It’s becoming a bit of a habit. Maybe that’s why I do it. Write. At least now I know. Another invitation to a celebration in town, courtesy of a little story. A tiny parcel has been sent out into the world. Met with approval. Packaged into an anthology. I’m on my way to the book launch and I’m not at all sure how I feel about it. Grateful, excited, nervous. Is this a new beginning? If so, am I up for it? Maybe this is it. A once off. A highlight to be remembered on the death-bed. If so, I’d better get my head in gear. The best is now here.

It is to kick off at 6.30 so I leave the house before 5. The plan is to hook up with him, meander around Grafton Street, nab a coffee or, let’s face it, a gin and tonic, saunter in to the hotel, meet and greet, relax, listen, imbibe, enjoy. The jeans have been shed and swapped for some writerly garb befitting of a book launch. A new black knit polo-neck and a checkered skirt. Black suede casual boots. The kids are being minded at this oddly early hour by my mother and sister. All I have to do is get there. Other writers are travelling for it. Jetting in from the States and from Europe. From different parts of this Isle to. It adds to the excitement brewing. Yes, I’m pretty sure the excitement is now brewing.

The every 8 minute 46A has forgotten its schedule. Four in a row fly past me in the wrong direction. The traffic, to my horror, builds up around me. I had factored in neither of these obstacles as I pulled on my tights and chatted to my sister about how the red checkered short skirt might’ve been a bit too young and punky for the evening which is why the blue and beige, marginally above the knee, had won out. Half an hour of waiting with darkness enveloping me and my silly new clothes and I’m feeling pretty sure now that I will not make it. Maybe he can just go on in for me instead.

The bus snails along as the Polish men behind me open up tin-foil encased food and munch and chat loudly and then swig at something that smells suspiciously strong. The bus driver is a novice, carefully stopping, painfully stopping, every few seconds at every bus stop even though we are FULL, have you not NOTICED, and risking not an orange light, barely a green as the other buses over-take and fly their happy passengers all the way to their Friday night fun filled destinations. I’m about to ask my Polish friends for a swig of whatever it is they are having when a text message beeps.
‘Where are you?’
‘Eh Stillorgan I think’ I text as I rub the condensation from the window and yes, even though it’s been about an hour I’m a few minutes, as the crow flies, from home.
‘Oh, ok, I’m in Neary’s. Don’t worry. We’ll make it’.
I vibe the stupid careful driver, telepathically through the floor, to hurry the hell up. Perhaps I should jump off and nab one of the flying buses instead. This must be his maiden voyage into town. The blood is well and truly simmering away in me. Until.
‘Just so you know’ the next text message reads ‘l came off a bike. I’m ok really. Just a bit shaken. A little scratched. I’m having a hot whiskey’.
It’s like a switch has been flicked. All of the frustration seeps out instantly. The mode has been changed to utterly thankful, just like that. He is ok. He may not have been ok. All the rest of it is nonsense. Little epiphanies.

He had been worried that he might be late for me. That the traffic along the quays could hold him up. Instead of risking that he thought it best to jump on a Dublin bike. To cycle along the traffic-free Luas line. Which worked a treat until the wheel got stuck in the track, flinging him free of the bike. He didn’t want to tell me. Not really. He didn’t want it to taint the night. But then he knew I’d spot the bandages and the slight limp, acute observer that I am. So taint the night it did, in a good way. A great way. What did it matter if we were late? We’d get there. Any residual nerves would be long gone. We’d have a ball. Which is exactly what we did.

Cheers to all the contributors, great to be snuggled in print with you, and many thanks to all involved in the competition, publication and launch. Thanks also to the Dubliners around Smithfield who came swiftly to his aid. He was swamped in kindness, the true heart of Dublin offering itself to someone in need. To the two elderly men at the bar in Neary’s who chatted and laughed with him while he waited, and then told me on my arrival to write a story about it, quick – cheers.

It’s the smell of the place that they love the best. They cannot describe it but there’s a smell that lingers after we’re back in Dublin as they wear the clothes brought back from the West. They inhale. They smile. They wish they were back there revelling and rollicking.

So it’s with a spoonful of trepidation that we make our merry way across for the bank holiday weekend. The place has been let in the mean-time. A long-term let to keep the bank happy-ish. Now that the pension plan for the self-employed has fallen flat. Sunk far beneath anything any of us could’ve imagined. We’re hanging on by our finger-nails. Hoping to claw our way back up out of negative equity. I know, I know, ‘mustn’t grumble’ as my dear old Grandma used to say, with a chuckle and a twinkle. There are many, many worse things. And yet.

We’re not sure of the key even. It’s been a while. But the one we suspect slides in and the door is opened and a sharp intake of breath resounds around. They’ve painted the hall a dark, dark brown. Almost black. In a gesture of good role modelling to the kids I do not scream. There’s more to be seen after all. In the living room they’ve painted an end wall to chime in with the hall. Say nothing, nothing at all I tell myself. But then it’s no longer possible. Not when I see the hound’s paw marks pattered all across the carpet. Down on my knees I scrape with my nails. It is paint. The hound that they kept here illegally has stepped in some of their paint and padded around. Perhaps a little scream slips out. They signed a lease. A lease which specified no pets. None whatsoever. There’s no garden – it’s classified as an apartment – so it is entirely unsuitable for a dog. The place is smothered with grey hound fur. There is shit out on the balcony. Mustn’t grumble.

We move on up the stairs. The two bedrooms have been painted pink. There are butterfly stencils on the walls. Mustn’t grumble. We had said they could paint downstairs in neutral colours. The bedrooms were to be left alone. Yes they said. No mad colours, we promise, they said. Black-brown and pink are mad colours in my book.

The attic room has been left alone. Small mercies. There’s an urge to exorcise them from the place. Exorcise them, and with them their deceit. The couple moved in. Then they imported their parents. Sisters. Dog. Painted and altered the place to their liking. Fell pregnant. Grumbled about the fridge being too small. We replaced it with measurements that they sent us. They mis-measured. The new fridge is half the size of the old one. We can’t fit a pizza in it. There’s a gap of useless dead space where the right fitting fridge should be. Mustn’t grumble.

