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The Headstone

“Do you remember any affectionate moments with your mother?”

The therapist was probably feeling an awkward silence that I was blissfully unaware of while I attempted to route through a few decades in under a minute.

“No”, I said, “Mammy wasn’t touchy feely. Just sometimes if she had an itch she might ask me to rub her back.” It was true that Mammy wasn’t the kind of Mammy to have us on her knee or give us a hug, but there were things I would remember later,  maybe too late.

That day in Dun-Laoghaire when we went to the bakery and she told me to pick out whatever bun I’d like, and I had the chocolate éclair.  Of course, I wasn’t allowed to eat it on the spot. There was the torture of carrying it to the bus stop in its paper bag and holding it on my knee until we had completed our journey up the hill on the number 7A bus to Sallynoggin and then the ten minute walk home until I could tear open the bag at the kitchen table and demolish it with a cup of tea that Mammy poured from the same tin teapot that everyone else on our street had. I remember biting into it and some of the cream oozing into my mouth, with the rest of it falling from my lips to my chin. Bits of chocolate breaking away, but never getting as far as the floor, and that light choux pastry, all air and chewiness, slaughtered by the captor of my mouth.

There were other things I remembered. The time I was so sick that I couldn’t get off the sofa, and Mammy got a bucket and every time I got sick she emptied it into the toilet. The bucket was orange and Kay from next door was called in because she had a book where you could look up any kind of illness that a kid had. It was called the Dr. Spock book. You knew that if your mother went next door to consult from the book that it was serious. The time with the bucket was apparently a stomach virus. I didn’t know what that was, but it sounded good.

I was a bad daughter from the start. Mammy went in next door all up in arms one morning because I had such acute lower abdominal pains. Kay looked it up and diagnosed a kidney problem. The doctor was summoned. Neither the doctor nor the Dr. Spock book could diagnose that I’d been up until the early hours of the morning, straining my back, reading ‘Tom Sawyer’ with a torch under the sheets. I didn’t dare tell the truth. I had too much to lose. As the years went on, I missed copious amounts of school suffering from the insomnia induced by my secret reading habits: Enid Blyton, Patricia Lynch, Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain, are but a few of the bad influences who weakened my academic prowess. Thanks to the Dr. Spock book, I was unable to get through the day due to anaemia: “ look at the black rings under her eyes”, which sounded too professional to contest. I was on a roll, I could do all nighters at the age of nine and was already cute enough to know that the best policy was to keep shtumm. It worked.

Therapists are always looking for a sad story, and if you are the victim in it, even better. People who do therapy all have the same story. It is ‘look at how damaged I was by my terrible parents and look at how well I have overcome it.’ My story is different. My parents were not the only perpetrators of my childhood misery and traumas, and quite frankly, not many people would have survived my childhood as well as I did. In my case, therapy helped me remember things from both sides, and ultimately all I could do was to thank the above mentioned authors for saving me. When the real world was too overwhelming to deal with, reading became a form of escapism. There was the real world, and the other world , the one I lived in, full of books  - novels, poetry and even the odd Dale Carnegie thrown in, that might have wandered in from my father’s bookshelf to my grubby child  hands. My favourite though, was Patricia Lynch ‘King of the Tinkers’. Granny gave it to me for my tenth birthday, along with a book of Irish fairy tales by Sinead DeValera. By ten it had become official that there was no point in giving me anything other than a book. One cousin was creative with a cookery book, and for about three years I managed to combine reading with making peppermint creams – a hideous paste of caster sugar, water and peppermint essence, rolled into little round coinlike discs.

There are probably dozens, even hundreds of kind and loving things that my mother did for me, but the relationship sets the tone, and it was always strained. A difficult marriage, the demon drink and a basic lack of parenting tools were things that set the scene when I was a kid in the 70’s. I may not have been alone in this, the only thing that set me apart was the fact that my mother never really liked me. For whatever reason that may be, and there is a plethora of possibilities, it shaped our relationship and I never managed to find a way back.

Ask her though. She may have a different story. Her prodigal daughter. No respect. Breaking with convention. A lesbian. Every mother’s nightmare. Maybe getting married and having children was a last attempt to win her over. And when the whole thing backfired, it was nothing but a confirmation for her that her daughter was a no good loser. Might she have influenced my decision not to follow my other true love, my passion for writing, in order to look good in a capitalist corporate role? Status, money, power. Not really. That was something that she only valued as something a man does. The woman really only needed to ‘mary well’. I didn’t.

 But who really knows what makes us do the things we do? Not even the shrink. Not even ourselves most of the time. Life happens, and if we decide to navel gaze we can come up with all sorts of concoctions.

In life she was quite the drama queen; in death she was very amenable. A short illness without much pain, one that meant we could say goodbye. There were nights on a recliner chair in the nursing home. There were long days where all we could do was sit around her bed and wait. But what were we waiting for? Does your mother ever die? Now, years later, I have discovered that no, she doesn’t, she is always there, and no matter how difficult the relationship was, she is still your mother, and yes, even if it was the hardest love you ever had to fight for, you loved her.

She was right. I’m a bad daughter. It’s taken me four years to get the ball rolling to have her gravestone heading engraved. Since 1979 it boasts my father as a permanent resident. She has been there with him since 2015, unbeknownst to strangers who like to roam graveyards reading the epitaphs.

Having a gravestone engraved is not easy. We edited and reedited and found multiple errors before realising we had forgotten to add that she was also a grandmother, and then the issue that her name was not written in the same size her husband’s was, which her feminist daughter was not going to let happen. Then, there it was. A sentence that said Mammy was there with Daddy, in St. Fintan’s graveyard, on the other side of the bay, the place they grew up before they got married. All of the lettering correct perhaps, but is that where she lies when I can hear her right here beside me, egging me on to eat an éclair or retreat to read a book, still whispering into my ear that I need to be respectable, that I’m a lost case, her ghost handing me a gin and tonic to keep my grief company in the only way that she knew how to deal with it. Just this time round, instead of giving her an angry lecture on the evils of drink, I let her off, raise the glass and say ‘Cheers’. 
Rest in Peace Mother, see you another time.

Forgiven

THIS BLOG USES COOKIES.....

You would think that telling a story to a bunch of listeners is safer than writing one down. When I was in New York a few years ago, I told a story about an exciting sex adventure with a lover who was 20 years younger than me. As the mother of 3 millennials there is no way I was going to have that story told anywhere other than a continent away from my children’s ears and nowhere that it could be found online. In Seattle I went on stage with a story about a dildo, and this time I even ventured to

give a tamer version of it in Germany, at the Loose Lips storytelling event that was being hosted by no other than my own son.

Telling a story is safe because there is no real evidence other than other people’s version and interpretation of it. No matter what you tell, all that can be passed on are other peoples version of it, combined with my denial of ever saying anything remotely close to what I really did say.

So when the topic last week at Loose Lips was Forgiveness and/or Betrayal, I began to get stuck.  -Forgiveness! The very cornerstone of who I am, I could take over the mic for the whole night and give a keynote speech on the topic. Again, it was being hosted by no other than my son Eddie. The day before the event he explained that he had chosen this topic as he wanted to see if people would come along not only with hilarious stories, drinking stories and fun anecdotes. Now was the test to see what kind of sad and deep stories might come up.

The way Loose Lips works is that there are always three or four planned story tellers and then, after a short break, the stage is open to members of the audience to come up and tell a story for about 5 minutes - a true and mostly unrehearsed story. The most exciting thing about the evening is that you just don't know what's coming. Exciting to the audience that is, and absolutely nerve wrecking for the host of the show not knowing just what is coming next.

