“It’s all better, we are better
You’re my shelter, you’re my shelter
You’re my shelter, you’re my shelter
You’re my shelter, you’re my shelter
You’re my shelter”
Our first night in our first home was…eventful.
We got the keys to it, a brand new three-bedroomed semi-detached palace in Clane , Co.Kildare on the Thursday and I drove home to Monaghan the next morning to fill my 91 MN red VW Golf van with all the stuff we’d been storing in Mum and Dad’s shed. Dad borrowed a long wheel base Ford Transit from Fergus Murray and we filled that too, mostly with furniture that people had donated when they heard that we didn’t have any.
We were in a panic to move in immediately as someone had said in passing that moving in on a Saturday was bad luck. Someone else had argued that Thursday was even worse luck , but we didn’t care, we just wanted to start our lives together in our home.
Mum, Dad and I headed out from Ballinode in our convoy just after lunch and we made it all the way to Broomfield before I had a puncture. Mum and Dad trundled on in their van while I unpacked everything from the Golf so that I could get the spare tyre out. I swapped the tyres , reloaded the van and carried on. The rest of the journey was uneventful…until we got to the traffic lights in Maynooth when Dad gently removed the headlights and bumper of a parked Audi. The only thing worse than damaging your own car is damaging one that someone has lent to you.
All day I’d had visions in my head of my Soulmate arriving from work on Grafton St. to our home , opening the front door to see all our possessions in the perfect spot , as if placed there by Terence Conran, or a travelling Feng Shui master, and to get the aroma of the chicken and bacon tagliatelle in white wine sauce and garlic bread that I was cooking for her in our new kitchen.
At 8pm Eileen opened the front door of her home to see all our worldly possessions piled in heap in the living room, and to the sound of me cursing loudly upstairs as I tried to put together the two single, metal springed beds that had once been my younger brothers bunk beds. I had planned to push the two of them together and place our brand new double mattress on top. The beds had been in the shed at home since 1982. They collapsed under the weight of the new mattress.
My Soulmate and I spent her first hour in our new home taking apart the two single beds and putting them in the box room, where they remained for three months before I took them to the dump.
We had poached eggs, toast and tea.
We slept in our new bedroom on our new mattress which was sitting on the floor on the flattened cardboard boxes that other stuff had been unpacked from. We had no carpets, and no curtains. To afford us some privacy we sellotaped sheets of the Northern Standard.
It was heaven.
This morning I’m in Galway. I’ve woken in the box room of Sarah and Jake’s first home. Elliott and I drove here yesterday with our van filled with amps, guitars, suitcases, record players, and boxes of books that Jake had been storing in our house. We went to see James together in the Heineken Big Top.
It’s surreal to be sitting this morning at the kitchen table in our first born’s home.
We didn’t have a kitchen table for the first three months in our first home. We had an old office desk, which worked quite well as a kitchen table with an inbuilt cutlery drawer and we sti=ored plates in the filing cabinet drawer.
And they have carpet and curtains !
Luxury !
Eileen insisted that we spend our first Christmas in our new home together, I’d wanted to go home to Mum’s. She invited her sister Ger and partner Dave to join us. She bought me a Scalextric…sorry, Santa brought me a Scalextric set.
Eileen painted and decorated every inch of that house.
I mutilated the plaster work and punched holes where no holes should be with an appalling lack of DIY skills.
We had had friends over to dinner. I learnt how to cook. In hindsight I should have learnt to cook before we had friends over to dinner. I cooked pork chops for our neighbours Paddy and Barbara, the second best neighbours ever , after the McMahons. I’d briefly scanned the recipe and bought all the ingredients. It was only as I started to cook everything that I spotted that I was supposed to have marinated the porkchops overnight in soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, Dijon mustard and lemon juice and something else. To compensate I trebled the quantities of the marinade , put them in a bag with the chops and shook them violently together for half and hour. For some reason that I can’t quite recall now, I also squirted lemon juice on the pork chops throughout the cooking process. I can still see Paddy’s face shrink into itself as he took a mouthful of the porkchops. We ordered a Chinese take away.
Jake was born there.
It was our home.
And yet anywhere we are together is our home, our refuge.
My Soulmate is my shelter.
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. This is stunningly beautiful , like you.
