From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace

Dear Grace,

Just a few words before the day ends. Now that you have reached the magic age of 11 months and have become a self-propelling crawler, I feel I should be talking to you about your identity.

If you continue to live in Ireland, you’ll run into many who write about the link between the Irish language and cultural identity.

Unfortunately, some of them will try to persuade you that the Irish language is an essential element in Irish identity. If you don’t speak Irish, you might feel excluded.

On top of that, as someone born in Bath who was brought to Ireland without consultation, you might be inclined to feel a victim of migrant behaviour.

Until a few days ago, I couldn’t believe that any intelligent person would say that Irish should be made the language of Ireland. Then the only celebrity with whom I went to school said something like that. And he’s particularly intelligent. Even got to say it on “Rattlebag”.

My confidence in my ability to shield you from weird views of identity is cracking.

Ultimately you’ll have to fight your own corner, design your own identity and test it out in whatever society you enjoy.

At the end of a long day, that began with me waking up before you, and making your breakfast before 7am, I am thinking of you from the lowlands of Scotland.

One of Ireland’s leading bloggers has described this as a “Lyrically & prolifically written blog…” I treasure such a kind descriptor of this place where I honour you.

But this tired man hasn’t words for the complexity of the endless debate around Irish identity.

I’m waiting for my flight.

Early. I’m here ahead of schedule. I am through security by 0815 for a flight to Dublin that leaves at 0915.

Those of you who know me as “last minute dot pom” may be raising an eyebrow.

All because I decided to avail of a RyanAir innovation. It’s called “Check ‘N Go” and it’s simply a system by which you can check in from home - up to 48 hours ahead.

It works.

You go down through the almost endless small print that comes with the RyanAir flight confirmation email, until you find stuff about Check-in. You click into a routine that asks for your “confirmation number”, your country, your passport number, its expiry date - and bob’s your uncle. You print out one page per check-in, and you trust…

You trust the system will work. You turn up early because, if you’re me, you don’t trust; deep down you mistrust Irish systems. (That’s an unfair, and perhaps unjustifiable, position to have but I admit it.)

The system cuts out contact with check-in. It means that one huge anxiety surrounding an interaction with ServiceAir (RyanAir’s agent) is cut out.

A management reflection…

Anyone into quality process management would tell you that, if you can cut out a stage in the process, the quality benefits are big. Take a supplier out of the chain and you dramatically improve the reliability of the chain.

Every time I check-in to a person, I feel anxious. Anxious that they’ll deny me access. Worried about whether my bag is overweight. Terrified over time and the prospect of hearing that the flight has just closed. On tenterhooks over the speed of the queue. In a word, nervewracked.

This morning is a special day in Cork Airport.

This is the last day of arriving back into the old terminal. At last it’s happened. Movement. For ages it’s seemed as if nothing was progressing. The old and the new terminal standing side by side. One a messy, ill managed, thoughtless ordeal. The other, virgin, unpressed, a shrine to beatific innocence.

There is no sign up to tell you about the impending change. It’s not as if Cork Airport would celebrate the promise of the new. Cork people are superbly reticent about blowing their own trumpets, aren’t they? I found out that I would be flying back in to the new building by going up to the Air Rianta desk (airport information) and asking.

Maybe it won’t happen.

But I got one treat due to the impending closure of the airport newsagent shop.

I got two BT Openzone Wireless broadband vouchers for the price of one. Two 1 hour vouchers for 10 euros. The kind owner/manager of the shop told me I could have two, so I bought four. He said that the other shops he had were in places which didn’t have broadband. So I guess unsold vouchers will be worthless. I love him because he didn’t have to give me that offer. Now I have what I need for the stopover in Dublin while I wait for connecting flight to Prestwick. They’ll also do me for my short time in Perth.

Perth, where I’m running a training course which includes time on diversity. Safety and Diversity - they’re the big elements of tomorrow. I’ll be showing “A Class Divided“, a film of a remarkable experiment in consciousness raising, a teacher in a white enclave in USA helping children to see what it was like to discriminate and be discriminated against.

