Significant Story

Last year I posted a little ditty I wrote for my sister's state-sponsored social inclusion project back in Dublin, and this year I have a little something I wrote for a competition that I came nowhere near to winning (not enough sex or violence no doubt). Slate.com (my favourite online source for all things culturally current) had a collaboration with a web site called SignificantObjects.com to generate fictional stories on a random object, the idea being that the story would increase the monetary value of the object when auctioned on EBay. The limit was 500 words and I decided to write a story 24hrs before the deadline, so like last year I took the train to work and banged out what Sonia thought was a presentable entry. Unlike last year's piece this is a work of purest fiction and outright lies. A picture of the object is below, followed by the story, the winner can be found here.




When I was thirteen I visited my grandfather Paddy every Saturday morning. Inside his sitting room the walls were stained brown from turf and cigarette smoke. Near the open fireplace, above the mantel, there was a large framed black and white photograph, a team of young men in jerseys and shorts, their arms folded, smiling maniacally, a sign at their feet - '1944 County Senior Football Champions'.

My granny died before I was born and as Paddy got older his daughters and their children stepped into the empty spaces of his life. He was an army officer for forty years, a man in charge. He was now no longer in charge, the glaucoma slowly advanced and his hands developed an uncontrollable shake. My first job was to read aloud from the newspapers. He was only interested in sports news and only then in the gaelic games section; soccer and rugby were referred to as 'foreign shite'. My second job was to administer his weekly shave.

We set up in the sitting room for the shaving. Paddy had no time for modern aerosol cans. He wandered over to the mantel and took down a brown glazed jar with 'Bar-B-Q Sauce' written across it, he popped open the lid to reveal the brush underneath and the tube of shaving paste. I added paste and water to the jar and mixed it into a creamy consistency with the brush. I lathered my grandfather's face and neck, smiled to myself and asked the question I asked every Saturday morning - 'where did this jar come from grand-dad, sure nobody barbeques around here?'

Paddy told the story of how he was stationed in the Curragh in 1944; it was an internment camp for foreign servicemen who crash-landed in neutral Ireland during the war. He was the physical fitness instructor and insisted on playing gaelic football only. I always asked who his favourite foreign footballer was. US Air Force Captain Mike DeLuca was 'horrid handy' and 'deadly dangerous'. By arrangement with the US government the American internees were allowed weekends outside the wire, Paddy began to take Mike home. Every Sunday after mass Mike togged out with Paddy's local team and played gaelic football. That year they won the county championship for the first time in a decade.

When I finished shaving and had wiped down Paddy's face I sat with the Bar-B-Q jar cupped in my hands and, still smiling, asked my last question - what happened on the night they won? My grandfather grinned, his eyes on the wall above the mantel. The whole town went out for the night, there was drinking and dancing, and when Paddy awoke the next morning Mike was gone. Paddy took his time reporting the missing pilot, he was never found. Six months after Mike disappeared Paddy received a package, it was post-marked Chicago, inside was a photo of a smiling Mike DeLuca and a brown glazed jar with 'Bar-B-Q Sauce' on the side.

Winter Weather

Portland has been hit by a surprise snow dump, an annual event that the local forecasters invariably fail to forecast. This time it happened while I was at work and my wife, the driver in the relationship, and her 4-wheel drive Landrover were at the coast with her family. Ordinarily I would down tools and car and take the train home, trusting my adventurous (and heavily pregnant) woman to come get me from the light-rail stop, conveniently located as it is opposite the Goose Hollow Inn, a warm and inviting tavern in Southwest Portland. However, I am on my own and opted to leave work in the car at 4:30pm, much like several thousand like-minded commuters. One hour and four miles later I had circled around to the car park of my local New Seasons supermarket, a half mile from the office. Oddly enough I have had snow-chains in the car for nearly 10 years and never once thought to use them, so my moment had arrived and after 20 minutes of soggy-knee'ed wrestling and driving back and forth I got them on (sort of), at which point I retired to the New Seasons delicatessen.

The deli counter in this supermarket is my favourite dining spot for lunch, or evening meals when Sonia periodically chooses to abandon me. The food is fresh and there is always a fine veggie selection, the seating area is amply stocked with free newspapers and chess pieces and, in the evenings, knitting circles (!), they even let you drink beer or wine with your meal. It is a peculiarly Portland area institution, Whole Foods is the big corporate competitor but New Seasons keeps it local. As big a fan as I am I have to say that the one in my own neighbourhood is pokey and crowded and the kids who work there are way too cool for school, the piercing-tattoo-dreadlock ratio verging on the ridiculous. My suburban work spot has an older demographic, both customers and workers, there is even one employee I keep bumping into in the fruit & veg section who I had initially met in a drunken line outside a TV On The Radio concert in Portland. My kind of people.

