Like it shines on me

In the lead up to Rosie turning 30 I tried to tell as many people as possible that she was going to be 40. Or else made sure that everyone knew she'd be 30 before me. She was less than amused, which surprised me at first as she has a very self-deprecating sense of humour and is well used to me. Getting upset over jibes about your age has always struck me as pointless, as it's a bit like being slagged for existing. But, just as the only birthday freak-outs I ever had occurred as my 24th and 28th birthdays saw me unemployed, so are there expectations and disappointments that can attach themselves to any number. And sometimes these things just remind us that the worms'll come for us all.

We decided to go away for the occasion; it being preferable to getting drunk in Dublin and raiding the burger vans of Camden Street on the way home, and well-deserved after the austerity of honeymooning on gift vouchers and special deals around the south-east of Ireland last year. New York was the spot we chose, she still carrying a torch for it from a previous visit and me unacquainted. Unacquainted, that is, only in the flesh - for no other city could possibly seem so familiar to a new visitor, rich in both pop-culture and real events. The looming Manhattan skyline as we approached from JFK looked like somewhere I already knew. Woke up this morning, got yourself a gun I hummed . And - Bleecker Street, Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn, Grand Central, SoHo, Times Square, Madison Avenue, Broadway, Harlem - Jesus, the weight behind them! The neon, the subway, the hotdog vendors, the yellow cabs, the showy screaming at each other on the streets, the pancakes for breakfast: it's all there like they said it was. There were a hell of a lot less white people than TV and movies would have you believe, but I'd heard that before. I quickly came to feel that New York, in the same way that cities like London, Paris and Rome were the epicentre of past epochs, was the city that embodied the 20th century. But it's a century that, for me, began with the arrival of a young Vito Corleone on Ellis Island in 1901 and ended on September 11th 2001.

We had ourselves a time, of course. When you come home everyone seems to have a list of things you ought to have done in NYC, and there's every chance that you did none of them, and they've done none of yours. We saw museums and parks and skyscapers and shops and we ate ourselves silly and slept like sweaty logs every night as it blustered and dusted snow outside.

On our last night there, Rosie's birthday, we wandered up Eighth Avenue uncharacteristically late looking for a decent spot to chow down when Frankie and Johnnie's Steak and Chophouse lured us in with an unprepossessing exterior before we choked over the numerals on the menu. If the sexagenarian waiters in tuxedos hadn't tipped us off that this wasn't just any old steakhouse then the woman coming in to book a party of ten for Tom Selleck soon did. We shared the Porterhouse Steak For Two over an agreeable, affordable Malbec, with sides of cream spinach and fries. I may never eat a finer meal.

"We should come back to New York for all significant birthdays," said Rosie.
"Mmmfffyeah, and eat here" I gulped through a mouthful of medium rare.
"I suppose if they've been going since 1926 they'll still be here in ten years."
"So, 40, then," I said wistfully, "Just think, we'll be sitting here having dinner and we'll remember this conversation." It is, invariably, me who injects a note of sentimentality into such moments.
"Stop," she said, "you're making me cry."
I was in danger of the same. Because making plans for ten years up the road is the most married I've felt yet, because life feels so good lately that ten years away can surely only be worse, because the future is always terrifying. Because the worms suddenly edged that inch closer. Because I do not want to wait ten years.

1909-2011

A couple of years back I wrote this post about going over to Wales to visit my great aunt who had turned 100 on New Year's Day. She died today, aged 102. On the scale of tragic-things-that-can-happen-in-life a very old lady passing peacefully away does not rank too highly, but I found myself more upset than I imagined I would be when today inevitably came. I'd wanted to marry her when I was little. I understood marriage as being something you did with a lady who always beamed when they saw you and treated you with love and kindness. Throw in 'age-appropriate' and 'not a blood relative' and it's still pretty much a philosophy I subscribe to.

I don't really get this world, more often than not, but 102 years of bringing warmth and smiles into other people's lives seems as good a way to have dealt with it as I've encountered.

On Being Read

Here's the thing: I think about you, my readers, probably far more than I care to admit. Late at night, quite often, when I wonder if I'd get to sleep faster if I told you about what's going on in my head. Even when all that's going on in my head is the horrendous feedback loop of wondering what's going on in my head. I wonder where and how you read me, and why. In an office, on the bus on your iPhone, in a college computer lab, on a rickety laptop on the couch as you growl with frustration at your slow connection (that's usually how I do it). Or as you watch football, as you drink, as you grin and grimace, as you pick your nose, as you go through someone else's blogroll out of sheer boredom. As you confusedly land here by googling song lyrics I've nicked for my post titles, as you follow someone else's twitter link and then stop and wonder if life isn't a mite too short to be on Twitter if this is where it brings you. And I'm fascinated by the very notion of being read in far-flung parts of the globe, and constantly wonder what it is that I might write that tickles someone's fancy in Laos just as it turns someone off in Laois. If some of you are just hoping that I'll pick another fight, or that I'll write a little more about love, as love happens to me.

