Old Rambling On

Inspiration for ‘Sweet Lemons’ by Fidelma Kelly, Poolbeg Press

I have always been fascinated by hotels – the smaller and quirkier the better. I love their ability to be distant and impersonal one minute, friendly and inquisitive the next. I attribute this fascination to the fact that I’m an only child. I was always far more enthusiastic at the mention of a childhood holiday that wasn’t self-catering: it was great to be able to ‘people-watch’ others not related to me, when having my breakfast!
As an adult, my nosiness travelled with me as I travelled more – and was exacerbated when I began to write fiction. Communal settings are fodder to fire the imagination – and I soon realised a hotel would be a marvellously economic setting for a novel. It offered multiple possibilities for drama. You have the cast of the permanent staff and their competitiveness and niggles within the workplace community. They’re the backdrop to the transient population of guests who come their way – sometimes only once for one night – others, repeat visitors for the same two weeks every year. The guests arrive with expectations and baggage that doesn’t always come on wheels – tense and difficult or ridiculously happy – neither state likely to remain for the duration of their stay. Make it a smaller, family-run hotel – particularly in Italy – and you have an extended family who can spot the guest type a mile off!
When I began writing an early draft of ‘Sweet Lemons’, the one thing I was certain about was that the action would centre on and derive from my fictitious ‘Hotel Panoramico’ community. I moved my hotel to a small town in Sicily where I had spent many holidays, eventually re-locating there for an extended period myself and where, no longer considered a tourist, I developed a real feel for the social nuances and town snobberies. Add in a local Opera Festival, and you have the makings of a half-decent plot!
When authors talk about ‘drafts’ of novels or ‘re-writing’ material, I suspect non-writers glaze over, thinking it’s something like spell-checking a report they’ve done for work, or ‘cutting out’ a dud paragraph. They have no concept of the journey a first draft makes to its final published version. Early ‘Sweet Lemons’ was a great, rambling behemoth of a book – nay, a social and historical document of Sicily in the 21st century with a built-in tutorial on the opera Tosca!
But when it came to paring the story back to its essence, I tried not to jettison too much of the social and cultural ‘colour’. Instead, several sub-plots were lost – and therefore, minor characters – who probably had no right to feature at all. A further de-construction of the manuscript was necessary – to forensically extract any foreshadowing or references to the characters or events that were no more!
Writing and re-writing a first novel takes time, and in the time-lag, life also changed. When I first began it, people and society were quite understanding when people dealing with tough personal events like bereavement, divorce or failed relationships, left work or took a year off to travel. But in the band of time post-recession and pre-pandemic, I had begun to observe there was little sympathy for this kind of weakness. Women in particular, were encouraged to ‘make no rash decisions’ – (post-bereavement) – or to ‘front it out’ – (post-divorce, when working alongside the ex) and I thought – I have to present the opposite viewpoint in my characterisation! Sometimes, when your life is de-railed, the most sensible thing – the strongest and wisest thing to do – is to run away. Whether for five weeks like the characters in ‘Sweet Lemons’, or however long it takes to make friends again with the unburdened version of yourself.

‘Sweet Lemons’ probably would never have seen the light of day, if it hadn’t been for the 2020 Covid 19 lockdown. Trying to fill the long, anxious days – days in which my input into the care of my then 93-year-old parents in a local nursing home had been ripped out of my hands as I was no longer able to check on them in person – I had to do something. Writing-wise, I was working on a different novel at the time, but I was making very heavy weather of it, consumed with worry that my parents would catch Covid and die. I decided to re-direct my nervous energies into something physical and clear out, paint and re-organise the bedroom I use as an office. In the process, I found my early drafts of ‘Sweet Lemons.’ Whether it was the deprivation of mobility or any hope of a holiday that filled me with nostalgia for sun and my Sicilian friends, I took down the hardcopy and began reading.
The theme was happier, the setting unburdened by infectious disease and the writing reflected these lighter times. I decided to give it another whirl.

Many months later, I had a re-written version that I was happy to let go of. I prepared only two submissions – each with different requirements and sent them off. When Paula Campbell of Poolbeg Press contacted me for the full manuscript very quickly after receiving the material, I was impressed with her speed of turnaround and felt encouraged. Thankfully, she liked what she read, and in July 2021 I signed a three-book deal with Poolbeg.
After a protracted gestation, ‘Sweet Lemons’ came into the world in September 2021 in eBook format and is also available in paperback through Amazon.