So I was all gung ho with my forgiveness tales, and yet when he called me up I found that I couldn't bring myself to getting up and telling that one sad story, possibly one of the experiences that I see as a great milestone in my life, and I realised that actually, when it comes to the sad ending maybe it is easier to write about it than to take the wind out of a fun evening by sharing a therapeutic past experience with an audience that are waiting for a laugh.

So I told the story of the ex boyfriend who was a serial liar and how indignant he was at being ditched just for telling a few lies about two timing me. It managed to get a laugh and I followed it up with a short lecture on the topic of forgiveness. You see I have this theory that forgiveness is not really something that you decide to do or not do, it has to come. Well, to me it does.

For many years I could never find a reason to forgive the man who abused me as a child. ( In Ireland we use words like abuse and molestation to soften the blow of hearing about child rape.) And in Ireland, abuse was not a very uncommon thing when I was growing up. In fact, looking back today, on the abuse histories that have become public, I hardly make the grade – it wasn’t a priest or a person of authority, or better still a Rockstar or celebrity like say Jimmy Saville or Gary Glitter. I was a huge fan of Gary Glitter at the age of ten. If I was going to be abused, why the hell could it not have been him, I even had his poster on my bedroom wall. No, it was just a random uncle. Not even a blood relative, one that married in to the family. A boring chef who looked a bit like Elvis and made me feel like it was all my fault that he had become a paedophile.  But that’s Irish guilt for you. We were reared on it.

Years later I decided to confront the bastard. I had just returned to Ireland after many years abroad and by now I had kids of my own.  This guy was still on the loose and I wondered what my kids would think of me when they were older if they asked me ‘hey mom, what did you do about it when that uncle molested you?’ What if my answer was ‘nothing’? That thought drove me to the cops and then the whole thing was exposed. (Pardon the pun).

 When the was confronted with it and not only vehemently  denied it, but tried to claim that it must have been my father (who died when I was 14) who had abused me and that I was all confused now, what with the passing of time,  I was even more sure that forgiveness did not belong anywhere in this story. He knew what he did, and it wasn’t as if I was out to get him, I had only wanted it acknowledged and to get an apology. I expected  the typical Irish bigoted schmuck behaviour that I grew up with. That he'd say something like 'ah well, it was different in the 70s, and I was drunk and frustrated and blah blah I'm sorry luv...' I was expecting to listen to that and to name and shame him in public, or at least make sure that all of the family knew, and that would be it. Of course it didn't happen like that at all though. The plot only thickened. As soon as he denied everything and made me out to be a liar and tried to pin the guilt to a dead innocent man, he became the family hero. Of course, it was easier for them to believe him as it meant that they wouldn’t need to come to terms with having a paedophile in the family. The case was dropped and over the next few years two of my cousins approached me privately telling me that they had also been victims, yet neither of them wanted to make a statement or stand behind me, even though they knew the truth. One of them beratingly told me that she didn’t think it was a good idea to upset the harmony in the family. Harmony? Hello?  Interestingly, another of these cousins is a therapist, which I found pretty scary, knowing that by not coming forward all they were doing were protecting a paedophile. Families are erm, so harmonious...

About then years later, in 2013 when Nelson Mandela died, there were a lot of tributes paid to him. Let's face it, this man was the crown prince of forgiveness, something that I couldn’t understand given that he had been so brutally tortured. Yet, he  forgave the prison officers who had tortured him over many years. I remember reading somewhere that they would put him standing in front of a desk and slam the drawer of it closed on his testicles. What part of this is forgivable?

Then one day I heard someone on the radio quote something he had recounted about forgiveness. He said "As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I know if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison."  So in other words he was saying that if you don’t forgive people, you will never be free. Damn it, the man was right. Here I was years and years later, still not free, while my rapist was probably out for a round of golf, or more likely a round of beers.

So that was it. If I wasn't able to forgive this person, I would never be free of what happened. I still didn't decide to forgive him though, not because I didn’t want to, I’d gotten that far, but because I just couldn’t.

Then one day it was as if it happened all by itself. Instead of feeling the way I imagined Jesus might have felt when he said things like ‘forgive them, for they know not what they do’, ( I imagined he would feel a bit like a very humble Rockstar)  I realised that instead of feeling pain, grief  and anger and all of the feelings you might expect to have from time to time when dwelling over a lost childhood, all that I felt  now was sorry for this pathetic excuse of a human being. How awful it must be to come into this world and be nothing but a lying conniving paedophile who knows how to make choux pastry. And I felt thankful. Thankful that I was never sold into his behaviour and never believed that it was a good idea to protect a paedophile in order to play at happy families. A whole layer of pain slipped away, I was a caterpillar who turned into butterfly all of a sudden, and a whole new era began, one that he didn’t feature in.

When I recently read his death notice citing how he would be sadly missed by his nieces and nephews, etc., I thought about writing in the online condolence book that this niece will not sadly miss him due to what he did. I decided not to, I think it belongs to the whole  forgiving thing. It was because whatever I write or think or do, it truly does not have a place with anyone else. There are people who cared for this person and believed his lies, there are others who knew his crime and protected him, and there is me, who knows what happened, me, who couldn’t tell this story out loud in public. Me, who knows that if I hadn’t forgiven him, he never would have died.

The Now or the Nervous Breakdown?

There’s a thin line between reaching a state of inner peace comparable to that of a Buddhist monk and being bang on in the middle of a nervous breakdown. Thing is, I’m never sure which state I currently find myself in. It’s true that one feeds the other at times. You need to have a proper meltdown to let the storm settle and find your peace. And peace wouldn’t be peace if you didn’t allow the true tempest of this life to enter your accepting and non-judgemental state of whatever you want to call not letting stuff get to you.

The buzz word nowadays is ‘Mindfulness’. If I understand it correctly, it means that you should mind your mind, like think of it as a place where you set yourself up for feeling good or bad, and as with all of these pop psychology hits, it’s about living in the now. Like Buddhism it involves meditation and sitting cross legged on a straight-backed chair, and then you have to focus, focus, focus…

So far, I’m pretty good at not sweating the small stuff. I don’t worry about the mess, in fact, I’m fond of my clutter, and fortunately my body image is not dependant upon what people or media say it should be. (But unfortunate for those who have to look at me on a regular basis). I’m the high priestess of detachment, as soon as I find love I begin hatching an escape route. Having moved house roughly 20 times in my life – and that’s not counting the in-between places, clutter just doesn’t have a chance to raise it’s little head.

When finances are low, I live in the moment by maxing out my credit card. Because in that moment the transaction goes through, and past and future there is none. And so on…

And yes, I know that that’s not the way you’re supposed to do it, and maybe that’s why doing it also ends up in a near nervous breakdown, or burnout as they like to call it in Germany, pronounced ‘Bern hout’. Here’s the thing though, surely this condition of being on the verge of a breakdown is the most honest and realistic state a human can experience? It means you are not trying to fake everything being all happy and rosy. It is real. Life is hard, even the Buddha himself said that.  If you want to live life to the full, embrace every challenge, accept yourself, live on your terms and be true to yourself, believe me, it’s going to be damn hard. That is the secret that you won’t read about very much, because who the hell would be stupid enough to write a book on the doom and gloom of self-realisation.

So what to do? Cross your legs and meditate? Shop online for stuff, stuff and more stuff? From Dale Carnegie to modern day Mindfulness, it all boils down to the same thing – if you can just be fine with yourself the way you are, even on the days when the roof seems to be caving in, then everything else will fall into place.

