De-Tox in the Dail - they need it

It was the last night of the juice detox. The 25 year old sporty teacher in my class was morbidly inquisitive about bowel movement, nudging me nightly for detail. I lied. Anyway, I was going to have real food next day, my neighbor and I had arranged a scrambled egg breakfast to bolster our rehab.

My next challenge was to meet a couple after college in a restaurant, so that’s 8.30pm and my resolve was no problem, I ordered hot water and lemon and chatted, perhaps tapping my feet a bit manically as their food arrived. My phone was going a bit ballistic, I checked it. Lots of missed calls and an urgent text to call a senator. Oh holy f**k, I bumbled, slight oversight, a long planned dinner in Leinster House had been forgotten, you see it really does affect your concentration. I was wearing jeans (just to prove I could get back into them), a tee shirt and Uggs. I think I'd slept in the tee shirt, I have six wardrobes of cocktail dresses, and two of shoes, for once I’d have had an excuse to get dressed up this year.

My girlfriend was wearing a very fetching dress and offered to do a swap in the loo, the Uggs wouldn't have gone with it and her dainty feet didn't match mine. Hell, it was only Leinster House, I muttered bravely.  But I was already an hour late, that's bad no matter where you're going for dinner.

I zoomed up to the gates and asked the garda if I could come in, there were loads of spaces, I love when guards aren't checking your tax or breath. I got profuse apologies instead, they would let me in but those indoors wouldn't have it. Legging it back from several streets distant, the usher was very decent about me keeping him waiting and escorted me through.

My host was beyond understanding, he’d been late too, but I doubt if I'll be asked again, he and the other guest had already tucked into wine, no way could I heap bad manners on to the already bad mix up, and tell them about the detox. I couldn't even remember why I was there, to discuss senate reform or something, activism of some sort, but why waste time on that when there was gossip to be exchanged.  So I had the delicious seafood platter, it would have been rude not to have just the one glass of wine. Flip anyway, I nearly did the full 72 hours.

With the exception of my very healthy host, the Dail diners looked like they could do with a good de-tox. James O'Reilly came over to our table, all curious, and then Richard Bruton, and nice, charming rural TDs, wondering why the eminent senator had such a ruffian at his table. Well Chatham House rules about the gossip, but whatever you suspected about a certain high office, it is true. Only Worse.

Best Foot Forward

When I had two good knees

Wednesday morning I'm at St Vincent's Trauma Clinic and the wait isn't so bad except there's nowhere to rest the throbbing leg. I have a book, Tatty - the name, not the condition - an iPad to write on, forms to be filled in for a mindfulness class, which ask all sorts of mood questions in different ways just to catch you out.

There are quite a few leg and arm cases around me, young and old, the main problem is the audible tv show on the wall, Jeremy Kyle, with crazy mean people saying crazy mean things to each other.... a teenage mother who doesn't know who the father is.. I think that's all a bit depressing for the outpatients already in pain. Everybody is studiously avoiding watching it, except the man beside me is trying to explain it to his elderly mother and keeps repeating ‘it’s all about sex'. It's really too early in the morning to be listening to him too. So I'm assiduously clacking at my keyboard, looking busy.

The student nurse calls me in, the orthopaedic doc can't read the notes, I explain in detail from memory what the damage is, then the senior guy arrives, he talks about skiing a lot, slightly embarrassing, I feel guilty taking up their time, although, all the cripples outside have foot, knee and leg injuries and they probably had a stupid fall as well. A new knee brace is fitted to keep the joint from rocking (what a pun!) and off I go in search of an iron to replace the caramel clogged one at landladyhouse because I forgot the gentlemen lodgers like to iron their shirts.

En route, I get the call from the Sunday Times to say they're going to run the story in the News Review section, I was just thinking a little column in the opinion page, if anything. They want to send a photographer. Holymotherofdivinesweetjesus. Tesco don’t have any irons, we’ll have to try another day, so I leg it home for Mr De Mille and get ready for my close-up. I put a black jacket on over the tracksuit bottoms which conceal the chunky knee brace and try to clear a space on the table so it looks like a tidy office.Mr De Mille does his best lights, camera and action, I want to smile into the camera, its eleven years since the event I am interviewed about, but a jolly face won't work.

At this point I’d like to remind the dublinlandlady reader that levity, not brevity, is the soul of wit, and I am departing from the serious matter of the interview by making light of my domestics while more than slightly traumatised by the idea of the piece in the paper.

