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Today in London signs stickers

#today in london signs #sticker

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Today in London signs

#coffee #today in london signs

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Flight haikus #45-49

#45 (LHR - HEL)

Marimekko cups cannot disguise just how cheap this airline is

#46 (HEL - TLL)

A flight so short, there's not even time to pull the bar cart out

#47 (HEL - LHR)

Now that I want to use the sauna in the lounge it is not open

#48 (STN - GLA)

How is it the case I could board a flight without proving who I am?!

#49 (GLA - STN)

Cramped EasyJet flight: somehow, the least stressful part of today's ordeal

#flight haikus #flight haiku #haiku #poem #travel poetry #airplanes

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Today in London signs

#today in london signs #gin

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Snapshots from Burford.

#cotswolds #england #photoset #snapshots from

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Of maps and memories.

We crossed the River Liffey and came up a hill, stopping at a traffic light. “Did I ever tell you my grandfather had a warehouse over here,” he said, not so much a question. I saw a church. No warehouse. “It used to be right in front of the church and” — we started moving again — “it stretched from here to” — several seconds — “about here.” I turned around to look back, trying to imagine what it might have looked like, but it was already out of sight.

+

Dublin was never mine.

I do have, of course, memories that are mine and mine alone: delighting in the bilingual signs (first Irish, then English) and through that divining a couple of words of Irish on my first ever moments in the city from the top deck of the bus; a long run out to the squat red lighthouse at the end of a slick-stoned breakwater jutting far out into the sea on a windy November morning; marvelling at the Marsh Library on a cold January afternoon, looking for bullet holes in the stacks; running the eleven miles out to Howth cliff walk and taking the train back because I could.

Then there are shared memories. Sitting surrounded by Francis Bacon paintings at the Hugh Lane Gallery on the day he and I met, a spark when our limbs grazed. A half-pint of Guinness at O’Donoghue’s later on, a flush growing on my cheeks (not just from emptying my glass). Poring over the Sunday Times at the kitchen counter for Mrs. Mills’ entendres and seafront countryside property listings; the Turner watercolours at the National Gallery in January; picking up a scone (rhymes with “gone”) or two from the Saturday market at Temple Bar; stoking a fire in the squat iron fireplace in the bedroom to stave off the damp chill; afternoon tea smack between our birthdays in February, nearly setting fire to our fancy little cakes because we couldn’t stop laughing and make our wishes fast enough. The drives back to the airport when the banter tried a little too hard.

He lived in the city centre despite professing to loathe the city. When I came in, we’d zip out somewhere more tranquil for a few hours—Enniskerry, Dún Laoghaire, Skerries, Greystones. A walk along the cliffs; a vantage point from the Dublin hills on the way to the mountain pass; sheep skittering out onto the road in Wicklow; lunch al fresco by the sea.

Our starting point, though, was the centre of Dublin, so to get anywhere, through the city we went. I’d sit back and listen to the tour. He didn’t guide so much as perform.

+

Over there, decades ago, that was a gay solicitor’s house. Around that corner, an old woman with the exact same name as his grandmother. The Protestant hospital where, having had his appendix taken out, he rode his new bicycle around the halls on Christmas Day. One of the old family homes, where he would sit on the window ledge and jump down into the basement well. The dilapidated cinema awning where he took shelter during a rainstorm, mugged for his brown communion shoes by a gang of brutish kids. Idling at this intersection at the age of six, curled up on the back window ledge above the engine of a Volkswagen Beetle, looking down the street at the very building that would one day be his home.

The city came alive through the hidden histories behind the buildings (over there, a hidden Huguenot cemetery; that squat brick building in the middle of the road, used as a stand-in for Checkpoint Charlie in a ‘60s film; that, once a debtor’s prison, then a boys’ school, now being renovated probably into luxury flats). Alive through the ghosts from decades past inhabiting the buildings that have changed but remain timeless. Alive in an altogether different way through the details that were highlighted—and what was left out. The imperfect filters of memory and nostalgia. 

Embellishments. 

Fiction, even.

This patchwork of intimate things both was and wasn’t mine to know. My not knowing which was which underscored that I was a mere visitor. My memories of Dublin were, overwhelmingly, second-hand: a retelling of the characters and scenes from a richly textured play that I’d never be able to see.

+

That stage of my life came to a close long enough ego that I look back on it with fondness, with a belief—a genuine and solid belief—that all turned out the way it should be.

Several months ago, my boyfriend and I boarded a Dublin-bound plane at London City Airport. A familiar ritual, but different. My cheeks flushed as I realised that, now, the person I love was sitting in the seat next to mine, holding my hand, instead of waiting for me at arrivals. But old habits die hard, and when I ordered my traditional gin and tonic, habitual anticipation flooded me. I couldn’t look away as we cleared the clouds, revealing that wonky patchwork of green fields.