Maybe I’ll return to this theme another time.

Meanwhile I celebrate the RyanAir system that got me here in time to limber up on this gym machine that some call blogging.

The day The Irish Times bought MyHomes.ie I faced the prospect of being homeless soon.

E50m The Irish Times Ltd paid for the main on-line site for house purchase and lettings. In my view this is an ill-advised purchase. The newspaper should not have done it.

Reason: this will distract management time from improving the newspaper. “My Home.ie” will have to be directed and developed. Most such business diversifications destroy value rather than increase it. I have no reason to trust that The Irish Times will be an exception.

And will I find a house to rent on “My Home.ie”?

On 4 September, we become homeless, streetless, communityless. I got a phonecall yesterday. The tenancy here ends. The landlord intends to sell the house. I was hoping to extend the lease until such time as the house in Bath sold and we could buy a place in Cork.

Now I think we’ll go move to Alaska.

I think there’s a place for rent there. And I won’t have to speak Irish or prove I am fluent in Gaeilge in order to be acceptable.

Can I be Irish, with a full Irish identity and kit bag, while having a healthy disrespect for the language?

I have trouble divorcing language from people.

I love the people who speak Irish as their first home (lucky them to have one) language. I love them so much that I wish them well. I mentally encourage them to succeed. It doesn’t matter to me what language they speak. Or who lives next to them.

I have no time for social constructionists: people who campaign for Irish to be the first language of the society. I find it had enough to speak and write my own language, which is a derivation of English.

But, if it would get me a roof over my head, I’d join the President of Ireland in west Donegal at Irish language school in Glencolmcille. (She goes there every year to brush up on her Irish, according to Paddy Clancy in yesterday’s Irish Times. I bet she doesn’t count those days as holiday.)

Under the pressure, I expect to show signs of cracking over the next few weeks.

Scribbled on one page of A4 are 12 items - my list for today.

I’m not going to go through the rigours of intellectual and emotional decision making. I’m not going to sift them into important and urgent, important & not-urgent, urgent and not-important…

I’m avoiding thinking about the consequences of addressing and the consequences of not-addressing each one…

In other words, I’m going for the full Monty.

(1) Should I hold the spoon during Grace’s breakfast?

What is the best balance between order and chaos? Between neat and tidy feeding with all its satified smiles and continually having to pick the spoon up from the kitchen floor? To clean or not to clean the spoon every time? By what age has a child developed immunity from kitchen floor germs? Is there any difference between boy babies and girl babies in this respect? Can I afford to take yet another risk with her upbringing, given that her mother is much more risk averse than me? Isn’t it about time she started to take responsibility for feeding at least part of herself and moved on from simply holding the bottle?

(2) How do I celebrate her crawling?

It’s happened. At last she has moved forward. Propelled herself, vectorlike, with momentum. She moves through the fairly strewn cornucopia of carpet and laminated flooring that used to constitute impassible jungle. She’s made the leap, the transformation of quantity into quality, and metamorphosed into an auto. As soon as she figured out how to lower her centre of gravity, and to purchase leverage around her hip joint, she did it. By Jove she did it… (Shades of Shaw - knocking off one of the topics which didn’t get on to my list.) All that training which the wiffe gave her on how to crawl finally paid off. I know they say that the trouble begins now. I know that I’m meant to look back on the immobile phase with fond nostalgia. But, fuck it… I’m thrilled. I’m mad about the funny way she plonks a palm down and waddles forward after it. I am all for the child moving under her own steam. I’ll service her with more water whenever that’s needed. Because it won’t be long until she’s leaving home and looking after her own grandchildren. And I was there to see it. I wasn’t an absent father off working, off making a career in the foreign office. I wasn’t off on the golf course with the lads. I was on the carpet, in the kitchen, by the stairs. There is nothing so satisfying as being present. Amen.

(3) Should I publish my sister’s painting without her permission?

