I got some energy for 2010…
There must be something fundamentally wrong with me; as a human being and I put on this planet for just a flicker of a moment and I behave like this…
There was I, all alone on the top deck of a double decker bus, on new years eve afternoon. I sat in the very front seat when all of a sudden a friendly girl, just a few years older than me, with an accent hard to define, sat in the other front seat opposite me.
She smiled at me as she took her seat and I half smiled back. When she settled into her seat, she kinda leaned over and said “this is beautiful isn’t it?” she could hardly contain her excitement… It kinda took me by surprise.
I looked out and saw grey buildings towering over me, traffic everywhere, people zig-zaging on the pavement. I tried to see the beauty, I replied “its a nice view from up here”, she agreed and her whole persona was poised for a fully fledged conversation. It was at that point, I reached in to my bag and pulled out my Ipod…
I could feel her watching me and I continued to plug my ears despite this innate feeling that it was the most ignorant, ugly thing any human could do in a moment like that.
With my ipod clogging up my ears, I couldn’t shake off this feeling of self disgust, so i put my ipod away and angled for a chin wag.
By that time she had a magazine open on her lap; I noticed it was called “voyage”.
I broke the ice and we had a loose, on & off chat for the duration of the journey across London. She was so excited to be here and had only just arrived from Paris. I told her that I too felt like that when I first came here, but now I’m sort of like a horse with blinders;
She said she feels that way about Paris. We agreed that things always look better when you’re just passing through… and I said “Yep, a rolling stone gathers no moss…”
I then thought to myself how cool it would be to be a rolling stone again, a wanderer, just roaming around from place to place and settling for a while, then moving off when the time felt right.
Imagine if we just followed our every whim and we never settled down… Like if I just went home now, packed my bags and walked out on all that’s familiar and just headed off, just headed off and just went where ever the wind blew me…
Anyway, she got off the bus when we got down south of the river and I said, “Happy new year to you”. She said it to me too. I said I hope its a good one and I really did mean it. She told me that it has already got off to a great start as she has just received the best news ever. She was beaming. I said I hope some of that energy passes over onto me, she raised her two hands over me in jest and said, “I’ll give you some of that energy now!”…
We both laughed and that was the end of our encounter.
I am kind of excited about 2010 now and waiting for my good news…
Short Eared Owl
I was woken up at about 5am this morning by the strangest sounding creature. It was an eerie sound to hear in the dead of night, in the middle of the country (I was at home in Ireland) – I wasn’t sure if it was a fox or an owl, but I just had a look online now and I found out what it was:
The Short-Eared Owl…
I heard a male AND a female. The female kinda sounded like a scratchy ol’ fox.
Click here to hear what the male sounded like…
And here is what the female sounds like.
I have been reading all about Owls today and fantasising about living in the country again….
When I first meet someone…
I sometimes find myself having a conversation with someone, but while they’re talking, I drift away from the conversation -but only if its safe to do so. You can always tell when the time is right to start drifting, you know yourself.
Some people like to talk and talkers will always find listeners. More often than not, I prefer to listen than to talk, yera, I wouldn’t be much of a talker really…
Some random people talking... or are they?
When I meet someone for the first time, or the first few times, I like when they talk because it allows me to ‘take them in’. I’d say they think I am listening to them and sometimes I am, but sometimes I am not! …and they are fooled, because I go through the appropriate motions; I am still nodding and responding and laughing and smiling in all the right places.
Things get a little difficult when I meet a like minded creature and when I do, I start talking – only because I feel as though there would be silence if I didn’t, so I am somewhat forced into the talking role, which feels uncomfortable at first but once I get into it, I’m capable of a bit of waffling. I will talk about anything when I am in those situations. Anything to fill that gap.
Today I was in a three way conversation. They are the best for this kind of thing because you can easily slip out of the conversation to have a little ’sniff around’. Dogs have been doing this ever since they were dogs and they do it much more openly; there are no social graces with dogs and that’s why I love them. When a dog encounters another dog, they have a good ol’ sniff.
Having a good ol' sniff...
They fill up their senses and gather all the information they need. They then make a judgement based on this and don’t have any qualms about it; they will either hump the other dog or lay into him
I make those judgements too, but in more subtle ways. I have to do it the human way, I wait until the person is in full flow and then I look at their eyes and how their face moves as they talk, their hair, their clothes, their shoes, their hands…the list is endless but I make a judgement as snappy as a dog.
Anyway, this particular conversation I was having today was with a tall skinny man and a swarthy twenty something girl. The girl was rabbiting on and I took to studying the tall skinny man, keeping the twenty year old girl for another time. The tall skinny man will probably be in my life for a while, in fact both of them will be if things go according to how I think they’ll go, but you can never tell – I could be knocked down by a bus tomorrow, but anyway, this man, he had an unusual shaped head. It was attached to his neck where you wouldn’t imagine it to be attached. Who ever made him, must have been distracted just as they were positioning his head onto his neck. While he was talking to me, I was imagining how I would re-position his head given the chance… Isn’t that awful?
The Irish Coffees that bombed…
Irish coffees have always been my forte. I make them so well that when people see me coming, they start seeing visual images of Irish coffees and begin to salivate.
At Christmas time, I usually make a batch after dinner for all the clan to enjoy. It had become a bit of a ritual by 2006, but unfortunately that year there was a little eh, ‘mishap’ that jeopardised my position as Champion Irish Coffee Maker and since then… well, I haven’t been asked to make them again. That year there was no cream you see and I had to improvise…
I found some whipped white stuff in a bowl in the fridge that looked just like whipped cream and looking back, I suppose I just wanted to believe it was cream…
I went so far as sticking the tip of my index finger into the mixture for the purposes of taking a sample. It tasted ok, it was mild enough to do the trick and looking back, I suppose I just wanted to believe it was cream.
Functionally, it worked a charm. It sat in beautiful dollops on the dark coffee underneath and when I came around the corner with the tray of Irish coffees, it was like the climax of the evening… there were ‘ooooohs’ and ‘aaaaahs’ and ‘mmmms’ and enormous smiles – My mother nearly ruined the moment by asking me where I got the cream. I think I must have convinced myself she didn’t ask me that and proceeded to hand everyone their drinks.
Everyone started sipping and supping and gulping… then there was a sort of silence that grew… I don’t know, the atmosphere just started to change and my imaginary bubble began to sag. People started to spit and cough and make faces and push the coffees away.
My mother then started to home in on the ‘cream’ side of things. I felt like I was in a courthouse. She was badgering me on what I used for the cream especially when she didn’t buy any. I finally confessed that I had used the ‘mixture in the fridge’ and they jeered at me when my mother revealed that it was marscapone cheese.
I drank all mine as they laughed and pointed. I thought it tasted lovely…
I don’t know…Looking back, I suppose I just wanted to believe it was cream.
