He was a Good Ride

The phone rings ‘It’s your lucky day! They’ve got a horse for you.’ I look at the screen, it’s 7.30am. I’ve had five hours sleep after the birthday dinner and now there’s a prospect of riding a horse for three hours in the snow-covered Wicklow mountains, with people I don't know. I’ll have to resuscitate the social gene.

En route we need petrol and Annie decides on a breakfast roll, I’ve never had one, but it seems like a great idea, bacon and sausages in a carb-loaded wedge of bread, slathered with ketchup. Yes, we do look like two city girls in jodhpurs, gone wrong.

Annie is wide awake and regaling me with shooting stories and the fine specimens who shoot with her. She comes out with a cracker of a word; it will find its place here one day soon, but not yet. Hmmm. I'm supposed to be in bed, fast asleep, maybe I'm dreaming. I'm trying to keep my eye on the road while working my core muscles, breathing evenly and mentally preparing for the canter ahead.

As we arrive at the farm, my phone alarm goes off at the time I’d set to wake up. And here I am surrounded by horses, sheep, chickens, fields and even actual sunshine, not bad going at all.

Girls on Breakback Mountain

We're here to join the ladies who lunch and ride. They're the riding angels. Annie and I are getting our horses from the G&T Angel. I'm given a very large grey mare called Queen Maeve, well there's some sort of synergy in our legendary names I thought. They tell me she likes to bolt and jump gates, whatever my expression, they changed me to a smaller piebald, Apache, a much better fit. There's a lot of heaving saddles, blankets, bridles and all, then getting them into the actual horse box, G&T husband comes to the aid and we're away.

The women are different in Kildare 4. Without doubt they can justify driving a 4X4, unlike the mummies in south Dublin who just clog up the roads and take up two spaces in carparks. We arrive at the Sunshine Angel's house where we will reconvene for lunch. There's a modern wagon train, with jeeps and horseboxes circling the yard and everyone being busy and useful, except me. The house is a great example of a newly built farmhouse, no temptation to wander into dormer bungalow territory and cleverly has an identical side and front elevation with three bays and a central door, giving it double the depth of a traditional farmhouse. We meet the Mother Ship Angel here and two other cow gals, one has a horse recovering from injury so it's a trot and canter ride, no jumping. I never believe that.

Sunshine Angel isn't riding with us, she's injured and hobbles around her kitchen with a swish of a golden mane. It turns out her injury isn't sustained on our four legged friends, but skiing in Switzerland after a recently well publicised wedding. Another Angel is also hobbling after a fall. Our woman, the G&T Angel broke her shoulder in two places at Christmas; they all take the injuries in their stride. I won't.

Six of us are mounted and clip clop towards Church Mountain, two by two. I love my horse, it's the smallest one I've ever ridden so I feel I can control it rather than it having it's own way with me. I've worn double socks so I don't freeze, the birthday blow-dry will turn into helmet hair, but you know, sacrifices. Calories will be burnt and fresh air will be partaken as compensation. What's great about horseback is you get up a mountain faster, see over hedgerows and navigate grikes and woodland without spraining an ankle. Nice little trot and the next thing mother ship and g&t take off, no warning, my hat slips inconveniently over my eyes, but I can do this, I whisper as I hang on with one hand and push the hat up, over and over. We stop on the mountain where the snow is still thick, the air is colder, the sky is blue and the lake below like is wide and flat, heather is about to bloom, it's a silent and empty landscape, no walkers, bikers or cars, just us. Someone says we could be in the Alps, much better, we didn't have to take off shoes, belts, go through security and endure a flight. The girls recommend I loosen the hat; next time we canter it's utterly brilliant.

The cold has set into my knees and ankles and the next time we trot it's a gruelling mission to maintain the stride. With all the opening and closing of gates, thankfully by G&T, as I don't think I could bend a leg to remount, I've ended up leading the group. With a panoramic spread of Kildare and Wicklow in front of me, probably Carlow too, it's time to appreciate a bit of health and agility, not to mention being an under-self-employed landlady.

