March 2011 Archives

I ONLY KISS THE ALTOS

Not long after we bought a house in France I began looking for a group with whom to share my passion and my addiction and at a fair in the local village -  purportedly showcasing the best of the terroir but really the annual autumn "Thank God The Tourists Are Gone Festival" - I found them. Women such as I, addicted to textiles and colours, the needle, the scissors and thread.  The members of "St Jo Patch" took me in as one of their own and off we went, from house to house each week, sewing and swapping swatches and trading ideas and news, offering praise and encouragement and humour and eating sweet cake.   Initially all local, we were subsequently joined by an Austrian and an American, and now it is a truly international group.....but still retaining the warmth, customs and culture of the Haute Savoie.    

 One such custom is the kissing of all the copines not once, but twice on arrival, and not once, but twice, on departure (though, we're not the worst; if we were a mere half an hour over the border in Switzerland, there would be three kisses each, that's six per person ....sixty kisses per sewing session.)   The international members of my local Anglophile bookclub have also adopted this custom but with them, I can stand up when I want to go, give an all encompassing 'urbi et orbi' type wave, say "consider yourselves kissed" and leave.  At least they get it, but with my inadequate French and their politesse and generosity of spirit, I couldn't risk possibly insulting my French friends with a mere wave, so half an hour later, amid coats and bulging work baskets and the wrapping of buns for husbands, we are still backing out the door.

Recently I was discussing this with my friend Síle who is also a transplant from Ireland to France.  On settling in, she also found a group of like-minded people locally, in her case, a choir, with whom she sings each week and with whom she now shares both the high notes and the low notes of life as well as chanson.  "There are fewer than a dozen people in my group to go around on.....how do you manage - with an entire CHOIR to kiss?" I asked......."Oh no" said Síle matter-of-factly "I only kiss the altos."   Aithíonn ciaróg ciaróg eile..........and as Síle sings with the altos, it does indeed stand to reason that she would limit her favours to members of her own group.

Kissing is all very well, for it is - literally - face to face.   But what about the new etiquette governing the dispersal of virtual kisses, those one is now expected to offer - or wishes to proffer - in texts and emails? Trouble is, once one starts, it's very hard to stop.....because if one stops, the recipient questions the lack of 'xxxs' fearing displeasure or exclusion.

.....and then, what about keeping in touch at all?  One has family - including an ever-increasing number of nieces, nephews cousins and the partners of one's friends and relation's children, one has an ever-decreasing number of parents and aunts and uncles........one has old sweethearts and their partners and children and their children's children, one has a few close friends, a circle of pals and lots of aquaintances - and now one has virtual friends and friends back in one's life from the past......

I'm stumped.   Every year at Christmas (well, sometimes St Valentine's Day, or maybe even St Patrick's Day, but still......) I used to write a round-robin letter to a long list of people, keeping them up to date with our news.  Then life, and Christmases (and St Valentine's Day and St Patrick's Day) got more complicated, and postage went up and technology became more advanced, so one didn't actually have to post anything any more......so I started writing emails.  Now I'm joined Facebook.  Trouble is, my dear Auntie Maura isn't on Facebook and neither is my good friend Suzanne and my best friends Fiona, Kathryn and Una -all far too profound and busy to get involved in such shallow communication - who get miffed when I say "Oh just ask your husband/daughter to show you their Facebook page - the photos are all on that......"

I don't like the telephone.  One has to talk to people on the telephone and since I gave up broadcasting - and indeed chasing ambulances by 'phone and doing interviews - I don't do 'phone calls except to close family, close associates or in extremis ("M'aidez!") But if I were to write to everyone, to keep in touch individually with friends in all latitudes, I would be here at a ginny all day. (Rather like the 'ginny': remember the "Cotton ginny"? It is the abbreviation of "engine" and as I always call computers "machines" why not engines? ).....but even if I were chained to the ginny all day I still wouldn't have been in direct contact with Aunt Monica or Uncle Patrick who don't hold with such doings, and I would therefore have to write, fold, address, lick, stamp, lick - and most difficult of all, actually post - letters to tell them this niece is thinking of them, and let them know that the little grand-niece they so generously gifted as a child is now a wonderful woman (she was, after all, reared by an entire village.... nay, a whole island) living in New York biting hungrily and sucking delightedly, every drop of juice from the Big Apple.

