Category: The Guy With The Hand

            A boxer from the nineteen fifties once famously said after losing a fight, “I should’a stood in bed.” All of us know this feeling, all of us have had days where, by the end of it, we wish that we had cancelled all appointments, disconnected the doorbell, turned off all wakeup alarms, curled into the foetal position, under the sheets, and let the day pass us by. Days like that often begin well enough, with you springing out of bed, haring down the stairs and feasting on a cooked breakfast. It is as though the weather forecast is for a bright, sunshiny day; only somebody forgets to mention the scattering of tornadoes on the horizon.

However, this was not one of those days. The clouds of doom had already gathered around me, even as the alarm clock sounded. 

            I felt like a Duracell Bunny that had run a marathon, all my battery juices were used up. The only thought that got me out of bed was that to arrive in the kitchen after my mother would be a mistake. Like most older people, routine plays a major part in her life. Kettles must be boiled as cod-liver-oil is drunk, cough bottles administered before inhalers are breathed-in and the tablets sorted through. Nobody wants to be in the kitchen queue behind my mother, at least not before coffee runs through their veins. And so, I rushed down the stairs ahead of her, organised coffee and sat down with a slice of brown bread to consider my position. It seemed terminal to me; by any objective measure, whatever ailed me, would prove fatal.

Being a man, stoic and all that, I decided to finish breakfast before writing up my last will and testament, lying down, crossing my hands over my chest and allowing my spirit to depart uninterrupted. I had a second cup of coffee and worked out the logistics of my death, (the where being uppermost.) Should my corpse be discovered on the living room sofa, or on my bed? Were the sheets clean enough to die on? Or should they be changed first? Which would leave the best impression on the undertaker? For some reason, consideration of my mother’s reaction to my sudden demise failed to register. I scarcely noticed her arrival at the breakfast, my mind being busy working through a selection of handle choices to compliment a budget coffin.  

Hobbies change depending on our age. This thought occurred to me when my elderly mother joined me and gave me her itinerary for the day. The list ran something like this: bloods to be drawn at ten thirty, harass library staff for a political tell-all about Boris Johnson after eleven, find a coffee companion before lunch, see doctor after lunch.

Doctors and nurses play a large part in the social life of the elderly; competition is fierce. Where women gain social status in their youth by comparing caesarean scars, they rely on larger scars in later life. Having only one hip replacement is the equivalent of losing your virginity, it hardly shows any real interest in life, or men, or sex, or anything at all.

“You have to exercise,” my mother regularly advises a neighbour whose progress after her first hip replacement fails to impress my mother. “I was back driving six weeks after mine. Six weeks. Use it or lose it, as they say.”

In a quick counterattack our neighbour proves her body more decrepit that my mother’s by stating, “They want me to have one of those… Those…” words fail her, and she squirms in her chair until she finds a way to continue. “Those pro… Things with the camera.” She pauses, eyebrows quizzically high, how can she say what she can’t even contemplate; polite society would never allow such scandalous talk. With some sketchy hand gestures, she leans forward and slowly continues. “Up… Your…”

“Colonoscopy,” my mother is a fan of the colonoscopy, there is a lot of social credibility to be gained having coffee with friends while comparing and contrasting the effects of taking ‘that stuff’ the night before having the procedure. “There is nothing to worry about,” my mother reassures her before bragging, “Had it done dozens of times, myself.”

“They are not sticking anything into me,” protests our neighbour, “I had three feet of my bowel removed, there is nowhere for the camera to go.”

What a boast! Almost as good as having both hips and knees done, with the hint of a shoulder operation on the horizon.

“That’s nothing,” my mother splutters, “You have thirty-three feet of gut remaining.”

She resisted telling her how many full-grown pythons that might be. Pythons were last week’s bowel measurement yard stick.

Today, my mother had less-reptilian things on her mind and was not in open competition with any of her old friends. She was only having bloods done and a quick review of her meds later in the day. Move along, nothing to brag about here.