Do I have the right to put a photo of her exhibition up on my blog? Does the fact that I drove from Cork to Galway, stopping off in Limerick to pick up one brother, one other sister and one nephew, give me the right to show some of the photos I took in Galway Fisheries Tower on the mouth of the river Corrib. The artist is gone to WOMAD. She can’t be consulted. Anyway I’m beginning to feel delinquent. I’m too old to be totally responsible. At my age I see too many angles. I see that I should seek permission to photograph the paintings and photographs because otherwise I am taking the images that cost her so much effort, frustration and creativity as if they were mine to acquire. I see that I should seek permission before mentioning them: how do I know that she won’t mind this publicity? “Viscaux” - that’s the name she gave to an exhibition of images of slime (”excessive growth of algae and the detritus found in the rivers and lakelands of the west of Ireland” - her words). Anything I say will do violence to her conception and wish for perception. My intervention changes everything - like the butterfly that flaps its wings … But I am beginning to feel like doing exactly what I want to do and I am beginning to be willing to take the consequences. I have no employer who could fire me. I have some skill and experience of apologising. So let me tell you simply that if you go to Galway now, you will find the Galway Arts Festival in progress. Visual Art 2006 is a fine display of sculpture, painting, multi-media, photography, prints, installations and live performance art. I also saw a great piece by Frank Morzuck, a sculptural installation, a construction of thousands of strips of stick hung together as a cube on to which light displays and calls forth whatever emotions you have willing to well up and surprise you.

This is taking me a lot longer to write than I intended…

(4) What 200 words shall I write about my mother?

The family is producing a book. It is to be a book for the mother, on the mother. She is to be given it soon, during another party for her 80th. The artistic sister has volunteered to turn words into print and have the lot bound. I was hoping no one would do anything and that would let me off the hook. But the faraway cousins in Canada and Australasia have spoiled that. They have written in and now there has to be a book. Which means that I must write. I can easily write that she has been the best mother I’ve ever had, the number one as far as I’m concerned. In all my previous lives, I’ve never had one so challenging and supportive. But the stuff I find hard to write is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of her. The childhood wish that she would get sick and stay in bed for weeks, so that she would not be able to police her “Rules of the House”. I never wanted her to suffer. Simply to be silenced. To be immobilised, so that I could run round more freely and with less embarrassment at her involvement in the games of my friends. I wanted us to be able to play without the interference of her “Rules”. And I’ve never forgotten that I wished her bed-ridden. This is a woman about whom I also say: she has got better and better as a mother, as a person. The longer she has lived the more I’ve appreciated her. The more I am in awe of how she coped with five children under six, and a husband who spent time in intensive care, almost dying, in Dublin. She ran two businesses in Limerick: one family, one commerce. Once I start its not hard to go on and on. When I put pen to paper, it’ll be hard to reach a conclusion.

(5) What do walkers and the ESB (electricity supply company) have in common?

They both want to use farmers’ land. But walkers don’t leave a permanent blot on the landscape.

(6) How should I celebrate the IRA ceasefire that’s lasted a year?

With the hope that it’ll last a thousand years.

(7) How should I drown the sorrow of Landis?

As a cyclist, I cheered his victory in the Tour de France. I marvelled at his extraordinary recovery to victory. I loved him for it. Now I hear he’s a fraud. I think every rider in the Tour should be publicly tested on the morning of the start of the race, while they are by their bikes. Landis, my Landis, we Menonites have been let down. We have another veil of tears… [this is an oblique reference to the book found in the Irish bog, another story.]

(8) McDaid is going to stand in Donegal, really?

Isn’t he the man who drove while drunk? Who got into his car while totally pissed and was caught by the police? Why do the news reports not say: McDaid, the convicted drink driver, is going to stand. Donegal, after all, has a wonderful road safety record which it wants to preserve, doesn’t it?

(9) The tunnel leaks doesn’t it?

And once again the tunnel directors fail to get their story out into the public arena in good time. Again they are on the back foot. Obviously they read my last blog on this and chose to ignore my advice.

(10) The K-Club Greenkeepers may win their struggle?

