mdm

This is the closing scene of the Shellshock Café Show in Wexford Arts Centre  - where I tie the stories together by demonstrating the places and people mentioned. It begins with the hometown shot on a misty quayfront -  and follows our heroine who emigrates  to Germany in the 80's,  the hotels and characters, through to London and half of Great Britain in the early 90's, through bratwurst and bitter, and home again, as the call of the stones of the homeland,  was embedded in her like subliminal sound. The soundtrack is   Wandering by Lúnasa.  MDM May 2015

Sour Dough Bread Once upon a quiet summers evening  - the car drops  me at the glass doors with the tinkling chimes. I carry freshly plucked Marguerite daisies from the furze yellow hedges around the ridged chocolate fields. There is also ice-cream wrapped in a deli-foil bag to keep it cool 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 as a race we have become familiar with,  although one is never sure if it is Croatian, Serbian, 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 she -  I wo

Barry Beany Bathes  They moved us to the New Forest and a 200 seater carvery that turned over 3 times on Sundays, where a Welsh chef called Taff would grind out his cigarette  with the heel of a steel capped boot and call them bastid s as they surrounded the building like a pack of feral animals on their never ending quest  for Yorkshire puddings. “I’m sweatin’ an orchard by yere” he groaned after a night on the cider. The first sitting of Sunday lunch, a choice of a salad bar  *with prawns* (which would be decimated instantly) 3 roasts and as much veg as could be carried on a dinner plate, ended  with someone taking their life in their hands walking through the crowd with a dessert trolley containing Missisippi Mud Pie , Black Forest Gateau and the intrigueingly named Death by Chocolate . English people love to queue, and so a phalanx of cars and vans would begin to assemble in the giant car park from about breakfast time. Despite the licensing laws which precluded u

One morning you will find that you are lying, in bed, staring at the headlights of cars as they criss cross the white ceiling of your room,  the shadow play,  chiaroscuro of light and shade. One afternoon you will find that you are standing, staring at the yellow names flashing on the phone  ringing to voicemail and you will not call them back, and you will realise that it is days since you spoke or left the house, and that you almost wore shades and a hat to buy smokes. One nightime you will find that you are sitting staring at the  TV  and your racing mind will project lights and squares and colours all around the room, off to the right, in the corner of your eye, and even rubbing or closing them will not remove the dancing lights and you will think you are having a turn.  It is 3 months since my Mother died. I type the word " died" and my stomach flips. Her quiet breathing over the days of her leavetaking became the soundtrack to her end-of-l