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The sailing time from Dublin Port to Holyhead is just under four hours, and if the sea is calm, it’s spectacular. Salmon coloured skies are the backdrop for the seagulls, travellers, migrants, and poets who travel from one Celtic land to another. People have been making this crossing since St Patrick and before him, and the journey is filled with waves of memories and the sounds of goodbyes.

Half way across the water, there’s time to think.

The thoughts needn’t be profound or interesting, but the middle of the sea can be precious and sacred.  It’s there you see the ghosts of the Irish emigrants of the 50’s dressed in their best suits and Sunday shoes, leaving one island for another. You sometimes see St Patrick, heading off to teach the gospel to unsuspecting pagans.  Nowadays, you see holiday makers trying to keep their distance.

Not everyone likes to keep their distance.

Yesterday, a very unpleasant man was too close to me in the queue.  His eyes were narrow, and he had a hooked nose, with an overstretched forehead. I could tell from his side parted hair that he was a careless driver, a bully to his spouse and a challenging colleague.  He wasn’t wearing a mask so I could smell his foul, mouldy breath, and the dampness of it, as it passed my neck, made me want to vomit.

He is the type of man who thinks that being asked to wash his hands is an infringement of his right to wipe his arse and let the faecal matter simmer under his fingernails, all day.

I asked the man to step away from me, but the request made him smirk.  When I asked him, a second time to please keep his distance, he snorted an exaggerated, pantomime laugh.  I told him that I had a Category Four person living at home, and that having a someone with underlying health problems, in my household, made me a little anxious about picking up and passing on diseases.

He laughed and said, “this man-made disease isn’t even real, come on, we all know that!”

How remarkable, how very sad.

I’m often struck by how unfortunate looking some of the anti-maskers are.  You would think they would be in favour of putting a small piece of material over their faces, and covering up for a while.

I don’t have a sick person in my house. 

That was just a lie I invented to encourage a gram of compassion or a speckle of decent, human courtesy from him.  It did not.  Contagious diseases aside, I shouldn’t have to ask men to move away from me.

What’s wrong with people? 

Why are they so mean?

Later, I saw the horrible man coming out of the shop and he was speaking loudly on the phone to some unfortunate family member, friend, or colleague.  He was walking with wide steps, outstretched legs and swagging shoulders, as if he were ready for battle.  He was holding up his phone up high, like a modern day dagger made of gold and lapis lazuli.

For a moment, I saw through the pinhole of eternity and into his soul.  I saw the sadness and grief that had caused this anger and pain, and I wished him less loneliness, and a happier life.

He’s not alone on his journey of insipid selfishness.

If he doesn’t want the free, life-saving vaccine, then so be it.  I just hope I don’t miss out on medical treatment later down the line, because he’s holding up another queue.  I know he’s been doing his own research with that one video on YouTube, and that conversation with his cousin’s best friend, I just wonder if his research is reliable.  I wish you well, strange man in the queue.  I wish you well.

We still have a little while left on this trip, and I wish him safety.

I really do. 

The last time I came back to Dublin, on the ferry from Holyhead, a coast guard helicopter tried to land on board.  It was at night, and it was dark, and it was very dramatic.  Most of the passengers ran outside, to see if we could record whatever tragedy was unfolding.  Luckily, it turned out to be a training exercise, so we all went back inside, and carried on scrolling our phones.

We, the humans, are funny old things. 

We are so perfectly pointless and serene, beautiful, mean and light-hearted.  What an extraordinary privilege to still be here.

Over the sea and back again, over the sea and back again.

I’ll see you here next week, when we can continue on our voyage together, and thank you so much for reading me.

Remember the small door in a tree, that reminds you of you, and is painted bright red?

It has a golden knob, and it’s quietly hidden but easily seen.  Knock, knock, who’s there? 

It’s you.

Two super massive black holes, collide and coalesce their energies, becoming one.  If a third arrives, or tries to join in, it is expelled and is flown over to a further galaxy.  Let’s travel through the wormhole to a different place and time, to a door in a tree, with a door knob.