They fight on, supported by a trade union. They want more than 10 euros an hour. I still suspect management and owners of the K-Club tried to kill the story by ignoring the problem and hoping it would go under. I still think the Greenkeepers should be paid top rate this year. They should be the best paid staff in all Irish golf courses for this year. They must be expected to add superlative value for the greatest match ever played in Ireland. Pay peanuts, get moneys…

(11) Who is winning in Lebanon?

We’ll not know for ages. I wonder whether Israel’s government has a reliable way of finding out how the battle is going? Is it possible that the armed forces of the state might have an interest in disguising how the war is going? Is it possible that Hizbullah is on its last legs? I’m reminded of a wonderful book “Oh Jerusalem”, all about the 1948 war which the Jews came so close to losing.

(12) RTE Radio 1 is going to start at 0730 during August?

This is disgusting. What will I do between 0700 and 0730? Lazy sods. Off on foreign holidays and running the programmes with skeleton staff no doubt. They should start at 0630 all through the autumn and winter. Some of us have lives to live.

I watched a lot of the British Open golf.

My dad taught me to play. I used to caddy for him in Ballyclough (Limerick) when I was about 10. He played every Sunday morning, and often midweek too. He’d been captain in 1935 and I think his lowest handicap was about 6.

I can still see him with three other men, the slowest fourball on the course, white-haired and intent on winning the honour or 2/6d (half crown). John Corboy, Jim Murphy and Dennis - I learned the manners of golf as I held the flagstick for putts and raked bunkers after their best efforts. I replaced divots (lumps of earth dug from the ground by golfclubs) and knew where to stand as they drove off. For this education, I was first paid a shilling a round.

Eventually, I played golf with my dad and he was encouraging. I suspect he never really liked being beaten by anyone. So I won’t say that he took pleasure in all my improvement.

Strangely, I most remember him as a golfer at his most ancient, when he crept round in his late sixties and seventies, even after he’d had a heart attack on Tramore golf course. (I wasn’t with him then and I always felt bad about that. I think I simply didn’t feel like playing with him that day. I was in the tennis court.)

As I began this piece, I had no intention of saying all this. It has poured out of me, as the stopper that holds memory in check is removed.

I was going to talk about Tiger and his dad, and DeMarco and his mum.

The two best golfers in the British Open lost their parents during the year. Tiger’s dad died. DiMarco’s mum. Both dead parents playing a role in the competition.

Tiger was overcome with emotion after winning.

Some of that emotion came from the death of his dad. Tiger missed his dad awfully, and wished he could have been there to see his victory. Tiger spoke about how his dad was missing from his celebration. He’d had to blot out thoughts of his dad in order to play, to keep focus throughout the week. As he hugged his caddy on the 18th green, the emotions he’d been keeping in check flooded out and engulfed the man. The best golfer in the world was overwhelmed. Death for Tiger meant absence of his dad.

In complete contrast, Chris DiMarco’s mum was with him all week.

She was by his side as he strode over the links. Every time he got into a bunker, she got in with him and inspired him to splash out close to the pin. She was his companion throughout his valiant effort to catch Tiger. After the competition, and during it, he spoke glowingly of how calm and accepting he felt and how pleased he felt to know that she was present for him during all the excitement.

You could hardly find two more diverse ways of relating to death.

I’m with DiMarco.

My dad still walk the fairways with me. Especially, he climbs into the bunkers, whether they be literal or metaphorical, with me and guide my stokes. He more or less hovers above me and is available for me to talk to whenever I feel the need. My dead dad is is living presence in my life.

It wasn’t always so. I used to rail against him and wish I could change him. I resented his deep religious faith and the way he used to live it in his conversations with me. During one awful period I used to avoid being left in the same room alone with him, because I dreaded the prospect that he’d enquire after the health of my immortal soul. Like so many Irish men (I think) I am sorry that I wasn’t closer to him while he was alive.

Perhaps I’m making up for it now.

One small things bugs me: Tiger won, DiMarco got second. Does that mean that Tiger’s point of view was an advantage? Was Tiger’s the attitude of a winner? Was DiMarco’s the angle of a runner up?