The MoMa, a Beggar and my Limp

There’s a woman who walks up and down the streets around West 82^nd and Amsterdam Avenue asking people if they’ll give her a dollar. I’d put her around 80. Small, wiry, bent, wispy hair. Brittle bird legs in black tights, but still a follower of fashion in a knit skirt with a tartan pattern, more the kind of skirt you might see on a 20-year-old Asian student. Pale pink lipstick, and a crimson red blouse topped with a cream overcoat despite the muggy August New York heat. I wonder what she does with the money she collects. She doesn’t look like she eats anything, can’t tell if she drinks. She’s sober when she pushes her trolley bag up and down 82^nd, asking ‘do you have a dollar for me?’ I don’t give her one.

I keep my dollars for the MoMa. My feet are killing me after walking into the city, but I’m scared of the subway. I did make a weak attempt, but have no idea what they mean by uptown and downtown. Both of these expressions mean the same thing where I come from: Uptown – as in, I’m going up the town to get some shopping. Downtown – as in, I’m going down the town to get some shopping. And there’s no way I’m going to ask a stranger what it means. After all, this is New York, I might get shot.

Oh Jackson...

The first thing I see in the MoMa is a long way from art. It’s an obese ageing woman with poor dress sense and flat shoes. Myself. There I am, my reflection scaring me in long glass window as I make my way over to find Jackson Pollack. And I’m on my own. This is a recipe for becoming depressed and lonely, but it’s New York, a place where people go out of their way to translate anything negative into the positive. For ‘no’, they say ‘I don’t think so’, ‘yes’ is ‘of course’, so  that translates my sad reflection in American speak as something like:  an interesting and rather unique lady of a certain age. That sounds better.

And how emotional this interesting woman gets when she walks right into the massive Jackson Pollock painting. You see, this is the man who made me fall in love with art, not just now as a distraction to my unique self, but towards the end of the last century when I bought a book of poetry, having fallen in love with words. The cover of the book had this amazing painting screaming out at me, all colour and splash and alive and hungry and happy,  it was a picture of how I wanted to say I felt. And somewhere at the back of the book in tiny writing it named the artist as Jackson Pollack. So there I was, touched by beauty on the cover of a second hand poetry book at the age of 17 and now, decades later, standing in front of the real thing, wishing I could have met this genius, if only just to tell him ‘Thank you for creating this and not Microsoft Excel, because this makes so much more sense in my attempt to understand the universe.’ But I will never get to talk to this man who died before I was born. Jackson never got old. Killed in a car crash aged 44.

The Great Art Revolution

I have to keep doing a reality check. Up to a few years ago the thoughts of walking around the MoMa on a Wednesday afternoon seemed about as likely as riding a unicorn through the desert  to a gay ice cream parlour with massage chairs and chilled champagne. So given the difficulty in accepting that this is actually for real and that I’ve made it to New York, there is nothing about it that can possibly be complained about, not the queues, or ‘lines’ as they call them here, not the obnoxious family with the mom picking on the dad and the dad picking on the kids and the kids picking on each other. What the hell made them feel it was a good idea to appear in public is beyond me, unless, of course, they are a live art installation or something. Not even these awful sensible shoes that are still pressing into my bunion and giving me an ever so slight painful and embarrassing limp, no, nothing can take away the excitement of the MoMa NYC. Everything is art. Everything.

Matisse’s dancers spread across another wall, a vibrant spread of color and movement, in one way so simple and yet, this is the art that influenced radical contemporary art of the 20^th century. I sit back from it for a while and let it wash over me, trying to absorb it in combination with the flow of people coming and going. It’s loud. The world is alive and free, in the painting and all around me.

A drabness of Art Lovers

The place is full of the greats that have inspired me since my teens. This is the art that made me love art. I feel high. A large group have gathered around a small painting, I stroll over and realise that it’s a Salvador Dali, ‘The Persistence of Memory’, which I had always thought was just called ‘Time’. It is surprisingly small, given that I’m used to seeing massive prints of these dripping clocks. I’m not a Dali fan, I don’t like moustaches and I just don’t get him, but apparently most people visiting this gallery are, and a drabness of art lovers surround the painting, holding up selfie sticks to create hideous snaps alongside the painting – after all, what could be more exciting than seeing a real Dali, other than getting a photo of it with your own face taking up half of the phote. I decide to join the mob and politely ask the gallery attendant standing beside the paining, ‘would you mind taking my photo please?’

‘Sorry Ma’m’, he replies, ‘I’m in uniform’. So that’s me told. I assume him being in uniform means he cannot take a photo, so I manage a selfie of my face, which I don’t particularly like, alongside a painting that I don’t like at all. This is wild, I think, just wild, and limp on without questioning myself as to why I just took a photo that I am never going to post on any social media site.

The Art of the Cloakroom

There’s no way I can take in as many painting as I’d like to, so I watch people dropping their bags at the cloakroom for about half an hour, not sure it this too is art or just a practical necessity. There are  two old dears, I mean ancient old dears serving at the random information desk, and they are most definitely art, no doubt about that. I walk a few blocks, venturing my way down the steps of the subway, and manage to navigate my way back by public transport without being shot or murdered even once.

It’s almost dark, and as I walk along Amsterdam Avenue I see her from behind. She’s still at it, been walking these streets all day. Yes, it’s the same old girl asking people ‘would you give me a dollar’? I’d love to know more about this woman’s story, but I don’t dare approach her. I pass her on the left, and she doesn’t need to ask, because yes, I would give her a dollar, and without much eye contact, I awkwardly slip one into her hand and keep walking.

One of those big red Hop-on/Hop-off buses passes along the street. It’s showing people the highlights of New York. I’m glad not to be on it. The streets of New York are a work of art, and here I am, in the very pulse.

Letter to a Boy, who Died aged 18, by Suicide

Dear Tiernan,

I shouldn’t be writing you this letter. I should be hearing about you from my son, your childhood best friend. It should be about some course you are doing, or a plan that you all have to meet up. But that’s all gone. Now there’s just that awful day that you went missing. The day a boy was seen jumping off the bridge. Next time I saw you, you were in a coffin, your body, bashed up by the waves; bruised, broken, dead. The boy who told me ‘be nice to nerds, you’ll be working for them some day.’ The boy who I watched grow up, who I held great faith in. Dead at 18.

And what’s left? The rest of us. Your inconsolable friend, his sister and his mother, travelling back to the West of Ireland for your funeral. Sitting in your home. Going into your bedroom and picking up your things. Yesterday this was your camera, these were your pyjama bottoms, that was your sketchbook. Now they feel strange to the touch. Relicts. And we, who never shut up, are silent. There are no words for our despair. This anger, confusion, grief that we carry, all ends with the fact that you are gone, and we didn’t save you.

Look, I’m sorry if there’s anything I could have done but didn’t. You do remember how I told you that I preferred chatting to kids than adults, right? That kids were more interesting and didn’t judge me the way grown-ups so often did. You were five when we made friends, and by barely nine or ten we were having our chats about god, gays, politics and chocolate. You were a clever kid with the dry wit of an adult, but you were still a kid, and even if I was raging when I caught you gliding down the stairs in a plastic laundry basket, I loved how brave you were. Always. Everything.

Remember the Lego, the Bionicles, the Forts, the Pirate Ships? Cinema visits and the time you kids got the bus into town on your own and came back so late that I almost had the police out? I assumed that all of that was a preparation for decades of adulthood.

And then the pre-teen years of  Vans, Canterbury pants and Game Consoles. You were brilliant. When the real teenage years hit, you were level gazillion at any game you wanted to be. School was a doddle and you could crack codes so well that when the legal department of some American gaming corporation called your home to track down Pakka al Sharu, your mother politely explained that this was the fake ID of a 14 year old boy.