No one really knows about the moon.

All these stars and planets, rotating like the eggs in your ovaries, silently invisible and tiny enough to be bigger than space. 

When does the universe end?

A virus, a shark, a rising tide, a footprint, elephants herding through China, ice melts.

And beauty, and laughter, and love and sunsets.

Be on the beach, swim in the sea, breathe in the sunlight. Find the door in the tree that reminds you of you.

Inside it’s cool. 

A warm draft passes by your forehead.  It’s small enough for super massive holes to live in.  One day, while playing pool with the planets, God lifted up his cue and asked “double or nothing?”  You agreed to play another game, who knows if you’re being hustled.

Its insidious selfishness, horror and scab like disgust, also comes with sea horizons and joy: unfiltered, uncontained, immeasurable joy.  All around and inside.  Your atoms, your molecules, your heart keeps the engine running.

There is a day, a summer, a laughter, a wooden door in the bottom of the tree.

Knock, knock, who’s there?

It’s me.

On Monday, I listened to News by accident. 

I thought I was downloading a meditation from the internet, but News slipped through by mistake. Shocked, I rushed over to my device as quickly as I could, which took me out of Warrior Pose unexpectedly, and I hurt my lower back in the process.  I have an exceptionally low tolerance level for pain, so I have been covering myself in Deep Heat, and ingesting Nurofen, every four to six hours, since.

In the few moments where News did get into the apartment, I learned that Boris is now a Catholic and has married his third wife.  I learned that more restrictions are being eased, and that the virus is still raging and mutating. I learned that everyone in Ireland is cross about the litter.

I may have mentioned this before, but the litter really gets to me.

Some people blame The Youth for leaving their rubbish all over the streets, parks and beaches.  Some people blame councils for not having robust waste management systems in place.  Some people blame the country’s unhelpful relationship with alcohol as being an underlying cause for the litter: while others blame it on the boogie.

Prior to the yoga injury, I had become increasingly interested in the work of two Welsh friends, Karon and Sarah.  The litter problem in Blaenau Gwent was rising, so they decided to stop complaining, and start fixing.  Karon and Sarah are now Litter Champions of the local area and clean up rubbish as volunteers.  Excited about my own Litter Journey, I signed up to An Taisce’s National Spring Clean (Ireland’s nationwide anti-litter campaign), and waited for my starter kit to come in the post.

I couldn’t wait for my starter kit to come in the post, so I set out without the regulation clothing (or safety gloves).  I took an empty bin-bag, walked to the end of the street, began to pick up the rubbish, and stopped when the bag was full.  It was remarkably simple, zen like and enjoyable. It had a beginning, a middle and an end.

The best thing about it, was the praise.

I live on a busy city centre street, with plenty of foot fall and a LUAS stop.  Dubliners are chatty and interactive at the best of times, but even more so when there’s an unusual sighting on the street, of a lone woman with a bin-bag, and a lower back injury.

All the comments were encouraging and filled with magnificent praise.

“Fair play to you Mrs”.

“You should get a gold medal for that!”

“Ah, aren’t you great now, for doing that!”

“I hope no one messes it up for you, it’s only gorgeous”.

I wanted to reply to the strangers “not all heroes wear capes,” but I decided to be silently modest instead. 

The second time I cleaned my street, I developed a benevolent nod in acknowledgment of the strangers’ praise, and by my third clean, I was simply replying “you’re very welcome” to anyone who wanted to thank me.

How things have changed since March 2020.

Back then, I used to scream at my partner, “do not go to the supermarket for single item purchases, that is a HIGH RISK activity”.  Now I pick up other people’s rubbish by hand.  Hands covered by regulation protective glove wear, but hands all the same. 

We mammals are so adaptable.

Day 447:  tended to the Spider Plants, ate Tiramisu, went for a walk in an anti-clockwise direction, cleaned the street with my new HiVis vest and gloves.  Watched The Office (USA), noticed that the clock said 6.30pm and got a shock because I thought I’d forgotten to call Dad at 6.00pm. 

