Category Archives: family

29. Live Aid…at 40?

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Saturday was the 40th anniversary of Live Aid. Forty years! I’ve watched a three-part documentary on the BBC about it origins in Band Aid at Christmas of 1984, the build-up to Live Aid, and it’s ongoing legacy. It’s interesting to see the evolution and maturation in understanding in the likes of Bono from charity and ‘feed the hungry’ to equity and justice and the legacy of colonialism. In addition to that documentary, over the weekend, a two-part, seven hour highlights show was released. The girls and I started watching it two nights ago.

Oh boy oh boy. It’s taken me right back to the 13th of July 1985. 11:55am. Twelve year old me in the sitting room in Ballygibbon, waiting for Live Aid to start. I watched it from start to almost the finish. Katie can’t believe that I sat through 16 hours of TV. ‘You’d never do that now,’ she says. ‘You’ll notice my mother didn’t sit down and watch 16 hours of TV,’ I tell her. ‘Who do you think kept me fed and watered through the entire thing?’

The truth is, however, that I didn’t watch 16 hours of Live Aid. By 2:30am, fourteen and a half hours in, I could no longer keep my eyes open. I tried so hard to stay awake, but I just couldn’t. So, I went to bed and missed the final hour and a half.

Watching it now, I can’t believe that I still know the lyrics to so many songs. Never mind the songs that remain in the zeitgeist – We will rock you, Sunday bloody Sunday, Get into the groove; I remember every lyric to Nik Kershaw’s Wouldn’t it be good and Howard Jones’ Hide and Seek. Where in the depths of my brain have those lyrics been buried all these years?

There are the bands and artists I loved then – Spandau Ballet, U2, Madonna, Paul Young, Queen – and others that I couldn’t stand and was bored to watch back in 1985. It would take another two decades for me to appreciate the genius of Paul Weller, David Bowie, Elton John, and I look at their performances now with delight.

There is a notable lack of women – although more in Philadelphia than in London. We still have a couple of hours to go tonight, but so far, I’ve seen only Sade and Alison Moyet in London, and Madonna, Chrissy Hind and Joan Baez in Philadelphia. (Lily says, of Joan Baez, ‘That lady looks like you mum.’ That makes me happy). Alison Moyet, with that incredible voice, only comes on to support Paul Young. (Ahhh Paul Young. I was in love with him. A couple of months later, when I started secondary school, during a Geography lesson on the Irish fishing industry, my teacher, Mr. Byrne, asked if anyone knew the meaning of the word ‘proximity’. My hand shot up. ‘To be close to something,’ I said. Mr. Byrne asked me to put it in a sentence. ‘I’d like to be in close proximity to Paul Young.’ Mr. Byrne laughed. I laughed. The rest of the class realised they had a nerd on their hands. That was the first of many geography-based jokes that were to pop out of me over the next five years.)

Lily and Katie know a remarkable number of the songs and artists, mainly from watching series like Stranger Things and Glee and from being force-fed this music on car journeys. What is new to them is putting faces to the songs. I am struck that, from my ancient perspective, most of these musicians are barely older than my kids are now. So many of them are fresh-faced and speak with squeaky kid voices when they’re interviewed. I realise that even David Bowie and Bryan Ferry, who seemed ancient to me back then, were younger in 1985 than I am now. That’s sobering!

I’m struck by the simplicity of 1985 cutting edge technology – the giant TV cameras, all the musicians and cameras plugged into the mains and people working specifically to ensure the lines don’t get tangled. The stages in both London and Philadelphia are decorated like a stage at a village fete, and the methods for making donations are so antiquated that I can’t even begin to explain to the kids what bank giros and postal orders are.

But what is most striking are the musicians themselves. They look like normal people in a way that normal people today don’t even look like normal people any more. There are no veneers, no lip fillers, no botox, no hair plugs, no plastic surgery. There are two young women who pick up litter in my little village in Spain who have had more work done on them than all the musicians in Live Aid combined.

