The Legions Arrive

I opened my door just moments ago to two tiny old ladies with big, beamy smiles and blue rinses. They told me they were from the Legion of Mary. So I told them that while I had been baptised into the Catholic church, I did not consider myself a member any more. Their brows furrowed a little. It felt a bit like I had just fornicated in front of my aunties.

But they were not to be cowed, these two legionnaires. "Well, that's the great thing about the Catholic church! Once you're baptised, you're in. You're in FOREVER! You can NEVER LEAVE!" She was gleeful, the older, less bobbing-about one. Beads of sweat broke out on my own furrowed brow. "But I want to leave!" I told them. As I began to enumerate my reasons for opting out of the whole thing, while convinced that if they knew the half of it, they wouldn't want to hang on to me anyway, I could see the Legion of Mary Ladies were busy being on Another Spiritual Plane. Particularly the bobbing-about one, who appeared to remain with the angels for much of the conversation. That is, until I mentioned Limbo.

See, the more vocal one was telling me that it was a bit much to be expecting the Pope to go about changing things, like letting women be priests and the like, because, well, because you, er, can't, I think the argument went. So I retorted cunningly: "But he's able to change Limbo, isn't he?"

Well.

At the word Limbo, the bobbing-about one came crashing back to earth with an almost audible wallop and yelped like I'd just summoned the divil himself. "NO!" Oops. "He's not! He's not changing Limbo! Limbo's still there!" Clearly, these ladies were not letting go of Limbo, regardless of what the higher ups had to say. And they weren't letting go of me either. "You're Catholic and you will be Catholic for the rest of your life," pronounced the tiny-but-fierce old dears on my doorstep, even as it began to dawn on them that perhaps I wasn't exactly the most expedient case on the block. So they linked arms, and bobbed off, with this, final parting shot: "You LOOK Catholic and everything!"

What now? I look Catholic? How? What on earth did that mean? Was it the fact that I was still in my pyjamas at 2 p.m. in the afternoon that gave me away? My unbrushed and unfeasibly large hair? Perhaps my furrowed brow? The shifty, guilty look of One Who Has Been Sinning(I was still in my pyjamas WELL into the afternoon after all). I look Catholic? This is most certainly not the look I have been aiming for, unkempt as I may be when legionnaires come to my door. I am alarmed.

Snowy and Alice are laid to rest. In the bin.

Sometime after we moved from our bungalow in the country to the lofty two-storey in Celbridge (with disappointing banisters) I was plagued with a Great Worry. Worries were not new to me - almost daily, something disturbing and grave was revealed to me about the world about me, and it was my lot to lie awake at night and fret about things like brainwashing, cancer, fire and germs (particularly the ones you got from eating things you found on the road, even though your mother warned you not to put them in your mouth). During one insomniac period, the fire fear in particular took up residence in my little-girl-mind, and I spent many a late night hour (often as late as 9 o'clock) perfecting elaborate plans that would enable me to escape crackling flaming monsters from my second floor bedroom window and land safely on the ground way, way below. These usually involved tying my bed sheets together in a secure but speedy fashion and abseiling down the cliff face of number 15 into the crocuses. A plan that saved me, but did nothing to allay the Great Worry - what would happen my toys?

Now, before I get dubbed a callous materialist, concerned only for a Sindy house or Scalextric while my family burnt to a crisp, let me make it clear: I had no intention of going looking for the Etch-a-Sketch as the flames engulfed me. But Snowy, Alice, Paddington and Pinky? They weren't just toys - they were family, for crying out loud. Besides, strictly speaking, both Snowy and Alice were pyjama cases. But I loved them dearly.

Alice had about twelve strands of wooly yellow hair that grew in a straight line from the top of her flat pink head. Fortunately, her pale colouring was nicely set off by her triangular-shaped, blue and white floral skirt (with a slit in the back where the pyjamas entered and exited) because it was stitched to the bottom of her neck. The entire ensemble was accessorised by two blue triangles, or shoes in the world of Alice and myself, stitched to the hem of her skirt. Truth is, she wasn't pretty in the conventional sense, but she had character and a certain innocent charm, and the guys were very fond of her. She was particularly close to Snowy, maybe because he was also a pyjama case, but with the head of a white furry dog and the added sophistication of a zip. Neither Alice nor Snowy were ever employed as such, however, and instead lived a life of relative leisure on my bed where they hung out with Paddington and the wise old elderly statesman teddy-bear, Pinky, who'd been knocking around since just two days after my birth.

Given that Alice had no legs to speak of, and Pinky was in a permanent sitting-down position, it wasn't clear how much help they'd actually be in the case of fire. I knew I was responsible for them, and I had to incorporate their salvation into my plan. So I resolved to chuck them all out the window first, and then descend on my bed-sheet rope to safety. So far so good. Until, greatly preoccupied, I hit a snag. Being a realistic child who had seen enough late-night films from behind the couch to know bad things can happen to good people, and are very much likely to happen to bad people, like those who try to push their (then bosom-less) little sister down the stairs, for example, I knew there was a chance that the flames would engulf me in my bed before I could scrabble to the window and chuck out Alice and the guys. Imagine the state THAT put me in. Hours, hours of fretting in my room with my trusting friends snuggled around me, oblivious.