As I work away on my second title, my parents are still alive. They have survived two nursing home outbreaks of Covid, four lockdowns of thirteen months in total without seeing me, and are now both 95.
I guess that’s where I get my resilience from.

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A WRITER READS

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A Writer Writes

Fidelma at the Piazza dei Signori, Verona

I don’t want to state the obvious, but a writer writes. Whilst other people might vent on radio phone-ins or pour it all out to a therapist, a writer has a compulsion to put into words – in whatever medium – a morsel of an idea, a moment of clarity or disillusion – something that may form an outline for a character or later shape itself into a story.

I have always believed that success breeds motivation – and I wasn’t wrong. When I was offered a 3-book deal with Poolbeg Press, the new focus of writing with a purpose precipitated a flurry of intensive work. What did surprise me was that despite my publisher’s faith in me, I realised I couldn’t abandon every other aspect of my non-writing life and superglue my rear end to the chair ten hours a day. The reality is other non-writing life has to continue as before.

What I do believe is the motivation derived from someone taking a chance on me, would send my self-belief rocketing and automatically, increase productivity!

And yet even small successes can provide incredible motivation or in equal measure, temporary discouragement. Take competitions, and why we writers continue to enter them.

The stats are there, but we ignore them, always hopeful to make the longlist, or the shortlist or god forbid, actually win something. When I submitted to the Bath Novel Award (www.bathnovelaward.co.uk): 1201 entries received, from 38 countries, whittled down to a longlist of 24.

And on the morning of that longlist announcement, I was nervous, I was full of anticipation: for some reason, I believed my title could be among the twenty-four!

I read the helpful, alphabetically-listed titles, and as my title was early in the alphabet, my disappointment was swift.

But it was the strength of my emotion, the depth of my upset at yet another ‘No’, that took me by surprise. Logic and odds didn’t enter in to it; it was a loss, a loss of possibility.

It made me recall a passage, that had struck me forcibly in Liane Moriarty’s novel ‘Truly Madly Guilty’:

“It felt like another loss. Each time he thought he was doing well, avoiding hope. Each time he told himself, I have no expectations, but with each new failure, it hurt so much, that he understood the hope had been there after all. […] It didn’t get easier either. It got worse. A cumulative effect. Loss upon loss.”

Oliver, in ‘Truly Madly Guilty.’

But a little perspective required – it was only a competition! I have since dusted myself down and entered many more with greater success.

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Rambling On

As I was reflecting on the books I have read over the past eighteen months and deciding on which I should choose to include in the A Writer Reads section of this website, a thought struck me:  I am a literary sloth – the very definition of what childish Dan in One More Time would call – a LazyBones.  The paltry collection in my Already Read pile seemed to indicate that I am a very slow reader indeed – never managing to devour and pontificate on something fresh off the press.  Far more likely to get around to reading your masterpiece fellow authors – a good year after it’s released.

This disappoints me.  Am I a complete wastrel?  Or just a bad time-manager?  I know that in these past eighteen months,  I have published two books – wrote and researched one in its entirety from scratch, buried two parents, dealt with all their administration, cleared out a house, executed two wills, kept my Border Terrier alive, fed and exercised, myself likewise in reasonable condition, the house warm and sanitary and the bailiffs on the other side of the door.   I am no slouch.

But reading – like a lot of other activities – has become competitive.  It’s no longer a leisure activity;  it’s an operation in one-up-womanship. I choose to alter the gender of that noun deliberately as I think it is mostly the female of the species who engages in this practice.

When did this happen?  Reading used to be a leisure activity – something you did on a wet Sunday afternoon by a big fire with a hot whiskey on your side-table.  Or during that last hour in bed before you nod off.

For the seriously time-challenged – and I include myself in this – it was something you looked forward to catching up on during a ten-day holiday lounging on the beach or by the pool, when you actually could read all day – with no interruptions.  On my many trips to Italy, the natives are always fascinated by why foreigners bring books – sometimes hardbacks – to the beach with them.  They could never see the appeal, when you had the blue Med in front of you.

Although it was invigorating and fresh to hear the views of the all-male gatherings on the recent excellent RTE The Book Club programme, historically book clubs have been most popular among women.

