Practising
Practicing? Practice your practise? I’ve just been for dinner with my mum, which was nice. I fortunately cycled between torrential downpours (they’re still going on, in June...). I wanted to go to my dad’s cousin’s daughter’s mate’s book launch, but, when I excitedly put it into my phone calendar a couple of weeks ago, I forgot I had a job. I forgot I’d be late, so late that she’d left, driving herself back to Dublin. My mum got me a book of her poetry, the one she was launching. She forgot to get her to sign it. It’s hard to remember these things.... She also got a lovely bottle of red, from her. (WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK? I JUST HAD TO RESTART A NEW RECORD COS IT WAS JUMPING LIKE BILLY-OH. BUT IT’S NEW!!!) My mother was sat at the bus-stop when I arrived, across the road. She said, I messaged you. I told you it was too late. But my bus isn’t coming, for ages. I said, I just jumped on my bike, and cycled. I didn’t want to read her messages, cos I kinda knew I was too late. If I had driven, she moped, I could’ve dropped her home. If I’d driven, I said, I’d still be all wet (got soaked at work... and I wanted to change, anyway) if I’d driven, I’d have been circling, looking for a parking space, getting angry... So... shall we eat? We went to the Other Place- just next door to the book shop where the launch had been. Handy! I don’t think I’d been to the Other Place since 1994, when I first discovered that I was now adult enough to drink coffee. We had been tripping all night. They had free refills. We took the piss out of their free refills, and fair play, they didn’t complain. They let us sit there and drink 18 refills. Am I remembering that correctly? Did I cement my new acceptance of the evil adult coffee drink by drinking one refill for every year of my life? Perhaps. My memory tells me that we went to the docks to watch the sunrise, too. It seems different colours on different sides of the bridges. Different bridges, then. Did the Lagan still smell? Was it still full of bicycles and shopping trolleys? This record is still jumping, even though I blew the needle. It’s new. Oh WHY? You can BYOB in the Other Place. I’m still pleasantly full. It’s good, to hang out with your ma. My ma is great. Nothing lasts forever. I should appreciate everything. Especially the generous and kindly folk who appreciate me. She got a bus home, too. She hates taxis. I quite like to indulge in them, when I’m feeling flush. But I’m not flush now. I paid for a wedding (for all three children and me!) in Scotland. Well. I have savings, but they’re for the summer. The summer is nearly here, and I’m excited. I’m not going abroad, but we will have the craic. Oh we will. In England, and Ireland, and Scotland. Oh, I’ve just remembered my practising title. We had a couch surfer on Monday, lovely Mexican fella. You end up chatting about Brexit, inevitably, with couch surfers (actually, we ended up talking about it in Dublin, too, back at my dad’s cousin’s 81st birthday party, when we learnt about the book launch. It’s hard to explain how one sick one is, of Brexit chat. It’s hard to explain how powerless one feels. How, yes, I vote, but then I switch off the news and just hope something happens. Or doesn’t happen, perhaps. Can we have our ball back? We’re going home for dinner now, then can we just leave everything as it was? Or perhaps we should have a united Ireland? Oh, I think the DUP are accidentally making a United Ireland happen? Oh, well, actually, that might be grand. I like BBC radio and the NHS but they seem to be fucking them right up anyway and their news is lies and oh- hang on- we can’t have gay marriage or abortions? Oh wait, aye, a united Ireland IS a good idea!) We showed the Mexican fella the fleg at the bottom of the street (something to do with poppies and the war) saying, that’s a Proddy fleg, this is a Proddy area. Only it isn’t, really any more, cos it’s full of Asian people, and African people, and there’s a Muslim family, and, shh, jaysus, you wouldn’t think it, CATHOLIC people. Only, well, not really. Not practising Catholics. Then I thought about what a strange phrase that was, cos it implied that the only ones who are actually real Catholics can’t even do it properly either- they’re just practising. There aren’t any experts, or anything. No champions. Just some who went to their schools by mistake, and stuff. A lot of ex-Catholics (oh how I’d love to be ex-communicated! Yet my desire to be ex-communicated is silly, cos it implies there was some truth in my baptism etc, some actual entrapment of my soul. My desire to be freed would suggest that I do feel actually trapped, trapped by shackles that I don’t believe exist. I mean, if you found out a relative had christened your child, you shouldn’t care, should you? You should just think, oh, that’s nice, a comfort to her, as she doesn’t want to go to her heaven without him. But instead you feel a burning searing RAGE and want to burn down some churches {not necessarily chapels; the Catholic habit of calling church chapel is simply incorrect- a chapel is a church within another building. This has always annoyed me}. It has left its mark. That church has Got To You. GRRR.) Hours after the Mexican left, the new flegs were in place. (Was it him?!) There seem to be less than last year. I don’t have one on my lamp-post, so I almost didn’t notice. Shiny new Union Jacks and Northern Irish flags for the street, but none for me. I feel weirdly left out. Or perhaps priveleged. Who knows. They never seemed to mind that I had a child (the eldest, too- she went FIRST) in a Catholic school uniform. Perhaps they had checked me out. (Do they do that?) I have forever confused folk, that way. Going to a Catholic school but living in a Protestant area. If people hear you grew up in the Cregagh, they assume you’re a Protestant. I also feel a bit put out that I didn’t see them do it. They did it on the 12th June last year (6 days earlier!) at 12pm, by my house (I thought it was a twelfth thing) in matching grey tracksuits, like urban camouflage. I liked to imagine they were all wearing union jack underwear. Let me point out that this is the only time I have imagined men in union jack underwear. In fact, it is the only time I have ever imagined ANYONE, in ANY sort of underwear. I think. Hmmm. It’s pouring again, and it’s dark, and the record has jumped its way to its end. I’m going to Body and Soul Festival tomorrow. I’ve pretty much packed. I have to work, before I pick folk up and GOOOO. But I’ve the morning, to throw the stuff in the car, and buy booze, (drinking tonight was practising :P ) and more strepsils and ibuprofen and all that jazz..... It’ll all work out fine, I hope (I’m totes SKINT!)