Fathers' Day

So, what shall we do today, Old Man?

We could dig worms from the bank and put them in a jam jar and hold old half-broken fishing rods by the deep pools of the river. I could tell stories of how I used to catch fish by hand as a young fella, and how one day an eel caught me by the finger instead.

And what if it's too cold for standing by a river?

We could lift hay bales and feel the coarse, hard twine before it snaps at the touch of a sharp knife. I could throw the hay into the feeder and you could loosen it for the curious muzzles of the bullocks, nosing through the feed with their snaking tongues. I could tramp through the mud of the yard and grumble about landlords, kick the worst of the muck off at the lone tree. We could peer into the hollow in its side together at the robin's nest, empty now, but not long ago filled with hungry beaks that opened like inside-out umbrellas begging for food.

And what if the lone tree has fallen?

We could tug and pull at the cross-cut saw, sweating in flurries of sawdust. You could push too hard and bend the blade and I could worry and swear and we could go to the lane where the coal is left loosely. I'll shovel and you'll drop the bag or hold it open the wrong way looking at birds instead of concentrating.

And what if there's coal and timber enough in the house?

We could sit by the hearth and watch red-hot horsemen dance through the soot of the fireback, twist wire coat hangers into toasting forks and hang bread in front of the cinders. You'll scrape off the worst of the black where it's burned and I'll reach down the jam pot from the cupboard.

And what if the house has fallen?

You'll help me dig rows for potatoes in my new garden and pick colours for the walls of the new house. We'll plant a hedge and hang an iron gate and railings and paint a house number on a plaque and do a thousand other things.

And what if you tire of the new house?

We'll sit on bar stools and drink beers and speak in low voices about things between us. You'll look at me and notice the laughter lines and the roguish glint in my eye and we'll wonder where the time has all gone.

And what if the time has all gone?

You'll look at children and cats and dogs and green hills and purple mountains and all the things seen from your window and you'll remember how I loved them. And in the evening, you'll listen to the birds singing until nightime comes on and you're called to close the door.

Snug as a bug

It's unseasonably cold this evening. I don't mean Antarctic winter cold, or even American High in the Rockies cold. Just cold for us on our Gulf-Stream warmed little green island. The temperature is a balmy 0 C, or 32 F, for our other visitors. The car roofs are dusted in pale waves of frost and I'm sure the potted geraniums in the back garden may be done for by morning. If they survive, I may move them into a tumbledown shed that's had a reprieve and has a sunny window.

Billy Connolly has some funny stories of growing up in Glasgow and the efforts to look more affluent when the parish priest came around, spoiled by the brother shouting from the bedroom:

"Mammy! Billy has his leg down the arm of the duvet!"

Herself and I both survived frosty nights in unheated bedrooms as children with blankets of adult coats on us for protection. I remember my father's large tweedy coat, the smell of tobacco from it, it's rough outer texture and smooth inner lining. We also had some furs, remnants of the family's few years in Canada, and these tartan-lined bearskins had long, soft brown hairs to keep the cold out of the unlucky bear. The furs are long gone, of course. But I found a small bear-fur hat from my mother's 1950s collection. It's sitting on a shelf by the door of my cluttered study. I'll give it a pat for old-time's sake on the way to sliding in under the many togged modern duvet in our centrally heated 21st Century house.

Times move on. On Monday, our visiting 3 year old grandson stopped in his tracks in front of the living room fire.

"What's that?" he asked, staring at the naked flames.

Good night.

My mother's voice

My mother’s speaking voice was beautiful and has always been associated in my mind with comfort and peace. Some of my earliest memories are of gently waking as a small child with sunlight and birdsong coming in through the old windows and hearing the murmur of low conversation in the next room, the kitchen. The high, wooden ceiling in the farmhouse would amplify the sounds. My mother, speaking with a visitor, perhaps her brother, John, or one of her sisters, Kay or Mina, who might sometimes travel up to the fields to meet her and speak about grown-up things.

