mdm

"Should we start the packing?" enquires Vonnie Dooley  Monday Jan 13th   A mere handful of hours after this photo was taken I collapsed at the back door at misty midnight.  It is 24 hours before I fly to America for the first time in my life.  According to my diary I woke at 7,  dined on a banana then rocked up to a dentist to have my teeth boxed off before I stunned the craythurs in the front row.   My smile has been disfigured for years from the slap of a bottle that chipped a front tooth, not to mention staining from smoking and caffeine.  Amrish is a stunning man with sparkling gnashers and a heart of gold who came in on his day off to check the state of play and how much the teeth have lifted with bleaching.   A lot actually, although he wasn't lying about the sensitivity.  He took a mould of my mouth on Day 1 and then presented me with the plaster version of my own teeth as an aide de memoir, a keep ...

My Producer is on her way over to manhandle a procession of hard backed, soft fronted, wheeled and carry on cases into submission and bate the contents of a stage wardrobe, props, furniture and various sundries into all the above mentioned holdalls.  She will also have to explain as if to a Martian how to actually pack and what I can and cannot bring. It would appear that I am absolutely going to New York in a couple of days. Days??? Christ My mantra is do what you can from where you are when I am low. And obversely do it like you mean it when I am high. I don't know where I am right about now. Howya gettin' on eh? says a lad on the street with a fine row of false teeth top and bottom. He'd a head for pints and was veering at an obtuse angle towards an Undertakers in a Bullring for large bottles, staring out the window on a high stool, having the craic. Gluing a €2 coin on the ground to see how many will stop for it, and then mortified pretend to fasten t...

Once upon a quiet summers evening   - a car drops   me at the glass doors with the tinkling chimes. I carry freshly plucked Marguerite from  furze yellow hedges around  ridged chocolate fields. I'm balancing  ice-cream wrapped in a deli-foil bag to keep cold so I open the door to my Mother’s room with my chin. A   pretty blonde woman in a blue tabard is kneeling on the floor,    both of my Mother’s hands in hers, craning upwards to see the face under the flopping fringe. -           Kin you tell me if there is anythink I can do for you ? She speaks with an accent that I've become familiar with, although one is never sure if it is Croatian, Polish, or Lithuanian. I am at pains to mark my territory, and inform this stranger that my Mother does not, cannot speak. I throw the flowers onto the patchwork quilt and make a production about getting a vase, a saucer and spoon. How very dare...