But something happened along the way. Why will I never get to work for you? I agonize over what killed you. Were you too sensitive? Was it society with a heap of expectations that you didn’t want to live up to? Was it because of us liberal parents allowing our kids to think for themselves?

And that medication they gave you. Did it really work? Did your hormones attack your sense of reasoning so badly that you couldn’t see beyond that dark place you had come to? You had your issues; maybe they overwhelmed you, and blinded you to how much you were loved and admired. If only I could have seen it coming. If only, if only.

But understanding it won’t bring you back. Believe me please that I’m not mad with you. Not anymore. Just heartbroken.

 I think about all the fun we had when you guys were kids, and try to accept that all those years of you coming in and out of our house, the shared driving to school, the kids parties, the sleepovers, playground politics and books and games so carefully chosen to help you kids think and learn new skills, that all of it was not about you preparing to be an adult at all, in fact that was it: those were the days of your life.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, but sometimes one child raises the whole village, teaching it that this world, the way it is now, cannot save everyone.

If I could go back in time, there is only one thing I would ever want to change. I would slap you alive again and convince you not to jump off that bridge, insist that you give life a chance, believe me that in order to love life you must despise it sometimes. Be that nerd who we all end up working for. 

But that’s not going to happen. So, I guess I’ll do my crying in private and write you sometimes.

Goodbye little friend, I’ll see you another time.

Tiernan Zephaniah Archer.
17.10.1997 - 28.04.2016
R.I.P. 

An Unexpected Twinge of Humanity

The art of the wallet for personal, sentimental, important and irreplaceable belongings seems to have survived the revolution of  the electronic everything else. So being robbed when away on business can make life very awkward, especially at 11pm at night in a train station.
It's not like thinking your phone is gone and then finding it after you look for the third time and find it down at the bottom of your bag. Well not in my case anyway. My ex-wallet was big and bulky and flowery and heavy and generally not to be missed. But still, when I got into the taxi and saw that my handbag was swinging open, I immediately checked to see if my wallet was there - no. So what did I do, looked again. Still not there. So I got out of the taxi and sat on the side of the pavement and went through my bag again. And then again. Despite my efforts at cognitive dissonance - otherwise called denial, I eventually came to the conclusion that I had just been robbed.
Then came the helplessness. In a flash I went from being respectable business lady about to take a taxi back to her hotel, to penniless bag lady on the side of the road. What to do?
Somehow, I found, or got guided to the police station. It was right there at the train station. In fact, I think they call themselves the train-station-police, but it was a bona fide German cop-shop, hats and bats and guns and all.
There was a queue - one other person. A very perplex young Indian guy who had had some sort of run in with his friends and was now missing his wallet. Whereas I tend to implode in a stress situation and just go quiet and pale (I was sitting on a bench staring into space with a white face), this guy was all hands and arms waving about the place and basically coming to the conclusion that since his wallet had been stolen, his life was now ruined. In fairness, he had some good arguments - his I.D. card was in the wallet, and he needed it to register for his upcoming exams, but now he would have to stay back a year, and his girlfriend was at home waiting for him and she was pregnant and she wouldn't believe that he was robbed and would leave him over this, and he would never make it home anyway because his travel pass was in his wallet and now he would have to walk 15 kilometres and that would probably kill him, but first of all the guy who he owed ten euro to would probably kill him since his fortune of 15 euro was gone.
I was a bit luckier. I had only been robbed of 180 euro, my credit cards, bank cards, Bahncard100 - which gives me free travel across Germany, my health insurance card, and basically any card that is vital for my survival. A different cop came and took all my details, and it was like, incredible what you have to tell the German police about yourself in order to report a theft. They needed to know how old I am, what I work at, and my marital status. I told them I was divorced, had a partner, a secret lover, a lesbian liaison and the occasional visit from a Brazilian call boy. Look, if this information will help find my wallet, then hey…
Actually no, I told them that my marital status is 'divorced but complicated' and that they now know more about me than Facebook does. The policeman laughed. Yes, as in sense of humour. The Indian guy was pacing the floor at this stage, and starting to get a bit too hectic. Another cop asked him to take a breathalyser. It was 1,4 promille, with the guy repeatedly telling them that he had only had two beers.
I myself had had two beers that night, and I was tempted to ask if I could do the test too, but no, I waited patiently for the policeman with the sense of humour to come back with the 25 million official forms that stated not only had I been robbed, but had now been legally and officially robbed.
But then it got interesting. I was done, but I had no money, no travel card, no relatives, no friends, no Irish embassy - no way home.
And that's where the unexpected twinge of humanity happened. The cop looked at me and said 'hey, you know what, I'll lend you 20 quid of my money if you like. I just feel I can trust you. I'll give you my bank details and you can send it back whenever.'  Then another cop said 'hey, we're not that busy, c'mon, we'll drive you home.'
I'm not sure what the hotelier thought about me arriving back at 1:30am with a police escort, but I definitely felt cool. I didn't take the offer of a loan from the cop, but I did tell him that when you've just been robbed, a gesture like that helps one to see the good in the world again.
I wondered if I was slowly going mad when I decided that whoever stole my wallet is either on drugs, so not in their right mind and not ethically in tune with what they are doing, or else someone who is down on their luck and doesn't have the same opportunities as me, so hence, the thief must be forgiven.
Next day I took a taxi to the bank to get some cash and I told the taxi driver my story of woe. He was a big old teddy bear with a foreign accent, and embarrassingly, he was almost in tears when I explained what had happened. He then told me that he often takes people who have no money and promise they will come back with it tomorrow, or send it, or whatever.
'And do they?' I asked. 'Mostly not', he replied. 'But then why do you do it?' I asked. 'Because you have to believe in people' he said, 'if you don't, you're lost.'
I have often cursed the wisdom of the taxi driver, but this time, I was on a learning curve. Yes, you have to believe in people, even the ones who rob you, for they will force you to find goodness where you never expected it. And if you don't, you're lost.

The Madness of the Short Distance Runner

So after a short break of 8 years, I've started running again, and this weekend marked it officially when I ran the 'Badische Meile'. Sounds like bad-ass miles to you non German speakers, what it actually is though, is an 8,88km road race that marks the distance of some old city wall or something.
As I am a mere fan of Germany and not an actual German, I can not bring myself to say that I participated in an 8,88km run - let's just call it a 9k run, ok?
Running is an important activity for those who leave the house too late in order to catch buses & trams, handbag snatchers, people who get caught in the rain a lot, latecomers, and those who are not clinically insane but in general just a bit mad. I belong to that latter group of the 'just a bit mad'. So I started running again.
There are benefits - when your mind is racing 24/7, running chases it and calms it down, running gives you a high, gets you fit, and it is seductive. Once you get involved you will find yourself falling in love with running and out of love with the couch potato.
Running in the forest and feeling alive is one thing, running around the streets of whatever city you find yourself on business in, is another, but running an official race when you're about 20 years older and 20 kilos heavier than the average participant is a bit like trying to fit back into one's wedding dress again.