When she went to see the vampire nurse, I took a covid test and plumped up the cushions on the sofa, my deathbed would at least be comfortable. What can I say, I’m a man, we worry.

The test was negative, not even the hint of a line. And that after putting a long stick up my nose, against my better instincts. No sensible medical practitioner would ever recommend such a course of action. But the test hailed from China, which is why the instructions suggested a conspiracy to have all westerners self-lobotomise. A far more convincing conspiracy theory, you must admit, than to imagine that the US taxman is arming up, and planning to murder tax defaulters in Iowa. Oddly enough, I did not question the test results, just the method of getting them. The human mind is a strange place to hang out.

Feeling more wretched as the day dragged on, I stayed as far away from my mother as I could by hiding in my office. False readings are known, and us men are sensitive about such things. I was not taking any chance of infecting another person. It was a shock, therefore, when the door to my office burst open and my mother entered, demanding that I take her to A&E.

The question why, resulted in a terse, ‘Doctor’s orders,’ by way of reply. No amount of direct questioning, or around-the-bush probing, resulted in any further explanation as to why my mother was being sent to A&E.  

There followed a drive to the hospital, windows open, masks on; maybe I did doubt the test results a little after all. Once there I did what everyone else does, I parked on two yellow lines, behind a deserted taxi, and unloaded my mother. There was doubt in my mind about entering A&E while in a twilight zone between covid states. I dithered for about 30 seconds too long on the yellow lines; car to the left of me, mother to the right. This was all the time it took for my mother to escape. “I’ll call you when they’re done,” she said over her shoulder, before disappearing behind a temporary prefab. If only my mind, or body, had been working, but they were not…

I heard nothing from my mother until I received instructions to put a bottle of white wine into the fridge at about six o’clock. It took a million questions to discover that there was a drip attached to her arm, though she had no idea why. Then she was gone. For once, the Chase went unwatched. I packed a suitcase with nightwear and reading material – just in case – and tested negative once more.

Then the phone calls started. How’s Ma? What’s wrong with her? What did the doctors say? Has she been admitted? When is she getting out? ‘Ask her yourself,’ I told my sisters, only to be told, ‘We have.’

The strangest communication came at ten o’clock when mid-call my mother captured a passing nurse and pressed her for an update.

“Am I being moved to the hospital, proper?” my mother asked.

“You are in the hospital,” replied the nurse. “This is Portlaoise hospital. You’re in the hospital. Don’t you worry. Why don’t you sit down here?” Having dismissed my mother as demented, she left her to her own devices. In her own way the nurse muddied the plot, rather than clarified it.

The witching hour approached and passed without news. Then, five minutes after midnight the call arrived, the Jim taxi was required, so I hit the road.

It seems to me that hospitals are designed to be impenetrable by anybody except maze runners. Despite this, there were parking spaces in the set down area of the A&E. I abandoned my car, leaving the parking lights on to indicate my intention of leaving immediately, and headed into the surreal world that is the emergency department. Patients were half-glimpsed through windows, ambulance doors were ajar, voices whispered reassurance on the night air. A young man walked past me heading up the ramp to freedom as I was drawn deeper into the bowels of the earth. Thankfully, my mother appeared before I reached the doors to A&E, accompanied by a male nurse. That’s when we heard the crash. I looked over my shoulder and realised that the sound could have come from only one place.   

I indicated to the nurse, whose head was facing in towards the set down area, that he’d find me there. A short sprint later and I found myself at the top of the ramp staring at two young men who stood beside a taxi. Of all the warning plates to be seen on cars, (L plates, N plates, or taxi plates,) the taxi plates are the ones that make the driver in me shudder. They are the reddest of warning signs. The pull off the road, signs. Lunatic at large, they seem to shout. And looking at the crash site, it occurred to me that the level of evil genius required to hit my car was astounding. There had been three car lengths between us when I pulled into the set-down area and yet the driver had managed to cover that distance at speed, in reverse, and used my car to stop his progress down the ramp, straight to the doors of A&E. A closer inspection showed that my bumper was battered but unbowed. My mother appeared by my side, ready for battle. She looked from the battered bumper to the two young men who faced us and managed to get only in a few argumentative words before I convinced her to sit into the car and allow me to handle the situation.

