Stormy Weather

I love the Spring colours along the river bank. Today is cold with the wind getting stronger. There is a storm forecast for later on. The tide is coming in fast, that water looks very dark and menacing, not the blue, sparkling stuff of yesterday. And yet, I love stormy weather best. I love to watch the white topped waves racing each other to the beach. And the seagulls letting themselves drift on the wind. What a feeling of freedom!
I took this picture a few weeks ago when the river bank had not yet let go of winter. Now when I walk along here, I can see the swallows darting about and if I'm lucky catch a glimpse of the stonechats.
Spring is definitely here with all the delights of long summer days ahead of us.

Lockdown Week Seven (I think)

I'm cocooning and hoping to emerge as a butterfly but until the hairdressers are back, I resemble a scarecrow left out in a stormy wind.
My heart goes out to all those who have lost loved ones to this horrible virus. And, like everyone else, I am deeply grateful to the people on the front line who are risking their lives. It is a humbling experience.

What have I been doing? Do you really want to know?
Week One: I cleaned the windows and the bathroom from top to bottom. Then I worked on my Christmas novel. Did some zooming with my children and grandchildren, got a lot of calls from friends who I hadn't seen for a while. Did all my washing and ironing. Avidly watched the updates from our Chief Medical Officer and the question and answer session with journalists afterwards. Watched a few panel programmes on the corona virus. Caught up on European news via France24 and Euronews. Read a couple of books, watched a ton of quiz programmes and the film Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.

Week Two: Rinse and repeat, except the film I watched was  In the Heat of the Night .
I finished all three Len Deighton books in the Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match series from the 1980's. Deighton started a whole new kind of spy story, as opposed to the James Bond style character. I really enjoyed his early novels.

Week Three:  I didn't do any cleaning - there was nothing left to clean! No need to do any washing or ironing. I got sick of hearing journalists ask the same questions every night, so I just watched the CMO's update and looked at the news. I watched Casablanca. Read a Harlan Coben novel Caught.


Week Four: Only watched the news headlines to see if any really "new" news on the virus. Avoided all those panel discussions where some expert or other tells us that we are economically ruined (in more elegant words, of course) and names a sum like 500 billion or trillion Euros or whatever, which the normal mortal can't comprehend. It's getting depressing having zoom conferences when conversation is a bit limited to "how are you?", "coping all right?" etc etc. I re-wrote the beginning of my novel twice and took out two characters and put in another two. Watched Berlin Express a black and white film from the 1950's. I found it interesting because some of it was set in post-war Frankfurt (with permission of the Occupation Forces of the USA, Great Britain and Russia, according to the credits). Years ago I met a woman in Frankfurt who was a child when the war ended. Her mother brought her into the city centre every day because she had a job somewhere there and this woman told me she used to play among the ruins, there were so many places to play hide and seek she said.

Week Five: see Week Four, except the film was The Magnificent Seven - my favourite line being the Eli Wallach one: "if God didn't want them sheared, he wouldn't have made them sheep". Wallach is the magnificent one in this film. Finally got into my Christmas novel and don't plan on changing much.

Week Six: More or less the same. I didn't watch a film this week. Finally did a bit of housework but not as thorough a clean as before and decided not to clean the windows. I've started dreaming about what I am going to do when all this nightmare is over. Apart from the obvious plans of meeting up with family, I'd love to go to Paris and London again. But even getting on the bus and going to Cork city will be a big adventure! Imagine eating out with friends again.

Week Seven:  Cocooners are allowed out for short walks. Liberation! It has rained ever since, though, so I haven't been out much. I am currently reading Just Take my Heart by Mary Higgins Clark. It's a bit formulaic but she has always written a good thriller and it's not too taxing, so I am really enjoying it. Next week, depending on how the virus is doing, we might be allowed to meet with up to four people, social distancing of course.

Things will get better, of that I am convinced.
 

The ex-pat syndrome or how to feel at home

There is nothing like being confined to home to make me sort through those books I picked up at various charity shops. I decided that Len Deighton's spy trilogy, Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match would keep me amused for a bit and I wasn't wrong. They were written around 1985 or so when the Berlin Wall was still up and Bonn was the capital of West Germany. I visited Berlin around then and saw the wall for myself and as I stayed with a German who grew up there, I was able to get into the atmosphere of all things berlinerisch. In addition, I had always loved hearing stories from my in-laws, whose exploits during and after the Second World War were hair-raising to put it mildly.
I found Mexico Set the least entertaining of the three books. I particularly enjoyed London Match, though. There was one paragraph of the book, towards the end, which resonated with me. The characters are talking about being Berliners and Samson is waiting for them to say that he, too, is German, because he grew up there. "Berlin was my town", he thinks. London was where his friends lived and his children were born but he was a German. But the others don't see him as a Berliner like themselves. He is still a foreigner.
Isn't this a bit like what every ex-pat feels? I have lived most of my life in Germany, before that I spent six or more years in London and before that a couple of years in Dublin. I never felt I belonged anywhere, I still feel like that. I love London and when I am there on a visit, I feel I could slip back into that life. I still have a great deal of interest in Germany and although I never felt that I belonged, I can identify with the mentality. I now live in Ireland but I don't think I will ever be 100% Irish. I've been away too long. Somebody (during my time in Germany) called me "a citizen of the world." Maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Spring in the Time of Self-isolation