But hey, I'm at the start line and my three teenage kids have all declined the challenge to run with mother - possibly more due to the mortification factor of being seen with mother than actually running. But still - it's an official run and the fear of failure, the fear of an injury in public, the fear of looking downright stupid (I get a big red face when I run, from the outset), and the fear that I will publicly display what a stupid idea it was to think I was even possibly a candidate to be in the running, makes this very very different to my daily runs. I'm scared!
Besides, I run anywhere between 4k to 6k when I'm out running, so how the hell am I going to get out there and run 9k?
Before race day I had practised running 6k and then walking 3k, just to get the distance, so my strategy was to just get out there and push the 6k, then walk the rest, even if it meant that I would come last out of the 6,000 runners. I pictured the TV being there to film the crowd cheering me on for being brave enough to be the idiot who came last across the finish line. I'd be interviewed. I had my speech in my head. It began with 'I had a dream…'

But then, all of a sudden, I was right in the middle of thousands of other slightly mad people - and my feet were moving, and my Nike App was telling me that I was doing great, and suddenly I had run one kilometre and I thought, well if I can run one, surely I can do another eight.
But seriously folks, here is what got me from start to finish - the training, of course. You need to build up heart/lung function and muscle in advance. But that is not enough. I decided to run each kilometre for somebody in my life. The first was for my mother who is very unwell. I decided to send her all the energy I was creating. I ran for my kids - it was also Mother's day, so those 3k were happy gratitude kilometres. At 5k I was hitting my boundaries and started to get a pain in my shoulder. It felt like someone was stabbing me, but I decided that the only way to cure it was to keep running. So that kilometre was run for an anonymous person -  endurance to give me strength in a situation which is one of hopelessness and hope, pleasure and pain.
Kilometre 6 was for my goddaughter Catherine. Just because.
The last three were for three people who have made my life happier, better and been there for the peaks and the troughs.You see, I wanted to celebrate the power of love and it worked. The last 3k were easy.
The other driver was my playlist and the nice lady in my Nike App who kept interrupting my songs to tell me that I was doing great.
So 66 minutes after leaving the start line I jogged across the finish line, it was about ten minutes longer than the few other people I knew who were running it too - but a few minutes under the time I had expected it to take. Yay!
I was on a high. Full of fulfilment, pride and happy hormones. Yes, a big high for all of about 2 minutes.
And then? Then I got into the queue to pick up my rucksack. Got it. Took off the medal and the number and put on my jacket. Walked to the tram stop and got the tram home. Showered, threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, sat on the sofa, watched Desperate Housewives and had a cup of tea.
All in a day - the madness of the short distance runner.

The Journey & the Destination on a Delayed German Train

Sometimes when people ask me why the hell I exchanged living in a country with beautiful landscape and fun people for living in Germany, I like to answer that it's because in Germany the trains run on time. But this is not always the case…
And when German trains run late they do it properly. One of my favourite obstacles in getting to work is arriving at the platform and reading 'train cancelled'. In fact, it makes me feel that the Germans are becoming a tad Irish. Just like that - train cancelled. Oh, ok. And now? Well you wait for the next one, which, depending upon the reason for the cancellation may also be cancelled, and the one after it.
My record in cancelled trains was 4 in a row - with an hour wait between each one. It meant I ended up arriving to the back arse of nowhere in the former East Germany at a late enough hour not to challenge the neo-nazis on the train when they did the Hitler salute (it's banned in Germany). But when you are already running 5 hours late and sitting in a carriage with two drunk Russians and three neo-nazis, it is not a good idea to go over to them and suggest in a foreign accent that maybe they should not do that, as it is 'polizeilich verboten' as the Germans like to say - legally forbidden. Forbidden is a word that the Germans love. I love it too, but in a different way.
So this week was not so bad. I arrived to the platform to find an announcement that the train would not be leaving from that platform after all, or, indeed, from that station. No, today the train will start at Augsburg instead of Munich. Ok, so I get another train to Augsburg on the trail of my missing train.
Yes, it's leaving from Augsburg, but has a 50 minute delay. The delay is due to what the Germans describe as 'human damage on the line', in other words, a tragic human accident.
This is when it gets interesting. As Germans don't like making conversation with strangers, their way of communicating with other people on the train is to call their friends and shout into the phone so that the whole carriage hears it. In general, they are just not amused.
And even if I agree that anyone who decides to commit suicide by jumping in front of a train, should not do so at rush hour, I am shocked at the attitude. An ugly woman in her 20's loudly makes a call:
'Hi, can you pick me up a bit later because some total idiot threw themselves in front of the train.'
Again, I use my better judgement not to go over and ask her to please help me understand what a total idiot looks and sounds like if it is not you, because you are in the train, not under it. No, I stay put on my seat, trapped between my handbag and a box of Dunkin' Donuts that I have bought my kids in order to make up to them for not remembering what their mother looks like anymore since I started travelling so much for work.
I understand that one late train sparks off a whole load of missed connections, but hey, somebody, somewhere, is getting the news that they have lost a loved one. Somewhere right now there are people whose lives are falling apart, and somebody has been the victim of a tragic accident. I call it that, because nobody in their right mind is likely to jump in front of a train. Yes, they are strangers to me, and tragedies happen every day, but surely just the tiniest bit of respect is called for in these situations. Just a little twinge of human empathy. No?
In an attempt to understand the mindset of my fellow passengers, I decide that they are even more traumatised than I am, and in order to cope, they need to complain and act as if only their little lives were all that mattered. Except for the guy sitting beside me that is. He doesn't seem to understand German, English or the fact that it's really not kosher to keep letting his head fall onto my shoulder every time he dozes off.
We finally get to Stuttgart, where I can get my connection back home in ten minutes. I go to platform 9: '40 minutes delay due to technical problems on the line.' Technical. I want to become German and call home to loudly shout into the phone that they should know better than to have some stupid hitch delaying the train, even if it's now well past rush hour and the Dunkin' Donuts will be hard by the time I get to peep into the darkened bedroom where my offspring will be sleeping.
But I don't. I sit on the cold metal seat on the platform, plug in my earphones and listen to Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing and feel thankful that there is always something good to come home to. Then I  pass the rest of the time looking at all the angry people on the platform, and wonder if they are in a hurry to get home for the same reason that I am...

Germany - The Home of Hideous Shoes

You really do have to hand it to the Germans, they are absolutely unbeatable when it comes to bad shoes. There seems to be some sort of belief that shoes are supposed to be practical, comfortable and long-lasting, and let's face it, if one were going for a long hike in the hills, or even prone to taking a pleasant walk along the seafront each day (oh sorry, I meant along some cemented walkway with a few withering trees, beside a motorway), well yes, it helps if you are not wearing stilettos or dainty little ballerinas that give you blisters.

Exhibit 1: Mad Shoe Professor & Daughter

But hello - it doesn't end here. Do they really have to be this hideous? In an attempt to understand the minds of the shoe makers in the country I now call home,  I am desperately trying to come up with a theory that might justify how these shoes came into existence. Exhibit 1 - wide, wild flowery peacock look shoes with cork insoles. 100% comfort, 100% durability, 0% cool,                        minus-a-gizzilion% sexy.
My theory here is that the shoe factory hired a mad shoe professor and asked him to design the perfect pair of shoes. As this professor was the traumatised son of war refugees who walked across Siberia, tragically walking in the wrong direction, sharing one pair of second-hand shoes, arriving to Japan only to find themselves surrounded by people walking around in flip-flops with wedges,  and then walking all the way back until ending up in Germany, one can understand that his only thoughts were those of comfort and durability.
But then the boss of the shoe factory decided that a fashion factor would also be important, so the shoe professor took the nice wide cork soled inventions home to his six year old daughter who 'coloured them in'.
Exhibit 2 - No nonsense, cost-saving design made in Swabia.