I think we need another word for boredom.

Whatever *this* is, it isn’t boredom. 

It’s far too menacing, hateful and insidious to be called boredom, but I don’t have another suggestion.  It feels like a conclusion, without an ending, or an ending without a full stop.  It’s a dash rather than a full stop or a comma – Emily Dickenson used the M-dash a lot in her writing.  She used it when full stops felt too final, and commas too vague.  Maybe that’s where we are – the dash at the end of a sentence – an outdoors summer with time passing on –

Are we nearly there yet – I don’t know – who’s to say? –

Further observation necessary.

Gather around your light and listen to these stories. 

Come closer to the sounds, and hear what tales there are to tell.  Learn from the stories, all you can about salt.  Memories of pink, Himalayan salt.  Dreams of Vietnamese salt farms; next to visions of naps in hammocks, after watching the sea water evaporate.  Journeys for salt.  Killer salt, helpful salt, indifferent salt, arrogant salt.  Peculiar compound that we love.

Once upon a time there was a salt farm in Viet Nam.  Seven people are napping in the hammocks after a delicious lunch of sea food with rice wine.  The radio is on, but no one listens to the man who is talking about the weather.  Everyone knows it is hot, and even the sun is tired.

From the kitchen, a small child watches as two slugs and a snail get covered over by a mountain of salt, and as their bodies evaporate, they transition, by osmosis into nothingness.  Except that it’s not nothing, thinks the small child who is watching, because nothing can be nothing.  It’s just something else now, some other matter that we don’t have the name for.  The child sweeps it up from the floor and returns to the tasks in the kitchen.

Just add salt.

Further away, on a snow covered mountain with a lake view, the salt is used to change the snow into water, and this makes the onlookers smile.  Is it magic?  No, just physics, and how easy it is to dilute the snow when you know how. 

Evil salt, helpful salt, kind salt and gentle salt.  Friend of tequila, enemy of thine mind.

Back to the sea, and the first thing the two swimmers notice is the smell of salt.  The blue of memory relaxes the mind, and the colours whisper again “you have been here before”.  The good sea air, and the views of the horizon are what we love so much.  Is it the sound of the never ending waves, or the rhythm that helps us breathe well?  Is it the wind on our faces, or the smiles from the other swimmers that encourage us to say to strangers, “here is the sea for you, it welcomes you”.

Unlike Lot’s wife, we crave more of it. 

We need the crystalline mineral to preserve our food, and our memories; carefully covered in bees wax wraps, and hidden at the bottom of a cupboard.  One day we’ll see a seahorse, and when we do, we’ll lean in closer and ask him “do you love the full moons, the smell of summer, or the taste of salt best?”

We’ll wait in the quiet for him to answer.

Buttercups are the rebels of the canal banks.

They dangle towards the water, like elite mountaineers, without ropes or fear.  They tantalise the ladybirds, and flaunt their yellow heads, under the noses of the caterpillars.

Sometimes the buttercups smile at the less brave flowers, who don’t wish to swing too near to the water, and they say, “it’s better over here where the action is”.

Buttercups are rock stars.

They swagger and they roll, and they rock and laugh, and live on the water’s edge. Buttercups don’t have pension plans, they don’t worry about tomorrow and they never grow old.  Buttercups lure and they sway again, and they dance all night long.  They are always on the road.

Do you play the piano, little daisy, what’s your favourite tune?  Are you interested in politics?  Are you religious or are you more comfortable describing yourself as spiritual?  How long have you been vegan and do have any allergies we should know about?

Do you like dancing, in the shade of the tree, little daisy?  How much do you remember and what do you see?  Do you think things are harder now, in this year that didn’t happen, or does it feel just the same to you?  Is it like previous plagues and poor harvests?  Do you care?

Do you, and your battalion of friends prefer moving under the guidance of the sun or the moon, little daisy?  Are you happy in the soil, or would you prefer to be part of a magnificent chain, in the hair of a young woman, enjoying the afternoon?  Would you like to spend time in a vase?