We get to Lidl. We buy lots and lots of scented candles. Apple and cinnamon. Orange and clove. Detergents, cloths, sprays.
‘Let’s go’ he says to me a couple of hours later. I’m standing, rubber gloved hands in the air, hair streaming across my eyes, peering at him as if he is deranged. How can we go anywhere when there is this exorcism to carry out?

‘We’re wrecked and we need to eat, nab a pint at least. We could be at this all night, but after the delay with the car and the long journey we just need a break’.
Yes I’d almost forgotten. We nearly didn’t make it. I’m wondering if we’d have been better off. All packed up, in the car in Dublin, he turns the key in the ignition. Dead. As a dodo. A phone call to our intimately known friends in the AA. An hour of a delay. A battery recharged. Sorted. We’re off. Hooray!

It’s dark out as we meander, dumb-struck, across to the bar. We sit by the fire. Kids menus and pints arrive. I don’t think I’m hungry at all until the pint hits some cells and I begin to relax. To hell with them I think, ordering the beer battered cod and chips. To hell with them and their smoking and their dog and their lies. When they failed to pay the last month’s rent we got onto the agent. She got onto them. They told her they’d no idea why the direct debit didn’t go out of the bank. That they’d get on to them to find out about it. All lies. They moved out, using the deposit as the last month, knowing full well they wouldn’t be getting it back on inspection. All of this seems a little easier to handle as the cod and chips slip down into the empty belly. As the musicians move past us and say hi to the kids. They know them from all the joining in they do. There’s a merry thrum. It’s been a horse selling day in the town and local folk are celebrating their good fortune. It rubs off. We feel we are celebrating too.

Walking back we spot the near full moon, dark clouds dancing across it. We stop for a moment and we stare. We are restored. Even as we know we have all the bedding to do. We can do it. They are gone. Thank god. We step back inside.
‘It’s the smell that I miss the most’ marque 3 pipes up.
‘That holiday smell isn’t here anymore’ he says. I inhale. Stale cigarettes. Dog. Cooking oil. Not olive oil. Chip oil. Grease. Mustn’t grumble.
We light the scented candles all around. We dress the beds with newness. We hoover and bleach and scrub. We throw the heaters on. The lamps. It’s morphing back to us.

We are on Mannin Bay the next day and the exorcism is complete. The wind blows them all out of us. The soft drizzle washes them away. The kids run and jump and scramble the long empty beach. A shell of the day is spotted by eagle-eyed marque 4 and he runs and runs until he has it. Running back, holding it up to us, a perfect white clawed specimen. Could’ve been an ashtray for our bold tenants if we were to give them another thought. Which we won’t. The Atlantic wind has gusted them, far, far away. I will not try to find them to settle some scores. I promise.

Tonight is the night that we brace ourselves. Instead of heading to our usual local haunt we are going to take a deep breath and jump on a 46A into Town. Something’s been niggling at us both lately. A call to expand ourselves beyond the suburban circle. To re-experience the colour and thrum of a Saturday night in Town. The last time we attempted this sort of spontaneity we were cruelly let down. Back in the boom. We hauled what we thought then were our ageing bodies from bar to pumping seatless bar. We couldn’t hear ourselves speak. All we wanted was a quiet corner somewhere to catch up with one another. There wasn’t a quiet corner to be had in Town. We ended up flagging a taxi back out to the burbs. But not before witnessing a brawl on George’s Street. Sirens, the lot. Stunned silence all the way home. We’re too old for this lark, a conspiratorial telepathic squeeze of the hands said. Never again.

Near on a decade later and we’ve summoned up the courage. We’re nervous and excited all at once. Like the good old days going out when you wouldn’t know what to expect. Not like the bad old days of parental exhaustion and knowing full well what to expect. But first, discussions of what to wear? Where to go? Bring the pepper spray or not?
Mid discussion marque 4 interrupts.
‘Mum, we should get the new Dyson V6 Hoover, it can suck up much more when you’re going over a surface and…’
‘What if you Hoover up the hamster?’ Marque 3 interjects.
‘With our Hoover she’d just be sucked into the bag. With the Dyson she’d be sucked into the drum and spun around and around. She’d be dead, sliced into little tiny pieces, whereas with our Hoover…’
Ahhhh. Let me out of here. They argue on. Prices. How we won’t be able to afford heating oil if we buy the Dyson. We’d be freezing cold with a dead hamster. Where do they get their acute sense of drama from?

We discuss trying to catch a show. An utter impossibility. They all begin at 7.30. Seven bloody thirty. How uncivilised is that? We’d have to leave the house at 6.00. How can parents of lots of kids be expected to leave their house at 6.00? The theatre world is missing out on a whole segment of society, which is their loss.

What does a vintage woman wear into town on a Saturday night I ask out loud, not expecting an answer.
‘A dress’ he says.
‘A dress? How do you know?’ I ask, a slight accusatory tone slipping out. Oh well.
‘Because I work in town and go to things after work’.
Oh, do you now?
A frock it is. A frock with black tights and boots he suggests. How very specific. He really seems to know his stuff.

At some stage before we leave he e-mails me a story of his. A story to be critiqued. Critiqued for discussion in a jam packed bar in town. I’m beginning to get cold feet. What if I don’t like the story? What if I’m standing, being squished to death, holding a bottle of Heineken over my head, shouting at him that there’s no climax to it, not really, no little epiphanies, or too many of them, that he’ll need to work on the whole damn thing, just my opinion, and he disappears, wounded into the night, leaving me alone in my frock, boots and tights? Ok ok, that’s where they get it from. What hope have they, after all, of being steady undramatic creatures with the parents they’ve been landed?

The bus seems to be going backwards. Half an hour on it and we’re still in the suburbs. His phone rings with my mother’s name on the screen. Great, I think. Something’s gone wrong at home already. We’ll have to turn around. But it’s only marque 3 looking for an iPad. Phew. The appetite for the escapist night out takes a jolt forwards. The bus stops at UCD for a minute. Something spectral bubbles in us as we look into the dark campus, the place where we met and married. It still feels like our special place even if hundreds of thousands of others have passed through its walls since. It holds the ghosts of our young, purist selves, with our hopes and our dreams.