I want to be a winner but I have no intention of adopting Tiger’s view of his dad’s death.

He is welcome to that. I just hope he finds solace because it is clear to me that his dad isn’t dead - but is very much alive inside Tiger. Just as my own dad lives on in me.

I wish people would say when they are going away.

I have certain daily routines. Nowadays, my daily ritual includes logging on to certain blogs. I do so with expectation: what will they have to say today? Any new expressions on the horizon? Fresh insights? More amusement? Any chance of a decent challenge?

It does matter to me whether there is a presence on the blog.

I have no time for yesterday’s piece (unless I’m catching up).

I buy newspapers too. I expect articles by correspondents.

If my friend is going on holiday and won’t be contactable, I expect to be forewarned. That way I’m not disappointed.

But many of the bloggers I read come and go without so much as a ‘by your leave’.

Not only do I miss them, but I get anxious about them. I don’t like being left in the dark. I fear for them.

After a week, I start to wonder whether I’ll ever hear from them again.

There is a famous Irish blogger, of a robust disposition, who argues the opposite. He hates people saying that they will be away. His philosophy is “Bugger off - and bugger back…”

I’m not like that.

I’m bothered by Lebanon and everything that’s going on there.

It’s inhibited me from writing my blog. After all, if the ship is sinking, and you are likely to drown with it, what is the point of writing another chapter?

It is so much in your face. Virtually all the news and media comment is dominated. I feel the World Cup ended and Lebanon began. [By the way, I know this is a travesty: I have read that on 9 June, Israeli shells killed at least seven Palestinian civilians on a beach in the Gaza Strip; Hamas called off its truce with Israel - well before Zidane’s header.]

And that war grows and expands. I don’t find it easy to see any limit or sure boundary around it. I can’t even be sure that it won’t expand into Demascus in flames, Jerusalem in rubble, Baghdad blitzed…

There was a time when I would have had a position on the war.

I would have known whose side I was on. I would have felt I had a handle on the history. I could have related the whole story to Jerusalem 1948, or the Balfour Declaration, or the father of modern Zionism, even to Zola’s exclamation [not another reference to football]. I was used to taking sides and used to see the point of so doing.

Now I am not so sure.

I had the best milk shake of my life in Haifa (1977) after visiting the burial place of Bahá’u'lláh. I remember climbing a steep hill (semi-mountain really) in strong heat and loving the mouthfuls of mango milkshake as if they were manna.

I went to see the Golan Heights and was shocked at how steep they were and what a view there was down over Israel from up there which used, until 1967, be under the control of Syrian guns.

I wept at Yad Vashem.

And I held the chuppah at a friend’s wedding on Kibbutz Beit Alpha. After that I travelled round by bus in Israel and thought Jerusalem was a fascinating city, especially the Wall and the Mosque.

I thought I had a grip on what was going on.

But I don’t think that any more. It is too complex for me. Even if I could figure out who I thought were the goodies, who had right on their side, what good would that do me? The reality of this modern “Inferno” overpowers me.

It takes me all I can do to prevent myself despairing.

I remember that I used to think South Africa would never be sorted without extraordinary bloodshed. I’m relieved that I was wrong.

So if I start thinking that the war in Lebanon and its surrounds will never end, I will be wrong again. That’s a relief to me.

There is life beyond the explosions of Beirut and Haifa.

At the same time as that carnage proceeds, there is other life in other places, even here in this quiet kitchen in Douglas, Cork, Ireland.

There is enough chaos in the untidied front room, where I spent the afternoon in between the British Open and the squirmings of Grace. There is a messy story in the sink where dishes wait for attention and more drama in the soggy weight of one re-usable nappy that lingers on the landing above.

I want to reclaim space that holds me, and within which I have a sense of being in power - even if I also have no sense of being powerful.

I need to throw my weight around in my world and feel its impact. I need that more than I need to be constantly distracted by struggles in arenas far from my spiritual centre.

I need to be here, not over there.