No-one appears to have a stylist or a wardrobe assistant. Madonna (Madonna! Have you seen that woman lately?) looks like she washed her hair and perhaps ran a hair dryer over it. No more. (She looks lovely) Steve Norman of Spandau Ballet looks like he’s wearing multiple layers of women’s blouses that he bought at Primark – probably because he did. And no stylist in the world would have let Bono out on the stage in that rig-out! There are mullets galore – I have never seen so many mullets in my life. People I didn’t remember having mullets, have mullets. And, I’m reminded of something I heard some time ago along the lines of ‘there must have been a shortage of conditioner back in the 80s’. There’s so much dry hair on display!

It’s a step back in time for me, to that very hot summer of 1985. It was so hot that we were allowed to not wear our uniforms during the last few weeks of school. It was a summer that I thoroughly enjoyed, and the build up and aftermath of Live Aid was a big part of that. We’ve a couple of hours still to go tonight, when the action will move exclusively to Philadelphia. I can’t remember who’s yet to come, but I’m looking forward to it.

25. My dream holiday

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There’s an ongoing battle taking place on in a living room in Warwick. My father-in-law insists he will make space for me to use the kitchen. I insist that I have no intention of using the kitchen. In fact, I want to stay as far away from the kitchen for as long as possible. We go through the routine multiple times a day. “I’ll be out of your way soon,” he says. “Take your time,” I say. “You’re not in my way.” He seems desperate to get me into the kitchen to cook elaborate and time consuming meals for myself. But, while he busies himself making batches of hearty barley and vegetable soup and rich meaty liver and sausage stews (in the middle of a heatwave!), that he will freeze for use over the coming weeks, I want to use the kitchen for no more than making a cup of tea or grabbing something quick and easy out of the fridge.

You see, I’m a solo parent. That means that, like so many parents in my position, I am 100% responsible for everything. My kids are great, they help out (when asked or urged) but, ultimately, the buck stops with me and me only. Apart from Sunday lunch at our next door neighbours’ house and the very occasional meal out, I am responsible for planning and making three meals a day, every day of the week, week in and week out. Sure, I take shortcuts such as batch cooking and eating leftovers, but that still requires planning. In addition, we live in a remote place without take-away options or the option of a quick trip to the supermarket to buy something last minute. I’m responsible for making sure the washing up gets done (by me or the girls), that the shopping gets done, that the gas bottle gets replaced for the cooker, and so on. I love cooking and baking, I really do. But the day in day out of it can become monotonous drudgery that takes up far too much time and head space.

So, for me, a holiday is not having to do any of that or, at least, reduce it to an absolute minimum. The girls have been away all week and I’ve only had my own food needs to think about. For me, that was as good as spending a week in one of those 6-star hotels in the Maldives or Dubai. Seriously, it was bliss. I gave absolutely no thought to what I would eat for any of my meals. When I was hungry, I grabbed a piece of fruit from the fruit bowl or popped up to the M&S Simply Food just 200 metres away and bought a yogurt or a meal deal. One night I ate microwavable mac and cheese in front of the TV and it tasted like haute cuisine, simply because I didn’t have to cook it and I didn’t have to clean up after. For lunches, I popped into a bakery near the library and got a spinach and feta roll or a sausage roll.

The break from cooking is part of a larger sense of what ‘holiday’ means to me. As a solo parent, I am constantly in decision-making mode for every single aspect of my life and the lives of my two children (with advice and support coming from wonderful family and friends). Financial decisions, educational decisions, health decisions, house and car decisions, and on and on. So, a holiday for me is also a break from decision-making. When friends and family ask what I want to do when we’re in the UK and Ireland my answer is “I don’t care.” And I really mean it. So long as I don’t have to make a decision about what to do, I’m up for anything. By the end of the past twelve months we’ve just had, I can’t tell you what it’s like to set aside my decision fatigue and rest my tired brain.

The girls are back now from their week away and, boy, did I miss them. But it’s pizza for dinner tonight and maybe a take-away tomorrow. I’m still in holiday mode and, try as he might, my father-in-law is going to fail in his bid to get me into that kitchen.

A bliss-inducing cappuccino that comes with Smarties on the side.