The young men who faced me as the church bell rang one AM were obviously immigrants. Goofy and contrite they reminded me of the Irish of my generation, when we first landed in England, Europe, or the USA. Looking at the crash site, it was practically impossible not to smile at the bloody-minded stupidity it had taken to hit my car. Anger and amusement vied for dominance, but anger had no chance here.  Details were exchanged and they drove into the night with a promise to phone me the next day. I no more believed that they would phone, as I buckled up, than I believed that a hair-fairy would reseed my bald scalp during the night.

But phone they did, with offers to fix the car if necessary. Smiling, I hung up and looked at the positive line on the test kit. I still believe that there is only one person who could have given me covid. But who will ever believe that some ninety-year-olds have a busier social life than their sons? Still, despite all the positives, there was no sign that a hair-fairy had visited in the middle of my night’s REM cycle.    

This blog was going to be a gripe, given a special category all to itself, hidden somewhere-off-to-the-side. Let’s face it, the ramblings of a menopausal male are best kept hidden, out of sight, deniable. The inspiration had all the ingredients for a non-glamourous investigation into the world of interior design, where common sense often flies out the window as marble kitchens are flown in. It was just supposed to be a minor, steam-releasing moment, until I realised why naming a paint ‘Spanked Bottom,’ so annoyed me.

You see, I love colour in all its variations, its shades, tones, tints, and hues. My gene makeup generously allows my eyes to filter through the visible light spectrum and distinguish the tiniest differences in light frequencies. Colour-blindness would be a nightmare scenario for me. The idea of not absorbing the full impact of vibrant works of art, the delicate intricacies of a starling’s amazing plumage, a busy bee working hard to extract pollen from the heart of a flower is a concept too large for my brain to absorb. The notion that some people will never distinguish between the bright yellows, deep purples, or darkest reds found on the stamen of flowers is enough to make me sigh. Flowers, after all, offer such a wide variety of primal, vivid, and luscious colours as to leave one practically speechless.

My awareness of colour probably began in the late sixties when floral patterns abounded in the world of fashion, when orange was the new black, and tie-dye was a rage that had managed to migrate thousands of miles, from the West Coast of the USA, all the way to Portlaoise.

Awareness does not mean that I loved the psychedelic antics of filmmakers or fashion designers back then. It was as though they had all learned only one rule in college, the rule of complementary colours. Then, stealing only this tiny fraction from Johannes Itten’s seminal work in the field, they streamed onto the streets like four-year-olds clutching their latest toys. Unfortunately, their investigations into the world of light were as shallow as their insights. And armed only with colour wheels they did not wholly understand, using the only rule their minds could half-way comprehend, they delved the world into a garish, visually clamorous universe. Clothes of the time were suddenly patterned from washed-out oranges set against undistinguished blues.     

But maybe we can forgive them, this was the late sixties afterall, a time where technical aspiration had yet to fulfil on its promise. However, this was not as true of colour as you might suspect looking at photographs from the era. The creation of colour pigments had been mastered by the mid-twentieth century. Even if the paints themselves were still chemically toxic the colours were pure. 

     Having said that, the printing of colours onto fabrics has often been hit and miss. It is as though not all colours are created equal when it comes to the dyeing process. This maybe why, as a child, the Irish flag baffled me. From a colour point of view, what was it supposed to be? Green, white and gold, as we were told by a gold-fáinne-wearing Christian brother? Or green, white, and orange, as my freedom-fighter grandfather declared? It did not help that half the Irish flags I saw had a bright yellow stripe, while the more official flags had an orange one. At the time I put the difference down to weathering and cheap dyes, as opposed to a deep denial among republicans that anything orange might possibly exist on the island of Ireland.

