Blue Moon

Sickle Moon

Wonder Brother is getting married again.
He went public with this Momentous News at his 50th Birthday Weekend (it was a Capital Letter sort of occasion) and although no one was exactly blown away with surprise, we were all blown away with happiness at his happiness.
He looked positively runny all weekend, as we would say in our house.

It was a great party.
Although - hideous thought - I nearly missed it.
He had, with great forethought and much consideration, rung to talk through possible dates for the marking of his half century, and we'd agreed a weekend that I'd be able to get to the UK.
But a few nights later I woke in a schwett (as they say here), remembering that we had already accepted another, equally important invitation for the same weekend this side of the water.
Ye gods and little fishes, where were my wits?
No doubt nestling somewhere with my lost NavBar.
As dawn broke, I sent him a text with trembling fingers. His reply was - well, curt.
I had no one to blame but myself - I should have kept my calendar up to date. But isn't it typical? Yummy invitations are like buses. You can loiter palely for months on end and then, when they come - if they come - they all come at once.

It took me another few days to clock that actually his do was on the Saturday, our other invite was for the Sunday night, and for once the dread Ryanair played a blinder by flying in and out of our local airports at the right times for me to be at both events.
Joy of joys!
I packed a bag and headed to pastures new in Cheshire. My parents and siblings all packed bags and did likewise - from the west coast of Ireland to the east coast of England, from Scotland to the West Country, we all converged on the newest outpost of the empire. 

Waxing Moon

It is hard to describe just how lovely the weekend was. Not simply for the Event, but for the people that went with it.

Perhaps it's only as you get older that blood really does thicken up a bit, but increasingly I find that time spent with my family is very precious. Looking back over the years, family get-togethers have been occasional markers, rather than the norm - we've been splattered hither, thither and yon most of my life.

It's made me think, once again, about locality. Even in this day and age, lots of families are still on each other's doorsteps.
Is having your family on hand a luxury or a pain, I wonder? I've never had the chance to find out, but I suspect that, despite all, it is probably a luxury.


Families love each other and hate each other, they embrace and bicker and argue. They slam doors but usually - eventually - open their arms and hearts wide. And many drop in and out of each other's lives almost daily. But not having grown up with that, I've neither looked for it, nor missed it, until now. Living in rural Ireland has highlighted the gaps I never knew I had.
Here, I am surrounded by collective families who have deep, subliminal connections with the places where they live. It is impossible not to sense the roots, the tensile bonds of kinship that link so many people together, the layers of history, relationship and intimacy that underpin communities, the invisible maps which they know instinctively but which I know nothing of. The warp and weft of blood with locality.
The intricacies of it all are something I will never unravel or understand because there is no imprint within me that recognises the pattern.
 
It is why, no matter how long I live here, I will never belong as my neighbours do. I will always be a 'blow-in', just as I would be if I came from Dublin, or Donegal. I may have a home here, but I don't have a homeplace. People use that expression often - 'my homeplace'. The soil from which they sprang.

The thing is, I don't have a homeplace anywhere else either, or yards of relatives to people it. No entrenchment. Does that make me a kind of locus-orphan? I don't know. For me, belonging is moveable and  lodges in the soul rather than the soil. It is about the people I carry in my heart, and those who carry me in theirs. That is my homeplace.
So, strange as it may sound, my first visit to Cheshire was like going home.



Wonder Brother and his fair Betrothed had planned the weekend to perfection. No easy task when catering for the interests of an age-group ranging from 14-91, but our packed schedule flowed smoothly from one event to the next without anyone being aware of a cunning plan underlying the whole.

Full Moon

Yet, sitting out under the stars in their charming town garden, I realised that it wouldn't have mattered if we'd done nothing and been nowhere. Watching everyone laughing and joking over laden plates and glasses of wine, it struck me that it's all about the ease with which you pick up the threads. No matter where you all live, or how different your lifestyles, your opinions or your priorities; once together, the blood recognises its own and mingles seamlessly, the heart remembers the echoes the mind has long forgotten. Those are the things that mark out our nearest and dearest from all the rest. Those relationships are future-proofed, time lapses and locus notwithstanding.

