. . . . On reviewing the year
OH, GODDESS ALMIGHTY, I so detest this day. Sitting around in ill-fitting Christmas pyjamas stealing from the children’s selection boxes and thinking about all the things I didn’t do this year. Didn’t go on the Dukan Diet. Didn’t write that novel. Didn’t learn how to make my own clothes. Didn’t win the lotto, which figures because I didn’t play the lotto. Didn’t cleanse, tone and moisturise. Didn’t stop looking around and wishing I was more like other people. Didn’t grow up.
I don’t think I’m alone in some of this, except for people like Jedward. That pair might never classify as grown ups either but I imagine they don’t much worry about can’ts or don’ts. They just do.
Sorry. I know it’s depressing talking about didn’ts, like foraging through a tin of sweets and only producing empty wrappers. This day can be grim enough, what with all the forced conviviality and general insanity and Auld Lang Whatever and parties you have to pretend you want to be at because it’s New! Year’s! Eve!
So, here we go. A boyband-style key change is needed from this moment on. For the rest of this page I am going to be on a higher octave, reminiscing about the Dids because there were loads of them. Especially the Dids which taught me something. Lovely, unpredictable, ordinary-as-anything or stopped-me-in-my-tracks Dids. In this season of lists I hereby present another one. Five things I did actually do in 2011.
1 One Saturday afternoon I watched my elegant Aunty Marcie make bread with the sieve her mother (my grandmother) used and the rolling pin, beautifully turned from a single piece of wood, that her mother gave her when she was a girl. Aunty Marcie might have been folding napkins for all the effort it took to create the melt-in-the-mouth soda bread she gave me to take home.
What I learnt: I need to visit my Aunty Marcie more. Especially on baking day.
2 I sat in the seat next to one of my all-time heroes Gay Byrne during an inspiring lecture by MJ Ryan on gratitude, to mark the Hospice Foundation’s second annual Thank You Day. All I kept thinking when she asked what we were grateful for was, I am sitting beside Gaybo! Gayyyyyy! And sometimes I’d think, wonder if he’ll say “roll it Róisín” at any point?’ We had a wonderful chat that I can’t remember a word of, on account of being on such a high and then I went and spoiled it all by asking him out to dinner. (As my school friends M and T would say, “tearing the total arse” out of the situation.) He didn’t say no, by the way. It was worse than that. He asked exactly the kind of great question you’d expect from such a broadcasting legend: “Why?”
What I learnt: Take it a bit more slowly with people you admire. Ask him for a drink next time, which might eventually lead to dinner. Also: Stop stalking people.
3 I started a collection of vintage Fisher Price toys. Stuff like the garage, the hospital, the schoolhouse, the fire station, the mini mart and the Ferris wheel – which I bought on eBay– and – following a hot tip off about Oxfam in Dún Laoghaire – a certain record player/roundabout. I love it all but then it’s not about me, it’s about the joy my children get from them. Ahem.
What I learnt: Forty-year-old toys are more sturdy than new toys. And the fifth time I tripped over the Mini Mart I learnt that I have enough of them now. Or I will when I get my hands on the zoo, and the circus and the . . .
4 I attended a raucous and brilliant deaf karaoke function on World Deaf Day where the deaf people and their friends gather to sign rather than sing. Under the influence of cider I may have accidentally promised to learn to sign Beautiful by Christina Aguilera for the next one.
What I learnt: Karaoke does not have to be about singing to be enjoyable. In many ways, deaf karaoke is more enjoyable than audible karaoke.
5 I oversaw the unblocking of the fireplace in my sitting room, instantly giving our home a heart. The fire has taken over from the telly as the most watched thing in the house. It feels as though as long as I have logs and briquettes and kindling and twisted up bits of newspaper, then everything will be right in the world. Or at least it makes it easier to remember that everything is exactly as it should be.
Sorry but I’m on a roll now. In 2011 I met another hero, Dawn French, and resisted asking her out for dinner. I stood a few feet away from the Queen at the Rock of Cashel. I was introduced to Donna, my purse friendly Portadown-based hair guru. I harmonised with the poet singer John Spillane. I discovered the perfect red lipstick. I took a ride on a bicycle made for two. And I slept on the street with Keith and Dave, two homeless men who treated me like family, which sometimes, beside the glowing heart of my home, I realise we all are.
I feel much better now, thanks. I think I’ll stop being a New Year’s Eve killjoy. I’ll maybe even drink a cup of kindness. To you, to myself. Have a happy, hopeful, healing new year.
In other news . . . Younger people are being asked to bring older people to the Lord Mayor’s Tea Dance for the Young At Heart, featuring Evelyn Grant and the Cork Pops Orchestra in City Hall, Cork on January 29th, 3-6pm. 2012 is the European Year of Active Ageing and Intergenerational Solidarity. Tickets €6 from Pro Musica, Oliver Plunkett Street, Cork. 021-4271659