The Summer Ball Season

Let's go to a summer ball, Alex said, and so went to Stonewall's, a fundraiser to support the eradication of homophobia. The venue was the swish Roof Gardens in Kensington and the evening was balmy. Stella Duffy opened proceedings with an empassioned reminder, that Martina and Billie Jean apart, out sport persons are a rarity. Gareth Thomas was given a cheer by us all, in abstentia, but Stella's words did make us stop and ponder the fact that in the midst of the World Cup, there is no out and proud premier division footballer. The roofgarden made a refreshing change from some of the dives wherein I have attended fundraisers in the past. The last time I was that close to a flamingo I was in the Great Rift Valley. We enjoyed our bbq alongside the two lovely Patricks. They make a habit of attending as many of these events as possible. The previous evening they were at Elton John’s White Tie & Tiara Ball at a cost of three mortgage payments for us mere mortals.

Alex’s parents came for the weekend and we ate al fresco at our local Italian on Saturday evening. Italians are great maitre d’s and can make such a drama out of the simplest things. Straightforward statements become the grandest pronouncements of authority by virtue of hand movements combined with a facial expression fused with a slight shrug of the shoulder and a raised eyebrow thrown in for good measure. “The chilli sauce must be hot,,, but not too hot...”.

Sunday was England’s big day and two Irish friends came out to the suburbs for the occasion. It was officially the hottest day of the year and there was a palpable air of excitement building up all morning. BBQ proteins were flying of the shelves and beer stocks were rapidly depleted. We were lucky to find ice in the third outlet we tried. We repaired to the pub to lend our support to the three lions. The hope which was very much alive in the first half vaporised as the second half progressed and twenty minutes before the end the writing was on the wall. I am no football expert but was amazed that such a good team (allegedly) could be beaten by what is on paper, a lesser team, so comprehensively. The three lions became the three minnows but for one Italian it was always a win-win situation. Fabio is one of the few in Britain, the Patricks, celebrities and footballers apart, who could now afford to attend the Elton John Ball.

The Crucible in Regents Park

Last evening was my first time at the Open Air Theatre in Regents Park and the play being performed was Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”. The play, while not without its difficulties is nonetheless recommended viewing. It’s much more than just another evening at the theatre and the themes should be a matter for discussion, reflection and action. When Miller wrote the play it was entirely allegorical about the 17th century witch hunts in Salem, Massachusetts. He drew on these events to highlight McCarthy's right wing vendetta against those in the performing arts and other notorious positions in the US of the 1950s, who might harbor any communist tendencies. Today, it could be applied to all sorts of issues – whistle blowing as vengeful tool, inciting peer acquiesence in a harmful way, over reliance and acceptance of institutions of rule such as the court and the church – neither of which are always right. Today, the publication of the Saville Inquiry Report into Bloody Sunday is an instance of a flawed institution (The Army) literally getting away with murder even if it cost £120million and 38 years for the fault to be unearthed and acknowledged. Despite the acknolwedgement and the prime minsterial apology it seems they will get away with it. Another insitution which got away with gross misdemeanours for years is the Catholic Church in Ireland.

However, I digress, so, back to the play. It is a difficult play with a large array of characters whose lyrics are dated and stilted to the modern ear and era. However, after a while, like a scar on a face, this becomes less noticeable and before long it's possible to listen to and understand the text. There's another challenge with this particular performance and that is the venue itself. While enchanting on the one hand, by 10.00pm it’s bloody cold and the concentration needed for this play is put to the test with the evening chill. Challenges aside however, there are no regrets about attending the performance. Indeed as time elapses after leaving the theatre, the play’s themes and events return to the mind for interpretation and consideration. The set itself was wonderful and the array of girls sitting around the stage reacting in communion with events being enacted was an effective visual ploy. There was one outstanding performance. Patrick O'Kane played the central character, John Proctor. The transformation from his first appearance as a confident man striding on stage to his last appearance as an utterly broken one is firmly planted in the mind. The cast is enormous and all performed the play to great effect. All in all, this play is more than worth the effort.

That was the weekend that was ....,

My commute this morning was longer than usual. From BF's house in the West of Ireland to my office near the Piccadilly Line in four hours flat. That's great said BF on skype later asking me did I see her camera. But is it? I had my enthusiastic colleagues getting excited about what we are doing and while normally, I am in the thick of it, today, I was kinda quiet. I guess I needed a bit more space between tranquility and action. We all need time to digest and reflect.

BF and I attended an art launch exhibition - a brave venture in a recession as the local politician who opened it intoned. An ecletic range of art with a packed gallery to view it. An amazing number of people I met there are natives of districts located near the Piccadilly Line and they moved the other way. Am I missing something? The artists were Breda Burns, Margaret Duffy, Betty Gannon, Pamela Gray, Mary O'Grady, Grainne O'Reilly, Susie Quinn, Sinead Wall and Ian Wieczorek. I particularly liked Breda, Margaret and Susie but resisted buying as the thought of flooring and light fittings took over.

So we stopped off in McGing's Pub on the way back and caught a bit of a session. I enjoyed the pint of Guinness and me and BF reviewed the weekend. We had ticked a lot of boxes - delicious dressed crab, a long walk, a Guinness, art, coffee, talk and relax. So I am back on the Piccadilly Line and will be back to normal tomorrow.