He passes a tip on. Exactly when to stand up and go down the stairs. The bus must be stationary. We no longer have the bones and joints, apparently, to leap up at our leisure and descend while the bus rounds a corner. We must be mindful of our knees and things. It was a moment of sadness when he came to realise this loss of youth, he tells me cheerfully, when he had to start timing his descent. Being very exact about it. Now he’s shared it with me. As if wearing my biker’s jacket holds no protective sway in such matters. I’m pretty sure it does. I’m going to rebel, I tell myself. I’m going to refuse to time my descent.

The woman standing in front of me is wearing my exact outfit. Biker’s jacket, dress, tights, ankle boots, the lot. The fact that she’s twenty and a half doesn’t disturb me at all. Not one little bit. Especially after learning about my fast approaching decline. We get off the bus onto a thrumming Dawson street. Music seeps out of bars. Very beautifully dressed men and women spill out of doors onto the street. Smokers perfume the chilly night air. I inhale deeply. We’re in Town, together. At last.

There’s a flatulence problem in the Dawson Lounge – the smallest pub in Dublin. We descend the red narrow stair case down into the tiny space. The novelty of its minuteness cannot compensate for the fact that someone around here has eaten too much curry. I have not come all the way into Town to have a drink in a fart infused cylinder of a room. We meander on around to Neary’s, sensible creatures that we are, and sink comfortably onto a couch. Drinks arrive without fuss or fanfare. The down to earth bar man delivers them to the table. No lounge staff required. We remember ourselves. I tell him of the time fifteen and a half years ago that I sat in this very seat with my family for my birthday lunch. How I had really felt that I was pregnant. We had decided a month before that it was time to get that particular show on the road. So I did a test, right there in the loo. I wanted to know if I could have a birthday drink or not. The test said that I wasn’t. Who the hell would get pregnant on their first try, anyway? I enjoyed two lovely bottles of Bulmer’s cider and a hot roast chicken sandwich. A few days later I did another test. Marque 1 joined our world within eight months.

We meander around to the Steps of Rome. An old Saturday afternoon haunt of ours. Rectangular individual slices of deliciously authentic pizza. Strong Italian coffee. We’ve never been in at night. We choose our favourite from all the years ago – melanzane – and order only to discover that the slices are a day time treat. The night menu is different. Circular whole pizzas instead. They do not disappoint and half a carafe of house red eases the transition for us while writing and reading and Rome are discussed. A vast picture of the Steps, where he once took a group of students, hangs on the wall. He tells me how the teachers told the students if they ran up and down the steps three times, it would bring good luck. They had lovely exercised serene students from there on in.

We choose Keogh’s for the last bit of the night, another perfectly atmospheric pub, pumping. This is a pub that seems to be Christmasy all year round. We get a seat in a corner – a rare treat at this time of the evening – and toast with our Christmas style drinks. To the invigoration of Town and to a safe descent. Cheers.

It’s not your average Wednesday. I have a carrot at my disposal. A carrot dangling in front of them. If they get their homework done, double quick, they can come to Power City with me. Our television burnt itself out a couple of days ago. It fizzed and buzzed and spoke quietly without any picture. It’s had enough. I fizz and buzz and speak quietly at times too, indicating a little burn out, only nobody seems to notice. Oh well. We’ve been making do with a borrowed tiny joke of a yoke. It’s time now to get a new one. The paltry savings have been attacked and further slashed. In my pocket there’s enough to get us a replacement. Maybe a little bigger than the last one. They all want to come but there’s only one proving it so far. Marque 5 works eagerly with his eye on the carrot. The others are faffing around saying they’ll start any second now, they promise, and this is my only problem, the logistics of homework. Until.

There’s a bellow and a yelp. We live in a house full of bellows and yelps. But there’s something different about this one. It isn’t any louder. But I know before I see. There’s something very real and immediate about this one. I take tentative steps out of the sitting room. Perhaps if I tiptoe whatever it is will simply go away. I give it a stealthy whirl only to be greeted by a scene straight out of a gore movie. Marque 4 holds the underside of his wrist up to me. A large shard of glass protrudes from it. It looks like a dagger. Blood drips down and splashes onto the floorboards. He looks at me, imploringly. He thinks I’ll know exactly what to do. Any mother worth her salt will know exactly what to do. This mother does what she always does when confronted with one of her kids badly hurt. She is not proud of it. She is unable to stop it. She puts her hands on her head and lets out a scream. Perhaps it’s piercing. Perhaps it’s blood curdling. I don’t know. I am elsewhere. You’d have to ask the kids. Scream first, to calm everyone down and reassure the injured child, and then act. It works a treat. I tell him ‘it’s ok, it’s ok, I’m just going to pull the glass out’ and he trusts me, which is miraculous, considering. I ease it out and the blood gushes faster now and I’m thinking about arteries and looking for something to stem the flow. Toilet paper. I stand there unravelling toilet paper until there’s a train of it, blood soaked, spinning down the hall.
‘What are you doing?’ Someone is saying.
‘Mum, MUM, what are you doing?’
What does it look like, I’m mopping up blood, what do you mean what am I doing?
‘Mum, mum, you’ve got to get him seen’.
Seen. Ah yes. Seen. My eyes are drawn to what’s on display from the gaping wound.
‘Is that his muscle?’ one of them asks. I look at whoever but I do not answer. I don’t know what it is, but we shouldn’t be able to see it.
‘Mum’ marque 1’s pleas are getting louder. ‘Mum, you’ve got to get him to swiftcare. NOW’.
‘Just calm down everyone’ I say, which is rich, considering.
‘Don’t we have a first aid kit?’ I ask marque 1. The toilet paper is losing the battle.
‘I think I’m going to faint’ marque 4 pipes up. He really needs some reassurance. Anyone?
‘You won’t faint, just sit down for a minute, we’ll get you bandaged up and take you to Swiftcare’. At last. Somebody is puppeteering me into making some sense. Marque 1 finds the first aid kit and in it a roll of bandage that is perfect for the occasion. He applies it. The blood magically doesn’t seep straight through.

