but I have boiled and bleached it when it got a bit yellow looking, and still it's in good shape.

I love the little pleats at the back, and the tiny pockets at the front, and I always feel good when I wear it. What more can you ask of a top?

What's your favourite/ most worn piece of clothing?

Letter to my mother 2

I'm not about to turn this into the "blog of grief", but I do want to share this other letter, so please bear with me, or, if you've had enough, skip today's post and I'll bring something different tomorrow, I promise. This pic of the pair of us was taken on one of those summer evenings, c 1982,about 5 years before she died.

" 29/10/1990
Dear Ma,
Tonight/tomorrow morning you'll be 3 years dead. I can't believe it, and I don't want to believe it. It's like being suspended in a time bubble, with time passing by and no matter how much you want it to stop, it won't.I know that come tomorrow, it will be your 3rd aniversary. I don't want that, any more than I wanted what happened that night. I just want it all to have been a bad dream, and I want you back. But I know that can't be- I can't hug you again, or see you or talk to you. I can't sit in the kitchen or study of our cosy home. It's just not to be.
Tonight is like the day before your funeral- just waiting and knowing that the dreaded hour will come. I feel a bit like this is 29th October 1987 and I know that tonight you're going to die and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
Ma, there's an emptiness inside, like losing a limb. You never get over it, you never stop missing it, you never replace it- you just learn to live with it.I get a pain in my chest and throat with the grief, and I just long for you, to hug you and tell you that I love you.
Your memorial card says "pray, smile, think of me, pray for me".
Of course I think of you Ma: so many things remind me of you. I picture you standing at the Aga making toast, as in a photo I took the morning of sister's wedding. I picture you sitting in the study knitting, or I picture you walking along the street carrying bags of shopping. I think of the last few moments we were together, 4 days before you died. It seemed no different to any other parting, but it was the last.I told you I loved you, and meant it. You told me that you loved me too.

Sometimes I think I am you.

"Pray for me"- I don't know if I do that enough. Sometimes when I think of you I do say a prayer, but then I don't like to think of you as needing my prayers. I feel guilty that I don't pray for you more often. I'm afraid to talk to people about these things in case they won't understand or in case it'll take the pain away.

I don't want to believe that you've been gone from us for 3 years, and that every day that goes by is one day more. No, I want time to go in the opposite direction and for there to be some hope of getting you back. And yet I know that won't happen, and even if it could, I'd hate to put you through all the pain you suffered here on earth again.
I believe you're happy in Heaven now, and God knows you deserve that. I don't want to take that from you, even if I could. But I feel the pain of missing you. I would be dishonest if I said it wasn't getting easier- time does help to heal the wound, but it's still not easy. At times like today/ tomorrow the wound is still very raw, but that's the way I want it- I don't want the wound to ever heal.

With these wintry evenings, I think of you a lot. Right now, I think of you at home this night 3 years ago, the fire lit, the room cosy, you sitting knitting. Little did you know the night that was ahead of you, any more than we did. Or did you? I think about it a lot, as though by finding out I can put right what went wrong, turn back the clock. Had you any premonition as you packed up to go to bed that it was the last time you'd ever do it? I hope not, cos I know that you were prepared anyway- you always prayed and you did your best in life. What more could God ask?
I feel guilty for the lack of understanding we had of what your life was like caring for K. I hate the pain and worry he caused you, and the way you died. But most of all, I hate that still nothing has changed with him. At least, when you died, you still had hope that he would take the help available. Now, we have given up hope for him.

Last night, I didn't want to go to sleep till after 3.15am, as a kind of vigil. I nodded off before then but I wish I hadn't, when I think of your loneliness and fear this time 3 years ago.

You had even made tea bracks that day- we gave them to people who called to the house- imagine, you cooked so much all your life, and you also cooked for your own funeral.
I've realised since your death that we must make time for people. I still feel so guilty that I didn't make time to ring you the last week of your life. Now it's too late- nothing, no person can bring you back. Nothing can be as it was before you died- things have changed and it's something I have no control over- the next page has been turned and there's no way to get back to the page we were on before 30th October 1987.
I wonder are you lonely for us the way we are for you? Or is there no loneliness in the place you've gone to? Or do you see and hear us even though we don't see or hear you? Like a one-way mirror? That would be nice.
Ma, I'll go now, but before I do I want to say thanks for all the nice memories, the care and attention, and most of all , for the love you gave me. You gave me gifts that nothing and nobody can take away- memories I can treasure for all of my life. We had a fabulous mother-daughter relationship. Nobody can take that away from me the way God took you. I hope he's looking after you, and keeping you safe for the day when we meet again. When things are bad and I read that bit on your memorial card, it keeps me going- I couldn't go on if I didn't believe that we will meet again."