We begin our descent and wend our way through farmland; a flock of pure white-fleeced ewes stand and stare at us, hoggets about to yean. My second new word of the day, these women are full of info. Two and a half hours later we're back at sunshine angel's house. Everybody has brought something, but other angels have set out a great spread in our absence, there's no nonsense changing into finery, it's boots off and padding around in our socks. Raspberry Angel has turned up with some bottles of pink bubbly, the honorary girl, let's call him Jock, wears pink cords to live up to his name. He hasn't been riding with us because, well, he was carted off in an ambulance last week. I'm beginning to feel I got away lightly. As we pose for a group photo, one of the girls has to move because she's standing behind Jock and the gash in his head is so gory. I'd still go back. If I'm invited. As Charlie would say, ‘Thank you Angels’.

Gem of a Night

So Absentee Boyfriend got away with being absent for my birthday. And I am glad I was here with friends, one of whom arrived in the morning and sang to me with cake and candle. This dear friend and I have sons the same age, just about twenty-one, both studying economics. We have known each other for quite a few decades; ending up renting out our rooms is far from the place we imagined we’d be now.

While my junior economist is wont to pointing out the error of my career achievements, her fellow gave her Freakonomics for Christmas, advising her that she needed to get into a commodity that she could sell multiples of. We are scratching our heads as to what we could dream up to salvage our middle-youth. Cost Centre #1 has disappeared to college and CC#2 is in charge of their joint present giving, not a DIY economics book insight, but a great one called Photos that Changed the World and, weirdly, a hip flask with the words ‘Who needs boyfriends when you can have vodka?’ OK. We’ll just park that.

Birthday mirth is mildly interrupted by laundry and I have to line up a sock identity parade, the whole thing is getting out of hand, what with the addition of ABF’s now and then. At least, Tristan’s are distinctive, but the rest is a mountain of blue and grey. I throw my hat at it in a bid to get some work done and enjoy the rest of March 13 and wonder will there be anything unusual about 13.03pm on 13.03.13. The answer is NO. Not just is it no, but I have another email thanking me for my application but I'm not being interviewed. On to the next lowly  paid, temporary, maternity cover role in the nearby university...

From the Gatsby Collection with Love by Melissa

That evening I am sitting in a great little BYO Lebanese restaurant with dear friends, including she who shall not be named, Annie Oakley, Clarice-the brilliant and talented jewellery designer, my friend who’s going to Japan, my friend with whom I went on my first holiday to Spain and still dines out on the story, and our own Tristan.

With our bottles of wine stashed under the table we are a giddy mix – the kind of night out you need these days and a birthday is a great excuse to do it, it’s like a personal Christmas, and truly gorgeous presents were unwrapped.

Annie mentions she’s got to hire a car to get to south Wicklow for a horse ride next day, I can’t see that working out and insist on driving, because of course I can ride too, I bravely admit. She couldn't get through to the cowgirls so late in the evening, so we forgot about it. As the night ended, we managed to avoid all talk of property tax, water charges, horsemeat and even the Pope, who’d only been elected that afternoon. With 364 more days before the next one, sure, why not chat for a few more hours at home?

Showered with Distraction

With the week that’s in it, one year older and more confused, I’m writing this diary a bit backwards; it’s Monday and a lovely drive to Ashford to look at a gate lodge for Annie Oakley and her husband. It was so pretty with Tudor-Gothic windows and a vegetable garden, like a fairytale, I’d be tempted to rent out the entire landlady house and decamp to the country with a horse and some chickens.

Later that day, there was the matter of Absentee Boyfriend getting out of the doghouse, apparently I was in it too, but we never know that, do we? His was a bigger doghouse than mine, as far as I was concerned. Suffice to say, he arrived on Monday evening holding a very fine bouquet aloft and laughing his head off at the ‘You Again?’ door mat. At least he spotted it and thought it was just for him.

It’s hard to turn away a man with flowers, especially when he did a quick rebound to retrieve the champagne and chocolates from the car. It was early evening, the fire was lighting and he was on a roll. Next came books he’d carefully chosen. It was a well organised assault. ‘Let sleeping dogs lie’ came to mind. Only thing to do was get out for dinner before further recriminations occurred.

One of the books was Hilary Mantel's latest Booker winner, I'm not sure about her. I took Wolf Hall to Haiti in 2009 while I was working on a building site, I would have left it behind if the Haitians were interested, it became a door stop.

I loved the QI book he gave me, with 1227 random fascinating facts – Did you know there are enough diamonds in existence to give everyone on the planet a handful?

Where are mine?

And under extreme high pressure, diamonds can be made from peanut butter (stupidly, it doesn’t give the recipe).