Colour is important. Flags attest to this, which is why they never stray far from prime colours. But what of the lesser ones, those which add comfort to a living room and restfulness to a bedroom? Everybody has their own idea on what works for them, or what might impress their neighbours, or a real-estate agent. But, when faced with a multitude of charts, most people still panic. Postage stamp colour strips are not enough to win over the heart and minds of vacillating homeowners. Painters are often booked before colours are decided upon. Then it is decision time. Panic gives way to desperation, logic takes a hike, signs are sought at the bottom of a teacup and mystics often offer as much hope as a colour consultant does. At this crunch point, when at your most vulnerable, the name of the paint may be the ultimate persuader. The decision maker.

And that name may very well come from a marketing company somewhere. This is where the world goes black, where darkness rules, where little men pun. Together with irony-filled women these cynics sit down and desperately pretend to have discovered a potential client’s unique selling point. This is where they argue their case, where they shout each other down to win a contract and get to name your paint. If only you could silence marketing executives: but then, a silent marketing executive would be an oxymoron.

Shakespeare asked, ‘What’s in a name?’ Marketing men would argue, everything. To them the rose is an insignificant thing, the petals invisible and the scent ignorable. The only thought on their minds is how to trademark the word and deprive others the use of it. To them, branding is everything. And while Pavlov could have predicted how some people would salivate at the sight of a dinner plate heading in their direction, he could never have foretold the visceral response of marketing people to the thoughts of new corporate accounts and the performance-based bonuses they promise.

It is as a result of their work that half of Dublin 4 is smothering in ‘Elephant’s Breath,’ a colour so beige as to offend nobody. This over-hyped colour pigment promised so much when I first heard of it from a fashion-conscious, social-climbing lawyer. Having heard the name, but not seen the paint, my imagination was ready for a murky brown at the very minimum, with a large hint of fuggy green, but, no, it’s beige. Am I the only one calling it as it is? Asking why the king has no clothes? Only to be told that he wears the most magnificent suit ever designed by man. Maybe it is time that somebody told him that he is naked, completely exposed for all to see, and pot-bellied at that. But, so long as marketing men sell sizzle, not sausages; sex appeal, not deodorants; freedom, not cars; silliness, not pigment, any hopes of sanity entering the equation any time soon are very low.  

These thoughts led me to reverse the normal process of creating a product in need of a name, and instead to wonder what colours marketing men would come up with to match these names, ‘Eve’s Shame?’ ‘Adam’s Apple?’ ‘Botox Eyes?’ And what would they make of, ‘Crocodile Tears?’

Think of all the phrases that worry you, that stop you in your tracks when you hear them, make you raise an eyebrow involuntarily, cause the hairs on the back of your neck to twitch, not yet having decided whether they should stand-on-end, or simply at half-mast. We’ve all experienced that dread, the sinking stomach moment when somebody says, ‘I want to be honest with you.’ Or perhaps they whispered, ‘There is something you need to know.’ Can any good come from such a beginning? Experience says no. In fairness, very few of the people who begin conversations this way have your best interests at heart. In fact, anybody who strikes up a conversation this way immediately falls into the enemy camp.

Remember, a friend, on discovering that you reek to the heavens will give you a warm embrace, then stand back and say, “Oh my God! You stink.” An enemy will sneak up on you, and in the guise of friendship will say, “This may sound personal, but…” They will then proceed to ask a million questions about your hygiene routine, your living quarters, your access to running water, soap, shampoo, and an underarm razor. All the time, as you wilt before their eyes, they shall maintain the veneer of caring, a rather diluted smile, one which conveys pity and superiority in equal measures. There is no point explaining that you have just come straight from a 24-hour rave, that the smelly rag which causes them offence has been signed by every member of your favorite band, and that you plan to frame it before falling into bed and sleeping for a week. No matter what you say, this kind of friend will twist your words and will hear only a groveling excuse, while you are not excusing yourself, but celebrating a really good time. Most people are too polite to tell this kind of friend that they do not need their advice on any subject, most fail to immediately turn the tables by giving them a Google map, with directions as to where they can stick their advice, and the majority are, certainly, far too nice to be ‘honest’ right back at them.