20. Normal England has resumed

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We arrived back to Leamington Spa late on Saturday evening, leaving the girls with a 19 hour turn-around time before leaving for a week in Lymington with their uncle, and leaving me with even less time than that to get the laundry done. It’s all too easy to forget how quickly clothes dry at this time of year in southwest Spain. Hang ’em out and take ’em in again two hours later, hard as boards. Not so in England. But the weather has been unseasonably warm here. We sweltered in 35 degree heat at Wimbledon last week and, if that weather had continued for just one more day, well…I’m just saying, it would have made doing the laundry a little easier. Gaia, why are you toying with me like this?

It was breezy when I woke up yesterday morning, my first task to fill the washing machine and do a quick 30-minute wash. Not that that did me any good. By the time they came out of the machine, the heavens had opened and rain fell at a slant onto my father-in-law’s newly laid patio slabs, and in through the open kitchen window, leaving the window sill and the floor slippery and dangerous. Did I care? Of course not. There’s a tumble drier out in the garage. I don’t like using a tumble drier, but needs must, so out I flitted, my father-in-law stating the glaringly obvious, ‘You’ll get wet.’

Forty minutes at high heat. Out into the rain again. The clothes were still wet in the drier. Another thirty minutes. Then another. No joy. My father-in-law insisted I was doing something wrong. I insisted I wasn’t. We eventually found the culprit – a very dirty filter thing that would need to be taken apart and cleaned out. But neither of us had any idea how and the instruction manual was long gone. Did I have time to go search how to do it online? I did not.

By now, the sun had come out, so I put all the clothes on the clothes horse and moved them to the far end of the north-facing garden to catch the sun shining in over the house. I was taking a shower when the next rain shower came and Lily dashed out to bring the clothes horse in. Then back out when the rain passed. Then in again. Then out again. And always that guessing game of ‘is this item of clothing really dry or am I just wishing it dry?’

Finally, the moment came for the girls to leave. Most of Lily’s stuff was still on the clothes horse and still damp or downright wet. There was nothing for it but to stuff it all into a bag with instructions for her to dry it when she reached her destination. “Don’t forget,” I warned ominously. “It’ll turn sour.”

Now I really feel like I’m back in England.

These are not our giant white knickers…I swear!!!

18. The hatch

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A conversation I had while out walking the other evening with Sarah threw up a memory of the summer of 1988, when I 15 years old.

We were having major renovations done to our house. A central heating system was being installed throughout, and the sitting room was being made a little bigger by the removal of a storage room (the cubby hole) in one corner. The contractor, Henry, had delayed starting the job so that his eventual start coincided with the start of the summer Olympics in Seoul. Daddy and I, sports fanatics, were not impressed. Neither was Mammy, when Daddy decided the large television on its wheeled stand would have to be moved to the kitchen for the duration of the renovation work. The kitchen was small enough as it was; negotiating a large clunky television in the middle of it would be most inconvenient.

The house, built in the late 19th century, had originally been a three room cottage – two bedrooms and a kitchen. The first two generations of Tyrrells lived there without electricity or plumbing. In the late 1950s, the house got electricity and Daddy was the first person on the road to have both a radio and, later, a television. In 1971/72, just before my parents got married and Mammy moved into the house, Daddy built an extension that included a new kitchen and, for the first time, indoor plumbing and a bathroom. The old kitchen now became the sitting room and it was this room that Henry was ripping up and reshaping during the Seoul Olympics.

In 1971/72, the new kitchen had been built onto the back of the house and what had been a small window now became a hatch between the kitchen and sitting room. The walls of the old house were thick, so this hatch was almost two feet deep, with a door that could be opened from either side. We used it to pass things between kitchen and sitting room and the newspapers that Daddy bought every day were stored there until they were burned or repurposed.

It was the late 80s, and the hatch just didn’t seem trendy, so it was decided to fill it in. In hindsight, it could have been made into shelf space, but then where was hindsight when we needed it?