After a delightful spinach salad and bowl of pesto-tomato soup I returned to work (chains still intact) which is where I am typing this, having established from the radio that 'no-one was going nowhere' in the greater Portland area. Yet again I am the only person at work during inclement weather, this time around at least I'm not actually doing any work.

[UPDATE: Left work at 9:30pm and made it home by 10:40pm using a crafty 25 mile network of back streets and freeways. I passed scores of cars littered along the side of the road or precariously skewed on freeway off-ramps. The chains worked the finest, I may use them again in the next decade or so.]

Vacation Delayed

I had, in fact, put together the pictures below not long after we returned from our holiday but because of some odd http text formatting problem (still not 100% fixed) was entirely dissuaded from posting - such are the energy barriers I battle. I have had many people, well maybe two, ask why I haven't been posting anymore and I couldn't come up with a credible answer except that it was too much like hard work. Yet if I can find myself at 12:15 am of a Monday morning cleaning the kitchen floor (badly), and at 1am the night before applying polyurethane to a new stairs, then surely I can find time to throw a few ironic words together for a quasi-diary of this ex-patriate life for the amusement of the silent majority. Greeted with the resounding sound of one hand clapping I shall persevere.

We had a very pleasant time of it in the 'old country' (as people here of vaguely Irish ancestry and none refer to Ireland), not getting to bed before 1am on any night, meeting with some friends and lots of family, and consuming vast quantities of black liquids - Guinness and tea for the most part, with the odd Americano thrown in for measure since everyone in Ireland now has an Italian espresso machine. I was drinking twice as much as normal because we were endeavouring to keep secret the fact that Sonia was 10 weeks pregnant. The fact that she was sick as a dog, constantly napping, and pushing glasses of red wine in my direction were something of a give-away but, based on prior bad experience, we were superstitious to a paranoid degree.

The ostensible occasion for the trip home was the marriage of the younger brother to his long-term and very patient accountant. Unlike his brothers he got married in a church to an Irish woman, thus everyone knew what to expect - no flies 'dying in lonely singularity' - and the stage was set for a good time for all concerned. Even the nasty weather couldn't conspire to ruin the day since the wind and rain gave way to a miraculous moment of sun and surf just before sunset. Enda and Tanya obviously picked up some tips (along with a baby) at our own nuptials since they bravely had an open bar for most of the reception, this is no small feat at an Irish wedding, it's akin to an all-you-can-eat surf & turf barbeque in suburban Cleveland, small children can be crushed in the onslaught. We made it home that night at 4am to our Clonakilty bed and breakfast - Sonia soberly drove in the dark and fog on roads built for a narrow cart and small donkey and managed to find an inadvertent short-cut in spite of my drunken directions.

We landed in Ireland in the aftermath of its economic implosion, any hopes of taking advantage of the newly humbled economy were quickly dashed when we were charged two euro for a cup of coffee at the airport Starbucks - per my Starbucks' price parity index that was twice as much as the same drink in Portland. The dollar is still mostly irrelevant so the price of everything was keenly felt, with the exception of some very sublime pints of the black stuff. If they were charging for the weather I would have asked for a refund, for the second year in a row I left sunny Portland to spend a week of valuable vacation time wrapped in water-proof layers in the face of yet another record setting wet Irish summer. We had one day of nine when it didn't rain and indeed with one eye half-closed I could almost make believe that I was on a Mediterranean beach. I cannot remember the weather ever being this bad when I lived there but maybe I'm just spoiled these day. Luckily we weren't there for the weather and what weather there was could be found in Amsterdam.

Ah, the 'Dam - drugs, sex-shows, and near-naked women in neatly rectangular display boxes, sort of like Barbies-gone-bad with Russian accents - all of which we mostly managed to avoid on our vice-free and very pleasant vacation. Our hotel was centrally located in Dam Square, a short stroll from the elegant Jordaan neighbourhood and an even shorter stagger to the (in)famous red-light district. We bought small wheels of Gouda (rhymes with cow-da apparently) and apples and crackers and retired to Vondelpark to watch the locals on their bikes, in between visiting Van Gogh and the odd Old Master. We celebrated Sonia's birthday with a dinner in Jordaan, we were the sole patrons, the window open in lieu of air-conditioning, candles flickering from the warm air drifting along the adjacent canal, the perfect-English-speaking white-clad waitress dancing on our every need. It was almost romantic.