However, there are real friendships which can stand the most brutal levels of honesty. But even so, there are marginal calls in certain areas of your life. Take for example the fact that a friend of mine recently gave me a tin of paint. I will admit that this was probably my own fault, one should never boast about cobwebs in your bedroom, or cracks in the wall, which become canyons as they approach the ceiling, at least, not to an interior designer. Hints about mold on the window frames should never be sprinkled before such a person, and never brag about sections of bare plaster on the wall, where minor repairs had previously been attempted but not painted over. If only I had taken my own advice and not rambled on to my interior designer friend, exaggerating my woes as I went along; after all, what harm was there in inflating the truth about such dilapidation if it passed a pleasant few minutes? There was nothing I could do about the situation after all, the room was not mine, nor was the house. I was merely a guest in my mother’s home. Making any modifications would have been interpreted as interference, perhaps even elder abuse by family or friends, or so I persuaded myself.

However, my perverse boasting about the decrepitude of my bedroom backfired and I learned that one should never mess with an interior designer. The next time we met for coffee I was presented with a free tin of paint. It was a put-up-or-shut-up, checkmate move. Her smile declared victory. I had been outmaneuvered, protests about the price of paint were pointless, this was a miss-tint, practically given away to my friend. Demonstration was futile, the paint was mine.

Driving home, tin in the back of the car, I remembered my first attempts at painting a windowsill. My family is more artistic leaning than practical, which explains why my mother chose me to do her small, interior decorating job. As a 12-year-old boy, my ignorance about house maintenance was complete. Decorating was a foreign continent. As far as I was aware, paint came in rectangular boxes, brushes were tiny, and cleaning fluids came from the kitchen tap. The commission to paint windowsills was well beyond my ken. But there was something about the idea which appealed, so I picked up the tiny tin of paint, a half-inch brush, and sought out the landing windowsill.

I don’t know what you make of dream sequences in films. Most, it seems to me, do not work. They are too contrived, more about the director than the story. The 1970s, in particular, was a dreadful era for the dream sequence in movies. Every feature film, it seemed, had long, unnecessary segues into the world of psychedelic acid tripping. Though most people were not interested in recurrent nightmarish LSD journeys, every Hollywood director was forcing us to join him on one. There were some directors who successfully investigated the landscape of dreams, Bergman for one, but most of these sequences are best forgotten.

The thing about dreams, is that they are more nonsensical than psychedelic. And whether they frighten you, or simply cause you to scratch your head in confusion, they have their own language, one which only rarely makes its way into the waking world. My first painting commission, however, seemed to break through this barrier and caused me to inhabit a waking-dream for a full afternoon. The whole event, even as it happened, had that sense of otherness, that sense of being outside your own body, of watching yourself as the nightmare unfolds. It was a Myles Na Gopaleen, surreal world, in which I found myself trapped, with no hope of escape. It was a sealed universe, one of wrinkling gloss paints, made terrifying by custard-like skins which formed even as the fresh liquid was carefully applied to the wooden surface.

To this day the smell of gloss paint causes flashbacks to that endless afternoon of chemical torture. Like Alice stumbling into a bizarre, parallel universe, I landed in a territory so strange, with rules so complex as to confound anyone except a professional painter. It is an odd thought that everyone believes painting is a simple craft, and while few would ever think of plumbing-up a shower, most people think that even a 12-year-old can paint a windowsill. The fact is, they cannot. They have no training, no understanding of paint – a world of chemical compounds, far more complex than most people realize. Gloss paint, in particular, must be treated with respect. If not understood and given due deference, it will misbehave as it did with me. It is essential that you put down an undercoat before applying the paint. But what did I know of undercoats back then? You’ve guessed it. And any of you who have ever approached a windowsill and failed to apply an undercoat know what I mean. It can be a harrowing lesson to learn.

