On Dublin Time

I was looking through old papers and came across this silly little story I wrote many many moons ago, presumably while I was aupairing in Dublin and trying to study Irish for the Leaving Certificate (= Gymnasium in DK). I ended up not sitting for the exam, having realised that I stood absolutely zero chance of passing. Doomed project from the beginning, taking Higher Level Irish evening classes, having only a little conversational vocabulary, crap grammar and being told that I would not be allowed bring notes/text books/dictionaries into the exam. Add to that the syllabus, which included having to know what an 'aisling' was. Doomed, I tell you. Doomed. The rest of the class must've been wondering what the hell I thought I was doing, all of them being actual students in proper school, because I didn't have the first clue, and it was obvious to anyone but me. Utterly doomed. Young and very foolish, so I was....

I did write a few essays during the course, mostly using dictionaries before I knew of their going to be banned at the exam. But the last one, for which I didn't go near a dictionary or grammar book (and which ended up being all of 1.5 pages long), and which I was immensely proud of.... the teacher never gave it back to me, so I never knew which grade it got. Darn! It would've been total crap, but still.....

Anyway, this little story would've been well within my abilities to write at the time (I've forgotten a LOT), but it has a note on it saying 'Corrected', so I think I must've gone over it afterwards. It wasn't part of the coursework and my teacher never saw it, it was something I did just for fun.


I've no illusions that this is in any way interesting to you, but it's my blog, and I can show off if I want to. So there. *goes HMMF and sticks nose in air* Behold - once upon a time, I had THIS much Irish! Besides, it made me laugh to read it again, so I figured it might do the same for someone else. IF you managed to read this far that is, and not fall asleep yet out of sheer boredom.


And if you do keep reading, I have to warn you, the story is very very silly, but also very very short which counts in its favour. It was also obviously inspired by Timm & Gordon....

Scéal Gearr

Bhí cailín ann agus bhí Máire an t-ainm di. Bhí buachaill ann fósta agus bhí Pádraig an t-ainm dó. Bhí siad ina gcónaí i nGleann Cholm Cille sa Chontae Dhún na nGall. Tá áit iontach álainn í.
Bhí sé lá breá. Thaitin an ghrian sa spéir agus chuaigh siad na leanaí timpeall na háit ar á rothar. Chonaic siad cat bhán. Bhí sé ina chodladh ar thaobh an bhealaigh. D'fhan siad leis an t-éirí an chait, ach níor mhúscail sé.
'Ní mór liom a dul abhaile anois', arsa Máire. 'Mise fósta', arsa Pádraig. Agus chuaigh siad abhaile á ndinnéar a ithe le a dteaghlach. Ar maidin ní raibh an cat ann. 'Cá bhfuil an cat?', d'iarr Máire. 'Níl a fhios agam', arsa Pádraig. Chuaigh siad timpeall an ghleann ar fad ach ni raibh an cat in áit ar bith. Bhí rud iontach rúnda, shil Máire agus Pádraig. 'Tá súil agam go dté sé an cat go dtí ár dteach anocht', arsa Máire. Ach ní dheachaigh sé. Oíche mhaith agus codladh sámh!

Short Story

There was a girl, and her name was Mary. There was also a boy and his name was Patrick. They lived in Glencolumbcille in Co. Donegal. It is a very beautiful place.
It was a nice day. The sun was shining in the sky and they were riding about the place on their bicycles. They saw a white cat. It was sleeping at the side of the road. They waited for the cat to move, but it didn't wake up.
'I have to go home now', said Mary. 'Me too', said Patrick. So they went home to have dinner with their families. In the morning the cat was no longer there. 'Where is the cat?', asked Mary. 'I don't know', said Patrick. They went all around the glen but the cat was nowhere to be found. It was a very great mystery, thought Mary and Patrick. 'I hope the cat will come to our house tonight', said Mary. But it didn't. Goodnight and sleep tight!

All Kinds Of Everything

Today I realised that it's almost a full year since I was last in Dublin. It has never been this long between visits, ever since that first trip in 1995. Wow. Small wonder I'm getting bouts of homesickness for good ole Áth Cliath then! Anyway, it'll probably be a while longer before I'll go back - the question of employment has to be settled first , but then! Oh then :)

So I was listening to that live version of 'Mercy' from Bruxelles last year, when we were there ourselves, and now I can't get that last line of the chorus out of my head: 'Because we can, we must'. Simple, and somehow enormously uplifting, I find..... It's very typical of Bono, and I mean that in the best possible sense. It might have sounded incredibly dumb coming from someone else, but not him. It certainly also resonates with me now in the context of all the fundraisers going on for hunger relief in Africa and all those other catastrophes happening over the last long while.... That line is going to rattle around my head for a while to come, I think.....