In the car marque 2 holds marque 4’s hand, upright to stop the blood loss. I look at them in the mirror. There’s something glistening on marque 2s cheek. I think now about how quiet he was in the midst of it. He internalised his scream. Marque 3 went bright red with shock when he saw it. Then he kicked into action. Got his boots on ready to go. We all have our own ways of processing traumatic events. I wish mine was a little bit more like theirs.

In the heat of it I forget to assess how it happened. It doesn’t seem relevant. It has happened and it needs to be sorted, quickly. I haven’t let their Dad know either, which seems odd now. Usually that’s the first thing I do. It must be a real emergency – I haven’t had a second to contact him. Marque 3 texts him something along the lines of ‘we’re off to Swifcare’ which prompts an immediate call back. Who? What? How? Where?

I give over our details at the desk, triumphantly. We rejoined our health insurance in March when some deadline seemed to be telling us that if we didn’t we’d be badly stung in the future. The lady click clacks the details into the computer, dead pan, and then tells me it has been cancelled. I tell her it most certainly has not, a queue forming behind me now as she tries different versions of us, puts in different names each time throwing up the same result. Their hands are tied, she tells me kindly. They can only go by what they see on the screen. We’ll be charged as if we have no cover whatsoever. The TV cash in the pocket is going to come in handy after all.

The triage nurse quizzes us, myself and marque 4. Exactly what happened and exactly how did it happen? I seem to be shrugging my shoulders.
‘I don’t know, I wasn’t there’ I say at which her nose wrinkles in disapproval. Marque 4 tells her that the glass was already cracked in the door. It happened a long time ago. That he was just trying to open the door when the glass fell out on top of him. She’s looking sterner by the second. Stern and confused. Typing her notes furiously. Typing them for the social services, no doubt.
‘So you were just trying to open the kitchen door when the glass fell out on top of you?’ she asks for clarification for the courts.
‘Yeah’ he says. Not the whole glass door I want to say, but I’ve no energy left in me to speak at all. A little square panel was cracked. That’s what he’s on about. Oh well.

They all want to come into the doctor’s room with him. They want to help him to be stitched. To offer up ridiculous black humoured jokes that marque 4 thrives on. They are not allowed. It’s just useless old me there to tell him the lies about it not hurting, not one bit.
‘Do you want an x-Ray to see if there’s any glass left in it?’ the doctor asks.
‘Ah no’ I say, adding the cost of the X-Ray onto the already massive bill. It’ll be a one inch TV by the time we’re finished here. I know, I know. Bad, bad mother.
‘Sure I pulled the glass out myself’ I say wishing I wasn’t being put in this position. Either he needs an x-Ray or he doesn’t and surely the doctor decides that?

The doctor sets about releasing the local anaesthetic into a very nervous squirming little boy. The brothers really would be good to have in here. I hold his legs and witter on about all the lovely things we’ll do tomorrow.
‘Why, what’s on tomorrow‘ the doctor enquires. It doesn’t seem to have struck him that this little person will be on a much deserved day off school, frolicking about with his dear old mother. The brothers announced this to us on the way here in the car. Rightly so.

I wake from a nightmare. In it little pieces of glass are reeking havoc under stitched skin. The next day my sister checks the wound and tells me it looks good. We’ll know soon enough if there’s a problem which she doesn’t expect there to be. We also find out that the health insurer had made a mistake and we are to be reimbursed. But you can’t reimburse for a mother’s guilt, can you? For the nerves frayed by not getting her child x-rayed when he might need it? Some fat bill that would be. However, back to reality, it does mean that a trip to Power City is back on the cards. Such fickle creatures are we.

I’m at the cooker stirring the cheerfully bubbling tikka masala when I hear the little cries. Mewls, that’s the word that springs to me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard mewls before but standing here listening there is nothing else to describe it. There’s something mewling in my garden and it isn’t giving up. Something is stuck or distressed. I can live with that. It’s dark and I’m sure it’ll sort itself out. Whatever it is.

Then marque 4 comes into the kitchen and hears it too. He alerts the gang. Before I can bellow that the dinner is now, finally, ready they are all outside investigating. They follow the sound. The un-abating mewls are multiplying. They are persistent.
‘Help, help’ they seem to squawk. The boys tip-toe over to the Christmas tree. Yes I know it’s September, and no, we are not ahead of ourselves. Last year’s russet tree lies a-slant waiting patiently to be made into firewood. The mewls are coming from underneath the tree. Marque 2 pulls at the tree a little. Then he lets out a long quivering whimper.
‘Oh my god look’ he quavers. We look and we cannot see. Marque 3 shines a torch from a phone in. There they are. Three teeny tiny new born kittens. Huddled. Sprawled on top of one another. Minutes old, if that. Before I can say ‘ah god, now put the tree back’ marque 2 has lunged forward with a towel and plucked one of them out. It’s legs are splayed, eyes tightly shut.
‘Oh my god’ reverberates around my own head. What next?
‘Put him back’ I say firmly, trying to sound convincing.
‘Put him back?’ one or two or three of them wail. There’s definitely an echo  around here somewhere.
‘But he’ll die. We’ve read about it. The mother will only look after one or two. She won’t do three so we need to bring him in’. They all seem to be mouthing this line. This entirely fabricated line. I must seem like a bit of a pushover. My head is spinning from one to the other to the other. I’m in a swirl. I try to slide the door closed while sticking firmly to my line. Any hesitation at all and they’ll have the whole lot in.