My boyfriend knew I’d spent a bit of time in Dublin (though not why, exactly), so he relied on me to find our way around. Memory provided the guideposts, moments in time etched into them. We crossed over the Liffey to the north side, walking through the neighbourhood I knew so well, a mere street away. He looked up cafes in Google Maps on his phone. (I suggested ones on the far reaches of the screen perhaps a little too quickly.) The birds-eye view of the tangle of streets was a poor facsimile of the layers of Dublin I had come to know. It didn’t correspond. For Dublin isn’t objective. It is perhaps the only place in the world that I must navigate by feel and memory. Maps and grids couldn’t possibly begin to explain it.

We walked around St. Stephen’s Green, inextricably associated in my mind with a walk with my former partner on a heavy January day, woven together with his tale of his having fallen in the pond as a kid when playing with a toy, a tanker boat, nearly drowning to death. Back in the present, I took us on a small detour to find the bust of Countess Markievicz—a gutsy firebrand revered for her role in the Irish fight for independence—which I regarded as important because it had been pointed out to me before, my spirit compared favourably to hers. 

(I did not impart the same importance to my boyfriend, safe to say.)

I fretted the entire time I was in Ireland that we’d run into him. Into a part of my past that I hadn’t yet talked about at all. That, in front of the person I fully intend to marry one day, emotion would slosh over the sides of the buckets neatly separating different eras of my life, threads of the past tangling with the present. I suppose even a genuine and solid belief that all turned out how it should have done doesn’t preclude something reaching in deep and snagging a heartstring or two.

+

This never was my town. Oh, I loved it, all right. Had fallen for a person and a city at the same time, which made them one and the same—and so the loss was twofold when it all unravelled. I had tricked myself into envisioning that this would be mine. But Dublin never was, and it never will be.

I’m glad for that. I’ve since left that vision behind, though the memory of it lingered when I was there. I trust that, in time, when I turn around and look back, trying to imagine what once was and what could have been, it’ll all have vanished out of sight—become an abstraction, a memory belonging to someone else. Onwards.

#memoir #essay #love #dublin

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Today Some time ago in London signs

#today in london signs #london #sandwich board

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Flight haikus #41-44

#41 (LHR - ORD)

Champagne while working Though decent attempts were made, multitasking's hard

#42 (ORD - LHR)

The Wi-Fi's broken. Seven sweet, sweet hours to be truly off the grid

#43 (LHR - ORD)

No upgrade for me so he sat with me in coach true love does exist

#44 (ORD - LHR)

I'm getting older, flights longer, ocean larger, eye circles darker

#haiku #flight haikus #poetry #travel poetry #flight haiku #airplanes #travel

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Keeping the streets of Wapping safe.

#london #police horses #wapping

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Flight haikus #33-40

#33 (LHR - ORD)

Holy fucking shit after an eighteen-month wait I AM ON A PLANE

#34 (ORD - LHR)

I'm not religious but I prayed so hard that my bags would show up safe

#35 (LHR - ATH)

The guy next to me struck up a conversation Shocker: not British

#36 (ATH - LHR)

In which you accept some airlines are basically just flying buses

#37 (LHR - ORD)

Sometimes eight hours is too long to sit quietly wrapped up in your thoughts

#38 (ORD - MCO)

What time is it now? (What day is it?) In any case: It's time for champagne

#39 (MCO - DFW)

So sick of COVID. Dumb reason for keeping all the good lounges closed

#40 (DFW - LHR)

You know you slept well when you're asked if your sleep was chemically induced

#flight haikus #flight haiku #poetry #haiku #travel poetry #travel #airplanes

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On English ways

Three years and change of living here has taught me that when someone says something and then a moment later you catch yourself wondering “wait, was that really an insult dressed up in a compliment?” ...

you already know the answer.

#england #english #english culture #text #essay #just an observation

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Scotland in a nutshell

Broad: Would gin go with Irn-Bru?

Waitress: (without the slightest hesitation) EVERYTHING goes with Irn-Bru

#scotland #irn bru

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Today in London Leith signs graffiti

#scotland #graffiti #doon yer tea #bread monster #leith #today in london signs

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Today in London signs

#plants #london #brown thumb #today in london signs

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Today in London signs

#london #sign #st katharine’s dock #lockdown fatigue #today in london signs

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Tranches.

Friend: Won't you need a visa to go to Wales now, post-Brexit?

Broad: Eh, they'll likely be the last of the devolved nations to leave us.

Friend: FILO. Edward I in 1283

#wales #united kingdom #devolved nations #tranches #edward i #nerd humour #filo

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Today in London signs

#coffee #star wars #parody #canary wharf #isle of dogs #clever clever #today in london signs