Then I went and picked up John Waters' book 'Race of Angels: Ireland and the Genesis of U2', because it's been sitting on my shelf for a few years and I haven't read it yet. I think I got it at one of those Saturday morning markets in Temple Bar Square. See how homesick I am? Anyway... the book starts out describing the aftermath of a Zoo TV show, and it struck me how little U2 concerts have actually changed for me since I started going to them - sure the settings are all different, but the magic and the sheer effort put into communicating with us, the audience - that wanting to connect - it's still the same, undiminished power. I still wish I could've seen a Zoo TV show - I would have loved to have been a fan pre-Achtung Baby, and to have experienced that whole transformation upfront, because it was so massive.

Someone said (can't remember who) that the 360 Tour had all the best elements of all tours from Zoo TV onwards, and there is some truth to that I think. Technology has been catching up to the visions in their heads - what was that story of Bono simply drawing a sketch of The Claw on a napkin and Willie just running with it? But at the end of the day, no matter where you were for this show - and there were no crap seats in the house for this one, I can tell you - the music still reigned supreme, all that other stuff was there to make sense of playing in a big space. It's going to be so much fun to see what they come up with next time!

The White Goddess

I finished reading this a few weeks ago, and boy was it ever interesting! It slots right into other stuff I'm in to - Avalon & Marion Zimmer-Bradley, and a lot of what Tori Amos has done ('American Doll Posse' and 'The  Beekeeper' spring to mind first of all). And, there's a whole new dimension in my head for U2's 'Mysterious Ways' (which features the holy spirit as a woman), which is also not a bad thing. I'm reminded of the backstory to Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code' - it's the worst written book I've ever come across, but the idea behind it was spectacular.

Graves writes about the shift in belief systems aeons ago from matriarchy to patriarchy, and the consequences of that, and it makes sense in all kinds of ways. I don't believe in god, or God. I'm still a member of the church and I've been both christened and confirmed in one, and I've no plans to cancel that membership, simply for the fact that the rituals are so familiar and have other values besides religious ones for me. That's not to say I am now a Goddess-worshipper either - she just makes a whole lot more sense to me. As time goes by, I'm realising that I am far more drawn to cycles than I am to forever....

Anyway! The White Goddess. I'll have to read it a few more times to fully get a grip, because there sure is a LOT of information and names and stories to keep track of, but I am very happy that I finally did read it. Next up is Ulysses..... (she says with a far too optimistic grin).

Puffs of the Day

So the sunflower I did yesterday, before the Endless ones, but didn't post about it because I was way too excited about the other ones. It was made using duplicate stitch at the center of puff and then random daisy stitches for the petals - am loving how it turned out.

The rose and the cup have a bit of a story to them - the yarn came from the stash of my maternal grandmother and the embroidery patterns are from an old book of my paternal grandmother’s (just cut-outs pasted into a notebook, but I’ve known some of these since I was small). I thought it was a very nice way to remember them by combining what they've left me in this way. Both of them were instrumental in teaching me needlecrafts, so it's entirely appropriate that they be part of my hexi-blanket. Can't wait to show these to my mum!

Technical note on the cup puff - the original chart wouldn't fit on the puff, so I counted one half knitted stitch as an embroidery stitch and used the back stitch, and then it worked. Yay!

Endless hexipuffing....

I had an idea (one of several) this morning to do puffs inspired by The Endless from Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics. The idea was to have a 'D' in the middle and the color scheme based on each character.

So here they are, from the top and clockwise, in the order of age:

Destiny - pale green for his garden and opaque white for the unturned pages in his book
Death - grey/white on black, because she’s just such a cool person.... I initially wanted to put the faint outline of the ankh in the background, but that will be for another puff.
Dream - gold for the dream dust, on midnight blue. I initially wanted to put beads into this for stars, but then didn't bother once I had done Death's puff without the ankh. Maybe there will be deluxe editions of these. Haha.
Destruction - orange brick-like stitch on brown for rust and debris
Desire - I didn't have enough red yarn to do a puff, because the first plan was for a golden 'D' on dark red, but I had some embroidery floss that goes from bright to dark red, which I used on top of the puff, so that the 'D' itself is in a sort of relief (desire taking over). The colours were chosen for the red of the heart's blood, and the gold of Desire's eyes.
Despair - grey on grey. You can barely see the 'D' for which I used cross stitch, but you can feel it if you run your fingers across the puff.....The background grey was a colour to get lost in while I was knitting.....
and in the middle Delirium - green and blue for her eyes, on vivid lilac. I used sort of random stitching for the 'D'. I had also thought maybe I'd embroider tiny butterflies on this one, but yeah that will be for another version as well....