The red light district is not romantic. But it is fascinating, built as it is in a warren of dark and winding lane-ways with an overtly sexual surprise around every corner - a bikini clad 6ft transsexual here, an array of battery-powered paraphernalia there, and an erotic museum with some intriguing 19th century hydro-mechanical handiwork. The Dutch are a famously liberal bunch but most customers in the district are foreigners (40% British allegedly). Similarly a lot of patrons of the 'coffee-houses' are young Americans escaping ever-paternalistic Uncle Sam in their quest for the perfect hit - which is surprising to me because they seem to have no problems getting their hands on the good green stuff this side of the pond. But like Bangkok the reputation is bigger than the reality and the city has a lot more to offer than nookie and (space)cookie. We shall be back.

God-daughter Grainne Mahony sitting guard outside our bedroom, her morning ritual. She has a lot of patience, the panda fell asleep half way through this particular morning.

A surprise birthday cake for Sonia, a chocolate caterpillar picked by Grainne and Peter. Daddy Niall guards the Cava.

Sonia took this to prove that there are still some trees in Ireland. Although these are probably Scandinavian pine or something similarly non-native. Her dad recently became acquainted with the idea that the British took all the Irish and Scottish trees for their empire conquering navy - see this link.

Clonakilty, July. Wet.

Happy Finn women and Lorcan.

Ariana and Aunty Mia.

Caoimhe plays with the whiskey, a traditional Irish past-time.

All dressed up with a wedding to go to.

The happy couple.

The (low resolution) Finn clan.

Another happy couple. Note the umbrella.

The happy threesome.

The garden cafe, Hotel Krasnapolsky, in the 'Dam.

Not all the hugs are free in this part of town.

Amsterdam Canal I

Amsterdam Canal II (I think those are Cactii)

Oregon brewed beer on sale inside - Rogue Brewery. Note the transplanted Oregonian poking around inside this beer shop, owned by a Canadian, run by a Scot.

Extravagant travelers that we are we splashed out on a paddle boat for Sonia's birthday. We tried to take a picture but instead took a very shoddy video.

Summer Summary

Six months between posts is a tad tardy. I've opted to adapt the Tammar model and belt the bloody thing out, ditching the poetic allusions and filling in with well placed pictures where words are lacking.

How to cover the events of half a year? How about quickly:

January: Weather was cold and wet. Snow finally disappeared into gritty black puddles. I was warm and dry, literally and figuratively, having assumed a sober posture for the month, like Lent in January, my third annual, it wasn't easy. Wrote to separate groups of people offering advice on travel to New Zealand and the Pacific Northwest. We went nowhere, but I booked flights to Madrid for the brother's stag party, and Vancouver for our annual 10km trip. New bookshelves ordered (8ft x 8ft). Started to fix up the 'sun room' to be Sonia's office, the dining room isn't working out. Sonia's dad dumped several million slides on us, Sonia allegedly asked for them. Changed Pilates studios, have swapped middle-class lycra for twenty-something lower back tattoos. President Barack Hussein Obama sworn-in, gun sales rocket in South Carolina.

February: Weather was cool and wet, so we decided to spend a weekend at the beach with our friends Teri & Randy. The Oregon coast is very pretty but it has not pulled me in like Santa Cruz, or even Ballybunion. Filled new bookshelves in as pretentious a fashion as possible, sections include: art, poetry, philosophy, science, politics, history, general non-fiction, literary fiction, book club fiction, to-be-read, and Irish. My efforts to include an erotic shelf were thwarted, magazines apparently are not allowed. Continued to fix up the 'sun room'. Got very drunk in a vegan bar in North Portland on some red drink with Southern Comfort and Tequila, started the night with a veggie chili dog and a side of brussels sprouts, was sick for two days thereafter. Sonia continued to spend every waking hour scanning and archiving the Halvorson slide collection. Pilates continuing, the view is better but the space is cramped.

The big bookshelf.

