“It’s oh, so quiet
Shhhh, shhhh
It’s oh, so still
Shhhh, shhhh
You’re all alone
Shhhh, shhhh
And so peaceful until…”
Lang/Reisfield
On Wednesday I had to do an extra worky, worky thing and decided to do it from home.
Before you feel the need to message me and say “You work ???”, relax , three people have already thought that they were funny and have already asked.
In the kitchen , at our table, I had reports spread out and was double checking a previous response to a similar clause when I suddenly stopped….something was wrong. I stayed silent for a moment and realised that I could hear the hum of our fridge, and the sound of Tuna’s water fountain.
Normally when I’m in the kitchen I have music playing, and am also cooking, singing to myself , and thinking important thoughts like ‘if a Terracotta warrior was found buried in Monaghan and carbon dating or some archaeological malarkey could prove that it had been there for two thousand years or more, that would neatly tie up a few loose ends in the story about the Three Hares, the symbol common to Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, and whether their motif travelled from China along the Silk Road via the Middle East, Europe , Devon, and then Monaghan as historians argue, OR as my copy of Êmile TATÉ and Édouard Fourdrignier’s Paris 1904 presentation to the Institute Internationale de Bibliografie Scientifique, and the Terracotta Warrior found in Monaghan will prove went the other way, from Monaghan to China.
But on Wednesday I wasn’t thinking brilliant thoughts like that, I was sitting in the near silence and wondering if our fridge should be making that sound, and how much is it costing us to power a water fountain for Tuna when she seems to use it for a millisecond once a day.
So I moved to the little sitting room and closed the door.
I did get the work done that I wanted to do …but wouldn’t like to make a habit of it.
As soon as I finished I rushed back to the kitchen and threw on some vinyl and played it loud and sighed deeply, before singing loudly along to Fontaine’s ‘Starburster’.
On Thursday Dad and I went to Dublin, and having time on our hands , we met up with Micky and asked him where we’d go for a fry. This has become a recent habit/treat and we have been introduced to breakfast in The Halfway House, followed by brunch in the Kilmainham Hospital, and more recently breakfast in the Boathouse at Farmleigh. This time Micky guided us to Glasnevin Cemetery , which up until that very moment, I hadn’t ever realised contained a café.
We chatted about many, many things, and then went on the tour. Pat, our guide, was very informative, and witty…for a Dub. At the start he had to speak quite loudly , so that he could be heard over the noise of traffic on the Finglas Road, but later it was less noticeable as we went deeper into the graveyard , or we just tuned it out.
Glasnevin contains the graves for 1.6 million people and is non-denominational. People from 26 different world religions, and none, co-exist, without separation or demarcation, all mixed. Pat gave us a potted history of some of the more famous ‘residents’ from Ireland’s political and cultural past. I found Parnell’s grave the most poignant. Daniel O’Connell’s featured an ornate crypt with a 55 metre round tower above it, whereas Parnell’s was just a large rock , carved simply with the word ‘Parnell’ and placed on a mound where he was buried among commoners and Typhoid victims with no headstones of their own. He had requested to simply be buried with ‘the people’. I asked Dad and Micky to sit with me on the bench beside it and took a selfie. Dad asked why, and I said ‘How often to we get a selfie on top of a mound of Typhoid victims ?’. He didn’t laugh.
At an avenue of Yew Trees , Pat told us that yews were regularly grown in graveyards and beside monasteries and asked if we knew why. I’d already told Micky and Dad that the longest avenue of yew trees in the British Isles was in Rossmore Park in Monaghan , and was about to answer Pat that , yes, indeed I did know, and that the yew tree was a symbol of longevity and rebirth. Yews have featured at religious and pagan sites long before Christianity adopted them, but before I did, Pat said it was because the monks didn’t want sheep and cattle grazing in their monasteries and graveyards, so they planted yews, as their leaves are poisonous and ruminating herbivores won’t go near them. He also said that ever since a wee girl and her dog had posed there for a photo and the image had gone viral, teenage visitors refer to that bit of the graveyard as ‘Ariana Grande Avenue’.
I got most emotional at Grace Gifford’s grave, a plain black slab that simply says ‘Plunkett’. She married Joseph Plunkett in Kilmainham Gaol on the eve of his execution after the Easter Rising. His family sued her to prevent her using his name, as they refused to recognise the marriage. Our Jake played Plunkett in a play once, in 2016, and I bawled like a banshee when they switched out the spotlight shining above him on a dark stage to signal his death, The song ‘Grace’ always brings me to tears…but just the Wolfe Tones’ version.
After the tour we had recuperative coffees and a selection of almond tart, Victoria sponge, and a caramel slice, which I’d bought with the intention of dividing in three and each have a bit, but Dad grabbed the almond tart and told us to go and do something that seemed highly inappropriate in a graveyard…or anywhere else for that matter.
I said that I wanted to find Brendan Behan’s grave, the boys had had enough and said that they’d wait in the car.
I wandered around for a bit. Squirrels scampered over the Sheehy Skeffington’s grave. A Jay chased a Magpie away from E.Dwyer Gray’s. There were windchimes in the trees at the bottom, near the Botanic Gardens and I stood and listened to them for a moment, and smiled. And then someone came along the path with a leaf blower.
I went out the gate and bought a pint in The Gravediggers and left it on Behan’s grave.
The whole time I was there I said just one Hail Mary , for John Martin O’Connor, he had a simple white headstone that read “Say One Hail Mary for John Martin O’Connor.”.
Dad rang from the car.
“Where are you ?”
“In the graveyard.”
“Still ???”
“Yes. Are we in a rush ?”
“I’m not , but Micky wants to get home.”
“No I don’t !” Micky interjected.
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
As my old friend Courtney Barnett would say “Things take time, take time.”
Toodles.
Paul
P.S. Unlike my quiet moments this week, this is wonderfully raucous, like you.
P.P.S And this is an audio of an old blog, and most certainly not a podcast.