So therefore, as letters are individual and Facebook is limited (imagine, 149 characters!.... one cannot live in 149 characters alone) I thought I'd write a blog.   That's the way to keep in touch.  Martin (husband of Síle who only kisses altos) writes a blog which keeps us all connected and amused; friends, family, clients, fans, lurkers, the curious, the envious, the odd-ball and the spammer. But I don't have clients - or fans - and am wary of the curious, the envious, the odd-ball and the spammer, so therefore must employ a different modus operandi......

Ah for heaven's sake....I can't write to you if I don't have a life from which to tell you the news and I can't have a life if I spend all my time writing. 

I'm grand.  We're all grand.  The garden is awakening, there is still snow at higher altitudes.  Consider yourselves kissed xxx

On a recent trip to Turin, I was delighted to see that there were Fiat 500s everywhere on the streets along with the new Fiat 126 which used to be known as the Bambino.   Well, it is Turin after all, and 'FIAT' stands for 'Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino'.)  This week at the Motor Show in Geneva, two special Fiat 500 models are on view, one called the "Fiat 500 Coupé Zagato|"(the last time the car designers played with the 500 for a Geneva show was in 1950.) The other is a collaboration with Gucci, to celebrate the 90^th anniversary of the Italian fashion house. It even has the Gucci logo on the wheels.

In 1978 Fiat introduced a 126 Bambino in the kind of zingy bright green a sportswear catalogue might now call 'gecko'. In 1978 I learned to drive and I had a baby daughter.   For six years I drove the bright green Fiat Bambino, before somewhat regretfully trading up to a hatchback so I wouldn't have to put the gas canister on the passenger seat when getting re-fills and I could get bars on the boot so the dog wouldn't be able to clamber all over the seats trying to sit beside me. When the sales manager at the garage saw my trade-in, he covered his face with his hands and wailed "How am I going to get rid of that gadget?" I couldn't understand his lack of enthusiasm and told him people would be queueing up for a car like that "they'll be queueing up for a good laugh" he replied. 

 I can recount all this verbatim, because I was a working journalist at the time and wrote about it in an article called "Farewell to a Faithful Steed". That little car saw many noteworthy events and even carried many famous people.  A "Fiat Embryo" my colleagues used to call it.  Once, going over on the ferry from Cobh to Spike Island prison in Cork Harbour, which had been set on fire by the inmates, my fellow journalists teased:  "Did you hear about the Kerry joy-rider?" they asked.... "He stole Isabel's 126".   They could laugh, but I knew that my Bambino often got me to the stories before the big boys, weaving effectively between a pantechnicon and an Expressway bus, out of the traffic jams and onto the open road, leaving the Audis and Beemers steaming in fury.  

 The little car was so easy to park that I would go into town and just leave it....often parked at right angles to the kerb.  I did sometimes get into trouble, and once, the Warrant Officer was sent to discuss with me my disregard for double yellow lines and parking tickets.  He said if I didn't pay up, or appear in court, I would be sent to jail.  "Right" said I "send me to Limerick prison....it would be great; I'd be clothed and fed, the 'phone wouldn't be constantly ringing, and the State would have to mind the daughter while I just sat about and read, or sewed a few mail bags, which would suit me fine."  But the warrant officer wouldn't accept my stubbornness, and I agreed to go to court and the Guard and I stayed talking about poetry until two in the morning instead.

 So I went to court and wore a pink cloche hat to flatter the judge - and myself - and when his lordship accused me of "causing an obstruction" I pointed out that with a car the size of mine, you couldn't possibly cause an obstruction because it was too small, and anyway, if I got in anybody's way they usually just lifted the car and moved it a little bit. I often came back to find that my car was in a different place to the one in which I had parked it.  (It actually all worked out fine until the time we were shifting it a tad out of the way and the bumper fell off.)

 Then there was the time I was on my way to Dublin and was delivering the child and the goldfish to be minded by my sister while I was away.   The goldfish was in the vegetable crisper from the 'fridge in the front of the car and the child was in the back and I was reading the advertising hoardings on the side of the road, and I sort of went forward and committed an act of vehicular sodomy with the car in front, and the driver got out peppering and the daughter wailed "Goldie.....where's Goldie?" and I had to pacify the other driver with "I will talk about the tip when I find the goldfish. " (Actually, his official name was "Gerald Y Goldfish" after a prominent Lord Mayor of Cork, Mr G.Y.Goldberg, but he, and the Lord Mayor, were always known as "Goldie")

Three minutes later the goldfish still hadn't been found and the other driver was getting agitated and the small daughter was wailing and I was saying "I'm sorry love, but that's it, he couldn't possibly survive without water this long"(I knew this because our previous goldfish had committed suicide by jumping out of the same vegetable crisper into an armchair in whose cushions we found him...well...crisp, two hours later.) 