And so to the Seoul Olympics. Being on the other side of the world, all the action was taking place in the middle of the night, our time. There was mounting excitement in the build up to the men’s 100m final. There was the great Carl Lewis of course, but also this new guy, the Canadian Ben Johnson, muscular and stocky and not built at all like the other sprinters. But he’d come through the heats impressively and we knew he was one to watch.

Because of the renovations, my sister and I were sleeping in our parents’ bedroom and they were in our rooms, which were the other side of the rubble. Before the 100m final, Daddy planned to wake me up so we could watch it together. I remember groggily stumbling into the kitchen at about 2 in the morning and Daddy and I watching, open mouthed, as Ben Johnson smashed the world record and left Carl Lewis and everyone else in his wake. We couldn’t believe what we had just witnessed.

I went back to bed then. When I got up the next morning, Daddy was eating breakfast at the kitchen table. He told me the news. Shortly after his unbelievable win, Johnson had failed a drug test. He was pumped full of steroids. This was shocking. These were the days before Lance Armstrong, before the East Germans, before accusations against Michelle Smith, before doped up horses. Performance enhancing drug use was unheard of – at least in our innocent little kitchen in Ballygibbon. It was all we could talk about for days. Indeed, it was all the media could talk about for days and Ben Johnson’s photo was splashed across every newspaper in the world.

When it came time for Henry to inset a plaster board wall in the hatch space a few days later, I suggested we put a newspaper into the space for posterity. So, we carefully placed a newspaper from a couple of days earlier, one with Ben Johnson on the front page, and columns of space devoted to what had occurred, in there. That newspaper is still there.

In 10 or 50 or 100 years time, when the house is knocked down or refurbished again or meets whatever fate awaits it, I wonder what they will think when they find that meaningless newspaper and all the kerfuffle about Ben Johnson. For us, it meant everything for those few weeks; for the discoverers of the newspaper, it will mean nothing.

13. Liliane’s replacement

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We’re on the train and I’m very excited. In only a few hours, we will be in southwest London at the home of one of my dearest friends.

Sarah and I met in Japan in August 1997. I had already completed two years as an assistant language teacher with the JET programme in a little town in Fukuoka in the southwest of the country. Sarah was brand new and had come to replace my friend Liliane, who had the same job as me in the next town over. Surely, no one could replace Liliane.

I arrived at Liliane’s apartment one hot August evening to meet this new person. Sarah opened the door. I remember her holding the Arthur Hailey novel Hotel in her hand when she opened the door. Back then, I was all up myself, into the Beat poets and raving about Jack Kerouac, so I wasn’t too impressed by her choice of reading material. ‘She’ll never replace Liliane,’ I told myself.

She invited me in and we sat at her kitchen table (Liliane’s kitchen table) and started to get to know each other. Twenty-eight years later and I’m on a train to London to see Sarah. I’ve no idea where Liliane is.

Sarah’s first year in Japan was to be my last. We quickly became firm friends and giggled our way through that year, having all sorts of fun. A year after I left Japan, I returned to visit her for a few weeks the next year and when she returned home to live in London, our friendship only deepened. She came to Ireland and met my family and I went to England and met hers.

We met our future husbands at around the same time. I still have the letter she wrote to me about the cute Spanish guy she met while she was in Boston and how he stuck a Post-it note to her work computer, asking her out on a date. She sent me that letter around the same time I sent her a letter about the cute English guy I met while I was studying in Aberdeen. Her wedding a couple of years later to Luis remains the best wedding I’ve ever been to.

We became pregnant with our first babies within months of each other and Lily and Isabel have known each other since they were tiny. Then I had Katie and Sarah had Daniel and our four kids – now all teenagers – get on like a house on fire.

Rarely a year has gone by when our two families don’t spend time together – her English-Spanish family coming to spend a few days with us; my Irish-English Spanish-speaking family spending a few days with them. These annual visits are a highlight of our year. The fact that our children all get on so well makes it all the easier for Sarah and me. Over the coming days, we’ll hang out, go places together, she’ll tell my kids stories about me and I’ll tell her kids stories about her – all from the days when we weren’t a whole lot older than they are now. And we’ll part ways after those few days, our friendship renewed and, despite a few more wrinkles than last year, the two of us feeling, just a little, like we’re in our 20s once again.