There’s a foot jammed in the door. A foot now prising the door back open. Eyes large and pleading, blinking back tears. Tears, if they fall, that will announce the fact that there is a mother around here who cares not a jot about a poor little defenceless newborn. Tears that will say he can’t quite believe he has such a heartless mother. Oh well. He shoves the towel under my nose. Perhaps if I sniff the newness I’ll crumble.
‘Yes, put him back’ I say, looking at my white towel, at what seems to be a patch of blood. Drat.
‘He needs to be fed by his mother. He needs his mother’s milk’.
‘But you could do that’ marque 4 suggests, motioning to my defunct chest, a slight grin forming. He has a clear memory that perhaps he shouldn’t have. They all do. Oh well.
‘Would you have liked it if someone came along and plucked you away from me when you were just born?’ I ask marque 4. He misses not a beat.
‘Yes’ he says laughing. ‘I would’ve liked that very much’. There’s a punishment pending. Suggestions welcome. Then he starts to really think.
‘We should call Nanny 911, she’ll know what to do’ and he sets to it. Nanny 911 is their maternal grandmother. Proud owner of six cats. Yes. Yes, she does fit the stereotype of the old lady living on her own with a rake of cats. All strays, in danger, and rescued by her good self. She will only encourage them, I think, staring at the splayed mite. Weakening myself now a little as they knew I would. I do a Google search, to bat off the encouragement should it come their way. But we are singing from the same sheet. Thankfully.
Put it back, she tells them. It needs it’s mother. Marque 3 has left out a bowl of hamster food for them. It’s all we have. She tells him to remove it. It could attract other animals. The mother cat could be frightened off by others competing for her space. Then she tells them that it is very, very important to put it back quickly as if the mother smells that it has been handled by other creatures she could reject it. Now why didn’t I think of that? Marque 2 is no longer trying to prise the door open to bring in his new pet. He is calling for help with the Christmas tree. Trying to put it back in the exact position he found it.
My own Google search confirms all her points. I’m reading them out. Reading that the very best place for them is to be with their mother. Unless in danger from wild dogs or foxes. Which it isn’t I say.
‘But I saw a fox’ marque 4 says and they are back echoing again about a fox up on the wall spotted by marque 4. I ignore them and their fabrications. I know we’re doing the right thing.

The next morning I spot the mother. She looks about three months old herself. Poor thing. So much responsibility. So young. But she’s taking it in her stride. Chilled out sitting underneath marque 3’s sunflower. She regards me with little suspicion as I approach her offering a bit of ham. She steps back for a second. Then she devours it. So at least I know she’s fed and able to feed. They are so quiet today. I’m afraid to look in really. In case the fox wasn’t a fabrication after all. But I do it. Before they arrive home from school. I’ll have to know. They are sound asleep, on top of one another, breathing fast and well. Rising each other up and down with the strength of their new found breaths. Helping one another to stay in the world. It’s a gorgeous oxytocin inducing sight.

The kids arrive back from school and set to making a fun zone for them. They string things from a table. A silver spanner, a blue Volkswagen Beetle, a Sinead O’Connor CD and a bicycle pedal all dangle enticingly, swaying and tinkling, waiting for the kittens to find their legs and come out to play. They peep in under the Christmas tree. The mother has scarpered to look for more food. She’ll be back later. And if she isn’t, well, hamster watch your back…

 There’s been a little nod. An e-mail indicating that a story written in haste and submitted for a competition wasn’t a waste of time. If ever writing a story could be. Along with the nod comes an invitation. A day out in the publishing world. A Friday in town with pearls from publishing being shared and devoured. It is the stuff of dreams.

First though, the kids.

‘Hurry up, I’ve got to get you all to school and then get the train into town’.

‘Why?’

‘Because of a story I wrote’.

‘Ok. Cool’.

It doesn’t feel so cool running the ten minute cut through walk in an attempt to make them hurry along. I’m on my own. I’ll be first in at this rate. While they meander with their leaden legs, wrecked after the week of early starts and homework.

‘Hurry’ I bellow down the field and it is only the other parents who seem to pay any attention. Oh well.
At the dart station – it has been two years since I was at a dart station – the nice man behind the counter has his back to me. He’s counting change. Silas Marner style. Heaps and heaps of lovely gold coins. I cough once lightly to attract him. The dart, I read will be here in one minute. He does not turn. I cough a great big whoop of one the next time. No luck. A kind young man fiddling with a machine steps in.

‘Bang on the window’ he says. So I do, feeling rude with it, expecting to be ticked off for my impatience. But when Silas turns around he is friendly and he is kind. I step onto the train as if I do this all the time. With precision and a feigned aloofness. Yes I can rock on into a station with seconds to spare and alight a train as if it doesn’t really matter. As if the next one along in twenty minutes would do just fine. Which it wouldn’t. I’d be late as hell for this important day. Late and berating myself. But hey. The other bored looking commuters need not know. I’m sailing into town as if to my job. I’m one of you. At last.
Outside the library where the event will take place, story tellers gather. They gather and wonder about one another. Ah yes, you’re one too. Congratulations. We’re led around to a back door and into the sanctum. An already filling room of myriad colours and personalities all with a common goal. To read, to write and to be read. All ages, all walks. To my right there’s a lively stylish grandmother. She says that when she got her nod it might as well have been the Booker prize she had got. She was that excited and couldn’t imagine being any more thrilled about anything. To my left there’s a father on a career break, screen writing in the mornings while the kids are in school. I scan the room. Mostly women with a smattering of men. There’s a buzz of sweet anticipation as it begins.
This is our day we are told. We are to relax and treat it as if we’re in our grandmother’s sitting room. Ask questions. Interrupt. Enjoy. The pearls come thick and fast. Editors and agents tell us that the book is back. E-book reading is waning and people are reverting to the real thing. Phew. But fiction is not as strong as non- fiction right now. Fiction is a tough market apparently. Oh dear.
The celebrated authors arrive. They write commercial fiction, literary fiction and crime fiction. We are treated to anecdotes and humour as they share their trials with getting published. Their rejections. The books that never made it to the shelves. They are self-deprecating. They are real. They love what they do, clearly. They talk about luck and persistence. How it takes both to get across the line.
Tips on selling and marketing your book, which is really about selling and marketing yourself, are shared before we swirl around one another for lunch. The young and the old and the middling. Those who have travelled from various parts of the country and further afield and those who have cycled in the gilded hope that the orange/yellow weather warnings turn out to be fiction. Little platforms that people are building for themselves are revealed. Eyes widen at the semi-tapped but largely untapped pool of talent. For some it is a first little nod. Others have had luck before. All are there though in the hope that the little nods and the little bits of luck will, some day, come to something bigger. Out of the people I was talking to, with a kindred knowing glint, it is only a matter of time. Their voices will be out there for sure. They read and they write and they will be read.
After lunch a clever affable structural editor talks us through being a published writer. Writing, it seems, is about editing. About layers which come over time. A first draft should be written instinctively with freedom and forward momentum. It can then be torn apart and restructured with the help of an editor. She details common mistakes that she sees and how to avoid them. The sweetest thing is that she too is submitting her writing to others. Submitting and being rejected. She shares insightful snippets from her rejections. How the publishers are looking for either expertly paced page turners or brilliantly original voices. The room erupts with laughter. Would it were that simple. The authors continue to interject as questions are thrown from the floor. And then it’s time to wrap the dream up. Goodie bags of freshly published books are given to each invitee. Then the disparate group is set to disperse. It is awkward in ways. Shouldn’t people who have been brought together and shared such a special day be able to stay in touch if they choose? Keep up with one another’s progress. Swap tips and upcoming events and the like. It’s the only flaw of the day. The lack of a contact list. We don’t necessarily want to be running around with a pen asking for details, shy and strange creatures that most of us are. So we’re flung back to our lives, buzzing with renewed vigour for upcoming writing projects. Buzzing from the fact that we are not alone, isolating and all as writing can be. There’s loads of us out there keeping the faith, crafting little creations. The best of luck to you all.