March. Weather was cool and wet. We spent a very pleasant weekend in LA with Sonia's family. Sonia's labours over the slides were translated into a mammoth 4hr slide show which I saw twice. I now know more about her family's history than my own, her dad was also very cute as a 2yr old. Ireland beat Wales in rugby to win the 6-nations grand slam for the 1st time in 60yrs, I watched it on a lap top in my father-in-law's condo before the slide show. I screamed and swore a lot before the uncomprehending in-laws but was hoarse and happy for the following 8hrs. Back in Portland we ran the Shamrock Run for the second year, rain was horizontal, winds were hurricane-esque, we were very slow and very wet. Celebrated Paddy's day in local pub, almost won the pub-quiz, subject was Ireland-Green, got all the Irish questions but what the hell is 'Ann Of Green Gables'. Turned 38, celebrated with a four day NBA basketball, dinner/concert, dinner/concert, and dinner. Beginning of minor obsession with local basketball team - Portland Trailblazers. 'Sun room' not finished. Pilate's abandoned, intricate body art notwithstanding, the back is no better.

Sonia's great-grandparents on a visit to Egypt.

April: Weather is warming, still wet. Booked flights to Ireland and accommodation for De Wedding, managed to squeeze in a final few days in Amsterdam. This trip will consume 11 of my 15 vacation days, if I stay with my current employer I jump to 20 next year, that's still 7 less than I had when I started work 17yrs ago! Went to Vancouver for the 10km run. As can be seen below our Canadian running partners are quite the fit feckers, we've long since given up competing with the bastards. Note the improvement in the Halvorson time as her lung function wheezes back to quasi-normality. I have no excuse for my poor showing except I was feeling a little tired that morning.

________'06_____'07____'08______'09
Finn_____57:39___n/a*___56:03____58:46
Halvorson_1:05:12__n/a*___1:07:32___1.02.42
Hughes___51:56___49:41__49:17____51.49
Taylor____53:05___51:42__53:31____n/a**

* Withdrawal due to injury (Finn back).
** Withdrawal due to injury (ankle, or maybe arse).

Courtesy of my extravagant woman we went to a Blazer's play-off game against Yao Ming's Houston Rockets, we won that game but lost the series. Courtesy of my extravagant woman we got hit with a massive tax bill, she blames the TB, I couldn't sleep for a week.

View from the new 'office'.

May: Warm-ish weather, not so wet. Trip to Ashland to prepare for the tourist season, lots of beers and food and weeding. Sonia has decided to try and sell the place, but not til August. She opted to stay on for a few days, I flew back to to Portland for $100 on a 5:30am flight, up at 4am, it was a long day. The trip to Ashland was one week after I flew to Madrid for Enda's stag. What follows is a very condensed version, as much as I can remember and am willing to admit. Left Portland at 8:30am on Weds, arrived Madrid 8:30am on Thurs, found the apartment, bought beer and yogurt and laundry detergent, took a nap, put on a load of clothes, the washing machine leaked and flooded the kitchen, frantic phone calls, problem solved by Spanish-English speaking petite Polish senorita. Wandered around the neighbourhood, centered as it was in a bohemian-gay district, admired, from a distance, the graffiti and trash and African whores. Found several bars and cafes to sit and stare in sober fashion at the Madrenos, taking advantage of off-beat locations and quietude before the descent into Irish alcoholic mania and mainstream tourism soon to follow. The brothers did not arrive 'til 10pm, I was sitting on the balcony, sipping beer and watching, from a distance, the police arrest suspected drug dealers. I made it to bed at 9am the next morning, myself and the elder Finn staggering through the sun filtered Friday morning commute. 3hrs later a bunch of blurry figures with thick accents were in the bedroom and laughing at me, these were friends of the younger Finn not seen in many years, their receding hairlines and expanding paunches confusing me in my semi-drunken state. And so began the stag proper, afternoons spent in vast plazas, serial rounds of drinks magically appearing, euro after euro magically disappearing, drinking games, red lycra & lipstick (the younger brother), dancing Spanish girls, dancing Irish men, vodkas and red bull, and on the second night we made it to bed at 6am. Most of the 'lads' were rugby friends of Enda's, old and new, this lent a certain give-a-shitness to the proceedings, one that it was best not to subvert or avoid but to embrace as much as one dare. The last night I opted not to go to bed at all and found myself yet again with Mark, this time at 7am in a Bangladeshi kebab shop with the elder brother holding forth on the merits of Irish cricket with the perfect-English speaking owners. At the time I thought he was full of crap but it turns out perhaps not. Shortly thereafter he retired and I sat on the door-step of the apartment with a gallon of water admiring, from a distance, the north African drug dealers, the pigeons and the late night party-goers returning to roost, and the sun rising over the red tiled Catholic girl's school next door. A couple of hours later as I staggered through Madrid airport I kept hearing voices, mostly Mark's, I would turn suddenly and stare, expecting a naked rugby player from Kildare to come charging through the crowd of travelers, but no it was just me with a weakened body and a weaker mind. The trip home was a blur for the first half to Philadelphia but at least I slept on the plane, the 5hr flight to Portland nearly killed me: small, cramped, crowded, warm, head nodding in momentary slumber and cracking back into place with loud, dry snorts. I got into Portland at 8:30pm on Sunday (that would be 2:30am in Madrid), went to work the next day, played basketball after work and scored a nice lay-up after a well executed pump-fake. Two weeks later my system collapsed and I slept for 24hrs. That was a once in a decade trip and subject of a short story at some point to be called Mi Hermano, or Bad Toro.