So I’m saying “all the best” to Lebanon and the people for whom that is their spiritual and temporal home. I can do nothing for you. You are not on your own as far as I am concerned. You are connected. But you have to find your own way. I can’t find it for you.

If I don’t attend to the washing up, and culling the newspapers, I’ll be storing up my own form of disorder. And it is in the dillution of disorder that I, and my writing, thrives.

Or so I am inclined to believe.

We played hide and seek on holiday

I would close my eyes at evening,
the breeze would slip away
to another appointment.
I would count the lights go down,
cover my head from stars,
let the moon keep watch.
I would draw back shutters at dawn,
go search for the wind.
A mosaic of pale stone ferociously
pushing heat up into my face
A frog fixed in the pond with fierce eyeballs.
I would look behind corners of brilliant white
across luscious grass blades, erect, unmoving,
plumbago petals still under cork trees
palms hanging arced in the oven.
I would look and look
until my eyelids would give in
and call out to the wind:
You have won, Unfound One
you are master of this game.”

Oh how pleasant it is to sit, and sit and sit…

To rest, away from the furious rays of the sun, in the bar of a hotel with only some miserable SKY football programme as background to remind me of how unpleasant I sometimes find civilization.

I know how urgently TV programmers need advertising revenue. I appreciate the need to pay wages to staff and dividends to shareholders. I even have some understanding of how quickly technology depreciates.

But is there no escape from football?

I missed Zidane’s explanation for that magnificent headbutt.

Perhaps it was installation art in motion? Could he have been making ironic comment on the values that underpinned Germanic feastmaking? Was he simply showing others how to execute without emotion? Or was John Walters [The Irish Times columnist yesterday] right to borrow his understanding from a French philosopher?

Isolated west of Lagos in the Algarve, without the energy to glue myself to SKYNEWS, nor the wherewithall to find the right newspaper on the right day, I return from holiday with a monstrous ignorance surrounding why Zidane did it.

Might he have been rejecting his iconic status, refusing to be a role model for youngsters - thereby asserting his right to being the Outsider (“L’Etranger” - so to speak) - a Camus incarnate…?

Might he have been showing how to reject cleanly the values of the dominant civilization, thereby laying claim to leadership of the disaffected, anomic visioning…?

Oh to de-construct the mind of a footballer, especially the mind of one so high in public esteem.

Is it our good fortune to have had two archetypes from the same stable in so short a time: Haughey and Zidane, two men fit for a divided society.

Perhaps it was a piece of modern dance?

________________________

The other piece of theatre I missed was the court case over the frozen embryos.

Who won? The woman who wants them used, or the man who doesn’t? When I left on Saturday 8 July, this case was shaping up nicely. It might even lead to a constitutional crisis.

Am I showing my male solidarity when I feel that a man should have an absolute right to determine what happens to such embryos: if he doesn’t want them used, he should be able to prevent their use. They should only be used if and when both parties agree. I think that’s what I feel. Certainly that’s what I think I think. I wouldn’t describe it as a belief. But there is a lot at stake.

If men are not persuaded that they have control over whether such embryos can be used, are they likely to agree to freezing? I don’t think I would. And I think I’m fairly typical.

But what did the Court decide? Is the matter over? I suspect not.

In the old days we’d have had a substantial contribution from F de Londras to guide us.

I’m no sooner back from sweltering Algarve than I head off for Perth, Scotland.

I feel an animal deprived of its habitat. No cave possession complete. Little chance to settle. A sure recipe for a disgruntled creature.

No point in blaming the weather that baked us in Portugal: one wee girl so hot that she moaned all week and puffed up unflatteringly. A grandmother experiencing dehydration for the first time in her 80 years. It was a week dominated by caring. If I believed in heaven, I’d be saying that I stacked up bonus points. Canonical penance I’d prefer call it.

The joy of the week came from familial unions, various members of family gathering and meeting and eating. Mainly fish - I didn’t eat any hot meat all week.