But when I think of competitive reading, it’s generally not in-person book clubs I’m thinking about.  They tend to pick a manageable book to be read over a reasonable time-frame and welcome a healthy mix of views on what the participants think of it, dotted through with general news and an adequate draught of white wine to keep the vocal chords lubricated.

Competitive reading is, I think, at its worse in On-line book clubs.  They can encourage people to project themselves, their erudition, their knowledge onto the other members – through their recommendations.  Of course some people are genuinely sharing a book that they thought was fantastic and enjoyed thoroughly, but others – particularly authors – are –wary of endorsing something they think might impact negatively on their own profile, while others consciously choose something that elevates their status in the reading of it.  I could be guilty of that last one myself.

But the thing that upsets me the most are the ‘Challenges’: read a book a day or 500 a year!  (I exaggerate for the sake of illustration!)  It might take a writer at least a year to get a book down – yet Janey doing the ‘Challenge’ can dispense with it in eight hours.  This ‘skimming-over’ – this speed-reading when it’s not your day-job – has fed into the commodification of literature.  Books as commodities with no intrinsic value or art or beauty within.  Just ‘pulp fiction’ – expected to be churned out on a yearly basis – often to the detriment of the quality of what lies between the covers and certainly to the loss of many good trees which don’t deserve to be sacrificed.

I think my ‘below-par’ score for the sum of books that I have read during the past eighteen months probably is an indicator – not of my indolence, but instead of my desire to really read what other people have taken the time to write.  I read like a writer;  loving the balance of a sentence – frowning at one that sits awkwardly – or is, let’s face, just plain ugly and shouldn’t have been allowed to stay.

My challenge is not how many books I have ticked off my list, but how long will the characters, settings and wonderful scenes from those that I have completed, stay with me in the future.

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Summer Break

Even 91-year-olds enjoy a break by the sea!  Especially when it involves being wined and dined in the garden!

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Competitions

 

There have been a lot of them around recently, and despite my thoughts on the unrealistic expectations of writers as to their prospects of actually winning something, the converse is also true: even a mediocre success can be incentive enough to keep a writer persevering. I was reminded of this when a chance encounter on the sun terrace at the Listowel Arms, brought me into the company of the now retired Radio 1 producer, formerly known as Mr Francis MacManus. A mutual acquaintance introduced us and I found myself thanking Seamus Hosey for giving me my first break. Back in 2010, at a point when I thought I would never write another word again, I received the coveted email from Seamus congratulating me on making the shortlist for the Francis MacManus story competition. To people used to winning things, this would appear a non-event, but for me it served as a much-needed fillip. My story ‘Hired Help’ didn’t make the prize-winning final three, but still served to encourage me to keep going. I include an extract below:

Hired Help

Silvia arranged the sets of keys in a circle on the scratched pine table. The baby in the apartment next door started to wail. She reached for the dial on the radio and turned the volume up. The neighbours could probably hear the loud music through the thin walls, but she could hear their screaming baby, so one-all. She wondered which set she’d need today. The key-rings and the labels reflected their owners’ personalities. Uptight Mrs Maguire had coloured coded labels with little stickers attached to each key, as if Silvia were unable to differentiate between a chunky Chubb lock and a plain old Yale key. ‘Entrance Porch: First lock’, they read. ‘Entrance Porch: Security bolt’; ‘Front door: Lower lock.’; ‘Front door: Upper lock’. The best of all, of course, was the purple label with the alarm code. Such was Mrs Maguire’s paranoia that she changed the combination every month. When Silvia had begun working for her, she received a laminated sheet with twelve coloured dots opposite a corresponding month. On the nearest working day to the end of the month, Mrs Maguire presented her with the new coloured badge and its code.

