Twenty something year old doing twenty something year old things

 Continuing in the tradition of my namesake Phoebe Buffay--I am actually named after the wise sister in The Catcher in the Rye but being neither wise nor a younger sister I generally nod in agreement to "oh, like Phoebe in friends?!"--I have found a cat friend that, I do believe is sending me feline messages of telepathy. She (or he, I have not inspected) has taken to sitting on our garden wall and, as I step out to the cool night air preparing to disappear below to my 'underchambers' (similar, in effect, to undergarment but in this case a bedroom that lies below the house) it sits and looks at me. The look, dear reader, is quite unnerving chiefly due to its unwavering intensity. I have, many times, ignored this wilful cat, disappeared into my bedroom, closed my door and taken to the bed. This method is not effective.  A tinkling of a baleful bell will interrupt my earnest preparations for sleep and I am forced, once more, to face this spectre of the night. Without f...

Nostalgic memory of youth: My mother telling me not to watch too much TV in case I got "square eyes".  I spent a long time trying to find someone suffering from this affliction but strangely never did.  But ah,  the days when 'screen time' was seen as an unnecessary pleasure and square eyes the risk associated with it, akin to the 'monster under the bed'. Now it is a necessary evil. We buy special 'anti-blue light' glasses to allow us to continue to stare, squarely, into the screen in an intense 'who blinks first' match. I'm currently in one and will continue until four pm when I log off my duties of monitoring  psychology classes.                                                                        ***** The above section was written, as you can guess, well before the present --when I ir...

 In reverse order from yesterday, let us start with a sentence:  "I learned about being thankful a couple of years ago, from some experts--a conversation on facebook--and now I do it everyday; like in the way you're supposed to do yoga everyday but I don't, because the idea of yoga, perversely, makes me tense." I am drawn to this sentence mainly for the camaraderie I feel to the author, Caitlin Moran's, aversion to yoga. I have never been a yogi and possibly never will. I put this down to the same reason that I'm not into soup: food in my opinion should be solids and an activity should be active. If I want a meditative state, I'd probably go for a swim. I get bored easily or perhaps I'm just put off by the heavy breathing. I also like that she puts her find of 'being thankful' down to Facebook. Such beautiful irreverence--it makes me very thankful.  Another thing I am thankful for, is my child minding job. I spent a long couple of hours happily...

 THIS IS NOW....A not so bold observation perhaps, but also the theme of an art competition which I have successfully enticed child A into entering. At first she was reluctant, "I'll never win"-- as she sulkily fished around for my praise (which I lavished). I am proud to say that she conceded and we have begun work on our entry. Soon after starting she made a 360 degree recovery in attitude. She now looks at me conspiratorially while whispering  confidently into t he  Papier-mâché,  "w e're gonna win this". I should probably say to her something along the lines of "it's not about winning but taking part", but really, I've got my eye on the prize too and heartily encourage this enthusiasm. It's also a project which will see me into two days of minding without having to resort to her favourite 'X-factor' whereby, on bad days I am made to sing and, on good days, must judge and comment on her various performances in my best Essex a...

 Today feels like the day when sh** starts to get real again. Or is it just Monday blues?  Life is catching up and the jobs, emails and calls that need to be made have come back to haunt me. At the same time my heart begins to beat a little faster. If there was a heart monitor plugged into me from the Christmas period until now, today would be the day that the doctors and nurses throw up their hats in celebration and relief as the cadaver starts to show life. The stuffed turkey begins to shift and the lady is a-leaping.  I have begun researching in earnest-- or as earnest as one can be with a remnant mashed potato brain of Christmas-- the subject of Flash Fiction and am acquainting myself with the work of Lydia Davis. I will be teaching a five week term in this course to teenagers, beginning in early February. It is a Saturday gig and the course description proclaims:  "Two golden rules of writing are ‘Always leave the reader wanting more’ and ‘Edit, edit, edit’....

 The slow languorous Sunday has begun. I woke up and, after making my breakfast of coffee and porridge (garnished with a generous helping of peanut butter), gobbled the rest of Ghost. I have been reading this novel pretty compulsively since I began. The words wash through me like honey, sweet and easy. I do not feel enlightened after each page, but brightened, yes.  Finished and tossing this to one side, ghosting it like the characters it features, I made my way down to Tesco's bottle bank. Empty wine bottles clanking conspicuously in my rucksack. I have had quite a collection built up since roughly mid November. Bags finally emptied they smell like bad breath the morning after a night out--a memory of how things were in the BC days. I never thought I'd be romanticizing hangover breath, but there you go.  Bottles chucked, I suddenly experienced a moment of regret. Should I be keeping these? Don't worry, I am not experiencing attachment syndrome to my used wine bottles. Fo...

 Once upon a time, on a caffeine fuelled wander of the Georgian side streets of frozen south Dublin, I came across a grocer. It was one of those hybrid grocers which also seems to cater for the needs of aesthetically driven hipsters. I mean no offence by this as I am also a prime target.  Sniffing around the goods with my friend, we were drawn to a table at the back displaying such wares as a knitted 'beer glove' and, most criminally of all, a walkman shaped 'Holibops sound effects box'. This evil box of inane corporate, commercial tosh was advertising itself as "the perfect gift for a terrible 2020". I am trying to work out which aspect of this creation annoyed me more, the term 'holibops' which, to borrow from the children I mind, is like "so cringe" or the fact that this pandemic, as if it hadn't already spread enough harm, is now spurring on an entirely new type of pandemic: cov-ets--covid themed gadgets. Which, I expound, should not ...

 I seem to have a habit of stockpiling all of the things I need to do, however enjoyable and fulfilling they might be, to the very end of the day. Today was one of those days, hence sitting down to write this, fuzz brained, at half eight in the evening. I have just come off a zoom meeting (you may be familiar?) but rather than the usual screen fatigue and awkwardness that seems to be the order of the day with these 'multiple floating heads on a screen socializing/working/schooling/everything-ing' I emerge excited and energized. I am working with these other heads on a collaborative and participatory, soon to take shape-ory, film project. Adding fuel to the bizzarreness of current times, none of us have ever met in the flesh.  Before being a head on a zoom call however I spent my day as a- somewhat- whole body in reality. I woke up, delighted, to a light smattering of snow about as thick as a layer of dandruff and watched from my window as kids with plastic spades scraped what ...

 And on the third day she wrote again... Once again I have food and coffee to report of. A date was arranged and we met outside Jolin's Vietnamese coffee house on Clanbrassil street near Portobello. How is it that I have been separated from my dearest Vietnam, *sigh-gon,  for a year and a half yet have only just visited this glory, complete with a bona fide Vietnamese owner, originally from Saigon? I guess, as they say, it takes a lockdown to 'get in touch' with your locality. I ordered the 'classic' Vietnamese coffee. It was not the classic however as I decided that I could not brave the iced version-- my fingers would probably provide that touch anyway. Cycling over to this joint (definite 'food blogger' credentials for using that word) I had been rehearsing how to order it in Vietnamese..."Cho em mot chai bia?" No, not beer--coffee.."cho em mot  cà phê  " brilliant. I'm a local.  In the end, seeing the menu entirely in English and ...