Modest little daisy, so grateful and kind, all eyes and all seeing, beneath us as we pass.

There is a dandelion near the canal, in a rainstorm in May.

It stretches its stem and arcs into the wind, like an ancient, wise yogi.

It protects its head with saffron coloured petals, and lets the water droplets fall into the roots.

It seems too gentle, lost and alone.

All still the dandelion.

After the wind, when the clouds run away, and the blue skies whisper “it’s now calm again,” the dandelion breathes out and sequesters the rain.  Each miraculous molecule of water, used up by parched needs.

An ounce of love, for every moment the same.

Unguarded, untamed, uncared for.

Gentle little dandelion, so lost and alone.

This brightly coloured dancer has seen it all before.  An ensemble of bees, bugs and butterflies visit, stop near the venerable healer with soft medicine. Some stay for tea before they travel on.  The living and the soil admire their atoms, entrust their kindness and compliments. 

Dimensional otherness, elsewhere and sublime.

A previous little dandelion, mixing in harmony for all of eternity, surrounding itself, in a rainstorm in May.

There is a group of people in Dublin city, who think it’s reasonable that their dogs defecate all over the pavements and parks, and they think it’s just fine to leave the mess there.  Most dog owners pick up the poo and dispose of it responsibly, but a smaller sub-section do not adhere to these rules.  Some people pick up the poo, but then leave the little plastic bags of excrement on the tops of walls, on the branches of trees, or down on the ground where they think no one can see. 

I don’t know why these people think this behaviour is OK, but I do wish they would stop.

Another group of people I have grown to despise, is those who enjoy their urban picnics and leave their rubbish behind.  They like to leave their empty drinks and food containers behind in the parks or on the banks of canals, and they believe it’s reasonable for someone else (a person who is not them), to come along and clean up the mess.  For some reason, they find it impossible to take the rubbish home with them, if the litter bins are full, and so leave it behind until, when? 

I don’t know why these people think this behaviour is OK, but I do hope soon, they will stop.

A third group of people I begrudge, dislike and am hateful of, is the people who play music loudly in public.  There is a direct correlation between how loudly someone plays their music, and how God awful it is.  For some magical reason, they believe that I would like to enjoy them playing the same song seven times in a row, and they consider my afternoon enhanced by my chance to listen to their tunes.

Last, but not least are the Guideline Breakers, and they believe the lockdown rules don’t apply to them.  They drop into the shop without a mask, or they go the wrong way round a one way supermarket.  They have a few friends over on a Friday night, or an impromptu barbecue in the garden.

These are the four most hated groups of people in Ireland, according to a survey that I just devised and answered myself.  These are the most heinous crimes, against other citizens in the city, and the final list above is as it is.

I finally understand how so many of the witches, accused of magic in the medieval period, were originally accused by people they knew.  The women were tried and sentenced by the Inquisitors and the Church, but they came to the authorities’ attention after being identified by people from their own villages and communities. 

Now I know why.

Those villagers were just really, really cross.

I’m so tired and weary and fed up and really, really cross, aren’t you? 

If I were a medieval villager, I would probably accuse almost everyone I knew of heresy, just for the fucking hell of it, and yes my little reader, that includes YOU!  You’ve probably broken some guideline, or played music too loudly, so I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.  You’re accused too!  If it makes you feel any better, you can accuse me too. 

I don’t care.

We’re speeding out of another lockdown, while the mutating virus continues to rage, and the death toll skips into its third million.  While this surreal, grotesque, nightmare-fairy tale continues we dance, and play music and we laugh.  The glaciers are melting, the sea water levels are rising, the forests are on fire and we’re outside enjoying the unseasonably good April weather.

Our selfish species continues to lie to itself and sleep, while ignoring the very mess we leave behind.  We defecate, abandon rubbish, play music too loudly and ignore the guidelines we wrote, while we shrug and ask, “what can we do?”

It’s all so effortlessly non-permanent, ever changing and mystical, but the real mystery is just out of reach.  The answers are just beyond the blue light at dawn or the remains at the bottom of a tea cup. 