Credit: Ivanna Blinova

For all the fussiness, ‘Shangri-la’ was a good place to be. They had a grand piano, the only one of her ladies in that league. When Silvia yearned for her old life, she lifted the polished lid, slid the stool out from under the key board and adjusted the seat to her own height. Her newly-scrubbed fingers glided enthusiastically up and down the stiff ivories. Rarely used, the keys resisted her rapid Chopin or gentle Débussy and she stumbled over phrases that she would normally take in her stride, as the keys stuck in shock at being played. Silvia had never seen this piece of furniture put to use. Roderic, the seven-year- old, was taking lessons but the presence of the Steinway in the panoramic drawing room was principally an interior design feature. As the hungry baby on the other side of the wall reached his crescendo, the argument on the radio phone-in raised its decibel level in sympathy. It was time to get out. Silvia checked her tiny pocket diary to see who was where and pushed the keys around the table once more. She stashed the Shangri-la set into her black leather tote, which she always used when on a job. It was large enough to create the illusion that it contained cleaning materials, yet it was stylish enough to make her feel like any other twenty-seven-year-old on a shopping trip. She chose a second set with a Los Angeles car number plate key-ring. These belonged to Jennie, who insisted she call her by her first name, ‘because we’re all equals here’, something Silvia never did, because it only served to highlight the disparity between the two women despite the pretend chumminess of informality. Jennie was a successful make-up artist who regularly travelled abroad for film work and whose modest detached house, could have survived without outside intervention. She had an entire room dedicated to her art, where her neighbours had in its place a garage. Silvia’s only task in the studio was to sweep and mop the tiled floor and empty the waste paper bins, as Jennie often took private clients for a make-up lesson or to have their face done at short notice, and she disliked the disruption. It was this room that had first given Silvia the idea. Rows of glittery nail varnish were arranged on miniature shelving systems, sitting there, waiting to be tried. There had to be at least fifty different lip colours – some in little tubs applied with brushes; others of the more conventional stick variety. The cupboards under the counter where the sink was, held drawer upon drawer of powder, tubes of foundation, compacted blocks of blusher. There were two other doors marked ‘eye make-up’ and another marked ‘hair’. It was the sheer volume and variety of products which tempted Silvia. One April morning with spring sunshine streaming in through the windows, she put down the mop and sat into the red leather swivel chair. She inspected her own hands and felt the roughness of her skin, a consequence of rubber gloves worn inconsistently. Wild Berry called out to her from the polish rack. Her nails, although in need of a professional manicure, were at least neatly cut – she had no option if she wanted to continue playing at Giorgio’s – but how much prettier they would look all gleaming with colour. Jennie had so many - she’d never miss ten little blobs. Deftly, Silvia ran the narrow brush over each nail – three light strokes apiece – and watched as the skin on each hand seemed to glow, drawing warmth from its berry-coloured extremities. The following week, she made up her eyes, sifting through that cupboard’s contents and selecting shades of muted green, greys and a smidgen of silver. Once the task was completed, she replaced everything exactly where it had been. Silvia would have been horrified at the notion of removing anything from any of her ladies’ houses, but after her twice weekly clean of Jennie’s, she emerged perfectly made-up and with stunning fingernails. The waiters at Giorgio’s had begun to comment. ‘Che bella!’ they would sigh, when she slipped in the side-door to arrange her music in sequence on top of the piano. Her repertoire at the restaurant was less classical than she would have liked, but the patrons preferred easy-listening with an Italian twist, so she tinkled her way through Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, some Billy Joel for the fifty-some-things and lots of regional Italian folk songs, to satisfy the indigenous population when they were in. Pleased with the compliments on her newly-groomed self, Silvia began to take stock of her other resources, beginning with the Steinway. The next time she was due at Shangri-la, she stuffed a book of Chopin Nocturnes into her leather bag. Mrs Maguire tended to vacate the premises on Tuesday mornings, deliberately scheduling golf or the gym so she wouldn’t have to witness someone on their knees cleaning under the rim of her toilet bowl. If Silvia speed-cleaned the house, that would leave a good hour to try and learn some of the new nocturnes. Giorgio, the restaurant proprietor, had promised her free rein at the piano one evening a month in which she could play her ‘real’ music, and she needed to work up some pieces to standard. Of course, on the evenings when she would play her classical tunes, Silvia would need to look the part. She had no evening gowns with her in Ireland, but she thought carefully of the various sizes of her ladies. Mrs Maguire was a bit taller than Silvia, but she was about the same dress size. She resolved to vacuum the bedroom thoroughly the following Tuesday and to have a look at her collection.

It didn’t take Silvia long to become the most popular cleaner on the south-side of the city. Her clients wondered at the obvious pride she took in making their houses gleam. The hired help for her part had a genuine enthusiasm for her visits. She made notes about her clients’ comings and goings. She listened attentively to their long weekend plans, the film they were working on in New England; the 25th anniversary holiday that hubby had booked, because it was sometimes difficult to get through everything on the appointed day – and clean as well. The pocket diary became a road-map to Silvia’s own social life. Once she discovered the perks of all those delightful houses, the world opened up. Her body is now trim and toned from the twice weekly workout in Mrs O’Reilly’s home gym. The Steinway’s keys do not stick any more, happy to be put through their paces vigorously several days a week. Clothes Mrs Maguire thinks she gave to the charity shop have been re-tailored and grace Silvia’s svelte figure in the restaurant or on the stage at the occasional concerts she is beginning to be offered.

