Walking into Winter

Winter is coming and the nights are getting longer. I never look forward to this time of the year, and yet when it arrives there’s something comforting about it. The tail end of Autumn wrapping its arms around us as the trees finally surrender and allow the leaves to fall to the ground. Perhaps this is the signal we need to withdraw into ourselves, to acknowledge the tired feeling in our bones, and let the silent stones go unturned until Spring comes back to put a sprightly pep in our step. Autumn is Spring in reverse. Warm at first until cold’s first light sharpens the senses. How I love those frosty mornings with their fresh ‘don’t fuck with me’ attitude. They bring with them a simplicity coupled with a graceful elegance, a clear boundary separating the seasons. They can cut right through you without a thought. The lukewarm water splashed across the early morning windscreen, only to turn immediately to ice again. This is the time when the rhythm of a new day is accompanied by a shiver. The bravery that it takes to step out of bed is forgotten as soon as our cold feet hit the floor.

It’s now that I begin the long wait for summer, waiting not so patiently for December 21st to come, so that I can put the shorter days behind us. Each week after that brings with it a little more light. We’re on the way back. But in the meantime there’s work to be done. Curtains to be pulled. Hot water bottles to be filled. The mornings full of school kids and worker bees, head down, pushing through the darkness and the routine, Monday to Friday, waiting for Saturday, then the Sunday evening blues choking at our throats as we get ready to do it all over again. The clock changing is a mean kick the guts. Until then it seems okay. It’s at times like this that I live off the fumes of what’s gone and what’s to come. I think back to the summer. The trip to Harry Potter World and a visit to the home of Roald Dahl, watching West Ham winning the Europa Conference League in a sweaty heaving Essex pub, Special times spent with Samuel, Jackie, Pamela, John, Kirsten and Lauren. Soaking up the sun. The hum of London going underground feeding my thoughts with endless possibility. Walking around Waterstones in Piccadilly, with books coming out of my ears. Seeing William again. Great memories. Going back to Buckhurst Hill. Highbury. Loughton. Passing through tube stations that still remain the same, their history protected as everything changes. Holborn. Tottenham Court Road. Mile End. That Sunday barbecue in the back garden, Louis Dunford’s ‘The Angel’ alluding to a London lost and gone, the buildings and streets everchanging, but somehow the people manage stay the same. Like Dublin there may be a roughness to London’s edges, but there’s a basic goodness to the fore that overcomes the bad. It’s just that the media like us to think it’s the other way round. On this and other things, I like to turn them down. I refuse to let them take me for a fool. Good things happen too.

The first three weeks of July were dominated by France. Samuel headed for Marseilles with his school friends and when he returned we headed to Tintiniac in the north for Anne and Darran’s wedding. Falling in love with the place. Late night chats and afternoon strolls along the quiet canal. Swimming in the sea. Easy company and spirit falling neatly into place. Baguettes and cheese. Beer and wine. Three men in suits at a funky wedding with full on funky people and even funkier music. We danced until dawn, a beautiful day followed by the heaviness of the rain bouncing off the ground. And before we knew it, it was time to go home again. We hop out of Darran’s car and jump on a train to Rennes. We get on the plane in Nantes. We step onto a bus at Dublin airport, and then take the Luas from Abbey Street to Heuston, and then another train to Adamstown, before a fifteen minute walk brings us back home again. Back to where it all began a week ago. The memories contained forever within. I miss people when they’re gone. Maybe that’s why I try so hard to avoid goodbyes.

If June was uncomfortably warm, July pissed out of the heavens. As if to match the unsettled Irish weather, there was a lingering uneasy anger in the air. Interest rate hikes arriving on what feels like a weekly basis. The ECB disconnected from reality, losing their fucking minds, and fucking with ours. Energy companies making huge profits as prices go up and up. RTE caving inwards. The government coffers overflowing with a heartlessness that’s hard to fathom. We live in a perpetual crisis not of our own making. The pharmaceutical companies rubbing their greedy hands in glee at a pandemic that played neatly out to their tune. The tax payers money paying for them to do their work, whilst the profits go back into their greasy till. War causing distress and unhappiness to all but those who sell arms and dissent. And then In late July Sinéad O’Connor left us, joining Christy Dignam in musical heaven. On the Sunday following her passing, Dublin’s footballers rose again to win another All-Ireland. A poignant day. The memory of the team warming up in front of Hill 16 as ‘Nothing Compares to You’ played on the big screen will stay with me forever, as will Sam being carried down to the Hill by the boys in blue at the end, with Sinéad’s haunting version of ‘Molly Malone’ as a backing vocal. Winter’s cold, but summer’s colder still. Dublin in a rainstorm, keeping warm. One of the best wins of them all. Kerry back in their box, for now. I told you so. We will rise. We will return. A Phoenix from the flames. There is no other Troy for you to burn.

August was up and down the M50 bringing Samuel to rehearsals for Shrek The Musical in The Helix. Great fun and one hell of a show. The laughter is with me still. Autumn be gentle with us. Guide us easily into winter so that when we come out the other end we’re ready to go again. There’s lots to look forward to. It’ll soon be time to get the Halloween decorations down from the attic. Christmas always a favourite time of the year. A time when the world slows to an abrupt halt. We breathe. Champions League nights. Premiership afternoons. Dublin beginning all over again in February. The Six Nations dragging us into Spring. The cobwebs catching on the summer winds. I’ll wrap myself up warm and embrace the storm. Woolly hats and jackets I get lost in. Scarves wrapped up to my freezing chin. Stormy days spent looking out the window watching the rain fall thinking of no good reason to go outside. Two duvets thrown over the bed when it gets really serious. Hot water bottles filled with warm delight. Quick soups and hot chocolate late at night. Early morning meetings in school when we crawl through the misty chill of the morning towards the light. We are counting the days, hoping, praying that we’ll learn to live every last one of them instead of wishing them all away. Nothing left to do. Nothing left to say.

I put a clothes wash on and think again about tomorrow and the things we’ve done and the things we will do. I think of London. I think of France. I think of faces filled with love. My mind turns to chance. Faces of family, friends and strangers hold my mind. I think of the special ones we have lost. The revolutionaries who did the hard lifting with words and inspiration. The rock stars, the writers, the poet, the crazy ones, the bowsies, the weirdos with their violent hairdos, the hippies, the broken and the damned. They do more to shift the consciousness than any political system ever has or could. I will carry the sadness of their leaving forever. I look back to see James McCarthy lifting Sam above his head. I feel the tears rolling down my face mixing with the rain. I hear the I do’s. I watch Samuel dancing across the stage in The Helix and I smile.

These are the moments that make it all worthwhile.