With all this going on, I’ve managed to overlook an important meeting in the courts, in Smithfield which couldn’t be further from landladyhouse on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, so I superlash into town and hope legal counsel hasn’t got the clock ticking. If I had any idea how this case was going to start, never mind end, I’d write about it, so we’ll all have to wait in suspense, it’s another one of its kind, testing Irish legislation, when I’d rather get on with writing another book.

After all that, the new, new thing, I think, is Mindfulness, a sort of talking yoga for the mind and body. Anyway, it’s a recession by-product and I’m lucky to have been given a place on this course so I must turn up even with all the trials of the day. I think the idea is to be conscious of your thoughts, and how they’re interpreted, choosing to step back or let them stress you, I’m still figuring it out.

I arrived in time for the meditative body scan, where we must start with focussing on the big left toe, as I lie on the floor, warm under a blanket, restful after the hospital, photographer and court; I concentrate on the toe and rub it against the fur of my Ugg. I think of the Boston amputees, the dance teacher, the little girl who loved Irish dancing, and am so grateful to have that toe. I can’t think of anything else except how lucky I am to have all the toes on each foot attached to my legs and, albeit one wonky knee.

International Women's Night?

It was designated a day to celebrate the advancement and achievements of women, acknowledge and lobby for women’s rights in places where they don’t have any and by sheer coincidence I’d arranged a birthday women’s lunch. Just an excuse to get together and celebrate being alive another year. By noon on the day, I had my seventh cancellation. Some had sick children at home from school, others weren’t well, and some couldn’t get cover for their kids.

Virginian Annie had Lady Jane, her King Charles Cocker babysat but hadn’t got the message that I’d changed the time to 6.30 and arrived for lunch to find just me and the cost centres. Another guest was recovering from a golf lesson that morning. That just left myself and Blonde Racquel with a very large dish of baked chicken and parma ham for dinner and quite a bit of wine.

Blonde Racquel's Birthday Surprise

Racquel suspected a conspiracy and wondered if indeed I had any friends to speak or was it just a ruse to get her on her own. The girl does give good gift though. Absentee Boyfriend is in the doghouse so her gift is brilliant for his next visit (!)

Of all the women invited, we were the only two with children in their twenties. 1990 and 1992 really don’t seem that long ago, but we had live-in au pairs and an army of babysitters. I had ten on call at one stage, in walking distance. Not that I went out a lot, I was in college and working freelance, living with the boys on my own, if I got an invitation to something nice, I made sure I could go. For my sanity, if nothing else.

Freedom slowly crept up on us in the last few years. We can have disco naps before we go out, no babysitters required, they can even cook for themselves. Racquel is one step ahead with a daughter who can drive her and pick her up.

We were joined by author/barrister Alicia (named after The Good Wife) who was having a dine and dash evening while her husband covered the kid situation. Racquel proceeded to advise her on the babysitting back-up she would need if she ever became separated. They had never met before, it was a strange bit of advice but Alicia gamely humoured her.

The new lodger arrived while the birthday bubbles were still fizzing and opted for a quiet night in while Racquel and I high-tailed it to town. You see, being past the babysitting stage, we now have too much freedom to go out and incubate a hangover and the international woman of mystery, Racquel had some nocturnal entente cordiale to catch up on.

It’s Saturday morning and Lodger no. 3 is exploring his new territory, we’ll call him Tristan Davenport, because he doesn't like my suggestion, Roger the Lodger. It's Triss for short, as in James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small.

The door bell rings and I hope one of the cost centre will open it. I’d forgotten my mother was coming with her food bargains, I leap out of bed and realise it’s Triss who has let her in and they chat as I hastily navigate my Uggs. Triss is on the phone by the time I reach the kitchen and my mother mouths something at me, a sort of approving nod to the effect of ‘isn’t he lovely’. I quickly assure her he’s the new lodger.

I confront the kitchen in my pyjamas, not the Saturday look I’d planned. Triss is impeccably dressed and stands to greet me with a morning peck; a friend/lodger is such a different experience to my Latvian. He’s still mildly jetlagged and comes up with the brainwave to go out for lunch a la New York-cool-urban-living. There’s just a matter of the France v Ireland game and not a table in Ballsbridge to be had. Triss has a word with the maitre d’ and we get the last table for two in Bellucci amid a sea of green. Top Tenant.