This evening’s recital at Giorgio’s is an important one. It has been listed in the Event guide of the national papers and she will receive 50% of the cover charge. Giorgio likes the exotic sound of her full name – Silviana Houskovà – and is delighted with the new interest in his small and rather dated restaurant. The chef has assembled platters of antipasti and cases of prosecco and cheaper wine have been brought in to cater for the music-lovers. Silvia has chosen an emerald green silk-jersey dress. It is sleeveless, with a diamante cluster gathering the plunging v-neck. The length has been altered since Mrs Maguire last wore it and Jennie’s black satin court shoes are elegant and won’t slip on the pedals. Her make-up is slightly more dramatic than usual, because Giorgio has installed a couple of spots to illuminate her. She had to spend more time than planned in Jennie’s that afternoon to achieve the effect. A neighbour seemed suspicious but Silvia cheerily explained that she was freshening up the place for her client’s return from overseas. She reluctantly had to break her rule about removing things from the houses and had slipped the satin shoes into the tote before going up to Shangri-la for a final run-through undisturbed, as the Maguires were enjoying a romantic break in a country house hotel to celebrate something or other.

At 9 o’clock, the restaurant is full. The usual intimate tables of twos and fours have been amalgamated into longer configurations to accommodate more people. Waiters circulate and take orders for the platters and pop prosecco corks. Giorgio blows into the radio mike and introduces her. A ripple of polite applause competes with clinking glasses and conversations.  Silvia concentrates on her opening choice: Débussy’s 'Clair de lune' – something familiar that won’t frighten yet gentle enough not to overpower the room. A tendril escapes from her upswept hair as her wrists flex and her arms and shoulders begin to move with the music. Absorbed, Silvia segues effortlessly into her second choice.

At the door, Giorgio personally greets Thelma and Roger Maguire. They are a bit perturbed by the long tables and hadn’t known about the pianist. Away for a long weekend, blah de blah, no interest in cooking, blah de blah, wanted a quiet meal. Giorgio soothes, placates, seats, fusses. Thelma studies the new antipasti, concedes that they look ok. Roger risks a bottle of unknown red and squints up at the elegant brunette in the green dress, dainty fingers punishing the keys. The waiter pours the wine and Thelma takes a sip. She waves at a new trio who push their way into the restaurant.

‘Look, Roger, Jennie Browne, my make-up girl, and some hobo friends of hers. Film crew, I’d say, judging by the clothes.’

Thelma bites into a tomato and olive bruschetta. Roger grunts and downs his wine, quite drinkable, for the price.

‘That young one playing the piano isn’t bad, is she?’

‘No, though I don’t agree with paying a cover charge for the privilege of listening to her.’ Thelma holds out her glass for a refill. ‘I used to have a dress a bit like that. You never liked it.’

‘Can’t say that I remember. Look here’s your hippy friend coming over.’

‘Be nice, Roger. Remember, she’s the one who found us Silvia.’

‘Ah yes, the hired help. Where would we be without the wonderful Silvia?’

‘Quite. Where would we be indeed?’ *

© Fidelma Kelly

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A Writer Reads

A writer reads

And how could I not read, freshly back from Listowel, laden with interesting material and still trailing around books which I just never got the time for, when they were newly-published.

One such is the highly-praised ‘Midwinter Break’, by Bernard MacLaverty, among the five short-listed titles for the lucrative Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award.

Being neither elderly nor long-term married, I hadn’t an immediate identification with either character, but as I read on, I marvelled at the minutiae of the lives of Stella and Gerry as portrayed by MacLaverty, and the way in which both husband and wife anticipate the other’s next move, second-guessing an imminent behaviour or statement, before it occurs. The tics of living together over a protracted period are instantly recognisable and though not all of the protagonists’ habits are attractive, they are so acutely observed, that the reader is left in no doubt as to how well this couple know each other.

