not everyone is always looking at you

“Not everyone is always looking at you” is something my mother said to me very often.” There is really no need to be so self-conscious”.

 So, when I walked onto the beach in San Diego a few years with a borrowed surfboard under my arm I repeated this mantra to myself. Around me the beautiful people were sunbathing, tending to their beautiful children and generally blinding me with their fabulousness. But no, I was not going to be distracted. This was probably the only chance I would get to surf in the Pacific for the foreseeable future, maybe even ever; I was going to take advantage of it.

As I paddling through the shallow water, I heard the sound of men laughing. For goodness sake, I thought, not everyone is looking at you! Just get on with it. (I should add here that I am not really (remotely) a surfer, I just want to be. I can paddle out a bit on the board and sometimes catch a wave on the way back and about three times ever, I have stood up for a second or two. That’s over about four years of trying.)

Then I found myself looking at a man beside me “Hey!” he said “Me and my buddy were just laughing at you! We always get a kick out of watching people try to surf!”

Don't pay the ferryman

“Who put Cork on this?”

I knew it. I knew I shouldn’t have done it. My husband was hunched over the laptop pricing ferries, tents, flights, car rental and roof racks and beside him sat our eight year old “helping”, with an outline map of Ireland. He had asked me to put dots where Dublin, Kerry and Cork were located so he could assist with the journey plan. His Dad looked over his shoulder and looked at Cork. I had to own up.

 “For god’s sake Lucy, that’s where Limerick is.”

diggers

So, if anyone needs to know about minor road works in the Dublin area, go no further. I spend my mornings trawling the streets with my Bob the Builder obsessed toddler, looking for construction vehicles. Just today we found a digger, a roller and a big thing that lays the tarmacadam before it is rolled flat. A tamper?  A stamper?  I haven’t a clue.

To a man the “workpeople” (always, always men) give my little boy a hero’s welcome. They wave, offer seats to try out driving, quack, chat and in the face of his stony face or shy downcast eyes are the epitome of kindness and cheer.

God I’m sick of it though. I mean, apart from the noise and the mud and the dust, it’s the hanging around just looking at people that gets a bit uncomfortable.

Because we are sort of “in their workplace”, I think it’s only polite to say hello or ask what they are doing. For some reason my voice always comes out very “lady of the manor” ringing rich, dulcet tones that can be heard easily over the machines.

“And what, may I ask, are you working on here, young man?”

For probably the same reason they never actually answer me, nodding and looking away as if embarrassed by my existence and also thinking, we can tolerate the little fellah but we’re not going to listen to this shite. I don’t blame them; I can hardly listen to myself.

And sometimes, on our approach I can see that they are chatting and laughing, sharing a joke and enjoying themselves. But once we take up our position and I start spouting nonsense they look as if the headmistress has arrived in their classroom during lunch break.  Caps are doffed and my little boy is greeted but their comfortable laughter is definitely over. I’m almost tempted to say “As you were!” but I doubt it would work.

Anyway, like I said, if you need to know the whereabouts of diggers in Dublin, I’m your woman.

beastly beauty

I had yet another regrettable chat with a beauty expert last weekend. I don’t mind getting things done, waxing, plucking, tinting, blow-drying, I just absolutely don’t like talking about my skin, hair, eyebrows or toenails in any way at all. It only ends in tears.

grrrrrrrr!

It was mortifying. We were just walking back to the car it in the school car park and everything was going fine. The toddler wasn’t screaming, no one fell over their bag, everyone had their coat and there was no awkward artwork to manage. Then I heard it. A low growl that lasted about thirty seconds. It was my eight year old (eight for Gods sake!) menacing a boy from another class. I don’t know, is menacing the right word? What I mean is he was standing in front of him (the boy was walking with his mother. I almost felt like saying “if you want to scare him, at least try and catch him alone. You know, in the toilets, in the school yard when the teachers back is turned. Not when he is with his mother.”) And like I said, growling and baring his teeth.

 The boy didn’t look remotely bothered and kept ambling along with his hands in his pockets but his mother was clearly disgusted. I had seen Colm do it before but to be honest, pretended I hadn’t as there was always something else to be dealt with at the time. Anything else was preferable, verucca's, blunt pencils, car seat belts, anything. But this time I couldn’t avoid it. I had to acknowledge the doggy behaviour publicly. To stop it of course but mostly to show the other mother I had some modicum of control over my children. Or at the very least knew that growling is not an acceptable form of communication.

So, cringing (I use that term a lot but this time it was literal. I could actually feel my insides compressing into a tiny ball) I said “….” My voice didn’t work the first time so I tried again and said “Colm! Colm!” in a firm voice. That was as articulate as I could manage. Hoping she heard me I considered going over to her and apologising but I really couldn’t. It would mean saying out loud that my son growls.  I had to stand by my man. You see I knew the reason he did it. Just over a year ago her son (let’s call him John) had pulled mine from behind by his jacket hood. He  had firstly, terrified him and secondly, hurt his neck. At the time I comforted my boy and agreed that Johns behaviour was unkind and he was someone we would not invite to our house.  “Just stay away from him.” I said. However, since then I have ended up having small chats with the mother at the school gates, about teachers and swimming lessons and the usual shite. She was friendly and normal and sometimes had make up and looked great and sometimes looked like she got dressed in the dark. So we were pretty similar. It was never going to develop into anything because our children were clearly not friends but still, it was pleasant. Until the growl. There was certainly no chat that day.

Instead of grabbing him by the ankles and slamming him into the car violently which I really felt like doing, I decided to be mature. (Anyway, there might have been security cameras). He seemed so happy too, sitting in the front seat on the booster singing “I love rock and roll, put another dime in the shoe box baby..”

We talked about not bearing a grudge and putting things behind us and then when that got too complicated, just forgetting about the coat hood incident. 

So he agreed to stop growling and we went home. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.