Now, I wonder what ever happened to Liliane?

12. Jumbo hot dogs

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Warwick market, Saturday morning

Being in the UK and, in particular, in this town, brings memories of Julian flooding back. I pass through places by car that I only ever drove through with him. I go to places that I visited for the first time, or only ever visited with him. Indeed, I would never have known this town in the middle of England, had I never met him.

There have been times in the past few years, when being here has been overwhelming. Not only being in this place, but being with Julian’s family and the memories and emotions that being in their company brings to the surface. In the past, being here has caused me to have panic attacks. In fact, last year, after only four days, I ended up in A&E (ER) with a panic attack that I thought was a heart attack. That was a scary day.

This time, however, I am so much more at ease. Time has played a part in healing me, so too have eight sessions with a therapist that I gave as a birthday present to myself last year, so too the memoir I’ve been writing this past year. I’m busy with work (intentionally, perhaps?) and I’m absorbing the sensations of being in parks and along canals and surrounded by nature in this exceptionally nature-filled town. (Yesterday, a falcon had an aerial fight with two crows only metres from me in Priory Park!)

Each morning since we got here, I work for a few hours at Warwick Library. Yesterday, I went in as usual. But it wasn’t usual. It was Saturday, so the market was on in the square in front of the library. Even better, at the far end of the square I saw a van bearing the words ‘Jumbo Hot Dogs’. Memories came flooding back. I phoned Katie and suggested that she and Lily get Granddad to drive them to the library in a few hours, so we could wander the market and have jumbo hot dogs for lunch.

The girls duly arrived and I packed up my laptop and we wandered around the market, chatting to the vendors and browsing the arts, crafts and foodstuffs they had on offer. At the food stalls, there were savoury pies and all sorts of lovely things that tempted me. But I was going for the jumbo hot dogs, for nostalgia’s sake more than anything else.

You see, Julian loved jumbo hot dogs. No matter what his state of hunger, if he spotted a jumbo hot dog stand, he had to have one. He was also someone who stuffed receipts into his pockets. When we both worked, we shared the task of doing the laundry. Every time it was my turn to put a load in the machine, I’d first have to empty Julian’s trouser pockets of receipts. When we lived in Cambridge, I’d often find five or six receipts for the jumbo hot dog stand! How long had he been wearing those trousers? Or how many hot dogs was he consuming a day? He’d laugh sheepishly and tell me he’d occasionally get a craving in the middle of work, leave his desk, hop on his bike and cycle the two miles into the middle of Cambridge for a jumbo hot dog and then return to work. Crazy man.

So, there was nothing for it yesterday but to introduce jumbo hot dogs to our daughters, who’d only ever before had those cheap rubbery vacuum packed frankfurters you get at kid’s birthday parties, and not these juicy British sausages, with real fried onions, ketchup, in a soft, freshly baked hotdog roll. Katie wasn’t sure if she wanted one, so I bought two. One bite of mine and I had to go back to get a third from the friendly chatty couple running the van.

Good God, they tasted good, that combination of good food mixed with good memories. As we ate, I told the girls about their father’s jumbo hot dog obsession, another piece of him revealed to them, another good memory of him restored to me.

11. The artist formerly known as…

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When she was in her early 50s, my mother decided to take up painting. She joined an art class, bought art supplies and painted some lovely landscapes and rustic urban scenes that still grace the walls of her house.

The Christmas after she took up painting, I arrived home from somewhere, I can’t now remember where. The presents were all under the tree – all except Mammy’s present to me. One of my and my sister’s favourite pastimes in the days leading up to Christmas Eve was to sit by the tree, examining all the carefully wrapped presents with our names on and guess the contents, comparing the size and weight of our respective presents. Mammy explained that she hadn’t put my present under the tree yet, because I would immediately know what it was and the surprise would be ruined. She planned to only put it under the tree in the moments before we unwrapped our presents after tea on Christmas Eve. I had no idea what it might be.