I'll think of you, dear readers, even on Thursday as I get married to the loveliest creature I've ever encountered. Or at least in the immediate aftermath. And on Saturday, when we do it again more publicly. I'll think about how I'm marrying one of you; how we first recognised a kindred spirit through each other's words. How a few more of you will be there to celebrate with us as friends.

How I'll tell you all about it (and the job interview sandwiched on the Friday in between) when I have words that are good enough, if there are any. How good it is to have been read, then seen, then loved.

Photo taken, like most good photos, by the wonderful Annie Atkins

he did make some observations

Having a bonsai tree really is like having a child, a puppy or syphilis: you have to bring it fucking everywhere. And so it was that Stella joined Rosie and I on a week-long jaunt to the west of Ireland, where we indulged in our customary pastimes of walking a bit, grumbling at the rain, reading a bit, watching DVDs, gorging ourselves like sows with tapeworms and cooing at each other a lot. It was precisely like that Discover Ireland ad, especially the bit with the couple looking affluent and aroused in Westport. We also flew (yeah, flew) to Inis Mór like motherfucking rockstars. More about all that another time, perhaps.

I was planning on throwing in a few grumbles into this post of odds and ends, as it's been a while since I've used the 'gripes' tag. Then Holemaster shows up in my feed-reader with a worthy list.
To his complaints I add:

People who won't switch their headlights on before the sun sets. Try driving down the M50 in a driving rainstorm with the backwash from a truck obscuring everything and tell me you wouldn't notice the fucker in a silver Audi cutting in front of you just a split second sooner if they had their lights on.

Bohemian Rhapsody. Tonight I sat through all two and a half hours of Channel 4's unfathomably unfunny Comedy Gala. It climaxed, like a sixteen year-old jizzing his pants, with one-trick pony Lee Evans performing his one trick, sweatily, to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody. And I realised that that song, far from being the 'greatest song of the twentieth century' that it is so often feted as, is a bloated monstrosity of a yoke that should have been left alone to enjoy its Wayne's World based resurrection and then banned from public consumption. Think about it: you don't like it half as much as you've been told you do, do you?

Overuse of the word 'rant' on the internet. There is a tendency among bloggers to preface and/or conclude any strong statement of opinion with a caveat along the lines of "I hope you'll excuse this rant", or "Don't mind me, I'm just ranting". It seems almost apologetic - anticipating the fact that some fucker will come along and take offence at something you've said. If your 'rant' is in any way blog-related you can be absolutely certain that someone will take offence, and will probably read far more into your words than was ever there. It happens. if you have something to say that may cause a few snarks then write it, read over it, sleep on it if needs be, then if you stand by everything you say then publish the fucking thing and don't use dismissive words like 'rant' for your own thoughts unless that is truly how it reads, in which case delete it. Or call it a rant, by which you might as well type "I'm not sure I mean this at all, I'm just not thinking right now."

And now, to close on an upbeat note, two splendid blogs that have recently come to my attention: This Limbo and Conor Creighton. Both well worth a click and a bit of your time. And Jennie, for fuck's sake, if you haven't already been round there.

codeine for a mouth abscess

I'd say that it was the greatest feeling ever, only that i can't feel anything at all. I assume this is what it's like to be a bran flake.

Some people say the sky is just the sky

Late last Monday night, lying in bed beside my gradually-recovering-from-swine-flu girlfriend, I found my head beating and beating at me with something I'd been wanting to say for ages but had never intended to say there and then.

"Will you marry me?"

Turns out she will. I held her tightly and she cried a little. The sap. I just shook. We kissed and we talked, thought what exactly we said has long since left my mind, so addled was I by the heady concoction of joy and fear. Fear, not of the commitment that we had just made to each other, but that, once we started the task of telling all the important people in the morning, even one of them might express the tiniest doubt or misgiving.

I needn't have worried. We let the night tick into the wee hours before deciding that we'd burst if we didn't tell someone and that there was a chance my brother might be awake. He wasn't, but he received the news with delight. The following day he told me that he lay awake for the next hour or so, composing the opening lines of the best man speech he knew I'd ask him to give and crying a little. The sap.

We lay in bed and listened to one of our favourite records, laughing at how we've managed to wear the vinyl down already. I don't know what time I got to sleep at, but she was even later, for once.

