'UNTIL THE NEXT TIME

I have been getting a huge reaction to my piece 'Until The Next Time' which was broadcast on Sunday Miscellany on RTE Radio 1 last Sunday 21st April.

You can listen to the podcast of the programme by clicking the link here.  My piece is about 31 minutes in.

Here is the script of the piece.....

“Well, that’s about it I suppose.... no more news.”

I hate these words as they usually signal that our conversation on Skype is coming to its natural conclusion.  Except that there is nothing natural about Skype.  It’s contrived and forced and virtual.  It’s the best thing we have when we are 9,000 miles apart but it’s not real. 

We finally hang up... after the lengthy ‘bye so, ok bye, ok love you, ok bye, bye, bye’ thing we do, as my cursor hovers over the red ‘hang up call’ button on screen.  Then there’s that horrible noise that sounds like something being sucked down a drain and she’s gone.

The picture of her, dressed in her pink PJs lying on her bed stays with me as I imagine her jumping up to head off to brush her teeth.  A few moments later and she will return to climb into bed under the lightest of cotton sheets, her beloved black cat settling down beside her.  I sit staring at my laptop and curse that yet again I have nothing interesting in for lunch.

Then I curse the bloody weather and freezing temperatures, I curse Enda Kenny and his entire cabinet, I curse Fianna Fail before them and finally curse the gaping huge distance that separates me from my first born. 

I allow myself a few minutes to wallow in the frustration of not being able to give her a hug..... or to receive one of hers.  I desperately want to be able to smell her hair and wonder at glow of her beautiful skin.  I want feel the air around her shimmer as she laughs.  I want to  savour the sound as it falls all around me.   

Then I get cross with myself for feeling sorry for myself when I know so many in this country are suffering fates much worse than mine.

I bang cups and plates around in the kitchen and the dog looks at me with his doleful eyes, sensing that there is violence and anger bubbling gently somewhere just beyond his perception. 

I make a cup of tea and sit at my kitchen table.  The dog settles at my feet.  And for the hundredth time I realise that right now what I want more than anything else is to have her sit opposite me and to talk rubbish and gossip and giggle.  Hell, I would even take an argument with her if it meant being able to share her space, to be in her energy. 

I want to look around me and see the imprint of her life in mine.  A handbag here, a scarf there, shoes abandoned by the front door.  I miss her always, but sometimes desperately.

She is probably sleeping now in the heat of the Perth night, under the languid movement of a ceiling fan.  I think of all the nights when she was little and I would check her room before I retired to bed.  Bending down to stroke her hair and pull the duvet up higher. I didn’t know then how precious those days were.  Perhaps it’s just as well.

I don’t know when I will see her again and perhaps that also is just as well.  Because right now all that is keeping me sane is the vague hope that somehow, in the not too distant future, the possibility of making the trip to the other side of the world will suddenly reveal itself.

 I drain my tea.  “Come on dog, let’s go for a walk”.  The pain has passed.  Till the next time.

SUNDAY MISCELLANY - FINALLY

There are many of us, writing away in our own homes, most days of the week because that is what we love to do. We write stories, start (and some of us finish) novels and muse about life in general. We write because it is what we do.

But many of us, your truly included, resist calling ourselves writers because we have not had anything published yet. So we down play our writing. We mutter "well, I dabble a bit with writing", or "when I have time, I scribble bits and pieces". But if we write then we are writers. But few of us believe that. We feel we are not writers until someone, be it a publisher, newspaper, magazine or radio station says 'we like what you have written and we would like to use it.' Wow - what a difference that makes. There is nothing like professional recognition of your words to suddenly make you feel that you might actually be a writer after all. Coupled with the knowledge that this will lead to many people being able to read/hear your carefully crafted words is the completion of the process. Writers write to be read.

Over the last two years or so, I have sent in a few submissions to Sunday Miscellany which is a programme which is broadcast on Sunday mornings on the national broadcaster, RTE Radio 1. So far I have had no success. But on Wednesday the email that all of us 'writers' love to get landed into my inbox. Yep - the very one that says "we like what you have written and we would like to use it" and the great thing about radio is that you get a chance to record your work yourself.

So my turn finally arrived today and off I went in to Radio Centre in Donnybrook to record my piece which is called 'Dad and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance'. The process was fun and very enjoyable. But most important of all, it made me feel like a real writer!

So - if you are in Ireland still lounging in the bed on Sunday morning, tune into RTE Radio 1 just after the 9am news and have a listen. I hope my Dad likes it. It's a fitting and affectionate memory of a man whose 8th anniversary occurs the day beforehand.

The text of my radio essay, Dad and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance is now up on my creative writing blog My Word Songs