Laying at rest in my bed in the other room, the sounds of quiet activity would filter through: a soft footfall on the linoleum floor, the muffled clang of the galvanised bucket as the last of the drinking water was poured into a kettle; a lid being replaced; a drawer of cutlery rattling open and closing; teaspoons in cups; milk pouring; a breadknife sawing through a hard, dark crust of fresh loaf bread. And finally the gentle rattle of the smooth, brass knob as my smiling mother peered around the door to see if I was awake yet and announced in her soft, kind voice that breakfast was very nearly ready…

The Hare and Tortoise prepare lists

Herself is running mad about the room.

"Where's my Christmas list?"

"You mean, of all the presents you're going to get me?" I ask, innocently.

"No..... Of all the jobs that need doing before Christmas."

I find the list, which is something like three pages long. Lists are things that run other people's lives. I'm not a fan of them. My mother, for example, used to leave them everywhere for herself to look up later and wonder where they came from.

Make breakfast.

Something for dinner.

Then in her later life, she would leave them for me. And notes. I found one in a fold of an old armchair one day a couple of years back. It reads: "Fried stuff for Dad in the morning."

It was reminding me to make the breakfast I made every single sorrowful day, in case I forgot.

Bugger lists.

So, my Christmas list, faulty and all as it is, is inside my head. It consists of two major instructions:

"1. Buy presents (If you want to).

"2. Don't worry (If you want to)."

I'm getting there.

We're all getting there.

Merry Christmas, if I haven't wished it for you already. And even if I did.

Christmas shopping is not man's work

Because I have always found that, contrary to sterotype, Herself actively loathes shopping, while I don't really mind it, I was surprised today to find myself wishing I was anywhere other than in the shops I was visiting in search of Christmas 2006 presents.

At one point I was in Dunnes Stores, which, it has to be said, has really stretched itself in recent years in the matter of variety of gifts. But feckin' hell! The things that were on sale in the Home Wares department! Either young and trendy mortgage payers are incredibly thick, or someone has found a way to sell wisps of nothing while keeping a straight face.

Those smelly candle things.... They had some tiny lumps of wax that required at least standard eye protectors -- probably the full breathing apparatus rig -- just to walk within three feet of the display. Another of the wonders was a yoke about the size of a whiskey glass, filled with little wooden balls and containing a worryingly small bottle of concentrated scent. Apparently one gripped the little brown bottle with the longest fire tongs one could find and dripped one drop of this on top of the balls, then sat eye-streamingly trendy in front of the television for the rest of the evening. The item was complete with small, wooden manhole-cover lid with a kind of string of ribbon passed through it. I mean, Jaysus! I could whip up a dozen of those yokes from random ingredients in the kitchen in about five minutes.

In HMV the staff are faced with the demoralising task of trying to wring an extra fiver out of the already impatient customers by telling them about a special offer. I passed several long-suffering Mammies, staring in bewilderment at racks of CDs and DVDs, while trying to remain calm on the mobile:

"Right! I can see the row you're talking about! But it isn't there. Do you think you can get your arse out of bed long enough to tell your mother who bore you for nine months (the last two in a fucking heatwave!) what other piece of crap musical selection you want?"

At the counter, a mental battle royale is going on between the slim, premenstrual twenty-something with the stud in her nostril assistant who has not yet had her latte and the going to fat and possibly unshaven twenty-something going on fifteen who is avoiding making eye contact with the queuing public. She says, in pure, purring, over-his head sarcastic Female:

"Is your cash register off at the moment?"

He completes the counting of his crayons and replies without the least inkling that she is any moment going to stab him in the eyeball with the pin of her name tag:

"Oh, no. I was just doing something else..."

Men! Wha'?

He looks up and takes payment for the goods I hand him. In the background, I hear the shop girl saying to a hassled Mobile-phone Mammy:

"Did you know, Madam that once you spend €30 you can choose one of these selections for only half price?"

Slow Poke takes my money and tries his best with the speil on me:

"You can have one of these...." (He realises there is a premium DVD in the stack of cheapos, and starts to shuffle them, all in a fluster, like playing cards) "Well... not including that one, obviously..." (He rallies) "...for only half price!"

"You're alright," I say.