OK, just one more: One in ten European babies is conceived in an IKEA bed.

Annie Oakley recommended a place for dinner I thought had closed down years ago, La Cave. With not too many restaurants open on Mondays and even less people in them, we gave it a whirl. Like stepping back in time in Paris, it did the trick; you can’t but be happy with cosy candlelight, a bottle of red, a juicy fillet and a jolly good man for company.

That night the house was replete with people. The logistics dictate that six of us will need a shower in the morning. I know my tank isn’t big enough for that, let alone figuring out the timer to come on at 5am, so Lodger No. 1 can get his early flight. I’ve had a few less than warm showers lately, but ABF says they’re not so bad.

What am I going to do when the water charges come in? While I have this romantic thought, I hear the man whose by-word is ‘no complaints’ groan wearily, ‘I’m dreading getting into that shower.’

Father's and Sons' Day

Laduree from Tristan. Too gorgeous to eat, maybe not....

Will there be a card? A drawing hastily executed? Flowers? Chocolates? Breakfast made? I am up writing early on the Sunday designated for making mother’s feel special or at least appreciated for pushing a trolley around Tesco and filling the fridge now and then. Cost centre #2 comes to my desk and hands me a white paper bag with a name from the distant past, it’s so old, it’s chic and vintage, in fact, these days the name must represent triumphant survivalism. Golden Discs. I know I can download anything I want, easy, instant and leave it stuck on my computer or iPhone, but he heard me say I wanted to buy this CD and with HMV closed didn’t know where to go anymore. You see, CD’s can be lent, like books and uploaded. The first CD he ever bought me was Kylie, which I still love for driving long distance. My special mother’s day treat is Lykke Li. A sort of husky Bjork meets Bob Dylan meets Patti Smith, I recommend.

In the afternoon, the cost centres and I make a long overdue visit to my brother who is undergoing chemotherapy. We’ve had a few cancelled visits when he hasn’t been feeling well and hope today will be a good one. It will be the first time in years that his sons and mine are all in the one room. His wife and I have prevailed on them to co-ordinate a few hours off on Sunday afternoon, away from soccer, rugby, work, cinema, girlfriends and, most popular, bed. After the essential photo calls, we settle down to watch the England v Italy game; a sport I never thought would bind me to my sons.

I want to invite my brother and his sons to cost centre #2’s forthcoming twenty-first celebrations and try to pin CC#2 down on the details.

I offer to do a dinner at home for his friends, the local homies, not everyone he knows. These days the twenty-firsts are often all-boy dinners and plus ones aren’t invited. CC#2 and his girlfriend don't go to each others parties much, but get on exceedingly well all the same. There is a new breed of woman out there who is content to walk the dog with her student boyfriend as a date. Tolerant but not surrendered; there must be a book in that.

In response to the offer he says he doesn’t want any fuss, no party.

‘But don’t you want me to do something special; just have your friends here for beer and pizza?’

‘My friends here drinking beer and pizza wouldn’t make me feel special,’ he says.

‘Oh.’

‘Going out with you, dad, CC#1 and my girlfriend would be special.’

You can’t argue with that. Now I just need to find a very loud restaurant.

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.

Thanks Google and Friends

 


How about this for a birthday surprise, I went in search of something and this came up, I thought, 'oh someone famous has the same birthday,' and scrolled over it, it said 'Happy Birthday Deirdre,' I gave Cost Centre #2 such a fright calling him to see it in case it disappeared. 'Only you get it mom, it's not on everyone's computer.' But still, a good use of algorithms and personal data.
 
As if that wasn't enough of a surprise, gorgeous Primary School friend arrived first thing with flowers, home-made tira misu, birthday candle and divine china cup and saucer. All the things the heroine of my novel loves. And me. At last, let's call her Vyvienne (because that's what her parents named her) is a sight for sore eyes. Just before she arrived I tore out to the front door to prevent the dog eating the cards the postman tried to deliver, I don't mind her chewing the corners off bills but just as I salvaged the TWO (!) she got thunderously sick, before my breakfast. Happily there were no lodgers around to hear the string of expletives.

After a birthday blow-dry from the best hairdresser in town JH Haircare on Highfield Road, I highly recommend. It's time for a disco nap to prepare to go out with the girls I didn't see on Friday, thank you all for turning up this time! And even better, lodger/friend Triss coming too ; )