Exhibit 2: 

This shoe has obviously been cleverly designed by cutting out little pieces of the leather and recycling them in order to make the fun ('fann' as the Germans like to say), pretty, attractive bow at the side. The practical, dog-poo, brown colour also means that the shoe is camouflage compatible should the wearer have to go to war at short notice, or alternatively should the wearer just wish to play hide-and-seek in the woods. In this case, exhibit 1 wouldn't stand a chance, unless the game of hide-and-seek took place in butterfly land. Again, 100% in the durability department, but only an 80% for comfort, as the tips of the flower may cause irritation. Reader, if you find this shoe in any way sexy, please visit a therapist. But that's the thing, I'm in Germany, shoes are not supposed to be sexy, right? In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if anything is, but this question will be explored in a later blog. It's all about cultural integration I guess.
So I'm here on a train looking at shoes and feeling sorry for German foot fetishists. I'm also terrified to take any photos as the one time I did that on a train here, there police were called. I only wanted to take a photo of the nice train conductor and write a blog about train conductors don't have personalities and ponder on whether they are really automised robots, but it all fell flat when he objected to the photo and I objected to deleting it and at the next station the police boarded the train in order to clear up the problem. Then I really really really wanted a photo of the policemen with the ticket inspector, but instead I just showed the police my camera with the already deleted photo of robot-ticket-man (who I bet wears open-toe sandals and white tennis socks in private, at the mini-golf playground).
So all I can do is post a photo of my own shoes, just to let you know that despite the recent sabbatical in order to research German shoe culture, I have indeed, managed to retain my 'ageing grungie converse' look. I swear…

On Sightseeing in Görlitz

A number of weeks ago I took a visit to Görlitz, the most easterly town in Germany. From where I live down south it was 7 and a half hours on the fast train, so in other words I probably could have made it to New York in the same amount of time. Even though the nature of my travel was business rather than pleasure, I did feel a tad smug at the fact that I am slowly beginning to lay claim to the fact that I have indeed seen a lot more of Germany than many of the Germans themselves. 

I guess it's understandable that if you are going to spend a day travelling to get somewhere, that you might just choose a trip to Italy above that of one to a smallish town on the Polish border, but still...

Germany is a fascinating country. Culturally speaking it is very much like two countries because of it's divided history, and what I love about the east is that mixture of progressive can do newness combined with the remnants of the past. And being an island woman, there was also the buzz of being able to walk over a bridge and arrive in Poland. (Phone call to daughter: 'hey, I just walked to Poland, WALKED to another country like!' 'Mom, you're so pathetic.')

Görlitz, without a shadow of a doubt, is worth a visit: beautiful buildings, culture galore, old churches, cobblestones and all that... 

My room, including cupboard with skeleton

And of course that eastern German flair whereby I wasn't really sure if my hotel was a shabby 'aul attempt at being posh, or if it really was a beautiful Jugendstil room with character. It was one of these run down places in an old building with old furniture and chandeliers, but it was a bit dead, and one of the doors of the wardrobe in my room was locked and without a key, so I did spend the night wondering if there was a skeleton in the cupboard. 

But here's the thing. There were a few tables and chairs outside the hotel bar on the street and they were occupied by a few dodgy looking characters. As I arrived to the reception (where there was a sign saying to check in at the bar), a little car pulled in that was from one of these mobile carer companies, you know, those dudes who go to old peoples houses and check on them to distribute medication and whatnot. So the guy gets out of his car and I go into the bar to check in. The guy at the bar takes me  back over to the reception where I see that in the meantime, the carer dude is in the hallway and one of the dodgy old guys from outside is sitting on one of those posh looking sofas taking off his shoes. As I check in, the carer dude proceeds to change a bandage or something on the old guys foot. I look away feeling nauseous.

At this stage I am tired and giving them dagger looks from the part of me that is a  cranky intolerant withering woman. But I keep the mouth shut and go to my room - the one that I'm not sure whether it's posh or not, the one with the skeleton in the cupboard.  

I decide I need to see more of the city (this is the part where I walk to Poland), but as I leave the hotel, I see that the old guy is back outside again, drinking a beer in the evening sun. He gives me a smile.

The bridge to Poland

And that's when I see the beauty in it. A city where people can work around caring for the elderly in a way that means they still have the freedom to sit outside a bar and enjoy the evening. Humanity, that's what I saw - a twinge of humanity, in a country that gets a lot of flack for being otherwise. I wondered where the old chap would be sitting if powers that be decided it unfitting to attend his wounds or whatever it was with his feet, in the public hallway of a run down hotel. What about the legal aspect? Insurance? Hygiene? The logistics of the whole thing? But you see, Germany is country as diverse as it is big, and for me, this kind of 'sightseeing' ranks higher than a holiday camp on the riviera. 

Because this was something that told me that the world was an ok place and that's when the room and the skeleton didn't matter anymore. And even if there had been no cobblestones or culture or impressive buildings, I'd been to a place where I'd caught a glimpse of something beautiful, and a place where all of a sudden, I stopped being afraid to grow old. 

How Important are Corporate Values?

Do We Really Need Corporate Values?

  Something caught my eye with regard to the Barclays scandal. It was the term: cultural corruption. I'm so used to skimming over details about complex derivative issues, that it made me curious to read more.
What was identified as cultural corruption was that Barclay's had pursued a 'revenue at all costs' strategy, fostered a culture of fear and intimidation, were actively hostile to compliance with banking rules, presided over a 'broken culture' where problems were ignored or buried, and ultimately allowed the business to 'spin out of control'.
That pursuing revenue at all costs has been highlighted as corrupt signifies the importance of corporate values. We all need to pursue revenue to some degree, but doing so 'at all costs' can ultimately end in disaster, as with Barclays.
When I explain to people that my work has a strong focus on delivering workshops on Vision, Mission & Values, I am often told how naive I am, and that ultimately corporations are only interested in the money. My argument is that the 'only' needs to be taken away. All businesses are profit driven in one way or another, but without a corporate culture that embraces even the most basic of values, they are headed for trouble.
Fostering a culture of fear and intimidation is not something unique to Barclays. From large organisations to the smaller family run business, I have witnessed this over the years as being almost endemic. Often during workshops and training interventions I've had a rosy view of the organisation, then when it came to one to one coaching sessions where individuals felt themselves to be in a safe environment, another story would emerge. I often got to hear alarming examples of the business not living it's principles. I also heard some fantastic ideas that were never put forward, all due to fear. People fear losing their jobs, bonuses, promotion opportunities and at times even subtle things such as shifts, break times and vacation approval. Bullying and harassment also effects self esteem and confidence, causing people to feel unsure and less likely to pose a challenge to superiors. This type of resignation is not only a heartbreaking let down for humanity, it is also destructive for the organisation, not only from a legal perspective.
I've noticed there is a paradigm shift in our attitude to business ethics when we now see cultural reforms up there on the top of the to-do list.
I worked for a company once where it was my job to workshop the business leadership principles with all new hires on the management team. I was impressed.  Impressed, that is, until my boss told me that the leadership principles were 'good in theory, but nobody uses them.' He told me that actually, within the company it was more important what got done than how it got done. I soon realised that I may as well have been making sand mandalas with the new hires, and, coupled with a culture of fear and intimidation, stating my opinion meant that luckily I didn't last long there. That  organisation have since had extremely bad press with regard to how they treat their people, along with very high fluctuation.
Despite all that, they are still an international hugely successful organisation. And it is important to note that as far as I am aware, they are not operating any scams. But the bottom line is, if a company doesn't foster a culture based on it's corporate values, it is only a matter of time until the fallout  from this will force it to rethink it's strategy.  High fluctuation, low morale and financial setbacks are the cost when it comes to double standards in corporate culture.
So what values do we need to live by in our modern organisations? How about: Communication, Respect, Integrity & Excellence. Sound good? Four essential values that could be the axis of any organisation. Oh wait, we need to live them, not name them. After all, these were Enron's core values!