You see, gloss paint readily allows itself to be applied to any surface. However, it does have phobias you need to be aware of. It has intimacy issues when it comes to other glossed surfaces – rather like magnetic fields, where opposites charges attract and identical ones repel. Painting gloss onto gloss is like attempting to force the North pole of two magnets together, it is not going to happen. In fact, in the case of gloss-on-gloss, the topcoat tries to escape friendly contact by shrinking away from the surface beneath it. It wrinkles on contact, practically screaming for help.

I was unaware of all of this as I faced into the job. To begin with, there was the challenge of opening the microscopic tin of gloss, which was followed by the pleasure of stirring up the separated liquids and of enjoying that first whiff of oil-based paint. Then it was time to dip the brush into the pungent liquid.  Soon afterwards came the excitement of that first stroke, the concentrated, tight-lipped intensity of a boy trying to avoid painting every surface in sight. There were drips of course, but nothing major, and after what seemed like an eternity, I stood back from my first painted windowsill and viewed the shiny, silky surface with all the pride of a Michelangelo contemplating the finished Sistine chapel.

Then it was onto the next room, and the one after that. Finishing my third and final windowsill, hunger called me to the kitchen. However, my gallop towards the food source was interrupted by what I discovered on the landing. My first windowsill, after seemingly accepting all the paint applied to it, had gone rogue and was counter attacking. The fresh paint looked like a rubber mask, desperately pulling itself away from the paint beneath. There are week old custards that I’ve seen looking less wrinkled than that windowsill. My twelve-year-old self did what every 12-year-old would do when faced with such a situation, he spent a few seconds smoothing out the surface before heading off for a well-earned lunch.

After stuffing myself with whatever edibles I could unearth in the fridge, I returned to learn that a serious paint problem had escalated in my absence. My morning’s work was a disaster. All the sills had followed the first one’s lead and were taking the aged-skin-look a little too far for my liking.  So, I spent one of the longest afternoons of my life in a Kafkaesque world, running from window to window, ironing out wrinkles which had no intention of disappearing. I do not remember when I became worn down enough to bow to the inevitable but bow I did. It would be years before someone explained undercoats to me and why disaster struck. In that pre-Google universe, libraries, not YouTube, held the answers to our most pressing questions.

One thing is certain, there was a loss of innocence that day, a threshold was crossed, leaving emotional scars behind. It took many years for the Post Traumatic Stress to diminish enough so that I could open a tin of paint without feelings of foreboding overwhelming me. And now, years later, there was a tin of paint in the boot of the car demanding I face my old demons once again and get down to some serious, surface preparation. My mother raised no objections to my painting the room, so age abuse was no longer an excuse I could hide behind. The paint was applied to the walls of the bedroom, leaving not a wrinkle in sight. The place now looks more glamourous than derelict and I suffered only a few nightmares during the whole process, one I do not want to repeat any time soon.

The lesson learned, though, is that ‘loose tongues’ do more than ‘sink ships,’ they can also cause bedrooms to be painted. But still, there are very few friends who can give me a tin of paint and not mean it as an insult. There are fewer still I would take it from.  

There will be a podcast to follow when my voice has recovered after a recent Covid infection.

The recent coverage of the passport, backlog scandal was presented with such OMG-ness by our national broadcaster, with such red-top zeal, that it made one pause for thought. They reliably informed me that the passport office was as fit for purpose as the Titanic, post its brush with an iceberg. The commentary was hysterical beyond belief. It appeared that holidays were the new subsistence diet of the Irish people and that a passport blight would create an emotional, human catastrophe not witnessed since the eighteen forties. It seemed, that in this post vaccine world, the lockdown would be extended indefinitely for many.

