The last October snowfall in London was in 1934 so I celebrated with my camera, a cigarette, a can and a complete stranger

Which probably indicates something apocalyptic about climate change but I don’t care.

I’ve just had one of those lovely experiences that makes me grateful for both life and London.  I have a big smile on my face.

Firstly, I should say that thanks to your incredible generosity (see a previous post for what was going on), I paid my bills (two yesterday, two on Friday) and had enough left over to pay half (one half being Rob’s) of a second hand camera.  That felt a bit cheeky but it was £verylittlemoney.  I felt like I’d lost a limb when I lost my camera.  Well, a finger, maybe.  So thank you from the bottom of my granite pebble heart for helping me out. Things are settled and back on an even keel now.  My bills being sorted is such a load off my mind, I had really been panicking over it and eyeing up things to sell (my body, for example.  A packet of crisps and a some cigarettes, in all likelihood.  But I like crisps.  It’s a fair trade).  I was going to post that yesterday but wasn’t sure how to crowbar it in between zombies and Kerry Katona. Thank you too for understanding how uncomfortable it was for me to make that post and being very tactful. And everyone seems to love Dead Set, even amongst my contrary circle of friends I have yet to see a bad word about it.

Secondly, sorry for yet another off topic post.  After an extremely traumatic fortnight, I’ve really needed a break from the intensely analytical mentalist posts.   I have a lot to talk about on Thursday (The Reckoning, oh dear), so it’ll be back to business as usual.  I’m sure that you’ve, er, missed the posts about mental illness?  It must be dull…not reading about it?  Really, what’s the etiquette for mental health blogs?  When people feel better and spend their days flicking through books rather than streaking down the street in their flimsy underwear, do they apologise for it?  It’s a tricky medium.

It’s bitter winter here now, and I’d had my thick drapes shut all day, warming my hands on cigarettes and strong cups of tea.  Then Rob called, telling me it was snowing.  I opened my curtains, and there it was, fat flakes storming to the ground.  When it snows in London, due to the heat of pollution, it’s just farty, feathery little scraps that dissolve as soon as they touch solids.  But this was proper snow.

I threw my coat on, without any socks, pulled my hood up and tore downstairs with my camera swinging around my neck.  I live on the Holloway Road, possibly one of the least picturesque locations in London, but it was beautiful, the snow was swirling around the street lights and I must have looked slightly odd standing in the street, laughing my head off, with my arms outstretched at 10.30pm.  The insurance with actually being mad is that you never mind if someone stares at you, you’re used to it. People were shuffling by clutching umbrellas, and then a man wrapped in a tartan scarf walked past, spotted me and gave this great, big beaming smile, and we looked at each other and laughed with pleasure.  I love the fact that snow brings the child out in some people.  (I know that at twenty three I am technically a foetus.  I find new nubs of flesh every day). Some people sneer at it, but fuck ’em.

While I was snapping and giggling, a blonde girl appeared and commented on the brilliance of the rare London snow.  I’d never seen or met her before, but it turns out that she’s my neighbour and lives next door to me.  We chatted for a minute, introduced ourselves and then made the snap decision that we should go to Highbury Park.

We were both fagless, since we’d just leapt out of our flats in the spur of the moment (and the streets were pretty dead), so she ran indoors and grabbed some cigarettes, then reappeared with gloves for me (my hands looked like cuts of meat) and some cans of booze.  Then off we went, smoking our fags and swigging our beer, looking like tramps.

It was still snowing by the time we got there, and looked beautiful.  Highbury Park runs incognito behind the main road into Finsbury Park.  It’s lined with expensive looking houses that belong in a Richard Curtis film and black Victorian streetlamps.  The snow had settled on the grass and cars and a few footprints muddied the white asphalt.  Our hands were frozen as we clutched our beers but only one other person was around and we were alone the haze, and the park was untouched.  Only the heads of the blades of grass peeked out The snow had started to lessen and sleet, so we would be the only people to see it like this, carpetted and lovely.

I wrote my name on a car windscreen (childhood habits haven’t left me; I also valiantly attempted a three line cock) expecting the alarm to go off and for us to end up sprinting and sliding home.  It was so quiet, and everyone had their curtains shut.

We were freezing so had to turn back onto the main road with cars slooshing by.  It was a drizzle by then, with people hurrying home.  We had a victory cigarette, wiping wet hair out of our eyes.  By the time we reached our doors, it has almost stopped.  We said cheerio and hurried inside.

I’m glad I ran outside and played in the snow before it disappeared. It’ll be gone in an hour, and it might not snow again all winter.  And what a lovely way to meet your neighbours.  It’s made me really happy, even though I’m freezing and I’m using the cats as slippers.

Here’s some blurry, excitable, shaking hand photos.

The Motherland

Hello.  I’ve returned from the Motherland.  How I wish it were the Fatherland.