The next day, I went in to Gilroy to see Nana. She made me a mug of coffee and put a plate of biscuits on the coffee table beside the bowl of Quality Street chocolates that was already there. We chatted about this and that. After a while, and seemingly apropos to nothing, she said, “What do you think of it?” “Hmmm?” I said, too busy deciding whether to have another Quality Street or another biscuit. “I don’t think it looks anything like you, do you?” she asked. “Erm, no,” I replied, with genuinely not a clue what she was talking about, but also still too distracted by the chocolate to find out more. And the conversation moved on to other things.

Christmas Eve evening arrived. We ate our tea and then went to light the Christmas candle on the hall table. Daddy lit the candle and the four of us bowed our heads and said a prayer. The moment to open our presents had come. In the middle of tea, Mammy had slipped out to put her present to me under the tree. As soon as I walked into the sitting room and saw it under the tree, I knew that it was a painting of some sort.

We opened our presents one by one, each of us waiting to see what everyone else had received and watching their reactions. The moment came to unwrap my painting from Mammy. I carefully removed the wrapping to reveal…a portrait of ME! Well, sort of a portrait of me. I tried hard not to burst out laughing and one look at Daddy’s and my sister’s faces let me know that they were struggling not to laugh too. But, she’d put so much effort into it and none of us wanted to hurt her feelings. But, God, it was hard.

“I couldn’t get the lips right,” she said. I thought to myself ‘And that’s not all!’. I could see that the lips and been drawn, erased and redrawn many times in pencil, as she tried and failed to get the shape right. My nose was very long and narrow, my eyes strangely slanted and wide-set and my hair sat on top of my head like a helmet. My shoulders were heavy and, although the portrait stopped above my chest, it gave the impression that I had the huge heavy breasts of a seventy year old. “It’s lovely,” I said.

I don’t remember what happened next, but by the next day, Mammy’s portrait of me had turned into a highlight of our Christmas. The first to see it was my uncle Tom, when he arrived out for Christmas Day dinner, and then my uncles and cousins who came out for tea later that evening. Mammy was very quickly in on the joke, realising that this was perhaps not her best work and that the portrait had value of a different kind – it made us all silly with laughter. We discovered the best thing about the portrait was showing it to people with straight faces, pretending that we thought it was brilliant and watching as the cogs moved in their heads as they tried to find something polite to say about it.

The portrait came with me to the UK and, when I met Julian, it came with us to the many houses we lived in over the years. I’d sometimes arrive home late at night to find Julian in bed with the portrait on my pillow, delighted with his little joke. He carried on the tradition started by my own family of showing it to his family and our friends with a straight face and waiting for their reactions.

When we moved onto the boat, there was no room for the portrait, so we put it up in my father-in-law’s loft in Coventry. I imagined it doing a Dorian Grey on me but, I’ve grown older and it continues to not look at all like me! A little over a year ago, my father-in-law downsized to a smaller house and I travelled to the UK to deal with what was left of our stuff up in his loft. There I found the portrait, which I hadn’t seen in years. There was only one place for it – on the wall of the spare room (Lily and Katie’s room) at my father-in-law’s new house.

Lily and I are sleeping in that room at the moment, with Katie relegated to the sofa in the living room. Every time we look up at that portrait we giggle. Who could have guessed that that heartfelt and earnestly created piece of art would have such an unexpected life out in the world.

10. From there to here

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The trees are so big and so green and so varied and so alive. Oaks, horse chestnuts, sycamores, beech. Their trunks are immense and they reach high up into the blue sky. So unlike the scrubby arid trees of the dehesa (savannah) of southwest Spain. Tiredness is causing me to have an out of body experience as I walk through Priory Park. Is this what it’s like to experience the world when high on drugs, I wonder? The giant beautiful trees seem to pulsate around me, my brain and eyes playing tricks on me. Maybe the trees are playing tricks on me too. The tiredness is adding to my disbelief that I’m here, when only a few hours ago, I was there.