MacLaverty’s beautiful writing made me ponder on how you don’t have to like a character, to deliver them fully-formed to the reader. Perhaps the author loved both Stella and Gerry equally; I have to say, I struggled with Stella, who perhaps not without her own good reasons, I found cold, and replete with the most irritating know-all traits. Alcoholic Gerry, in his bumbling way, loved her deeply; he just hadn’t made the connection between that love and how harmful to it, his behaviours were.

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Elder Care in Ireland

HOW IT BEGAN

ON the shortest day of the year in 2011, my godfather’s widow fell off a step-ladder, trying to reach bird food on a shelf in her garage. She was ninety years of age at the time, and still living, with increasing difficulty, at home alone. This is how my crash-course into the world of elder care in this country began, in what was to become the longest year of my life.

The inevitable fractured hip, hospitalisation and alien environment precipitated an acceleration of the dementia that she was battling so hard to conceal, not helped by the sudden transfer after the requisite time out of her ‘bed-blocking bed’ on a private ward, to the inferior public facility that was affectionately known as ‘the holding area’ for those awaiting nursing home placement.

Even the by then ninety-one-year old recognised the downgrading of her circumstances. But the die was cast: she had been recommended for long-term care and the quest for that elusive nursing home began. She would remain on the ward for the bewildered until they – or I – found her a home to go to. I sprang her in May of 2012, to a place I found and for which she paid privately. Nine months and two nursing facilities later – she was kicked out of the first home because they couldn’t manage her disruptive behaviour – silent and uncommunicative and having just given up on life, she passed away.

I open this Elder Lemon section with my aunt’s back-story, because it is relevant as to how I arrived at my current role in looking after my parents. Being the nominated next-of-kin to this non-blood relative, opened my eyes as to how to protect my own parents from her fate, for as long as I could.
If I thought that first year was long, well there have been seven other long years since. In a country with populous families, an only child with no children of their own, is an oddity. I have felt at times during meetings with hospital social workers that they didn’t believe me. That they suspected I had secreted or silenced several other siblings, partners and offspring somewhere and was just getting off on the power of being in control!

But elder care is not a job that you sign up for: it happens by stealth. Because of my apprenticeship with the aunt, I installed the hand-rails on the stairs. I changed the height of the toilet and put grab rails and a chair into the shower. I adapted the kitchen to a more modern, home-carer-friendly version. You do this in advance of the problem, because by the time the elderly person has had that tumble and you look for help in retro-fitting, they will either have passed away or be on the ward for the bewildered when the funding comes through.

Nor is caring for the elderly sexy. It doesn’t have the cuteness or the cachet of staying home to care for small children. Your investing of your time in nurturing future generations is seen as a valuable contribution to society and the world of work has finally come to recognise this, with parental leave and career breaks.
But taking over the lives of elderly people in all their aspects, is relentless, time-consuming, unrecognised and unpaid work, and involves a range of more cerebral activities, than the martyred notion of the – usually – female care-giver – wiping bums and spooning mush. It is one of the reasons I will not use the term ‘carer’ in describing that part of my life’s work.

Thankfully, this section will not be all gloom and polemics. It will visit Feisty Dad, still living at home and although Mother has succumbed to the uncertain world of dementia, she is in a terrific nursing home.

Life goes on.

Human behaviour continues to fascinate me – whether it’s the social dynamic of groups in a nursing home, or the complete absence of care in the community, unless you subscribe to what is available through the public health system and ‘avail of the services.’

Perish the thought that a neighbour or a friend, might just knock on the door, to see if you need anything – and not get paid for it.

HOW IT EVOLVED

Despite the proactive measures I took to shore up my parents’ physical home and the increase in practical domestic help provided by me and paid carers, the insidious introduction of dementia into the picture – altered the scenario.  In my mother’s case, her journey was slow and typical of frontotemporal dementia insofar as its presence was recognised most acutely by behavioural changes.  Always a woman fond of her dinner - she had upturned the structure of my father’s life – by insisting that the main meal of the day be switched to lunchtime.  (I seem to recall not one, but several politicians and the odd television presenter being lampooned for coining the phrase ‘the plain people of Ireland’ – those who ate their dinner in the middle of the day!)  Whether it was my father’s aversion to being ‘ a plain person’ or just his stomach that objected to eating a heavy meal so early when neither of them were up at cock-crow, he refused to comply, insisting on maintaining his usual habit of cooking and enjoying an evening dinner – while he or whatever carer was in – made Mother’s dinner for 1.30.