I watched the young ones who'd managed to be there - the under 30s - catching up, swapping news, so full of their lives, and I remembered with blinding clarity and some nostalgia the place they are now at. At that age how radiant and full of promise the world is. Everything is an adventure, every dawn a new beginning, and time, if you ever think about it at all, is just a remote bank vault, bulging with funds. Happy as I am, it is an unalterable truth that living wears some of the shine off that polish, and eats quietly through that largesse.

But it is good, and right and proper that my nephews and nieces are still millionaires in that regard, that they too will have these spendthrift days to look back on. And family get-togethers that replenish the collective memory.

And it is beyond good that my brother and his lovely Betrothed have both come full circle - through the tarnished years back to a point where energy and happiness are raw and vibrant again. When life is for living and each dawn an adventure. Maybe, as he puts down tentative roots alongside hers, he will learn what it is to have a homeplace. But it hardly matters. He has found the homeplace of her heart, and she his, and I am so glad for them. Glad that they have found it, and known it for what it is, and seized it with both hands.

The chance of love, with the happiness it brings, the belonging it bestows, isn't like buses, chugging along at stolid intervals.
It is more like a blue moon, rare and special.
And oftentimes not even acknowledged or recognised.

Blue Moon. We had one last month, and the next one falls on July 31, 2015

The Mad Hatter's State of Mind

It's been a funny old Easter. One of those years when you are dimly aware that something is happening - elsewhere - but the festivities have passed over your head.

The In-Charge and I are largely recovered from our joint illness, but remain in a state of spineless exhaustion. The slightest exertion - sometimes even coming downstairs first thing in the morning - is enough to reduce me to a grease spot on the floor. He feels much the same, which is most unlike him.
What is it with this flu?

I have to say the weather doesn't help. The miraculous sunshine of two weeks ago is but the vestige of a memory, and we are back to rain and chilly inclemency.
Hello Ireland.


But all is not woe.

Easter - the moment for millinery genius. A wonderful bird's nest of a hat

The Mad Hatter's Parade at the Easter Market went off with a flourish, and cupcakes and little chocolate eggs were handed out with gay abandon.

Another winning hat. And definitely a winning smile!

Also, we have planted the two blossom trees where the elm once stood so tall and proud.
I'm convinced they have already grown three inches and will be in full flower by tomorrow morning.

And I have been happily curled up reading my friend's book, Goodbye Mr Smith, while eating a great deal of chocolate. It's an account of how she came to move here from Germany, and the wonderful friendship she struck up with the old man who was her neighbour until he died a few years ago. It is delightful, warm and vibrant and I can hear her voice in every sentence. I am enjoying it hugely.

Moreover, we have just returned from our favourite beach where the sun even shone for a brief and startling moment, and the dogs raced and chased and rolled in the sand in an ecstasy of happiness.

Rolling in unison. (As opposed to rolling in something horrible!) They've done it since they were puppies

Top Dog found a trophy which he carried to the end of the beach and then ate.

Top Dog likes seaweed

Alas, the silver beast is still sulking, and remains in lock-up, but my dear friend has once again donned her halo and angel's wings and flown to the rescue. Her little green car is parked in the yard and has declared itself ready and willing to convey us anywhere we choose to go - which has so far included the market on Saturday, a delightful supper party with its owner last night and the beach today.

Thank you friend.
Thank you, little green car.

The silver beast shall hear of your selfless reliability.
Perhaps it will think twice before giving up the ghost in future.
It could take one Mad Hatter's message to heart.

A hat apart

My friend's Dodo Hat bore this message on the back: 'Extinction is only a state of mind'

The Delicate Art of Making Cake

I don't suppose Marie-Antoinette ever said 'Let them eat cake.' But she might have done.
I could understand it if she did. It would be the wish of any Queen for her people.
Bread is about survival. There's something altogether more significant about cake.
Cake is aspirational.

