Dublin - Unesco City of Literature

Isn’t it brilliant! I always knew that as a nation we consistently punched way above our weight in the international field when it comes to the Arts, but this designation confirms Dublin’s status within the world of literature.

Many of our greats worked in and wrote of Dublin. Dublin is in itself a character in most of Joyce’s work, including his masterpiece ‘Ulysses’ - which I freely admit I have never managed to read in it’s entirety. It’s on the list of ‘to do’ but I may have to break a limb and be immobilized before I can summon enough concentration to absorb it. My own internal monologue is confusing enough without throwing Leopold Bloom’s fevered thoughts into the melting pot!

I am particularly delighted for Dublin City Council’s Library Service who were instrumental in putting forward the detailed application to Unesco. The various city and county library services throughout Ireland are the quiet backbone of our country’s great love of words. As a child I was not surrounded by books at homebut I was a member of the library. My maternal grandfather had been a ‘stoneman’ (a typesetter) and was interested in all matters literary. It was he who took me to the mobile library on Ballygall Road in Finglas to join the junior division of the Corpo’s libraries. The excitement!! There were three little enevelope type green cards which bore my name, address and library number and into these little packets were placed the details slips extracted from from a flap on the ‘date return’ page of my desired books. Then the page was stamped with the date it was due back! The joy! I so wanted that date stamp.

‘I want to do that when I grow up’ I gushed to Granda on the way home.

‘Well, keep reading and doing your lessons and I’m sure you can be a librarian when you’re bigger’ he laughed.

I would take the books to the bedroom I shared with my three sisters and devour them in one sitting. Then I would read the books again, slowly, making them last, for the mobile library would not be back for another week. Occasionally I would meet another child who loved to read and we would swap books. I often hid under the bed to read in peace, neither my mother nor my siblings could find me and so disturb the world into which I had disappeared.

I distinctly remember one good summer’s day Mam scolding me and telling me to go and get some fresh air – that I wouldn’t learn everything from books(!!). I climbed onto the garage roof with the book wrapped in a towel and read up there, perched precariously on the doubled-up towel trying to avoid a burning from the red-hot corrugated iron roof . I got so lost in the book that I didn’t realize my dangling legs were being slowly fried. It was a ‘Mallory Towers’ book by Enid Blyton. Everytime I hear of those books now I can remember the agony of those sun-burned legs.

I never did become a librarian but soon I will have a book in the library with words in it written by me. I wish Granda was around to see it.

MayDay, MayDay..........

Spent a good few hours yesterday puh-hull-ing(for those of you without Hiberno-English that's messin' about) away in my suburban garden. There were lots of weeds to pull, lots of frost damaged plants to coax back to life or to sadly inter in the composter. Jesus, I love getting my hands mucky. I also love seeing my reliable old perennials coming back year after year. The hardiest of them never give in to frost, live long and only die when removed from their little spot.

All of which made me think of the Irish diaspora and what the emigration from our tiny island has done for the world. There are very few places on this planet you can go where you won't find a Paddy has been at some stage. We do seem to be able to adapt to most ways of life, or die trying. Our contribution in the Arts worldwide is enormous and we certainly punch way above our weight in terms of literature and music. I'm not to au fait with painting or other more cerebral pursuits but I think for an island of so few we have given the world a lot. Perhaps our very displacement all over the world is that which makes us so creative. If you haven't got the raw materials to make some kind of a living for yourself you have to make it up as you go along! Does that make sense?

All of which terrifies me - when will I be caught out? When will someone snort a derisive laugh toss my carefully numbered pages of writing back in my lap and tell me 'it's shite - get on with your real life' If this happens I think I might just quite simply die. When I discovered I could write (and I can-I know I can)I realised that I had finally found my my spot. Hurray! I am rooting myself deeper and deeper into the world of words, surfacing only sometimes to share in more worldly pursuits ( like eating!). So, no matter if that -'it's shite' day happens, I can still do it for me, make sense of my world with my words

Now if I could earn a living at it it would be even better!

T.V. Dinners

I have almost stopped watching television altogether, it has been a long and slow withdrawal process but I believe I will emerge from this addiction a stronger and wiser person. I wonder how many hours of my life I have wasted watching inane programmes and thinking I enjoyed them.

However last weekend , apart from the obligatory ‘Casualty’ on Saturday night, I had a feast of T.V. viewing. It was an ‘Alan Bennett’ weekend on the Beeb and what a joy it was. I love that man. His sense of humour, his observations of Northern English life, particularly his finely drawn Northern women. Class. I love reading anything by Bennett, he makes me laugh out loud. And cry too occasionally. And I usually learn new words when I read him. Lovely words, unusual words - ‘glabrous’ (look it up yourself!)

Then on Sunday evening there was another treat in store for me - a dramatization of Andrea Levy’s ‘Small Island’. Great book, well adapted. What is it about England and wartime? They seem to do survival in straitened times so well. All chins up, shoulders squared and tally-ho.

So I started to think about all the good programmes I have seen over the years. David Attenborough’s canon of wildlife programmes. ‘Inspector Morse’, ‘Boys From the Black Stuff’, ‘Father Ted’,’Last of The Summer Wine’,the divine ‘Only Fools and Horses’. BBC adaptations of Dickens, Hardy, Austen. Paul Scott’s Raj quartet – ‘Jewel In The Crown’. Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons in Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Brideshead Revisited’.

Ah, maybe I shouldn’t give it up altogether, just ration my viewing. And no contrived ‘reality’ shows (what an oxymoron!) or endless bloody ‘talent’ shows. None.