From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace

After trying every trick I know, I give up.

I simply can’t face the struggle to tie her up and prise open the jaws in order to apply toothpaste. She insists on putting paste on her own brush and then sucks in mouthfuls.  One tube per day, if I’d let her have her way.  Instead we have waged war on each other. The battleground is strewn with tears and frustration. The teeth have escaped a scrubbing for the second night in a row.

Maybe I’ll go up later when she is asleep and sneek a brushing or two…

She used to be so compliant, used to enjoy me making sure here teeth were clean at least once a day. Grace Violetta has become bolshie and sure of her own preferences. 

And she’s not even three yet. 

Do you have any advice? 

I tune into Newstalk 106-108 expecting to hear one of the biggest voices in Irish media.

George Hook, I am your fan.  You have magnificent presence, excellent good manners and an intelligent turn of mind whenever you are running your radio programme.

Instead of George, I find another enormous voice, Kevin Myers.  Kevin is a writer with a huge personality.  A fine prose warrior, a powerful broadcaster (meaning one-way expresser of opinion), a slayer of holy cows whenever he is read.

As a radio host I find him hesitant, limp and awkward.  It’s the first time I’ve heard him run a radio programme. I expect he’ll grow in confidence and fluency, but for me Kevin serves to highlight how superb George is.

Who should pop up with a comment texted in to the show but J L Pagano.  J L P wondered whether he was suffering with concussion, as if he’d woken in a dream…  It was good to hear JLP’s name, and disappointing to hear Kevin respond by wondering whether "Pagano" was Italian for rustic.

Up until the surprising discovery that George had been substituted, I’d been finding it hard to understand how I’d ever been able to have a flow of opinions and give expression to them. Suddenly I had an opinion about Kevin and a flow of confidence to support it.  The day got better.

And I’m left wondering what others thought of Kevin Myers instead of George Hook? 

I took up blogging again yesterday as a result of a conversation with the Wiffe.

She persuaded me. I accepted her persuasion. The thing that swung it for me was the prospect of writing about stuff that was external to me, that was separate from my feelings.  I could only envisage writing about issues that were not close to the feelings I had inside.  So I would write about politics, the weather, my child…  That’s why I began with Munster, and that great community of (and in) celebration easily recognised as greater than myself.  It was as if I needed the safety of not expressing the feelings that have dominated me for longer than  I care to remember.

She also persuaded me to write late in the day - when there was the best chance of my feeling well.  Which is why I am writing this shortly before midnight, rather than during morningtime…

A day later I think I was trying to fool myself. 

I think I was hoping to do the impossible… hoping I could pull off a stroke.  The idea that I could write without reference to my feelings… The idea that I could write free of feelings…  The idea that I could write stuff as if I was someone else…

I reckon I am stuck with my feelings, and my writing will be through those feelings and each word may even feel as if it was emerging through treacly emotion  (sticky feelings, feelings dripping all over the proverbial page…)

This evening, after being to a meeting of Aware (a self-help group for people who know depression and wish to get, or remain, better) I feel able to rise out of the quagmire that has dogged me.  I am able to reflect on my life and see it without feeling sunk in it.  Oh how wonderful it would be if the morrow would see me on this same hilltop, able to gaze over the rivers and valleys, look up and down the landscape and even out into the heavens…  Oh how marvellous that would be.  To retain the sense of being whole and fit for much…

So I’ll write without the burden…

of a resolution to manipulate the art, without the pressure to portray a rosey picture where the briars are forcing through.  I write whatever comes to me and celebrate the fragile habit as it bares fruit.

I was tempted to write about the relocation of the Central Mental Hospital from Dundrum to a prison site… tempted to offer and explore an opinion on the decision already taken by government.  But now its too late in the day and I need to look after my sleep.  Fortunately I sleep through the nights.

What better way to celebrate Munster’s win than to take up writing again.  It is fairly easy to share in the sense of wellbeing that is abroad in these parts.

I watched the match en famille in Limerick, and was on my feet cheering the try that never was, that brilliant back move where Munster cut through… And I shared the disappointment when the pass was forward.  I said to myself "no matter… that brilliance has sapped the French… it’ll be easier from now on…"

Part of the community of supporters who do little more than watch the matches on television… but part of the pride that playing well has brought to Munster…

I have that pride, a gentle pride indeed.  I’ve been proud to admire the antics of Paul O’Connell & Co.  And reminded of that wonderful match which Ireland won in Croake Park. 

Grace played in the garden.  I don’t think she saw any of the match but I bet she picked up all the excitement.

Winning the second time proved it wasn’t a fluke: this regime that has guided Munster rugby has had method behind its inspiration.  It’ll be good to watch the handing on of that culure to the second generation of leaders, and to see whether and now the two knit.

It’s good to have something to celebrate. 

ps : I began putting capitals on the back to writing theme, then thought lower case was more appropriate.