The over-egging of the story, coming as it did from a reliable source, caused this reluctant traveller to stop for a moment and think. Something about it bothered me and then I remembered what. There had been a German wedding on my far horizon, only, somehow the horizon had crept into the neighbouring landscape when I was not paying attention.  The timeline had shrunk from months to weeks. An oops thought sent me frantically digging in drawers for my passport. Double oops; if my passport were an Italian sausage, it was so far past its best before date that eating it would have caused a serious case of botulism.

The warnings were dire. ‘A ten-week passport tailback,’ we were told, was the shortest tailback in town.

It was a very dispirited man who visited the passport website. Hope was gone. The wedding would have to proceed without me. Life would never be the same again.

Once online, there was a simple list of requirements and a sample gallery to show what was expected from my photograph.

Having read the instructions, I filled in the online forms, uploaded the least cadaverous picture of myself, the not-quite autopsy-slap shot, the most animated (but not smiling, no teeth please,) in my collection. One could call it the ‘portrait of a zombie,’ and no Hollywood, makeup artist would quibble with the description. Fee paid, I sat back, with my feet on a stool, and drafted an apology to explain my absence from the upcoming German wedding.

Feet nicely elevated, I thought of other times, ones when the passport mug shot was taken by professional photographers. In those bygone days, travel for its own sake, was exotic. The passport photograph was a portrait, one designed to make you look good. In a recent trawl through a box of family pictures, I unearthed two ancient, green hardbacks, each with a harp on the cover.

Opening them revealed an elegant, young woman in a discreet polo neck, and a dashing young man in a suit and tie. We are talking nineteen fifties glam here, a time when my parents were single and curious to see more of the world. How things have changed in the passport universe since then; and not for the better.

I unearthed my father’s, that young man’s, final passport too, and was faced with a grotesque caricature of a human being.

The picture, somehow, managed to be even more horrible than those normally produced by the automated photobooths, still occasionally seen at railway stations. And it was not the displayed ravages of age, the sagging jowls, the receding hair line, the signs of stroke, the frailty that comes with age, which struck terror in the soul. This was a Francis Bacon meets mutant-movie, special-effects photograph; and should have carried an over eighteen’s certificate. Worst of all, to my eye, there was nothing of the man I knew in the shot. It could not, under any circumstances, be called a portrait, unless you bore the name Frankenstein.

After all, a portrait should capture something of the person sitting before the lens; a light in their eyes, the hint of a life yet to be led, the story of parties attended, experiences survived, and lessons, possibly learned.

These are the signs of life, as are laughter lines around the eyes, a disapproving droop around the lips, or perhaps a frown of discontent etched into the forehead. Better however, is a smirk brought on by a half-remembered joke, or the hint of a smile on a lived-in face.

And yet, for all the sad comparisons between the first and last passport pictures, here was a man who was very much alive.

A man who was yet to party in Germany, be a tourist in Rome, holiday in Spain, and barbeque in the US. Like Lazarus, this apparently dead person, had a few miles in him yet. 

On the fourth day of waiting, the mailbox received an express delivery. The fourth day! Not the fourth week, for the lucky few, who knew a man, who knew a man in the passport office. Not the fourth month, the expected arrival date. The fourth day! Ordered on a Monday, delivered with Friday’s post. Where were all the journalists now? Where were the story retractions? It took God six days to make the world, it took the passport office a mere four to set my world to rights.

But what of the photo? Yes, it was as bad as expected. My jowls seem far worse than when viewed in the shaving mirror. The hairline, ok, so there is none. And, as for my face, it is as one dimensional as a frying pan. No one could call this mug shot a portrait. Looking at the picture, one could not say that here is a writer; a disfigured monster, maybe, a homicidal maniac, perhaps, one might even be persuaded that this is the picture of a fast-order chef. But then, what does a computer know of fast-order chefs? Or teachers? Nurses? Or Doctors?

Looking at my new passport and remembering my father’s final one, I can see him now clapping his hands with relish at the idea of a trip to Germany. I can close my eyes and imagine him licking his lips, while talking in hushed tones of German beer and chilled white wine.