After Lent

I've just had a glass of wine. I didn't really want one but I had to, because Lent is over.
Giving up alcohol for lent is not easy. I don't mind abstaining from the drink, it's the explaining that's difficult. People can never understand why an atheist would do something for Lent. So I have to explain that as I eat a shit load of chocolate at Easter and masses of food at Christmas without being questioned about religion, that it is only prudent to adhere to the fasting traditions if one is also tagging along for the feasting ones.
Alcohol - if you are Irish you will probably have an unhealthy attitude towards alcohol. Most people drink too much or don't drink it at all, neither of which are healthy. The ones who drink too much are either raving alcoholics whose whole life has been destroyed because of drink, or alternatively, people who function at about 60% of what they could be, but because they 'enjoy a jar', and pay a massive price to do so.
Those who don't drink are either 'recovering alcoholics' (which to me is an oxymoron), who go to AA meetings and talk about drinking and live their lives thinking and talking about drink but just not drinking it. Alternatively they are crashing bores who chose not to drink and have a slightly condescending attitude towards those who do, but pretend that they don't. And there are the pioneers, but if you're not Irish you won't understand, so just imagine people who are clueless about drink and don't want to taste it because their mammy, or teacher or local priest said so.

I should be one of the above, but the secret German in me causes me not to always fit in to Irish ways. So I gave up drink for Lent. I like a little tipple I have to admit. A shot of rum in my hot chocolate, a glass of wine with dinner a few pints in the pub and the odd mouldy night. So it's not as if I were giving up lollipops or condoms or sauerkraut. The first week was the worst. But then, the less you drink, the less interest you have in it.
I only remembered today that I could have had a drink yesterday, so I had a glass of wine at dinner.
And that made me feel that the whole thing is a bit silly. I'm just not a black and white sort of person.
I'm also not a very balanced person either though, so it was good to see, just as a test, if I actually would miss alcohol. I didn't really, and I remembered that I've often been off it before as I never drank whilst pregnant.


So now what? I've decided to open a bottle of wine and have another glass, to celebrate my successful lenten fast. A nice red rioca reserva. And then because it's open I'll have some more tomorrow and then finish it off on Wednesday. It's good wine, I can't let it go off.
All the same, I'd love a nice cup of tea...

A Cure for Warts

A few years ago my daughter had a wart on her foot. But warts are like mice - they rarely come in ones. Soon it was a little cluster of warts so we paid a visit to our local GP who decided to use a selection of treatments.
First of all he scraped at her foot with a little instrument that looked like a shaving razor for dwarves. When doctors do things like that it makes me wonder what the big attraction is to studying medicine and becoming a medic. "What do you want to do when you grow up little child?" "I want to scrape dirty warts of peoples feet."
But it didn't end there. He also put some sort of ointment on it and gave her a few of those little homeopathic pebble-like sweets.
Then he gave us both some serious instructions. There were 7 warts on her foot. We were to get a paper bag and put 7 small pebbles in it - not the homeopathic ones, real pebbles. Then we were to leave the bag at a crossroads. Whenever the bag disappeared the warts would also go.

Of all the remedies I thought the latter made the most sense. Because apparently warts go away on their own eventually, and I was sure that if my daughter just believed that the warts were going to go that it might have some sort of influence on the mysteries of the immune system.  Needless to say, the doctor we visited was in the West of Ireland.
Despite similar university education, there seems to be quite a difference in cultural attitudes regarding best practise regarding the cure of the patient.
Problem was, though, that my daughter wasn't sold on the pebbles in the bag idea. She wanted an operation, crutches, bandages, plaster paris and a week off school. It never happened, and years later the 7 warts had started to have offspring and I knew if we didn't treat them that eventually these warts would start taking over the family.
So I decided to go the absolute safe medical route. I bought one of those sprays that freeze off warts.
My daughter took a look at the wart spray and screamed, telling me that it would hurt too much. I assured her that it wouldn't, and that the only reason her brother had gone through severe agony whilst I used a similar freezing spray on  a wart he'd had on his finger, was because he was the oldest kid and you use the oldest kid as guinea pig to test things on, and that I'd put on way too much by mistake, and that no, I was not going to accidentally burn a hole in her skin in the effort to remove the warts with a freezing spray. I would get the hang of it this time.
We agreed to do it 'tomorrow'.
Then the next day we agreed to do it the day after tomorrow. And then about a week went by.
So I decided I'd have to spring on her when she'd least suspect it.
So as we sat on the sofa, I hid the freezing stuff in my pocket and took hold of her foot to give it a massage. Oh, wrong foot. I took the other one. Also wrong foot.
"Hey, where are your warts?" I asked.
She felt her feet. I felt her feet. We looked at her feet. And there were the warts - gone.

So I decided that buying the freezing tube of stuff had the same effect as the bag of stones would have had, if she'd only believed. The fear of her mother's use of poetic license with medicinal cures, rather than taking careful medical instructions, had just made her warts go away. It must have been the mysterious workings of the immune system.
So here's my advice. If your kids have warts, forget about all the hocus pocus. Just buy some of that aggressive freezing lotion stuff, and then tell your kids you've bought it. If the fear of you using it on them doesn't make the warts disappear, then just go use it.
You're cured.

A Revolution at my Kitchen Table

So this is it. I've just published my first ebook. It's an ebook for kindle and available on Amazon. I'm still fiddling around with how it all works, but I've gotten as far as putting the whole damn thing together and publishing it.
The cover is a photo of a deserted house. Now let's analyse - arsekick is diverse, it has many rooms, hence the house. The house is falling to pieces, so hence the relationship to my dishevelled life. The house started out in life with different aspirations. There is a story there. Stories. History.
And you could also say that the trees and shrubs growing up around the deserted house are lush and fertile and that nothing is ever linear.
In actual fact the only reason that the cover is such, is because it is a photo that I took myself and I was afraid of taking a photo from the web in case I get sued. I'd prefer a photo of a female warlord throwing a punch, or at least something sexy.

I also downloaded a book written by a guy who has a number of bestsellers on amazon. He makes the very good point that 'vanity' is a word for private publishing invented by publishers. If a person opens their own business is it never referred to as 'vanity' business.
And the way the publishing world is changing is really exciting. I've brought out this book all on my own. No editor, no publisher, no marketing, nothing. And because of the low costs, I will also be giving a chunk of the profit to charity - but I need to work that one out, more to follow.

Most exciting is that it all happened at my kitchen table. When I finished uploading all the amazon files I baked a lemon poppy seed cake without having the feeling that baking the stupid cake and being the crux of a family meant the end of my writing career. This is a revolution!

So next step is that you read the book, either for free from the Amazon library, or you buy the book which about the same price as a cafe latte - no cheaper actually, it's euro 2.60(ish) I'm not sure exactly. And if the link below doesn't take you there, than just search my name in amazon or the name of the book: Arsekick Pick.

And if you think this is a good revolution, you might press a few stars on the amazon page to give me a bit of a reputation?

http://www.amazon.com/Arsekick-Pick-ebook/dp/B00C2Y3OE6/ref=la_B00C3BYCB2_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364551127&sr=1-1

And remember that this is all because of you. Without readers I never would have been inspired to take it further.

The Retreat

Winter is a long time when you come from an island that doesn't really do seasons. It was so cold that I even had to buy a coat and also discover that things like gloves, hats and scarves have an actual function. But it wasn't just the weather. I've been on a retreat.