I remember finally working it out. I got out of bed, and pattered into Ma and Da's room. I have no idea what time it was, but I'd imagine it was Very Late. But my task was urgent, so I shook Ma awake (I knew I was wasting my time with Da). As she opened a bleary eye, I explained the predicament. Quickly and with a precision born of urgency, I told her that what I needed her to do. Luckily, my mother was an accommodating woman, and I managed to elicit a promise from her that, in the event of her middle child being engulfed by flames in a fire, she herself would rescue Alice, Snowy, Paddington and Pinky and carry out the window-chucking plan as daughter number two was incinerated. I went back to bed and slept like a baby.

***********************************************

Time passed, and myself and Alice and the boys lost contact. Yesterday, I found them at the bottom of a very large box. Alice had holes in her head, where mustard stuffing was peeping out. And Snowy had lost his nose and much of his whiteness. Paddington was gone missing - he was always of a travelling bent. They were bundled in with all the other cuddly toys accumulated over the years, most of them intact and ready to be passed on to a children's charity. But Alice and Snowy were beyond even that. I had to say goodbye. It was a brief re-encounter that brought me right back to a moment of panic soothed in the wee hours of the morning when I passed the buck to my groggy mother, who probably doesn't even remember. Luckily, the fire never happened and she never had to step up to the mark. So Alice and Snowy survived to languish at the bottom of a box as their entirely responsible carer went vagabonding herself.

Yesterday, we - Alice, Snowy and I - said our farewells and I laid them to rest. In the bin. With First Love Susie, whose head had taken leave of her body. Pinky, now aged 33, came with me.

How to have a successful blog

I have spent many a sleepless night gainfully employed in blog perusal, and have gleaned some much-needed tips on how to have a successful (and comment-laden) blog. Here is what I have come up with in handy point form:

1. Forget what your English teacher taught you. Use Capital Letters mid-sentence for words that are not Proper Nouns (see what I did there?) This is very humorous. It is so that knowing people reading your blog can go hahaha, she is not crap at English, oh no, she knows where capital letters belong but is Employing them with Irony to great humorous effect. And so that when such people read the blog out loud, to their friends say, they know which bits to Emphasise.

2. Introduce regular characters. Heretofore, I have not had any regular characters like a Canadian pathologist or a He Man Pilot Hero or indeed a Short Tony. This clearly explains why I am not inundated with comments every single day. So, just to show that you CAN teach an old dog new tricks, I am going to introduce some quirky characters, cunningly combining them with rule number one to make things like: Generously Bosomed Little Sister or Eco-ranting Pregnant One (this latter one might have a short shelf-life given that she may some day give birth. But hey, the rate she's going she's bound to be knocked up again in no time).

3. Post some pictures. People like illustrations. It breaks up the text. Like this.

4. Write about Topical Things and Current Affairs. Comment on Big Brother. And Update your blog daily or people will stop giving a fiddlers. You will lose the interest of your fickle, Big Brother watching audience. Even if you've nothing to say, post. Post about posting if you will. Like I am now, really.

5. Tell people about your blog. Shout it defiantly from the rooftops. Introduce yourself at parties in the following fashion: "Hello, I'm (insert witty blogging name here) from (insert witty blog title here). You can find me at (insert URL here). Don't walk away from me you (insert expletive here)." Enough of all that "I wanted to remain anonymous and keep my private life out of the public eye" business. If you're blogging about your private life, dumb-ass, then that's all a bit on the redundant side don't you think?

6. Draw. This one is hard. I can't even draw with a pencil and paper, even if the paper is transparent and there's a highly visible easy to follow work of art underneath. As if that wasn't hard enough, now it's all the rage to draw on your blog. I have yet to fathom how people do this with their computers. The mind boggles. And jigs about a little, but that's a separate issue. I'm going to have to omit this key rule exhibited finely here. This may be why I will never get any comments and he will get gazillions.

That's all for now folks. Just a few simple rules and you too can be a Successful Blogger. Unlike me. Sigh... (When all else fails, just look for sympathy and talk about being sad and alone and angst-ridden in general. The people who read blogs are a morbidly depressed lot really and like to Identify with other Blue People.)

the leaving train

There's a moment for leaving, that moment when, if you just turn and exit, you can accomplish a clean cut. I somehow always miss that point. As a result, I'm left with jagged, stuttering endings and overlaps, and frayed memories that sully my pasts. I've missed a leaving train more than once in my life, and had to hitch a ride out. And that, I've found, is not always the quickest way away.

P.S.

Clearly I was technologically savvy at 12 and hip to the Atari groove (I have subsequently discovered that this is what I was trying to spell). Other choice entries to come soon where I become obsessed with Mass and Peter Buckley.

Diary entry: 9/1/1987

Today I went to Anita's. We played computer games. The first one was called Aviards or Anvacards or something. If you got 2,100 points you wrote your name up on a kind of list. Anita wrote Anita but then changed it to Nits because that is her Nicname.

Adios dos mil seis

This time last year I was living in an apartment on calle Mexico in a city that was my home on the other side of the world. I had not met Lars, nor Diego, nor Raphael. My left knee still didn't work properly and I had yet to be referred to as 'all legs' by a gentleman who saw me in my first real high heels. I had not been to Africa. I had never dived into water and I did not know the word stridulate. Now I know the sound a cicada makes and how to make mince pies. This time last year, I didn't even know I ever would.