“If I saw you now
Could I look in your eyes?
Do you think of me
Like I dream of you?
Do you wish you were here
Like I wish I was with you?
You’ve loved me before
Do you love me now?
Does love ever end”
(Deal /Deal)
Yet again this is not the blog I wrote yesterday. While looking something up I noticed that today’s date, July 19th , struck a chord for some reason. I started to flick back through photos to see what I’d been doing…I have been known to take the odd photo , here and there…
On July 19th last year I had a photo of my Soulmate and her fellow Gazelle, Grainne, outside the office, a screenshot of Colin Tate Ltd., a stone supplier where we were ordering some decorative stone, a photo of Freddie and myself outside the shopping centre , after one of our regular Wednesday lunches, and a photo of two tubes, one of Voltarol, and one of it’s Spanish cousins, Voltadol Forte, for reasons that escape me now.
So that wasn’t it.
I scrolled back to July 19th 2022 and there it was. A single photo by me, of my left leg crossed over my right leg , clad in rather fetching compression tights , with an ID bracelet around my ankle , as I sat waiting to be taken down for what they lovingly referred to as ‘radical surgery’. That was the only photo taken by me, but this being the wonderful modern age we live in , and my phone’s default setting of adding photo’s sent to me, or groups I’m in on WhatsApp, there was also a prayer from my namesake’s letters chastising the Romans, about hope, two photos of my friend , Martin McKenna, one drinking a beer outside a café, wearing a lovely pink tee shirt, straw hat and sunglasses, and another by the pool, and then one which I don’t recall from where , possibly Robyn , of a little Brontosaurus tattoo.
I’d forgotten that it was already two years since that day.
It prompted me to look back at what I’d done since I’d gotten out of hospital, 12 days later, and that’s the blog I was writing last night, a monthly list, prompted by photos, of what I’d done since August 2022. I’d only got as far as four months, and had already written 1,000 words, and if I’d continued, would still be writing. There was some degree of repetition. Wonderful repetition. But the images that made me stop and smile most often were the photos of us sitting at this very table that I’m sitting at now, typing this, our kitchen table.
When we moved back to Monaghan from Belfast and bought this house we needed a new kitchen table. Our kitchen in Belfast itself was not as big as this table is now. Our business here was then based in Seamus McAree’s old furniture factory, at the bridge in Ballinode, and Seamus sometimes pottered about making bits and pieces for friends and family. We asked him to make us a plain simple table, and he picked a natural Irish wood, and handmade us this table, which, apart from the odd Bond inflicted blemish , looks exactly the same as the day we bought it.
This table has hosted many fine dinners late into the night with family and friends. It has hosted Christmas dinners, Liddy extravaganzas where 10 of us have been seated, candlelit dinners for two when the kids were smaller and we’d hoofed them off to bed, and candlelit dinners with our neighbour Kieran, as the strong ceiling halogen lights annoy him…Hilda was there too, but she looks great under any light. In actual fact we have a candlelit dinner at least once a week. It has always been our family table, it was just five of us originally, but now encompasses our kids’ partners, Sarah, Teresa, and Dundalk John. Actually it was never 5, because Micky and Helena have sat at it more than once, there’s a place named after Hartney, it’s the Bond /Liddy table really, or the Bond/Liddy/McMahon table. Lets just call it our table. This table has been the host of frank discussions, and many , many joyful games of Uno , and one or two family games of Monopoly that we all agreed not to talk about, but let me just say that my Soulmate is never allowed to be the banker in Monopoly , or allowed to sit either side of the banker, especially if the banker is Robyn, who, now that I think about it, is also never allowed to be the banker.
My other favourite table which featured in a lot of photos is the metal one out the back of Mum and Dad’s where we all seem to gravitate to on a Saturday and Sunday afternoon. For all the giving out we do about the weather, I have a surprising amount of photos of my whole family, Mum, Dad, John, Linda, Stephen , Sarah, their kids, us, our kids, in multiple random combinations, over the last two years at that table in sunshine, drinking tea and being force fed almond fingers by Dad, who subsequently complains to the next visiting party that the previous one has eaten him out of house and home.
My other other favourite table is the picnic table in front of Tom’s CoffeeDoc in Rossmore Park. It has featured in lots and lots of photos over the last two years. Ray features most often, as we always stop there for a rejuvenating three scoop rum ‘n’ raisin after a training run…or if it’s raining , we just go out and have coffee and ice cream. We have discussed absolutely everything at that table, some of it repeatable. Other times we are joined by our fellow Parkrun volunteers Gareth, Angie, Margaret, Dominic, AnnaMarie, Brenda, Tony, the McElroys, Gerry and Joan, Chris, Mrs.Connolly, Patrick and Jennifer. Not all at the same time…it’s a picnic table. It’s always a joyful conversation, and there’s always damn fine coffee.
And my other other other favourite table is in The Squealing Pig, having dinner and perhaps a pint or two with The Band, Benny, Glenn, Trevor and Gerry. Sometimes it’s just dinner, sometimes it’s a film club, sometimes great plans are hatched, sometimes great counselling takes place, and sometimes we are joined by fellow troubadours, like Ray, and The Hannon. But it is always memorable. There are now annual ‘Not Dead Yet Dinners’ with my old schoolmates, and random get togethers with my brothers and friends that no longer live in town and we’re the connection now.
Sometimes you don’t even need a table to have a favourite table. This week our friend Annamarie dragged Ray and I up Slieve Gullion and at the top we sat on rocks and dined on red velvet cake and drank Nosecco. It was wonderful.
I’m finishing this now to join my brothers John and Stephen for our weekly breakfast in the Screaming Bean in town. Stephen will have the eggs Benedict, I will have the fry, large, and J ohn will order the porridge to feel good, but will then eat the toast, a sausage, piece of bacon and the beans from my breakfast.
So in a nutshell, my favourite table is the one with you.
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. This is the amazingly gorgeous ‘How About That Coffee ?’ by Niamh Regan.