It’s oh so quiet. Back in the house the ghosts of the first morning are everywhere. Packages from the new shirts, empty on the couch. Crusts of toast. Half drunk orange juice. A pair of trousers to return, labelled upside down, bought as a 6 when they’re in fact a 9.

You never get used to it and it never gets easier. That’s the conclusion. Waking them feels cruel. Dressing them in new stiff shirts seems pointless. Walking with them, singing about how nice their new teachers are bound to be seems questionable. Then marque 5 pipes up.
‘My new shoes are electrocuting me’. I laugh. He insists that it’s true. Marque 4 stops to turn off the flash light. But it is not that. It’s something in the sole. Pinching or fizzing or frying away. I plonk him up on the wall, remove the shoe and press into the sole. I can’t find what it is, but it’s something alright. We walk on and he is slow, limping almost, looking pale. If it were a different child a psychological cause might spring to mind. First day nerves. But he is sunny and hearty and that isn’t it either. The pace slows so considerably that I think about carrying him. For a milli-second. You can’t actually carry a child into first class. Not even if he’s your baby. We’ll just have to be a little late.

We are greeted at the door by the support teacher who is aiding Marque 4’s reading. Drat. There was a torturous amount of work we were supposed to plough through in the summer. We did no such thing. Although we did do some. Selling homework to a kid on their holidays is no forte of mine. There isn’t a carrot I could think of to engage him as regularly as I should have. Marque 3 disappears, confident about where is going. He’s in the senior cycle now in fifth class and is bound to embrace it wholesale. I find out where the others are to be and we wend our way through the mixed bag of parents hovering, unsure of themselves, of how they should be. I find marque 5’s class  and we are greeted by his very smiley cheerful new teacher. He will be fine. Sitting down in his named place he whispers that he will just tell her if the shoe is still electrocuting him in the day. That’s how comfortable he is with her. I kiss him, again, and leave to take marque 4 to his room but there’s no sign of him. He must’ve given up on me and made his own way. Or else he’s done a runner. I ask for directions again. It’s at the very far end of the school. I walk quickly, trying to stop myself from breaking into a run, because that would be too weird and anyway, there’s no running allowed in the corridors. I find the room, the door almost closed, so I rap on it and push it open a little. The teacher is addressing a sea of little uniformed boys, all sitting quietly, attentively. Until their heads turn towards me, quizzically. I can’t see him, they all look the same. So I call out to the teacher – another friendly one smiling through a beard – that I’m just checking that marque 4 got there. A little hand waves at me. He’s right under my nose. He looks pleased and mortified all at once. I’m sure I’m in for it later.

I walk away from them feeling like a traitor. There’s no smidgeon of pleasure being derived from the fact that I’m free now for the next few hours. That for the first time in ten years I will not have a double pick up. It will come though, I know it will. Just not today. Today I’m home alone reeling in the quiet. Listening out for a laugh or a plea or a shriek. The new hamster turning on her wheel doesn’t quite hit the mark.

 As the rain buckets down for the last week of the summer holidays the ambivalence kicks in. Mine, not theirs. I hate them going back to school, and yet I’ll love a bit of time to get on with things. Then there’s the guilt that accompanies that. Which spirals into more guilt. Did I give them the best summer possible? Could I have done more? Taken them to more places? Constant parental anxiety about not doing the best for them in every moment. How have we got here? What is it about parenting today that causes an undercurrent of guilt no matter what? It’s not just me, thankfully or worryingly. The friends I’ve met over the last couple of weeks are all at it. Trying to give their kids a last hoorah, a blast of something to ease the transition back and lessen the burden of guilt. What is going on?

The kids are mercifully oblivious. It’s raining, again, so two of them set up a camp under an array of umbrellas in the garden. They are having great fun sheltering, peeping out, snacking. They love getting wet too. The rain will not stop them at all. The others retreat to baking. Orange zest muffins yesterday. A coffee and walnut cake today. Later there will be lemon meringue buns. None of this has been at my instigation. I’m in the sidelines wringing my hands wondering if they are happy enough. If they’re having a good enough summer. They’re just getting on with being happy and having a good enough summer. Oh and shipping me off to the shops for an occasional ingredient. A theme that has emerged while writing all the blogs so far is to let the kids show us. Get out of their way and they’ll be ok. But I’m still not listening. Stepping back and letting them be instead of counting the super fun outings that never seem to be enough, in my book, is the only way. Somebody needs to point this out to me.
Of course it never even struck our parents that they may not have given us the best summers. If we were out playing, at home or on holidays, then that was good enough. Even the language we use today is wrong. Giving them summers. We don’t give summers. They are made. By them. And the more free-range the better.