Now there is only time for one last moan: if Cork Airport continues to be such a dreadful awful mess, I’m going to complain. It is so disrespectful of customers. Subjects them to an unsightly entrance through people smoking, people waiting for taxis, people waiting to be picked up… It makes you walk for miles over uncovered land to get on the plane…

I know it’s late opening the new terminal building, but that isn’t a good enough excuse for the mess I expect to have to walk through again.

Maybe I’ll make time in Scotland to report on holiday reading…

Me too.

A few days in the sun.

Should improve the quality of Omaniblog.

Let’s hope

We all gain from the silence

Lying in the shade.

The day of the London bombing.

Today London remembers the bombing and the killing and maiming that took place a year ago.

Today, as I write, Dublin airport is evacuated and I hopefully assume it is a false alarum.

My darling wiffe has flown to Dublin this morning, and, for all I know, she may be caught up in it.

Grace is down for her morning nap.

Before the holiday:

Preparations for holiday in Algarve are advanced: only my washbag waits. I need to buy blades, shaving gel, deordorant and toothpaste. My mother arrives later; she’s coming with us.

Can you remember where you were…?

I’m not very good at remembering where I was on the day. I have no idea where I was when I heard the news about London.

But I do remember the 30 bus. The bus on which one of the bombers killed a lot of people. I remember that bus because I used to work on Euston Road, just round the corner from the explosion. I was a bus inspector who stood on that road recording the time of passing buses, issuing instructions to drivers and conductors on routes 30, 73, 14, 68. I probably don’t remember all the routes but I know London by its bus routes. I think of the geography of the city by the destinations, the terminii, the depots (’garages’ we used to call them), the blinds displayed on the front above the driver. I remember the turning points, where buses would turn when they were running late, or where they were scheduled to turn round and go back the way they’d come.

The multifarious people of multicultural London.

Some of them came out from the train stations on Euston Road and got on to the 30 bus in the hope that it would find a way through congested streets. The bus is a place where you can sit and read a paper or novel. [I read “Shogun” while conducting a 31 bus from Camden to Chelsea.] It’s a place where you are sure to see people different from yourself.

I was a bus inspector:

I used to be in uniform with a cap under which all my curly hair was meant to fit. In those days I had a beard to keep me warm. I used to carry a “book”, my “timebook”, and a carbon pencil. With the pencil I’d make marks on the plastic pages. Each bus that was meant to arrive had a number and a time. If the bus was on time, I’d draw a diagonal line through the number. If it was early, I’d put the number of minutes it was early above the line. Late buses had their time marked below the line.

I had a radio and could find out how the bus was doing from other inspectors along the route. The bus left Putney on time, got to Kensington High Street 4 minutes late, Piccadilly 8 minutes late… and so on. By the time it got to me on Euston Road, I was expecting it to be about 10 minutes late. I would make all sorts of calculations about how likely the traffic congestion was to continue, who was driving the bus and whether the bus had any “recovery” time at the end of the route. I would consider how many people were on the bus and what the situation was like for buses going in the other direction.

An imperfect science. But the best one we knew for regulating the bus service. Evacuations of train stations brought all such thinking to a stop: there was nothing you could do except practise patience.

Meanwhile in Dublin…

It must be a bit like that for the people trying to control what happens in Dublin Airport, trying to tell people what’s going on, trying to predict when normal life will return.

I do hope there will be a return to normal life this morning. For London a year ago, there was no return to normal life. People were blown apart on that Number 30 bus in Tavistock Square. The top deck exploded, crosswords unfinished, Siduko …

She’s alive. Hurray. God bless mobile phones and the ability of the network to stand up.

The wiffe just rang: 30 minutes sitting in plane on tarmac, now jammed into a covered area with 25 thousand others… A huge long queue for coffee… the toilets turned off…

A suspicious bag in the Airport. Of all days…

I’ll relax more when I hear that the bag has been blown up.

The knock-on effect on the return journey back to Cork this afternoon? Who knows? Who cares? Just so long as no one is blown to smithereens.

The poor bus driver who sat in the cab below the explosion and then had to get out and see the terrible consequences. I remember him. It was good to hear him interviewed on RTE Radio 1 this morning.