We were once all under the sea, and the dinosaurs once called this home.

What can I say; things change. 

One day, we weren’t here, and one day we won’t be here again; the light and the darkness are the same.

Last night I dreamed I was a zookeeper again.

I’m often highly competent in my dreams.  I am frequently found operating complicated industrial machinery like aeroplanes, submarines and nuclear power stations, and the responsibility never makes me nervous.  The fact that I was a zookeeper, in my dream, didn’t worry me at all, and I felt completely at ease in the role.  The only thing I found odd was that so many people, outside of the zoo, were queuing.

The people in my dreams have been wearing masks for some time.  I’ve attended some zooms in the sleeping hours, but last night was the first time I dreamed of the queues.

I don’t mind the queues.

I like the spontaneous conversations, and opportunities for oversharing with strangers, that can happen in a good, Dublin city, supermarket queue.  You can have a quick-fire chat, express your opinion, and move on with your life without recourse. Another great thing is, that the interaction doesn’t end with somebody saying, “sorry Ruth, I can’t hear you, you’re on mute!”

I chat to the random people in the queues, and I talk to the supermarket staff inside.   I lurk in the frozen food aisles until a member of staff comes my way, and it’s there that I launch into my line of questioning.

“How’s your brother?” I ask a member of staff I’m most familiar with. 

“Did they get to the bottom of that credit card scam, or are the fraud section still investigating?”

If the staff won’t engage with me, I try to converse with other shoppers instead.

“I don’t even like mushy peas,” I say to someone I’ve never met before.      

“I like real peas from a pod” I continue.  “All the same, it’s handy to have a few tins in the dried food cupboard.  My word, do you remember how everyone bought loads of tinned food in the beginning of Lockdown One?  Such a long time ago now, hard to comprehend”.

This kind of behaviour produces one of two results. 

Either the other shopper will nod kindly at me, and then move away quietly.  Or they will respond to my comment with gusto and enthusiasm.

“I think mushy peas are the devil’s food!” they say, eyes flashing wildly, hair unkempt.

“I will not permit them in my kitchen!  Mushy peas soften your brain tissue and make you go vegan.  Bill Gates is behind the Big Pea industry, and I know there are peas in the vaccines!”

You never know who you might run into while shopping in the supermarket, and that’s the exciting thing about it.  The supermarkets and the queues are the only places left for spontaneous chats; they are the beer gardens and the cigarette areas of yonder year.

There are queues on Everest now. 

Remember the photo, by Nirma Purja, that showed all the people queuing to summit Everest, like you might queue for a ride in Disney Land?  I was looking at that photo again, and I honestly couldn’t believe it.  I’ve been watching a lot of documentaries and films about Everest this week.  In fact, I now only refer to the mountain by the name of Chomolungma, and I would appreciate it if you would do likewise.

My partner asks me “how’s the training going for your bid for the summit?” when he sees that I’m resting in between the mountaineering documentaries on Youtube.

“Everything’s fine” I tell him.  “The conditions are excellent, and I hope to be through the Khumbu Icefall by sunset!”

“Good to hear!” he says encouragingly, “radio through if you need any supplies”.

He’s always been very supportive of my projects.

The only two things preventing me from attempting to summit this season are finances and ability.  Apart from that, I’m ready to put together a small team for 2022.  From my extensive training programme, it’s clear that as long as we’re on the top by 2.00pm on 10 May, everything else should be fine.  We’ll need to pack a lot of snacks, oxygen and good quality crampons.  We’ll need to employ at least a dozen Sherpa.

It’s a long way to go for a view, but it’s one I’d like to see.

One of the most macabre details, about the tallest mountain on the earth, is the fact that it’s littered with the corpses of climbers.  Every season, a few people go up the mountain and never return, and sometimes it’s too difficult to bring their bodies back down.

So they remain there, encased in the ice, and frozen forever.