June: Tentatively sunny and relatively dry. A month of yard work mostly, some nice hikes thrown in for measure. I realised that a cubic yard is 27 cubic feet and not 9 but only after I ordered 7 yards of top soil, about 4 yards too many.

Soil anyone?

The sanctuary.

A very good raspberry crop this year. Lovely with cream.

More foodstuff - potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, basil, peppers. The black thing is the compost bin, conveniently located under our bedroom window.

Front of house, concrete wall as old as the house is leaning precipitously. This is the Donny and Aggie memorial (sort-of) space since they cleared this entire area of ivy some years ago.

Tarts

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives--
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

from Clearances - 3, In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984, by Seamus Heaney


As mentioned in the last post my sister twisted my arm into writing a rose-tinted reminiscent piece about food in our family; or maybe I volunteered when back home for the summer but then forgot about it until the week before it was due when I started receiving reminder emails from Maria. So I persuaded Sonia to drop me to the train station for a few days last August (no snow in sight) and out popped the commuting composed, deadline driven paragraphs below; but only after some judicious editing by Sonia (I was persuaded to leave out the incident with the bread knife). Apparently it made my mother a little teary when she read it, which, I am told, is a good thing.

You will note a distinct absence of humour, ironic distance, or even sarcasm. I'm not sure what to make of that except to say that normal broadcasting will soon resume.


Aggie's Apple Tarts

The centre of my childhood week was Saturday. It was Saturday when the turf boys came with thick plastic bags stacked with sods. It was Saturday when the fruit and veg van came with the potatoes and cabbage and cooking apples. It was Saturday when my mother would wheel out the twin tub washing machine with the hand wringer and tackle the week's laundry. It was Saturday when the stew was cooked for dinner and the sausages fried for tea. Above all, it was Saturday when my mother would work her weekly magic and produce the best apple tarts in Ireland.

On Saturday mornings my mother's ever clean kitchen descended into an unholy clutter of children and washing machines and tables and television. The kitchen was the centre of our house, and the centre of the kitchen was the range, the four-footed solid fuel stove that warmed our feet, cooked our food, and heated our water. In a house without central heating the kitchen doubled as dining room, living room, and laundry room. My mother would drag the washing machine from its hiding place into the middle of the floor and set to work. She loaded the first batch of laundry and started on the stew to come and piled the apples on the table for the tart to follow. The stew held little interest for us; we were turned off by the raw potatoes and red meat and tuned in instead to the television blaring in the corner. Only when the mixing bowl was pulled down from the cupboard did we get up and shuffle over, smiling and sort-of-willing to help.

Ignoring the hungry eyes my mother mixed the flour, water, egg and butter in the bowl, kneading the pastry mixture with her fingers into a white lump that looked like play dough. She dusted the table with fine flour and began to flatten and roll the pastry to fit the dinner plate that would act as a baking pan. My mother never used a rolling pin, she always used an empty glass milk bottle, plucked from its spot on the doorstep. Once the pastry was ready it was time to add the apples. We were thrown an apple or two and told to peel the skin. In the time it took us to hack away at our apples, my mother would have peeled several pounds of big cookers. We would always wonder at her agility with a peeling knife, running it over apple after apple, the skin descending like a winding staircase. Her skill was such that we could take the peeled, continuous skin and reconstruct a hollow apple. We never knew what type of apple was used, all we knew was that they were cooking apples and the skins tasted very tart, so much so that we generously dipped them in sugar, sometimes we would lick the sugar off and double dip the sticky skin. This was our favourite part of the morning, this was our favourite part of the week. Meanwhile my mother sliced and arrayed the apples in the pastry sandwich, skimmed the overhanging top layer, and sealed the edges with the prongs of a dinner fork. She repeated this with two or three tarts, shoving each into the oven in the range, the temperature gauge on the outside firmly in the red.