Mrs Robinson

The unfettered joy I felt when Mary Robinson was elected President of Ireland came flooding back to me this morning. I slept in my god daughter’s bed last night while she is working and living away in Vancouver. I left the Piccadilly Line to spend this weekend with my BF on the west coast of Ireland and I found, on the bookshelf, the former president’s biography, written by John Horgan, published in 1997.

Mary Robinson’s election to the presidency was a welcome alternative to decades of political partisanship in the 70 year old Irish State. When I started out on my working life in Ireland in the 1980s, the country was in a parlous state. Taxes were high, jobs were scarce, emigration was commonplace and people were deeply frustrated. The country was trying to wade through a vat of tar and our citizens, informed by education, television, overseas experience and travel began to realise that it did not always have to be like this. Voices from the far right scare mongered about emerging dissenting voices such as Mary Robinson's, and overseeing all this was the Catholic Church who seemingly were in cahoots with the government in keeping citizens under thumb. The 1980s was a decade of much moral debate which followed the even more miserable decade of the 1970s. There was a so called abortion referendum (lost), a divorce one, (lost), the case of the Kerry babies, and the poor schoolgirl who gave birth and died in childbirth at a grotto in Granard.

Reeling in my own 1980s I recall picking up condoms in the Well Woman Centre in Dublin for my married friend living on the west coast. I also remember speaking to the manager of a building society about getting a mortgage. He laughed out loud at me and said that single women could not get mortgages. I moved near the Piccadilly Line towards the end of the decade with a band of others. London offered and delivered liberation from faux morality, fun and opportunity. Ireland carried on in sharp denial of realities led by hucksters of dubious ethical provenance. The words banana and republic spring to mind with the tribunal era still some way off. The 1980s drew to a close and in 1990, Mary Robinson rose from this undiluted mire and was elected, against all the odds, as the President of Ireland. It was so refreshing. I heard it on the Friday night news and hungry for information, I travelled all the way the following morning, on the Piccadilly Line, to West London to a newsagent I knew for certain stocked the Irish Times. I needed to soak up the all the comment and coverage. It was a tweet free zone back then.

The election of Mary Robinson offered new hope for the country. I remember, she declared that she wanted to be a president for all the people of Ireland, not just those who supported a particular party or section. She acknowledged the diaspora and promised to keep a candle lit in the Aras for all emigrants. The biography related an incident from her own life which might have influenced this. In her early 20s, Mary was a student in Harvard and while she enjoyed the intellectual stimulation she was heartsick and homesick. She stumbled upon her local paper “The Western People” in a Boston newsstand and as the biographer reports she soaked up every inch of it.

Although I dwell near the Piccadilly Line, Ireland is always in my soul. In my exile the country became the subject of envy of many tomes around the world as its economy grew at an unprecedented rate and when it crashed spectacularly many spirits and hopes were crushed. Ireland has had to raise taxes, cut incomes and benignly endorse emigration as its brightest graduates, such as my god-daughter, leave in droves in search of work. And there is the wanton waste that is so evident in town after town of unoccupied and unfinished housing developments. These estates are spooky places which apparently attract disaffected young people, alerted through social media such as Facebook. The word here on the by roads is that of demolition. The Ireland of today is in a much more depressed state than that of the 70s or 80s. At least then, we had not known any better. This time around, a greater number of citizens were invited to the party but the ensuing and enduring hangover has been both severely acute and chronic.

Ireland is due for a new President next year as the current incumbent, Mary McAleese’s, term of office comes to an end. Let’s hope that the new President can reinvigorate the mood of the country in the way that Mary Robinson once did.

Poem extract

in all her life, she never thought
that she'd ever be stranded
in a place known as stansted

Eurovision, Six Degrees of Seperation and Way on High

As soon as the osteopath sorted us out on Saturday morning it was time to turn our attention to the Eurovision fancy dress outfit. Alex barred us from the top floor and when this Moldovian Jew appeared in our cottage Blue and I were taken aback. I realise there's a recurrent theme here. Since I started this blog of our lives, Alex has a penchant for dressing up. Maybe a psychoanalyst could make something of that but as a documentalist I am easy about it. The best part of the Eurovision party, costumes aside, was watching the geopolitical voting patterns.

On Sunday we hit the road to South Wales to meet friends of Alex's family visting from Vancouver Island. Bob's claim to fame was that he had been in the US Peace Corps in India back in the day, had dogded the US draft and absconded to Saskatchewan and never went home. And there's more .... He had his photo taken with Bob Clinton in a remote outpost in Canada but more impressive was that Pete Seeger played and sang in in his front room in San Franscisco. Now, I went to see the late Kirsty McColl in concert many moons ago on the Euston Road. Her dad, Ewan was married to Peggy Seeger who is Pete's sister. So there you have it - six degrees of seperation.

Monday, we dropped into the festival at Hay on Wye en route back to the Piccadilly Line. A glorious day, the tented village hummed with readers, writers and us lot. It's a glorious location with bleating sheep in the background. Kicked ourselves that we did not plan things better to spend more time there. Sill, we managed a refreshing Pimms watching the literati go by ...