mdm

mdm aged 5  50 years later I get to bring a doll to New York City. Let me walk you back a little ...................... Once upon a time I was a very heavy sad woman. And resembled an egg on legs with enough cheek for a second set of teeth.  After I had made myself as fat as a lark, I threw in Type 2 Diabetes to boot.  May as well go the whole hog says I on Lithium eating the fill of the table and rooting for more.  I had watched my Mother Siobhán die a little every day in her mute locked in body in a gigantic padded chair.  We all die a little every day, just not as harshly.   Siobhán witnessed this with her own Father, whose curled sepia fingernails gripped the white railings of the bed, ferociously shaking them in agitation while his wife, a doctor, a district nurse, a home help, 8 sons and 4 daughters did the caring.  The Dooley Men doing the heavy lifting,  sleepovers and gatching, the women doing the cooking an...

mdm Zzz I saw the word sleep in the ad. And women curled up under grey blankets. Blah blah blah ........ so very what I thought and scrolled on. It came back into my feed repeatedly so I tapped the link. It's a heavy blanket to calm you down is what it is. Calm a scourge? A woman with a racing brain who rarely sleeps ? Go ahead, hit me with your best shot. My amazing Doctor  -  had once issued the immortal line - "We'll have to bring out the big guns " and prescribed a strong sedative that I became immune to as speedily as my head races. Trying to sleep with the mania of a Bi-Polar high means that your brain is fizzing with kaleidoscopic colours and thoughts. Sometimes it hurts more to shut my eyes because of the flickering. On tour with my play I lay on a hotel bed in the last hours of sunlight before showtime and remarked wearily to a woman in the corner that it was easier to stay awake. As a child I had many names. That Divilskin....

It was a whore of a night. The kind of night where a rain soaked wind blows a jeep sideways on the N11 and the heater mists the windscreen so that you nearly plough into the orange cones that have diverted traffic into Carlow town. The Sat Nav was on cocaine.   She tried and tried to bring us in ever decreasing circles around the town - always within spitting distance of the theatre we are bound for, but then frustratingly away, again and again as she shouts turn left, turn left.  She led us a merry dance in a hurricane down roads that are named for Pollerton, Staplestown Graigculle n and Dublin , and streets that are named for Tullow and Burrin. I know this town. Since I was a child I have been driven up the roads from Wexford to my Mothers home in “ The Crescent” named for Killian . Oylegate, Enniscorthy, Bunclody, Kildavin, Ballon, and Carla recited like a Mantra as we drove at speed over potholes you could lose a wheelbarrow in, rattling around un...

"I like the way you've done my eyes Meeeee shell" Artwork  © MDM I met Frank Sinnott when I was a Communion Child in 1971. I was brought across the road to be given a pound and have my dress admired. I was terrified of a parade of random hairy dogs that lay across the steps of Old Pound House like savage mats. I was almost more frightened of the hairy lad looking out at me from under his wild hair in the hall. He started to visit us, making wildly inappropriate suggestions to my Mother, each of whom had a soft spot for the other.  We were privy to all the comings and goings across the road, from the house going up in flames to Sonny Condell ringing the bell looking for divilment at 3am after a gig. He tried to teach me the guitar but I was more fascinated by the peas in his beard and the newspapers on every inch of the room. As I grew up I began to write, and it was Frank who gave me my first writing gig on his beloved "Boker". This time last year I...