In the next hour or so my mother would finish up the laundry, set the stew to simmer on top of the range, and restore the kitchen to its previous state of hygienic grace. The smell of oxtail soup from the stew mingled with the sweet aroma of baking apples and pastry. In time the tarts were removed and allowed to cool, steaming and crisp in the corner of the kitchen. The next we saw of them was after dinner, when they were sliced and served as dessert. To us children the apple tarts made by our aunts and grandfather (the army cook) were very foreign, full as they were of spicy cloves and glazed on the outside with jagged shards of baked sugar. We loved our mother's simple apple tarts; the cooked apples were soft and tangy, the pastry crisp, with a dryness that called for a cup of strong tea. On Sundays we were allowed to have custard or even ice cream with our tart. By Monday the once full dinner plates were reduced to crumbs, the apple tarts were gone and we were left again to wait for Saturday.

Slow Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Snow, by Louis MacNeice


If I had wanted to experience sub-zero (in the celsius sense) temperatures, snow ploughs, snow chains, and frozen roads I would have relocated to upstate New York or to Mt. Hood. But no, I chose the temperate climes of the Portland metro area, expecting the odd chilly downpour but nothing like the craziness of the past ten days. We've had about two feet of snow, followed by freezing rain, followed by more snow. My car has been parked in its spot for ten days, day by day submerging beneath an ever expanding pile of ploughed wintry debri, the car parked behind was hit today by a fish-tailing commuter on their way to a soon to be closed office. I've been diligently going to work everyday with the help of public transport, my woman and her four wheel drive Land Rover Freelander. The car I daily rail against for its fuel ineffiency and lack of headroom has proven its worth over the past week, its heated seats ('butt warmers' in the local parlance) are particularly pleasant of an early morning. But even the Freelander cannot cope with snow drifts without snow chains, the missing essential component for winter weather driving I've learned. When Sonia finally opted to get them today she joined a queue of 35 people only to find they they were out of stock. Yesterday there was the sum total of three people in my office, it took me two hours to get there and two hours to get back, I would like a medal.

Day 6 of this winter weather madness. I thought this would be the height of it.

Day 9. Where's my feckin' car? Apparently there is more to come.

On the travel front we recently spent pleasant weekends away in Vancouver, Seattle, Maryland, and Ashland for, respectively, a mini college reunion with Herr Doyle from Munich, the third annual halfway trip to meet the Vancouverites Hughes & Taylor (of Paradise Park fame), the seventh quasi-annual trip to Arnold (nope, you never heard of it) to spend Thanksgiving with the HalvoCarlsons and their ever expanding menagerie (now including humans), and a random visit to Sonia's hometown for their Halloween festivities for which I dressed in stockings and blonde wig (no photos available, you'll just have to use your imagination).

With some of that imagination you can believe that this is me 17 years ago. I dug this up after meeting Doyle & Hughes in BC.

Sonia has been exhibiting some photos in a wine shop in North Portland. The subject of the show is 'Fear', a little cliched perhaps so she decided to explore the cliche a little more with her choice of photo - guns. We discovered we had a friend who was born (almost) with a 9mm in his hand, and he currently owns quite a few others, mostly inherited from relatives, including a Beretta - the preferred lethal choice of one James Bond. The photos were blown up to 2ft x 2ft and are hugely impressive, God knows where we'll put them when the show is over (none purchased thus far) - they might be a little intimidating in the bathroom or the foyer, perhaps in the basement, next to the machete? The pictures provoked a range of reactions, not always predictable, and sparked some lively discussions, not always rational. Job well done I thought.

9mm Beretta.

In other news I had my first piece of writing formally published in a book of collected reminiscences about food and family. The fact that it's a non-profit publication by Dublin County Council and my sister was intimately involved in the production should not in any way take from the significance. I received my copy the other day and I noticed that my sister had decided to give herself a joint writing credit (she was always generous) and that a government minister (of the newer, lesser corrupt variety) was also a contributor. It's the last story in the book, which is apparently a good thing since it should be the last piece people will read and remember, I would have thought it a bad thing since I doubt that anyone will actually read the whole book to the end, unless they're like my sister who used read the last chapter of her holiday novels first to avoid the annoying suspense bit in the middle. I will publish it in its 700 word entirety in a later posting.