I don't mean an organised retreat where you officially say you are going on a retreat, because that wouldn't really be a retreat, would it? It would be an action. A statement.
What I did was retreated. I didn't plan to. I just became reflective and reclusive and my favourite place was solitude. I did a lot of thinking, a lot of deciding and a bit of changing. I was surprised at that. I thought people didn't change very easily, or that it was huge work to change, but in this case it just happened. A bit like puberty happens to kids and as they hysterically scream at you to 'leave me alone' they also reassure you that this behaviour is nothing to do with their hormones whatsoever, no, it's all because of 'you'!
So was my retreat of the hormonal nature? I believe not. Possibly something to do with age though, and definitely attitude.
And then something even worse happened. I shed a few layers of tolerance, patience and understanding. I decided that no, I won't 'stay calm' and drink coffee. It's not my fault though, it is the fault of the greater gods who sent me on the retreat. I didn't make these decisions consciously, the Gods  just allowed me to release my inner cantankerous cow. Cows are sacred in some countries you know.
Oh hang on  a minute, cantankerous cow is what people used to call me before my retreat. So maybe I just became a tad more self aware.

And on the subject of the Gods, well I did something very wild recently. I went to church! You see I was sitting (on my own of course, due to the retreat) in a cafe on a Sunday morning and I saw people going into this big church across the road. Wow, I thought, how quaint, people still go to churches. So I got curious and went and joined them. I wasn't sure if it was a catholic or protestant church, but I decided protestant because there were bibles on the seats and when they sang a hymn, the number of the hymn came up on a display on the wall. Do catholics do that?
I think in general that the protestants have better hymns, but otherwise the sermon was pretty much the same. The priest read a bit from the bible, and only then did I discover that the phrase 'healer heal yourself' came from the new testament. Very apt for my current state of mind I thought. Afterwards I thought about how as a kid I used to have to pretend I had been at mass. (Who said mass?) But now I would have to pretend I had been at the museum in order to save the embarrassment of explaining to people where I'd been.

So the bottom line, reader, is that I have not blogged so much as I've been on the retreat, but now that I'm back, please expect the blogs to be even more bitter and twisted than before, and possibly not as frequent, as I am also doing a lot of business writing at the moment. I will post the links when it's presentable enough for the public eye.
On the 2nd of April I move into my new office space on the 7th floor at Park Office in Karlsruhe. After the retreat I'm looking forward to a bit of elevation...

Newgrange

Around a year or so ago, I took a day off work in order to visit the Neolithic site at Newgrange.
But because Newgrange was there and wasn't going to go away I decided to go for a coffee instead. I'd like to emphasise here that I've never neglected the importance of having time to go for coffee. After all, the 'coffee morning' is a significant instrument of gossip, one of Ireland's most important forms of social control. But Newgrange, well I'd been there before, a number of years earlier and I just felt incredibly drawn by the place.
Newgrange is what they call a 'passage grave', and it being over 5,000 years old, one can only speculate that it might have had some sort of religious significance. Maybe that's one of the things that draws me to it - the fact that we can only wonder what the whole thing is about. How did people who only lived for about 30 years manage to gather stones from distant places and erect this massive building, aligning it with the rising sun so that the sunrise can flood the chamber at solstice? When they simulated the solstice light from within the chamber that last time I'd been there, I remember feeling overwhelmed. So I wanted to go again. And now that I don't live there and it's far away and almost inaccessible, I did go. Last Saturday.

There was an old bokety van that left from outside the tourist office and charged 17 euro return. Not bad for a post celtic tiger trip, and the bus itself made me feel like Ireland in the good aul bad aul 80's: semi unprofessional, friendly, possibly illegal and somebody other than the driver is making a few bob out of it.
As soon as I boarded the excuse for a bus, I hear 'hello, are you also travelling alone?' It's one of those annoying solo tourists who like to latch on to people.
'Well, em, no, not travelling as such, just taking a day out to go on a spiritual journey.'
'Spiritual?'
'Yeah, I've been here before and I find it an incredibly spiritual place.'
I politely hear that she's from Holland, staying in the city centre and that she loves Ireland. I politely tell her that she looks Irish with her red hair - because gingers who visit Ireland tend to feel special.
And then I move to the back of the bus, excusing myself with a book. Some young Americans get on and a moody couple with a lunch box (I'm guessing Germans).
I've been here a few times before so I'm not surprised to hear that there will be a two hour wait until we can do the next tour. I visit the tourist centre and the gift shop, pay some humungous price for some mini slice of quiche and as big as the place is, I keep on seeing the ginger Dutch lady who I have decided I am not going to be nice to, as I am on a spiritual journey and not a tourist hosting mission.
It's about 3 or 4km to the actual site, so instead of waiting on the shuffle bus I decide to kill time and walk over. The smell of Spring trying to push it's way through the hard winter soil and lush landscape along the river Boyne is precious. As I approach the site, I begin to fill with wonder, awe, something that I can only explain as soul, I feel some sort of connection to the mystery of the past, to the things our ancestors knew and did that seem to have gotten lost along the way.
How did stone age women have babies without epidurals? Whatever they did, the population grew, so it was something that worked.

Walking across the lush fields to the site

When the rest of the tour arrive in two shuttle buses, the guide gives us as much info as there is to give, and half of the tour go inside whilst the other half walk around outside. I'm in the half that do the walkabout before going into the chamber. It's one of those sunny February days and a ray of light cuts across the low wintery sky.
The sun - I realise that the sun is still as significant now as it was then - we just don't seem to notice that anymore. And I wonder about the soul. 5,000 years ago, when life was so visceral and short and survival based, what did those people know about eternity that got them building this passage grave. I feel overwhelmed.
But then something happens. I walk behind a big stone in my spiritual state, and yes, there she is - Dutch ginger lady, throwing up, and believe me, not in a ladylike throwing up way, but more in how I might have imagined our neanderthal ancestors to have done.

Light across the wintery sky. Newgrange on the left

I'm mad. She's been ruining my spiritual retreat since I boarded the bokety bus. So I walk off in the other direction and get about 100 yards away before my conscience sends me back. I go over and put my hand on her shoulder.
'Are you ok?'
'Oh, yes, thank you, just feeling a bit sick, but better now.'
I give her a paper hanky, then change my mind and give her the whole pack. She looks pale.
'Are you sure you're ok?' I ask again.
'Yes, thanks, I think it's just the stress of travelling alone and then the bus journey.'
There's a story there I tell myself, but I'm not going to ask to hear it, not when I'm on my damn soul searching one day retreat with half of it already in the back of a  15 year old red Ford Transit Van.
As we get our turn to go into the chamber she turns around and drops the whopper -
'So where is the spiritual part of all this, is it inside the chamber?'
'Oh, it's probably just me that finds it spiritual' I reply, offering her a Nurofen Plus the way you might hand someone a chewing gum.
And that's when I begin to like her. I realise that the soul and the spirit are endlessly personal and unique, and that only by finding that out like this, can I understand that other people must also find their spirituality in the strangest of places, and that here, in this light chamber, it might be only me who feels a sense of eternity, of peace, of mystery and of soul.
We head back to Dublin, and all I know is that I feel spiritually recharged. I feel kind again and have a newborn energy to cope with the worldly things around me.
Somehow, being in that chamber makes me feel that some part of me will never die. I'm polite as I disembark the bus.
'Goodbye now, enjoy your holiday in Ireland.'
'Goodbye, you should visit Holland sometime, you would love the Windmills.'
'Possibly' I reply, and when I don't mutter fuck off under my breath, I realise that
I am truly on a spiritual high.