 Being of that most romantic age, namely senior, 70+, I am staying at home, literally not venturing out at all.
Before that, I went for two walks per day and limited my shopping to once a week or twice if I ran out of milk/bread (they seem to have very short shelf lives, or is it just me?).
On my walks along by the river I could see that Spring was starting to making itself felt despite all the gloom and doom and the soothsayers and see-it-all-positives.  I took this picture near the quays a couple of days ago.


Spring Flowers

The birds are very busy right now, twittering all over the place. (I was going to say tweeting, but that might give the impression that I think our feathered songsters are adepts on their mobiles). I managed a shot of this blackbird who is a regular in the garden. We get robins, too but they are so quick to take off that I haven't been able to get a good picture - not that this one of the blackbird is going to win me any prizes. I've seen blue tits and I've seen a bullfinch twice. They make me feel good every time I see them hopping about.

Wish I could go walking. Stay safe wherever you are.

Coping with things

Seems like this has been going on now for a hundred years!  I checked in my diary and saw that the last time I was in any kind of gathering was only two weeks ago. Incredible! It's not that I was out partying every night, I live alone so am used to silence. But I didn't realize how much I actually went out until I stopped. I am a member of a few clubs, there's a book club I go to once a month, I meet up with friends to go to the cinema or just for a chat. I'm involved in a community centre. And when the mood takes me, I like to hop on the bus and visit the big city for a walk around the shops. That's all gone for now and I miss the freedom.

Being a "senior", I am washing my hands, keeping my distance, not visiting or receiving visitors, shopping once a week and going for walks every day. I think I would add one more thing to that list, namely, stop reading the rumours on social media. For some people, bless their happy hearts, no news can bad enough so they invent worse scenarios - I sometimes think they should just binge watch catastrophe movies on television.

The weather is sunny here and I have the sea on my doorstep, something you pay a lot of money to experience.
I met a few acquaintances on my walk this morning and we were all so pleased to see each other and exchange experiences, keeping our distance of course.

If we learn one thing from this, it is that we are herd animals. We might all talk on our mobiles and keep in touch using social media but there is nothing like human contact, when all is said and done.
It is a reassuring thought in a world that is getting more and more robot driven.
Stay safe everyone!

Learning new words

We are all learning new words. Social-distancing, for example. Now, I think that will be the word of the year.
Personally, I can't keep up with all the new expressions out there. One of my favourite quotes (don't know who said it) is:  "a smile is the shortest distance between two people." A smile is better than words. If you have ever been in a country where you do not speak the language, you know what I'm talking about. You feel understood without having exchanged a word.
I am doing my bit towards social-distancing. Thank heavens we have social media to keep us in touch with our loved ones. I think I have received more phone calls and WhatsApp messages in the last two weeks than ever before. It is heart-warming to say the least. And it proves that if used positively, Twitter and FaceBook can help isolated people from feeling lonely and depressed.
Take care everyone.

Leap Year Day

I am writing this on Saturday, 29th February, which makes it Leap Year Day. Currently, the sun is shining in a blue sky although there has been a flurry of raindrops against my window.

I woke early this morning and decided to do my shopping straight away in order to beat Jorge the approaching storm, which is due to hit the West of Ireland in the next hours - two counties are on red alert. Not surprisingly, nearly everyone had the same idea. My shopping took longer as I stopped and chatted to any number of acquaintances. In Ireland, the big topic is always the weather: 'Cold, isn't it?'; 'Lovely to see the sun'; I wonder will we get the storm?'

I have stocked up on crispbread and cans of soup - just in case I come down with the coronavirus and have to self-isolate for 14 days. I can't believe I wrote self-isolate! What a whole new range of words can evolve around a storm! We now have a storm warning nearly every weekend. It used to be "strong winds" now its galeforce, gusting up to 150 kmph. Even worse are the rainfall warnings. The ground is saturated, there is no place for the water from swollen rivers to go so they burst their banks and swamp huge areas.
The newspaper headlines which I glimpsed in the supermarket carry assurances from the racing folk that the Cheltenham Festival will go ahead. I sincerely hope so as I enjoy watching this on television and always put on a few small bets. It is bad enough that the Italy/Ireland rugby match has been postponed but our human rights are in danger if the horse racing is off the cards.

I have a sore throat today, so I will stay at home and keep warm  - that North wind nearly took the skin off of my face on the way to the shops this morning. I will do a bit of writing and then I will make a pot of tea and watch Casablanca.
Here's looking at you, kid!