Whatever it makes of me, I sure hope the German, passport-control computer raises no objections to my jowls and allows them, along with the rest of me, into the country. I have a sudden urge for cool German wine.

People say that my 91-year-old mother leads a more full, active life than I do. They may be right. She is, after all, not a writer; a  quietish, retiring type who can only be explained away with reference to, ‘The Spectrum.’ She is an extrovert whose life is full of people, plans and places to go. One part of her regular social life is the Friday night visit from a neighbouring pensioner.

To me, this seems like a reverse hostage situation, where the host is held hostage by their guest. The guest feels exactly the same and, though free to leave whenever they want, they are emotionally trapped until given a special benediction, a sign to say, ‘until next week.’ Does such a theory put me firmly on the ‘Spectrum?’ Or is there a more sinister, underling problem hiding in the background?   

After fifty years of being neighbours, ritual plays a large part in their Friday night sessions. The night is flagged in advance by the Thursday telephone call to confirm the event, though, in reality, it is about the bottle. This should be a Prosecco, or a Cava, white or rosé, it doesn’t matter; it’s bubbles and alcohol content which take top billing in the wine department. Once it has been decided who is bringing the bottle to the event, it is time to organise the nibbles. At the farmers’ market, where these are sourced, I am invariably asked at the three baking stalls, what the guest would like to eat, only to have every suggestion dismissed. My mother prefers to choose her own weapons when it comes to killing with sweetness.

Nibbles ready, bottle chilled, it’s time for the Friday Night Philosophers’ Club, not to mention a visit from the unvaccinated Harriette. Even as she crosses the threshold, before a cork is popped or pulled, or a screw cap turned, she will launch into her first philosophical investigation of the evening with her weekly opening gambit.

Harriette does not believe in the vaccine. In this she is guided by a higher power, Christine Gallagher; a mistic who talks about herself in the third person, perhaps because her body is merely a channel for ‘Him’ to speak through. Her sole purpose, it seems, is to ‘Deliver Heaven’s Message’ to the people of the Earth. In these times of the internet overwhelm, Christine is not above using Ireland’s Eye, a provincial magazine, to spread her gospel. Through this outlet Harriet has discovered that the vaccine is, ‘The Mark of Satan.’   

“The Mark of Satan,” repeats a wide-eyed Harriet, reflecting on Christine’s message from above, even before the first glass is poured, “What do you think of that, Mary?”

“The Catholic church has no problem with Darwin,” comes my mother’s reply, strategically using her deafness as a deflection tool to avoid an argument.

“It’s my immune system,” Harriet tells me accepting her first glass of alcoholic effervescence. “It’s low. I can’t have the vaccine because it’s low.”

“You studied Catechesis too,” continues my mother, “So you know that the church has no problem with Darwin.”

“It’s that Guillain-Barré, Mary, you know, I’d have it in a flash, only for that.”

“Oh, this is good,” my mother replies, toasting her friend after her first sip from the glass.

“I got that in Downey’s.”

“It’s very good,” my mother reassures her. “There’s a documentary about Diana for later.”

With that, it’s time to flee, though when I occasionally pass-through, to pour an additional glass or two, nuggets of conversation grab my attention.

 “They got me the new Bob Woodward in the library…”

“Prince Philip and Christine Keeler were, you know…”

“Can you believe a nun saying that Trump was bringing people to God…?”

“She said she’d take my driver’s licence away from me, Mary.”

“Don’t worry about her. She’s had to retire because she’s going blind…”

“Somebody put one of those dishes in my tree. They’re watching my every move.”

“Hillary Clinton has a new book out and I’ve asked them to hold it for me in the…”

It seems, as I eves drop, that there are rules to keeping a long-term friendship alive. First, serve your wine chilled. Second, always allow the other person to speak without interruption. Third, ignore everything the other person has to say, on every topic. And, lastly, politics and religion can be discussed, so long as you adhere to the first three rules.