But despite all the eating, I began to observe that she was losing weight  - quite dramatically.  When on a review with a gerontologist, the first thing that consultant remarked upon was the dramatic weight loss.  This was the most serious implication of the altered behaviour.  For despite insisting upon it, she wasn’t eating those lunchtime meals.  Nor the sandwiches later or indeed anything else.  The mystery was in part solved by my former dog, Todd, who began to take a great interest in the cushions, the sides of the sofa, under the seat chairs… where balled up serviettes full of food – had been secreted.

This ‘hiding food’ is not unusual to those used to the world of Alzheimer’s dementia, but the dramatic weight loss, resulted in a hospital stay for my mother after which – principally because nobody got her out of her hospital bed to walk – she came out of the hospital in a wheelchair and was transferred to the private nursing home bed that I found for her and that would become her home for the remaining six and a half years of her life.

Sometimes, you just get lucky.  And as a person with no track record of luck of any kind, the day I knocked on the door of  Foxrock Nursing Home, I did get lucky.  Not only was it small and homely, but at seven minutes door to door from my own home, it meant I relaxed in being able to visit my mother in a calm and pleasant environment so unlike the dreadful six weeks I had put in at the hospital.

My father was forced to become accustomed to his own house alone – with either me or the carers coming and going, but after about a year, I observed that he wasn’t doing well.  I thought he’d enjoy the freedom from having to care for my mother – even at the age of 90 he still danced around her – looking after everything that she needed – but in her absence, despite me fetching and carrying him to visit her in Foxrock  - he went downhill.

Then, he too began to behave bizarrely.  I suspected a mini-stroke or two – but he presented himself very well any time I managed to get him to the GP.  Eventually, convinced that he too was spiralling into dementia, I demanded a referral for a private MRI, had him seen within 10 days - and my feelings were confirmed.  He was admitted after the results of that MRI – into Blackrock Clinic where they treated him for the two strokes he had already had. The fact that he now had vascular dementia and was aggressive and difficult with it – didn’t detract from the care they put in place for him.

Home he came with a live-in carer doing 4 nights a week and me doing the weekends, and one of his previous carers doing a couple of weekday hours in order to give the live-in or me a break and so I could try and look after my own affairs!

When the in-house carer gave notice, exhausted by trying – and failing – to find her replacement, I wondered if it was time for him to join my mother in the nursing home.  It was.

This was something he was totally adverse to – but the tough love of leaving him alone for a couple of weekends – made him balance his loneliness and confusion – with the company, structure and really lovely cuisine which he was soon to adapt to in the nursing home.

It wasn’t that he didn’t complain.  Or that he didn’t ask me – repeatedly – ‘when am I going home?’ but as I had already put in over three years fielding the same question from my mother, I began to understand that the only one who would be bothered and upset by that question an hour after it was asked – was me.

*

CARE INTERRUPTED

And then, came Covid.  I have written an episode in my latest work of fiction One More Time where the principal female character is in Nice, France on business when this hubbub about a ‘Chinese flu’ breaks out.  This is in fact autobiographical.  I was in Nice on business in February 2020 and returned home to the increasing anxiety around this virus.  Little did I know that within less than ten days, my daily routine of spending time with my nonagenarian parents would cease and that I, effectively would be ‘locked-out.’  In those scared early weeks of 2020 when people were terrified by the sight of the deceased lined up at a Bergamo hospital, keeping communal settings ‘virus-free’ had to be the priority.

And they did.  My parents’ wonderful nursing home, kept Covid 19 out and throughout 2020, various relaxation of lockdown levels made various types of contact possible.  Window visits – where I spoke on the phone through the window – me out in all weathers, Dad in a chair on the inside: WhatsApp video calls were all timetabled and managed superbly by the Events’ Co-ordinator.  My mother was no longer able to use the phone. Or Facetime, or these video calls, but sometimes they’d schedule one anyway, so I could see her and what she looked like.

In a way, ‘living in the moment’ of her Alzheimer’s cloud protected her emotionally.  She didn’t particularly miss me;  I was just another familiar face of many.