My brother's reaction seems to have set the tone thus far, thankfully. The Fiancée ( I love saying that) made the important family calls in the morning and then sent a blanket webtext to almost everyone who would care to know. She lost her already fragile voice in the maelstrom of excited calls that followed. So uncomfortable am I with an inundation of attention I chose to do my informing in drips and drabs, soaking up the enthusiastic responses at a manageable rate. I wondered if my heart would ever stop racing.

It was nearly 24 hours later before I was able to lie calmly in bed, thinking about how incredible it is that someone should choose to wake up beside me every morning and how wonderful it is to be gaining a second family, that it all fully sank in. And I smiled, and I woke her up at stupid o'clock babbling about what stones she should get in her ring (her very talented jewellery designer sister will make it) and I knew that every day from then on will feel like a celebration of that one.

P.S . That's what she said.

Sugar Baby

"Your breakfast is ready." She's been up for over an hour now.

"I didn't ask you to make me breakfast."

I am that much of an asshole in the morning. I groan and roll over, without a note of thanks. She tries to rouse me a couple more times before I gradually start to sit up, the implication that I'm doing her some kind of favour in undertaking this strenuous task writ large all over my face. I grunt a little and frown at her. She brings breakfast to me.

POP TARTS!!!

Everything changes now. Pop Tarts are the kind of breakfast that should always be followed by exclamation marks. We never had them for breakfast in my home when they first came out about sixteen or seventeen years ago, being far too sensible (or "poor", as I understood it) to spend that kind of money on breakfast. They are awesome. I recline back in the bed and start munching, crumbs going all over my chest and onto her sheets. "These are awesome," I say, continuing my morning policy of saying exactly what comes into my head. "I had a conversation with my second year class yesterday about how awesome they are. They're awesome."

I leap up and head to the bathroom for my morning tinkle and beauty regime. My hair needs a little fixing - last night's attempt at a white man 'fro has left a few odd kinks in it. I come back and give her a long, slow kiss. Unfathomably, she lets me do this. "Ready to rock now?" I ask chirpily, putting on my shoes swiftly in the full knowledge that she's been ready to leave for about fifteen minutes now. But even she is shocked by the speed of this transformation.

I decide to sing her one of the few songs I know all the lyrics to as we walk along. I imagine she's pleased, though her face betrays nothing right now. We get to her bus-stop and I do my annoying clingy thing. My morning lethargy has made me miss my first lecture of the day and may very well see her slightly late to work.

She gives me a hug and grins. "I need to find a way of getting sugar into you before you wake up."

Trudging slowly over wet sand

"What time is it?" I ask her, with my customary grunt and disgusting throat clear.

"Eleven."

Terrific, I've managed to sleep long enough to shake off the hangover I've fully earned through copious pints of Guinness consumed in the horrendously busy Doheny & Nesbitt's whilst watching Ireland thrash England 14-13. The poor love has gone off and done whatever it is she does when she can't sleep any more, while I've farted and dozed my way to comfort.

Snuggles later, I arise, consume a chunk of Toblerone and drive us to Dún Laoghaire. We have the greatest of breakfasts: Eggs Benedict (yeah, I'd never quite known what that was before either, this one was sexy smoked salmon and gorgeously runny poached egg on a bagel) and mascarpone and mixed berries on French toast so heavenly she threatens to leave me for it.

Our scheduled walk is abandoned after a nasty sleet shower catches us off-guard and leaves us dripping and grinning, with one of us smelling a lot like a wet dog. So we do the shopping, with me skittering around the place as annoyingly as ever, suggesting we purchase a Pirates of the Caribbean boom box as she picks up the sensible things, like mushrooms and pro-biotic yoghurt. To amuse me, she leaves me in the biscuit aisle and tells me she'll come back for me in a few minutes, and I can only pick one packet. My quest for the perfect uberbiscuit (shortbread with layers of caramel, marshmallow and chocolate chips with a Jaffa Cake topping) fails, so I insist on four packets. I get my way, she's nice like that.

Back at hers, we while away the rest of the afternoon making stew and watching episodes of The Wire, her head resting on my hip. Snuggles later, we eat the stew and find it to be truly fucking delicious. Glasses of gifted Rioja don't hurt either.

Now she sits watching Lost as I type this (my simpleness and impatience mean I never made it past season 2). We left The Wire at such a critical point that we'll probably have to watch one more episode before hitting the hay, though that will still be early enough. She'll be asleep before me, and she'll deserve to be.

"Every day is like Sunday, every day is silent and grey," Morrissey once sang.

Stephen, you've never met my girlfriend.