But something made me look in the glove compartment.  With the impact, a pair of my high heeled shoes had been catapulted from the floor onto the open shelf of the glove compartment and the goldfish and a sizeable amount (size 37actually) of water containing the goldfish had also been catapulted up there and into the shoe, and there he was, hale and hearty, swimming around. When the police arrived they asked if anyone had been injured and the daughter piped up "We thought the goldfish was dead but he was in Mummy's shoe........"

Maybe it was seven years ago - maybe it was ten - my husband bought me the an internet domain. I had recently taken a break from my journalistic career. After almost quarter of a century of writing as well as presenting and reporting on radio and tv out of my native Cork, I wanted to clear my head. Writing 1,000 words a day had become such a way of life that I thought it was me, that if I stemmed such a natural output, I would explode, and the thoughts, words and ideas would come toppling out. That was 11 years ago and since then, I have not for one minute missed the journalist's life. I began writing a novel which didn't have a deadline so has been at the 60,000 word mark for eighteen months and am very grateful that I have the greatest luxury in life....time to myself.

I hate anything to do with marketing, and therefore have always had a problem with self-promotion. I would, over the years, have liked to sell things I made - engraved glass, textile and conceptual art, jewellery, clothing -  but find it so excruciatingly difficult and embarrassing to sell myself or my work that I often ended up giving it away. To compound this, I have always had a problem with intellectual espionage and my ideas being nabbed and nobbled and successfully sold (tho' ne'er so well expressed.) As I got older, and had fears that I might cease to be, I envisaged meeting St Peter at the Pearly Gates. He would look down the three columns of his book headed: Name (Isabel Healy) Talents Givenc(writing) and then he would look under "Use of Talents" and would find "Social networking, e-mails". The book would be closed, the not-quite-so-pearly gates would open and I would be sent down to spend all eternity with my fellow under-achievers. I would never get to talk with Alexander Pope or Keats, Maud Gonne MacBride or Longfellow(see above and below.) I would be forced forever to suffer the vapid personal anecdotes of bores.

Terrified by this prospect, in the past two years I opened the blog application and tried to use it.  The process was too frustrating and cumbersome so my husband promised he would sort me out on another blog tool recommended by a friend. I began to write again and put the pieces in a file, ready for export ".... when the blog is up and running".

Over the past week, I have been sick in Berlin (because I didn't wait to get better when sick in France before folding my tents like the Arabs and as silently stealing away to Germany.... and before that, I'd been around the world for the month of December.) As my body heroically (albeit painfully) struggled to heal itself - I don't bother much with pills or doctors - my mind raced. I asked my husband to lie with me on my Bed of Pain and translate plug-ins and widgets and explain the exporting of files from laptop to web. This - and the possibility of divorce - is the result.

I am up now and if not running, at least able to make it into another room. The blog is up now and if not running, at least hanging around in cyberspace.... not pretty, but the curlicues will come and sure aren't a thousand words worth a picture? The pieces you will see here under a current date were written within the first decade of the twenty first century and have been since, like myself, merely languishing (alone and palely loitering?)

I write this introduction today because it is the birthday of the twice Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Lowell, the first to establish what became known as the "Confessional" style of poetry in America. He has a lot to answer for (but then, he was mad.) "Confessional" is the easiest form or story telling (the vapid personal anecdotes of bores?) because it requires no imagination. Journalists make the worst creative writers because to them, making up stories is anathema. Their training, their existence, is chronicling the whowhatwhywhenwhere of real people and events....not making things up.

Today, shy of putting it out there, I hear the noise of Lowell's own voice saying something like "I'd love to be able to make something up...but yerra, feckit, why not just say it like it is and tag people?"  Thank you Bob, and on your birthday, I make your Epilogue my Prologue

Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme--

why are they no help to me now

I want to make

something imagined, not recalled?

I hear the noise of my own voice:

The painter's vision is not a lens,

it trembles to caress the light.

But sometimes everything I write

with the threadbare art of my eye

seems a snapshot,

lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,

heightened from life,

yet paralyzed by fact.

All's misalliance.

Yet why not say what happened?

Pray for the grace of accuracy

Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination

stealing like the tide across a map

to his girl solid with yearning.

We are poor passing facts,

warned by that to give

each figure in the photograph

his living name.