The look on his face says that it is very early in his day and he does not expect to shift many of the half-price offers before quitting time.

There are camping stoves and oil lamps in the camping shop window. The staff are trying valiantly to think up camping gear that might double as Christmas gifts. So am I.

In Easons, I walk around most of the store with a tin box of dominos in my hand before finally putting it back. Someone this year will get a 2007 calendar on the subject of Ferrets, but it won't be anyone I know. I put back a keyring with the picture of a black cat on it just like ours. I can take a picture of our black cat any day. No, I don't want a box of oil paints. Nor videos of great sporting moments.

Then I see a CD entitled "Favourite Childhood memories", hidden in the back of the budget CDs. It's tracks listing is:

Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf / Henry Hall
The Ugly Duckling / Danny Kaye
On The Good Ship Lollipop / Shirley Temple
I Know An Old Lady / Burl Ives
William Tell Overture / Spike Jones And His City Slickers
The Woody Woodpecker Song / Mel Blanc
Me And My Teddy Bear / Rosemary Clooney
Thumbelina / Danny Kaye
I Tawt I Taw A Puddy-Tat / Mel Blanc
Christopher Robin At Buckingham Palace / Anne Stephens
Blue Tail Fly / Burl Ives
The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine / Laurel And Hardy
Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo / Dinah Shore
The Big Rock Candy Mountain / Burl Ives
Wonderful Copenhagen / Danny Kaye
The Laughing Policeman / Charles Penrose
A Four Legged-Friend / Roy Rogers
The Runaway Train / Vernon Dalhart
Little White Duck / Danny Kaye
Polly Wolly Doodle / Shirley Temple
The King's New Clothes / Danny Kaye
I'm Popeye The Sailor Man / Billy Costello
The Teddy Bears' Picnic / Henry Hall

Like a fool I decide I'd be better off without it. I'd be better going home and drinking tea and eating something, wrapping what presents I have bought and coming back another day. So I do.

I'm going back tomorrow. I hope it's still there. Bugger this man-thinking business. It just isn't me.

Are we who we are or who we remember we are?

Very interesting documentary on Channel 4 tonight, entitled "Unknown White Male." The film-maker basically posed the question in our title and made a movie of his friend's dilemma. The friend, an Englishman, took a phone call in his New York apartment around 8.00pm, when he stated that he was probably not going to go out that night, then at 7.00 am he found himself on a subway train wondering where he was going. He then wondered where he had been. In the next few seconds, he re realised he didn't know who he was.

Getting off the train in Coney Island, he searched his backpack which contained a few inconclusive items. Finally, he turned himself into a police station. The police found that he didn't have any memory before coming to on the train. They asked some questions and went through his stuff, finding a woman's name and telephone number. However, the woman didn't recognise the description of the man and has no knowledge of how he had her telephone number.

Following an examination and tests at the local hospital, it was found that the man had some minor bumps on his head and a small tumour on his pituitary gland. This latter item was something he'd had since birth and was not the cause of his memory loss. Finding nothing physically wrong, the doctors arranged for him to be transferred to a psychiatric hospital. He languished there for a few days before being allowed to again phone the lady whose number was written down in his effects. It transpired that her daughter knew him well. He was an accomplished man who had retired in his 30s from a well-paying job to pursue a career in photography. He had, as the lady's daughter said: "A good life."

The documentary followed his efforts to reacquaint himself with his family, now living in Australia and in other parts of the world, and to revisit his friends and connections in England.

It concluded with him finding a new life with an Australian girl in the knowlege that his memory could return any time. It has never been explained how he lost his memory, but the doctors (the documentary says) feel it is 95% certain it will someday return.

"Will we still be in love?" his girlfriend asks.

His friends and family remarked upon the differences in his character since his memory loss. He was no longer as "outgoing" his father said, but his sister said there was no longer an "edge" about him, that he was more relaxed in himself.

How much then does our memory of life inform our personalities? It's a subject in which I have always been interested. Is Doug (his name), going to change if he remembers "who he is", or what will be the result of what the filmaker called "the collision of his old life and his new" when he finally gets back his memories.

Fascinating subject.