Arthur, Wellington's son moves to pastures new

I have been thinking about cake because yesterday we drove over the mountain
We took Arthur to his new home where he will live the life of Reilly with my friend Tina and her happy jumble of family and animals.

The mountain was silent, spare and untouchable. Drab browns and dull greens seemed dingy on a misty, wet February afternoon. The only living things we saw were sheep and the flock of wind turbines that, facing the same way and turning slowly in ghostly unison, felt like some strange cabal caught in ritualistic prayer. It felt like alien country.
And I felt like a stranger.

On top of the grey mountain with a lens full of rain

Husband and I were not inspired to chat, as we followed the lonely road.
Instead I found my mind turning to vagrancy, my feet itching.
The cake came later.


When people ask, 'Where do you come from?', I never know what to say.
And, as you know yourself, it's not an uncommon question. Particularly if you don't have a local accent.
When I was young, I used to try and explain, but it's like 'How are you?' No one wants to know about your explosive diarrhoea or bunions. They just need to place you.

For quite a few years I used to say: 'London', because that was where I'd most recently come from.
But generally though, I just say: 'I'm a vagrant.'
Because it's the easiest answer, and it feels like the truth.

I was born in Africa, I grew up in the West Indies, I lived in England for a good while, and for the last 18 years I have lived in Ireland. But none of that qualifies me to be African, West Indian, English or Irish.
In Ireland, we're called 'blow-ins' - a term applied to anyone who wasn't born within the Parish boundary, so I don't take it personally.

The Hound of the West is definitely not a blow-in. He was born in the Parish (where, as you can see, he plans a reign of terror)

The thing about blow-ins is they can blow-out again. I suppose that's how you start being a vagrant, and once your feet get itchy, there's no end to it.
The seriously good side of vagrancy: is that you get to lead an interesting life and live in loads of places.
You don't feel rooted to the land.


On the other hand, there is also a seriously bad side to vagrancy.
I don't feel rooted to the land. And quite often, I don't feel connected.
And sometimes, like yesterday, I feel like an alien.

When we got to Arthur's new home, Tina brought us into the house and fed us delicious hazelnut cake - a recipe from her childhood in Germany which she said she often makes on Sundays. We sat in her kitchen with cats on our laps and the fire crackling brightly in the stove, and afterwards we all went out and looked at Arthur, who was being eyed up by the locals.

One of the locals

The area where Tina lives is wild and open - wetland criss-crossed with small streams, tucked under a heather blanket, fringed by forest and with the bare, bleak highlands of the Ox Mountains as a backdrop.
Tina is a blow-in just as I am. But to her this isn't alien country. This is the place that - when she first saw it umpteen years ago - she recognised straight away because somehow it was already imprinted on her soul. This is the place where her children have been born and raised, the place she would hunger for if she had to leave.It is the place where she makes cake.

Tina may be a blow-in, but I don't think she's a vagrant. I think she is very rooted, and very connected.
You can tell by looking at her, and her family, and all her laid-back animals.

Lazy afternoons in bed

We drove home, Arthur-less, across the bleak, bare mountain, silenced again by the enormity of the place.
And when we got back to the lush coastal plain with its trees, its green fields and its vista of the Atlantic, I stopped feeling quite such an alien. And back inside the house, snug with the fire and the animals curled up in their beds, I had an overwhelming desire to make cake.


And I realised that cake isn't about hunger, or need, or nutrition. Making cake is something special we do when we are happy, when families get together, or friends come, when we are going a step further than just feeding ourselves. Cake is a statement of well-being, an offering, a simple but eloquent way of marking an enduring connection between people, time and place. It says that right here, right now a delicate balance has been achieved.

I may be a vagrant, an itchy-footed blow-in. My roots may not be deep, and they may not tap into the land, but they tap into home - wherever that may be.
Home is where I feel connected.
It is where I make cake.

Jack-flak - definitely a cake-of-choice