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 qui...

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 licensin...

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 soundtr...

Kidney Punch ******************************************************************************* Death is the baby that is born with us, and walks with us through a life. it is the chink where the light comes in, a hairline crack in the giant Universe that allows us to ease our tiny souls in and out. It is our shadow self. I am telling the Matron that I subsist - when not fed by others - on a diet of caffeine, nicotine and chocolate, when I realize she is also telling ME something. Important. Listen to this says the small voice in my head and my eyes fill with tears as I hear her explain that Siobhán is being called home. To be present, to be in THIS moment, I find that I am rhythmically punching myself softly in the right hand side of my lower back, again and again. And as I notice I become aware that I am punching myself and so her words seem to come from a long way off, as if she is whispering through wet newspaper. She has also noticed the punching. It is impossible to stop. Her ca...

Mothers Mind I wake early to have a shower and see the clothes hanging over the back of the door. Apparently, I had placed them there the night before in some out of body space, where I have to remind myself to be present, to be here. They are all wrong, of course,  and so contrived and outrageous that I look like a caricature of a middle aged spinster,  the full skirt too long, the layers too much, the scarves trailing. “ Will you look at the get up of the one ?” I imagine them saying in the churchyard as they park their cars. The more I try to blend, to fade into the background, the more like a ragged bird of paradise I become. I wear them only because they are dry and ready and I do not want to have to tackle the hotpress. Again.   I share the car space with 3 men, the child in the back, the flowers on my lap. The Father is driving, The  Brother beside him, and Hewhomustnotbenamed stares out the window at the dappled fields in the b...