This was in my knee (see here). I don't know what it is.

I have decided to follow good on my pledge to try any old holistic shite to get my back in order and have been attending twice weekly pilates classes. Pilates certainly does not have the cache of Yoga and is generally associated with middle-aged women and lots of Lycra (this, I can confirm, is true). But what it does is to strengthen ones stomach and lower back muscles - and it seems slowly to be doing the job. I've gotten over my initial embarrassment at often being the solo inflexible male in a class of rubber jointed women but have yet to fully eradicate the occasional flatulent outburst. This is a particular risk when one has been consuming stir-fries for lunch and is then expected to lie down and bend backwards with legs apart, like an inverted squat. I try to look serene (through the pain) and hope my fartiness blends into the background noise of rubber floor-mat against middle-aged Lycra.

On the home front we have been quiet, merely completing the backyard fence, starting a raised planting bed with retaining blocks, installing a brass chandelier in the attic (having first cleaned it with Brasso - there's a story there to do with childood rituals and old artillery shells), and painting the outside of the dormer extension. Oh, and three weekends spent cutting and nailing and painting trim for the baseboard (skirting board in Irish) to hide the edges of the new floor in the attic, a fake wood vinyl affair ably installed by my good woman.

Attic update, note that the attic passed building inspection one year ago tomorrow but is still not quite 'finished'.

Christmas is upon us. The lights are lit. The rented (?) tree is decorated. The presents are wrapped. The cards are in the post. The in-laws are in town. I am weary from work and weather and looking forward to rest and festive recuperation. In the mean time snow will be general all over Portland.

Paradise Lost

The little pansies by the road have turned
Away their purple faces and their gold,
And evening has taken all the bees from the thyme,
And all the scent is shed away by the cold.

Against the hard and pale blue evening sky
The mountain's new-dropped summer snow is clear
Glistening in steadfast stillness: like transcendent
Clean pain sending on us a chill down here.

from Meeting Among Mountains, by D.H. Lawrence


I am typing this on a Tuesday afternoon and I am not on vacation. While my work environment is a little odd these days (the new CEO is cleaning house) it is not yet odd enough for me to be blogging on the company dime, or, at any rate, to expect to get away with it. I am on sick leave, recovering from minor knee surgery - an arthroscopic meniscectomy, try saying that when you're full of painkillers. I had a torn meniscus (cartilage) in my right knee, and when they went in to repair it they also found a pea-sized lump of something else, which may have been the cause of my on-off knee problems of the past decade. The surgical experience was curious and drug-fueled, they pumped me full of narcotics and put me under a general anesthetic - I was a babbling mess for 48hrs thereafter, an unusually pleasant mess according to Sonia. Before I went under I had a stream of medical people asking me the same questions, including which procedure I was to have. I told the first nurse I was in for a vasectomy, she drily pointed out that it appeared they had shaved the wrong area.

Back in my younger days my knee used to inflame dramatically after a night of boozing and so-called dancing; alcohol inflames the joints and, perhaps more importantly, induces the illusion in me that I am an Irish knee-dropping hybrid of Elvis Presley & James Brown. There'll be no dancing for a while, I have three small cuts in my knee and instructions to stay away from work for a week. It is day two of the week and I am a tad restless, my unused bottle of prescription painkillers is looking very attractive right now, all I need is some Gilmore Girls. In the meantime I'll content myself with the Olympics on the telly, the web, a book on traffic (called Traffic), DVDs, the web and the (we)blog. The TV component of my recuperation is significant since this is the first time in 4 years that I have had a television with actual TV stations. Since we now have a flat panel digital thing (Sonia's birthday gift to me) and broadcast TV is still free, and increasingly digital, I purchased an antenna. Now we have the grand total of ten channels. One of the channels is the public radio network (NPR), complete with blank screen and a scrolling text box that says 'audio only'. It's only been a week but already I find myself escaping the incessant commercialism, violence and sentimentality of American television (and that's just the Olympics) to the land of political correct discourse and middle-class mores that is NPR, staring at the blank screen like a latter day Luddite (this is where those painkillers could come in handy).