Which is why choosing good teammates is essential.  To this end, I’ve made a list of my best friends alongside the talents they are blessed with, and I think we’re all set.  What we lack in map reading skills, and high altitude mountaineering experience, we make up for with enthusiasm, interest and good humoured optimism.  Even if we got caught in the queues or lost our way for a while in a blizzard, I think we’d be OK.

See you at Base Camp!

Did you have a Happy Easter? 

Have you eaten all your eggs?

Did you get the fine chocolate you wished for? 

I hope you got some rest.

I was reading an article yesterday which suggests that 95% of office workers do not want to go back to their offices full time.  Some would like to go back to the office a couple of times of week, while others would be happy to work from home permanently.  I thought 95% was a high number.  That basically means that pre-2020, only 5% of the people who worked in offices, were happy with their working lives!

No wonder some meetings were frosty, and emails were hard to reply to if more than 9 out of 10 of us were dissatisfied.  Apparently, we were all exhausted from commuting, found colleagues distracting, and found the lighting, heating or open plan set-ups irritating.

Now we’re happier working from our homes.

I prefer working from home, why wouldn’t I? 

I work much better when I’m well rested, well fed, and focused on one thing at a time. I find it easier to work to my own flow at home, and I’d be happy to stay like this forever.

The only thing I don’t like about it, is perversely, the very technology that allows me to do it.

I feel like my IT proficiency peaked in 2008 and that my abilities have been decreasing ever since.  Up until 2008, I could find my way around a computer and I rarely felt lost.  Now the proliferation of browsers and apps make me sea-sick, and I’m often confused by the myriad of ways there are for adult humans to communicate with one another. 

“Is this desktop app compliant with this android device?”

I don’t know.

How should I know?

I don’t even understand the question.

The other thing I’m finding annoying is the increase in the two-step verification process for all the apps and websites.  This seems to be a very fashionable addition to modern life, and one I find hopelessly irritating.  It’s not always possible to find the text to open the app, to see the message they sent you. Or sometimes, when I’m looking I get lost in other spaces.

Why, why, why do they do this to us?

Oh, I know they are solving all the problems I didn’t know I had, but can’t we go back to a time before 2008, when sites were static and non-participatory.  I still only need to send written messages from me to other adult humans, so I don’t need seven hundred ways of doing it. 

“Hi, I’ve just emailed you the document because I couldn’t upload it on Slack, so if you can just text me back when you’ve read it and we can discuss it on Zoom tomorrow”.

Sweet mother of God!  I’d love to go back to faxing. 

If we can’t go back to the days of the fax machine, I suggest that we all agree to only send messages to one another between the hours of 11.00am and 1.00pm Monday – Thursday?

Apart from that I’m happy; I’m happy working from home.

Happy doesn’t mean what it used to. 

Before 2020, you could spend the weekend in New York, go to the NBA final in Madison Square Garden, head off to the after party with Bradley Cooper and Gaga, then watch the sun rise over Central Park, and still only describe it as “OK”.

Now, you celebrate if the queue to the supermarket moves quickly or if your pizza arrives on time.  Although I think we’re getting harder to please again.  For a few minutes back in 2020, we were so #blessed and #grateful to be alive, but it seems we’re less happy in Year Two.  We want our holidays back, and the restaurants to open.  We want it back to normal, so we’re coming out of lockdown again and we’re easing the restrictions.

This, as always, makes me feel nervous.

When I’m very nervous, I try and remember Derren Brown’s advice in his book “Happy”.  He reminds us that we only have responsibility for the things we say, and the things we do.  Everything else is beyond our sphere of influence apart from the things we say, and the things we do.  I find that very helpful, when I start to worry about the changes and I repeat to myself, that I am only responsible for the things that I say, and the things that I do.

So, I wake up in the morning and if it’s a blue sky, I smile.

I enjoy the beautiful spring days of Dublin and the wondrous displays of colour from the flowers and the trees.  This part of the year is filled with new life and hope and the movement towards brighter things. The days are longer, and everything is alive again.  The moments of these days are not what we planned, but let’s try and enjoy them and be happy when we can.  Only worry about the things we say, and the things we do, and try and enjoy our days.

We should try and enjoy our days.