The lemon meringue buns see me drafted in for action. There’s that old meringue bit which includes showing them how to separate the white from the yolk in eggs. Cracking and tipping the goo from one half of the shell to the other until somehow, miraculously, they are divided. It’s great to be showing them a trick or two from my small reserve. Great to think that they can sail into the new academic year safe in the knowledge that when it all gets too much they can, at least, separate eggs and make meringues. Beat the white into stiff peaks. By hand. A test in resilience if ever there was one.
The rain eases off by evening and a plan is hatched for a high-tide night time dip. It’s the least we can do for them as this summer chortles to a close. At 21.47 we pull into the dimly lit cove. The water splashes into corners and crevices we never thought it could reach. They strip and change and we shiver watching them. Then marque 4 walks out into the black and swims without so much as a whimper. The others follow, ducking even their heads down into the freezing darkness. They are utterly nuts, of course, but they are determined to squeeze every last drop out of the holidays. They are scarily cold afterwards. There’s only one thing for it. Back at home again they make hot chocolate with marshmallows and settle down in front of the fire to watch a film. It’s the simple things that they love the most. Night-time swimming and hot chocolate. This they will keep with them.
There’s a trip to the town. One of those that’s put off and put off until there’s no longer the option to deny it. It’s happening. Get with it. Shoes. Runners. Copy books. Pencil cases. All the shops are thronged with calmly resigned parents and kids. It is over. Almost.

‘It wasn’t great though’ one mother says to me in Elvery’s sports shop.

‘With the weather an’ all. It wasn’t great. But sure we did our best, didn’t we?’ she asks me, this stranger, reading my mind.

‘We did’ I say to reassure her, and myself.

That we did.

I am a child again. Marque 1 has legs now that are very much longer than my own. Which is fine. A thing to be celebrated indeed. Until it comes to the squished journey home from the West. There’s no room to accommodate his legs plus all the baggage in either of the back rows. Especially now that we’ve added four body-boards, two camping chairs and a badminton set – complete with net – to our already overflowing vehicle. We refuse to do the roof-boot thing, although right now I can’t remember why. Something about bringing just enough and not too much like the good old days. Which we did on the way here. Right now, standing outside the vehicle, with body-boards wedged, blocking the doors and bags all over the place, a roof-boot thing seems like a heavenly idea. I do the only thing I can. I scale over a board into the middle row. I’m wearing a skirt. Silly me. The scaling is not a dignified thing. Oh well. I plonk myself beside a bemused marque 2.
‘Not a word’ I say to his smiling nodding face. Marque 1 takes his long legs to the front seat and rests his bag on his lap. He turns around to ask if I’m ok. I am, I tell him and he winks at me.

One minute later we stop at the garage to fuel up and get some bits for the journey. Scaling again. It is with even less dignity that I scale out over the board to the busy courtyard, stopping half way astride the board to wrestle with the skirt that’s riding up on me, trying to get it back down. An impossible task given that it’s a bloody pencil skirt. Lycra leggings are the only thing that’d work in a case like this. Note to self.

After a bit of excellent back seat driving – it all looks a lot more perilous from here – I begin to relax and enjoy myself. Marque 2 and marque 3 are chatting away to me. I throw an arm around marque 2’s shoulders. Marque 5 sticks a brown foot at my head and I give it a squeeze. Marque 4 offers me his hand for a hold. There’s no squabbling with this adult/child amongst them. I can talk to the front, the middle and the back in nothing more than a whisper. I feel like a conductor of calm, a rare treat for everyone. I can even take a sneaky read of the newspaper. What’s the catch?

It is the moment when I immerse myself so completely in my diminished stance second row position, that I find myself sucking a Chupa-chups lolli-pop. I’m dishing them out one second, and the next I’m wrestling with the wrapper of my own one. I do not have a sweet tooth, Your Honour. I would not do this in the front, I swear. The long-sucking pops are to keep the kids amused and preferably quiet for a while. But somehow, right at this moment, there is nothing in the world that could dissuade me from sucking a lolli-pop along with them. Strawberry and cream. Divine. I suck and I marvel at the flavour – at it’s great approximation to the real thing – and at how there’s no biting them and at how quiet we all are. There’s a car parallel to us and the driver is smiling at me as I peep over the body-board, stick pointing at him. It is not the smile of an adult to adult. It is the smile of a fun-loving person saying he gets it. This is the moment that I know for sure that I am a child again. I don’t think there’s any way back from here.

Eh, are we there yet?

The clouds fly past us, the skies open up and cast down their wares. We’ve missed it, I think. We stopped to pick up the rolls for the picnic and the window of nice weather has fled. We chase it anyway. The wipers are working hard but off in the distance I see a speck of blue. To my left it’s all black thunderous cloud. To my right there’s that glimmer of blue. I put the foot down. Here in the West of Ireland I believe in chasing the blue. Hunting it down. Wrestling it to the ground.

We trundle across the headland to our favourite beach. We park just above it. The blue is gaining ground on the black. It is with a smidgeon of smugness that I take out my red camping chair. Look at this I say to them and to myself. All this beauty, it’s worth pushing it to get here isn’t it? But they are gone. I take out his chair then too, even though he is not here. Perhaps I chat to him a little. Tell him how we’re getting on. It’s a little less weird if his chair is out too. The boys are trying to find the boat they made out of driftwood and old rope a couple of days ago. They are far off along the beach. I sink into my chair and reach for my book. Isn’t this what it’s all about I ask him. A seagull squawks his reply overhead.

Three sentences into the book and a commotion is brewing down on the beach. I’m being summoned. I ignore it. They send marque 5 as a scout. It is not possible to ignore marque 5.
‘Quick Mum, you’ve got to come quickly. There’s a bird and it can’t fly and it might be in labour’. His eyes are popping out of his head with the urgency and excitement. I look down the beach at them. Marque 1 is motioning to me to get there too – both arms up beckoning as if guiding a plane in to land. I take marque 5’s hand and he leads me down.