Before I became a sofa bound invalid our Anglo-Hiberno-Canuck friends (Taylor & Hughes) popped down from Vancouver for the Oregon Brewers Festival and a little bit of hanging out at the end of July. It was a very pleasant trip, that is until I had the bright idea that we should all go for a walk in the woods. Mount Hood is the highest mountain in Oregon and a not-so-active volcano. Paradise Park is an alpine meadow on the south-west slope, it is well known for its wildflowers and is accessible with a 12 mile round trip hike from the famous Timberline Lodge. Part of the hike traverses along the 2000 mile long Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and is considered the most beautiful hike in the Mt. Hood Wilderness, it's also only 60 miles from Portland. The word 'wilderness' should have been a warning, that and the fact that my ten year old hiking boots died the week before and the guide book blandly listed the twelve mile trek as a five hour walk of moderate difficulty. Ten hours after we set off we staggered into the lodge just before sunset, very tired and very hungry, the apple, two bananas and small bag of nuts long since consumed. Sonia was not so much hungry as malnourished, she was beyond exhaustion and collapsed in a dehydrated heap on a couch, I knew she was in a bad way when we couldn't even interest her in a pint of pale ale. The cause of this misery? Snow.

One hour into the hike we lost the trail, it was covered in cold white stuff that looked remarkably like snow, but since this was a blistering hot day in July we were a little confused. Since we were at ~6000ft (~2000m) we shouldn't have been. Instead of finding the trail we found an older male hiker, complete with compass and map, who had spent the previous two hours wandering around in circles. At this point the so-sensible Irish men in the hiking group suggested that we turn back but, as always, were swayed by the enthusiasm and raw sex appeal of the Anglo-American female contingent. With a little help from some fellow walkers we managed to find the trail and wound our way up and down to Paradise Park. It proved tiresome to have to continuously cross snow and ice strewn trails in a pair of hiking shoes, particularly when one's hiking partners were skipping around like drunken mountain goats. Suffice to say my arse was well wet by the time we reached the Park which truly was very beautiful, the mountain looming large and the flowers in kaleidoscopic bloom. The real problems started on the way back, when we hit the less sunny north-west section that looped back to the PCT. The snow was more prevalent and the trail periodically disappeared for very long sections, this proved to be troublesome. Since I was slipping and sliding and even more useless than usual the three others fanned out to find the trail - essentially locating fallen logs with chain-sawed edges. This was a slow process and at times the mountain slope was precipitously steep and snow scattered, my arse was getting wetter. We eventually found our way back to the trail intersection only to realise, not surprisingly, we had traversed a complete circle. Since the sun was setting we started jogging down the trail, led by the super fit Canadian contingent. We still had three miles to go when we reach the top of the steep Zig-Zag Canyon. It may well have been thirty. Myself and Sonia were not well and struggled along slowly. John & Caz laid down markers across the earlier snow covered trail and waited for us near the end. The sun was going down, the wind was winding up, and our car looked very lonely in a once full car park. As we headed down the mountain, full of water, coca-cola, veggie burgers and beer, the empty gas tank warning light went on - it was 20 miles to the next gas station, luckily it was all downhill. We left the house at 8:30am that morning and limped back in at 11:30pm that night. It was a long day but the pictures are very pretty - see John's phone and Caz's pics below. The day after our hike a mountaineer was killed coming off the peak and a hiker was airlifted, having slipped and fallen 200ft, breaking his ankle and shoulder. We won't be going back in a hurry, at least not without proper preparation, and a saline solution for Sonia.

A common sight. Note the light clothing, the running socks. What happened to the well equipped Irish hillwalker? Too many walks on too many well marked trails on too many sunny days leading to a false sense of American ease.

I see a mountain, but where's the trail?

View from the Park.


Sonia and Rock.

The weekend before the operation we took ourselves off to the Columbia Gorge for Sonia's birthday weekend of hiking, massage, and strong beer. The trail we hiked was the one we should've taken with John & Caz, it's called the Eagle Creek trail, it was also twelve miles, and actually did take 5hrs, it was very pleasant, almost as nice as the marion-berry pie, pale ale, hot soaks, and massage that followed. We took no pictures but our friend Richard took much better ones than we could have and he's conveniently put them in his blog. This coming weekend we're off to visit John & Caz again in BC, this time with the excuse that our mutual friend, Mr. Doyle of Munchen, is over visiting for the first time. There will be no hiking, just lots of medicinal alcohol consumption, tea sipping, abuse and Afghan rugs (we're gonna visit the neighbours).

This is Kali. She was the best-dog at the wedding of our friends Tom & Kiernan in Northern California just before we went to Europe. She is the Platonic ideal of a beautiful, friendly, golden Labrador and is originally from Ecuador. This picture was taken a few weeks ago on our front deck the weekend before she died, we miss Kali.