Belfast was great.  It was lovely to have us (my siblings, anyway) all together for Orlaigh’s sixteenth, which I still refuse to believe has come to pass.  I spent not as much time as I would have liked to with my siblings since I also wanted to briefly catch up with my three remaining friends there.  On Friday, I nabbed free food at Paula’s work and spent the rest of the day watching rubbish TV with her (which always makes me happy) and playing with her black Tonkinese cat, imaginatively called “Cat”.  Given that my cats are called “Boy Cat” and “Girl Cat” (and Hobbes, who lives with Rob), you can see the poverty of original thought that exists in my family.

My little brother, Liam, was there before donning his rags (not so much “glad”, he’s a crusty punk with a pungent yet not unsettling aroma) and heading out.  I have never met someone who is so confident in his appearance as my little brother is.  He is, naturally, gorgeous, as are all my siblings.  He knows it, though, but it’s disarmingly charming rather than irritating.  He kept me up until five in the morning to show me photos of himself.  An actual quote from him was, “Stay out of that mirror, that mirror is all ME!” It was tongue in cheek, but only just. If I have Body Dysmorphic Disorder, my brother has some sort of inverse.

On Saturday I extracted myself from sleepiness in order to be a tourist in a warzone. I took my camera and my friend Stephen onto the Falls Road, my stomping ground when I was growing up, as I went to school there. The Falls Road is a working class, ostensibly left-wing Republican area, full of interesting political murals and daubings. My own politics- unsurprisingly, lie upon the far left, and I do correct those who refer to me as British, as I’m from Nationalist West Belfast and was raised with Republican ideology and the Irish language.

It felt quite strange taking photos of things that I used to see every day and think nothing of, but I always regret not doing so.  Here is an example; it’s one of the murals just past my school.

That mural depicts the Easter Rising (which is what Éirí Amach na Cásca translates to), and that building there is the GPO in Dublin, which was the site of the uprising against the British Army. It was unsuccessful, obviously, or else the “Troubles” would not have been.

For those interested in politics, murals, art, myself, Belfast and etc, I have uploaded a whole set of photographs that I took of murals, my old school grounds and my friend here at Flickr.  I am too tired at the moment but when I’m more awake I will write descriptions so you know what you’re looking at. For the extra nosey, I’ve uploaded two more sets- one of my sister’s birthday and one of photos of my old haunts in Belfast, featuring me holding some scones.  (I have been feeling especially hideous lately, but am putting these up for memory’s sake.  Please don’t poke the soft bits with sticks).

Remember to Live

Anyway, as an antidote to the previous post’s misery (it’s relentless these days)…

I’m not angling to lower the tone of this blog with titillation, but here is a photo of my “Memento Vivere” tattoo taken a while back. It means, “Remember to Live”.

The story of alcoholic liver failure

My dad’s death changed my life.

I had learned to live with his depression and alcoholism, but I am still struggling to learn to live without him. The memory I am clinging onto right now is Christmas 2005, the last time I really spent time with him, and the last Christmas my family shared with him. He didn’t drink the whole time, and it was wonderful. The last memory I have of him alive and well is sharing a taxi as I went to the airport to return to London. He could only go so long without drinking, and got out to go to the off-licence, paid for my taxi, and kissed me goodbye. I didn’t see him again until the last hours of his life.

He could be aggressive, angry, amazingly self pitying, violent, abusive, embarrassing, hilarious, political, sensitive, proud, loving, mad, silly. He was a deeply flawed, wonderful person.

I’m reading over old journal entries, starting from when my dad was admitted to hospital and ending the week after he died. That whole period lasted just over a month.
Masochistic, yes. But oddly comforting because he was still there, and for a while, I had dreadful hope. Sometimes I wonder how we actually got through that time as it was the most heartbreaking situation I’ve ever experienced, and I’m certain it was the same for my family. It is also reminding me how great my friends were when he was in hospital and of how brilliantly my family dealt with it. It was the one time my mum cut out her bullshit, and my big sister Paula, who was in hospital with him the most, was amazingly strong. Even my dad dealt with it with his customary cantankerous humour.

I found some photos I took on my camera phone on the day of his funeral.  In the PD (a pub) afterwards.  Actually having an alright time.  They put on a spread for us, for free, like they did when my granda died a few months before.

This is me- I had been plastered in make up that morning, and cried it all off.

Paula and her friend Adeline who came after the funeral:

Another of my sisters, Michelle:

I’m going to put the entries here, unedited, for the benefit of people who have been in that similar, not knowing what to believe or think situation. I’m also going to put normal entries here, that don’t mention him much, because that Life Goes On. I also want to put this here for my own bizarre reasons in that I like stamping my dad all over the world, no matter which way. It will be a very long entry.

If any of you manage to read this whole entry I will give you a prize.

What surprises me, but also doesn’t, is that a lot of the entries I wrote in that time were happy and hopeful because it was generally a nice time in my life, before it all kicked off. I liked my job, had a beautiful boyfriend and things, usual brain weirdness aside, were good. It wasn’t until the very end that I began to really believe I was going to lose my dad. The further down I read, the more I remember what that time felt like.

People ask me why I am so explicit and forthcoming with things like this. I don’t want my dad to be forgotten. And I blog like this because I want the stuff we went through to mean something, even if it’s just one person in the world who felt the same.

Anyway, click below.