Many things flit through my mind as I stare at the bundle before me. A young wild bird, dazed and serene but puffed out a little, is being tended to by the crew. They try everything they can think of. They pluck fresh mussels from the rocks and prise them open. They wave them under the beak of the little bird. ‘Ah, he’s not hungry’ they deduce. Marque 4 has some fresh water in a lid. He pops it under the beak and the bird takes a sip. ‘Yes, yes, look he’s drinking my water’. They stroke it. They talk to it. It’s going to be okay they tell it. Then they turn to me, their wise mother, for what to do next.
‘We’ve got to save him Mum’ they chant and expect me to leap into some sort of action. It is perhaps the first time ever that I’ve scanned the beach hoping for a passer-by. Some knowledgeable adult who would tell us to leave well enough alone. That nature will sort what is to be sorted. There’s not a sod in sight.
‘It’s probably just a little concussed’ I say, bamboozling them with my insight.
‘He probably took a dive at the rocks instead of the sea. If we just leave him alone for a while he’ll get back to himself’.
I am being looked at by 10 eyes – maybe 12, can’t tell if the bird is staring too – as if I’ve just said something treacherous.
‘We can’t just LEAVE him Mum, he might die, we have to DO something’ marque 2 says.
‘A vet’ marque 3 interjects. ‘We need to get him to a vet’.
I need a good local person to come along and tell my kids to get a grip. You don’t go about plucking wild birds from wild beaches and take them to a vet. In the absence of such a person I say it myself but they do not buy it. What? Leave him here to die?
‘But we’ve only got here and it isn’t raining and you haven’t had a swim yet and what about the picnic and we’re miles from anywhere and…’ All on deaf ears. There is only one thing to do now in their book. Save the bird.

I come up with a plan. I’ll ring a vet in the nearest village. They will tell me that of course they don’t treat wild birds. I’ll boom that out to the kids. That’ll be an end to it.
‘Yes’ the calm soft voice says at the end of the phone.
‘Yes we’ll take a look at it. We’re closing at 5.30 though’. It’s 5.05.
‘Oh dear, we’ll never make it by then, we’re miles away’ I boom out.
‘l’ll stay a little late to see if you can make it’ the kind voice says. Darn it.
The crew carry the bird back up the beach in some old tarpaulin for a stretcher. They all have a corner. I put the chairs and the book back in the car. It’s 5.10. We’ll have to go like the clappers. They wrap him in a beach towel and he sits on the seat behind me. Visions of him panicking and taking sudden flight in the car while I’m driving flash across my mind. But I don’t share them. This crew is on a mission and excuses to put it off will not be tolerated. We bump back across the headland.

A drove of donkeys stands stubbornly in our way. A chorus of ‘no’ echoes around the car. On any other day we’d stop for a chat and a stroke. Not today. Some move a little as I approach. One is parallel with the bonnet looking defiantly at me. He’s not about to budge.
‘Just beep him’ marque 1 advises and I do. I blast the bejaysus out of him. He takes a few steps away and looks back in at us. The look suggests that he’d very much like to give us the finger, if only he could. We reach the gate and marque 1 does it with pit-stop speed. Now it’s over to me to win this race.

A jeep full of men and half naked boys pulls out of a side road in front of us. They snail along the narrow boreen. Some of them are are facing us and leering. There’s a touch of Deliverance about it.
‘Beep them, tell them to let us by, that we’re trying to get a sick bird to hospital’ one of my frustrated crew pipes up. How to get murdered I think to myself and snail up their arse a little tightly instead. They hang a right eventually and we are free to give it some welly. It’s 5.25 and we are 15 k from the village. Oh well.

On the journey they name the bird. Jazz. They talk about how good it feels to be helping him.
‘lt just makes you feel all zingy and alive again’ marque 4 says and they all agree – a rarity. Zingy. Where has he got that from? It fits the moment perfectly. I’m complimented on my racer style driving. Another rarity.

We screech up at the vets at 5.40. They all get out, barefoot, to bring him in while I park the car. Then there are six of us in the tiny waiting area, dwarfing it. The vet’s assistant takes the bird. She wraps him in a blue blanket – like the ones for newborns in a maternity hospital. He looks utterly precious with just his little head peeping out. She takes him into the vet. We sit and stand and wait for some news. She comes back out.
‘The vet says you don’t have to wait. The bird will be in overnight. If the wings are broken, the bird’ and she drops to a whisper directed at me ‘will be put to sleep. If not he will be released.’ We’re all nodding at her.
‘Can we ring tomorrow to find out how he is?’ I ask.
‘Yes, I was just going to say that’ she says and smiles, a kind gentle smile.
‘Oh and boys, thank-you’ she says.
‘You did a good thing, the right thing, bringing him in. Thank-you all’ she says and her eyes are a bit moist looking. Perhaps she’s allergic to feathers.

Light streams in through the crack in the curtains announcing a new day. I’m feeling a little knot of dread and I’m not sure why until marque 5 opens his eyes too.
‘Ring the hospital and find out how Jazz is’ he says. Ah yes, Jazz. I don’t want to ring. I’m afraid to find out. I put it off, brew a few coffees, forget to eat something. Then they are all up with their expectant faces. They all want to know except me. I take a deep breath, step out onto the balcony and dial. The cheerful voice on the end of the line is not the same person as was on last night. She will, she says, have to find out. She will ring me back. If I were a smoker this would be an excellent time to reach for one. She doesn’t leave me hanging long though. It is with much regret that she passes on the news that Jazz did not make it. She fills the picture in beautifully. Jazz was two or three weeks old and was born with a deformity which meant that he would never fly. The parents would’ve kept him alive at first, feeding him. But after a while they would’ve pushed him out of the nest. He was not viable in the wild without being able to fly. When we found him and brought him to the vet he was severely dehydrated and starving. The vet put him on fluids and medication. Then when he checked him at 10 o’clock last night he had died.

There’s a moment of silence when I deliver the news. Then they talk amongst themselves about how at least Jazz would’ve been comfortable and felt cared for in his last hours. How from the time he was pushed out of the nest he must’ve felt afraid all the time. How he would not have felt afraid coming towards his death. How it still feels good to have tried to help.
‘Can we go and collect him?’ marque 2 asks as if it’s a perfectly reasonable request.
‘What? For what?’
‘For a funeral. We can bring him back down to the beach where he’s from and give him a lovely funeral’.
Aaagh… Enough already! I manage to dodge that one, masterful mother that I am. But we are here at his beach again today and marque 2 finds a white feather that he shed yesterday in the tarpaulin stretcher. He waves it at me.
‘Keep it’ I say to him.
‘Yes I’m going to’ he says.