We woke up at 3.10am. I slept little anyway, checking my phone through the night to make sure I hadn’t slept through the alarm. Katie had set her alarm too, so it wouldn’t have mattered, but tell that to my subconscious/unconscious brain. It didn’t help that the narrow single bed in the cheap airport hotel was springy and uncomfortable and the room was too hot at first, then too cold with the fan, then too hot when I turned the fan off. Through those few brief hours, I heard other hotel guests arriving and departing, the thunk-thunk of heavy suitcases being hauled up or down the old stone stairs of this hotel without a lift, the wheels squeaking down the corridor outside our bedroom door, a movement-sensing light flooding our room with light through the glass panel over the door.

I am grateful that the airport was straightforward, the flight uneventful, our train to Leamington Spa on time. By the time we get to my father-in-law’s house mid-morning, the effects of the tiny €30 airport breakfast has long worn off and we are starving. While he asks the girls about the flight, I make a bee-line for the kitchen, knowing exactly what I’ll make (the girls and I have been discussing it, fantasizing about it). We anticipate what Granddad will have in stock, and we’re not disappointed. Rashers and eggs and fried tomatoes, with buttered fresh white bread and strong tea.

Afterwards, I rest for an hour, unpack a little and then I’m off again. The girls are sleepy, though they claim they aren’t. But they’re pale and have bags under their eyes, so they can’t fool me. I leave them sitting in the livingroom with Granddad, looking out over his garden at a fat pigeon pecking at the seeds he’s scattered about. I leave the house to the sounds of him telling the girls about a radio he built when he was a teenager, from his dad’s old cigar box. I hear him ask them what components they’d need to make a radio. My Gen Z teenagers have never used a radio in their lives, but I’m out the door before I hear their answer.

While my work life will be decidedly less frenetic in the coming weeks than it has been of late, I have a deadline to meet this coming weekend and I need to crack on. I spend a few hours at the library, meet my self-imposted work target for the day, and head back to my father-in-law’s house again. By now, I am well and truly zombified with tiredness, and the trees pulsate as I walk through them. Perhaps they are really Ents. Perhaps I need a good night’s sleep.

8. Leaving home and going home

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Later today, I will close my front door behind me as the girls and I leave home for 10 weeks. We’ve never been away from Sanlucar for so long before. At first, we will spend a few weeks in the UK and then we will go home to Ireland. We have a wonderful summer ahead of us, packed with family and close friends and trips to all sorts of wonderful places and events.

But I have mixed emotions about leaving. I am saying goodbye to a close friend who, owing to illness, will likely no longer be with us when I return. At the same, I am excited to spend time with my family and dear friends, the people who have known me longer and who know me better than anyone.

I’m taking the girls away from a summer by the pool and at the beach, and being with their friends. I’m also taking them away from Lady. But then I remind myself of how hot it’s going to be and how we’ll be stuck inside the house most of each day in +40C heat. So, I’m looking forward to taking the girls to cooler beaches and to places familiar to them that they want to visit again and places new that they have never been to. And I’m excited about the time they will get to spend with friends in the UK, starting on Sunday, when we travel to London to visit their oldest friends.

While I have adapted to many aspects of Spanish culture, after ten years I have yet to adapt to staying out so late at night. I can do it once or twice in the entire summer. But, in general, when Sanlucar comes alive at night in the summertime, when many of our friends and neighbours are out strolling the streets, or at one of the bars, or sociably sitting outside their houses, the girls and I have already gone to bed. I have tried to adapt, but I can neither stay awake that late at night nor get by on so little sleep the next day when I need to be up at 6am to get my work done before it gets too hot. Lots of people have managed to adapt to it. Sadly, I’m not one of them. So, I’m looking forward to cooler weather in the UK and Ireland (despite a heatwave in the former at the moment) and sticking to my normal bedtime.

For all of that, for all the wonderful things I have planned, I know that when I am at home* in Ireland I will miss my home in Spain. I will be looking forward to coming home in September, batteries charged, feeling refreshed and renewed, and feeling love and longing for both the home I will be leaving behind and the home I will be returning to. I am grateful for both.

*I don’t actually own a home in Ireland. We’ll be couch and spare-bed surfing for the entire summer. It’s more that home owns me.

An aerial photo of my home in Ireland, taken sometime in the 1960s.