But my father – lucid and engaged 70% of the time – suffered greatly.  When we were catapulted back in to the 2021 lengthy, demoralising lockdown – notwithstanding the roll-out of the vaccine programme – the isolation and emotional distress for both of us escalated.  It’s at this point that I became angry when unhelpful people suggested how at risk my parents were – because I had chosen for them to be cared for in a nursing home.
See my Irish Times article: I’m thankful my parents are in a nursing home during this Covid-19 emergency

The intelligent director of nursing at the Home, could see how their residents were deteriorating – not through Covid though they did finally succumb to some cases – but through the unexplained lack of contact and misunderstanding of where their family had vanished to.  The toll of dementia makes a nonsense of technology – and additionally, the infection control protocols in my parents’ nursing home were so strict that until they had increased the number of iPads, they wouldn’t allow their passing between residents, unless they had been returned to be centrally disinfected and ‘rested’ until in use again.

Innovative ways of staying within the guidelines but allowing the residents catch a glimpse of their loved ones were employed.  Regulation had by this stage reached nonsensical levels: family members nor their vehicles not allowed within the car-park of the nursing home – as if it were ‘foot and mouth’ disease travelling on the tyres of the cars.   (Why nursing homes only?  What about all the ‘germs’ in supermarket car-parks?)

When I recall one drizzly, cold March day – and the sight of my 94-year-old father in a wheelchair, dressed in his heavy outdoor jacket, a blanket over his legs, a carer standing in her uniform in the rain with a golf umbrella over his head, he on the inside of the railings of the home and me on the other side – several metres away on the abutting communal green of the housing enclave where the home was, I am still angry at the lack of consideration for our elderly.

For those who oversaw this policy with impunity, I have two words – yes, those two as well – but the polite two are – antigen tests.  Commonly supplied to and in use among the nursing home staff to ensure they were infection-free, apparently, the ‘plain people’ of Ireland according to the former CMO were too stupid to use them all by themselves.  No mention of the cost that would have been involved to supply them had the nursing homes been allowed accept one nominated resident ‘buddy’ and employ a ‘tester’ to screen that buddy-visitor, so all these elderly people around the country vaccinated but locked away from their children and spouses, could have had some contact.

HOW IT ENDED

Eventually, we exited Covid and my parents, despite contracting it twice, survived it twice.  But life in the nursing home as I had known it, never returned to normal.  Gone was the family-feel and the camaraderie between old and new residents’ visitors as they chatted or supported each other on their way to and from spending time with their people.

The isolated visits that had resumed following the pandemic meant that the visitor continued to be brought to the resident’s bedroom to see them – and the implicit group support from other relatives often struggling with difficult scenarios – was no more.

When their time came – it was pneumonia that took my parents off – following as a result of that bad chest infection that was doing the rounds in 2022.   My father had given it a preliminary attempt earlier in the year in July and August, when everybody cautioned that his days were numbered. Last rites were administered, the doctor had put in his courtesy warning phone-call – but JP – as he was affectionately known to his employees and his golf club friends – rallied and did a Lazarus, giving the same doctor quite the fright when he returned from his holiday to find Dad up and dressed and sitting in the conservatory.

Alas, Christmas 2022 was to be our last one together.  As he and I sat with some rugby match bobbing along on the in-room television, he turned to me and said: ‘I think I’m on the way out.’

This was his warning to prepare myself.  Within a week – and four days ahead of his 96th birthday – I had lost my best friend.

I’ve never been a great fan of marriage – seeing it as an economic, societally acceptable way of keeping people bound to each other in stable partnerships – but when my mother, his wife of sixty-eight years – despite her hazy Alzheimer’s grasp of things ,went further into the doldrums following my father’s death, I had to acknowledge that there might be something in it.  For better or for worse – that length of time spent as someone’s soulmate cannot be dismissed.

In true Diva form, my mother held off dramatically – to pass away on the same date as my father, exactly one month later in 2023.

*

© This is an extract from a longer piece of non-fiction, currently in progress.

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May and June

Throughout May and June, there have been a surfeit of riches in terms of literature festivals and writer events, and indeed, because I need to stay solvent and deal with the demands of my non-writing life, there is only so much I could allow myself the time to attend.

However, one event which I did go along to with enthusiasm was the inaugural National Day for Writers at IMMA, Kilmainham, on May 25th. This was organised by Words Ireland, the umbrella title used by the seven supportive literature organisations who collaborate to work with writers in Ireland and it was held as an integral part of the Dublin International Literature Festival which ran over eight days.

Highlights for me were the manifestoes of Alan Titley, Marina Carr and Kit de Waal. I particularly liked Alan’s plea to ignore ‘fashionism’ – which I interpreted as the tendency a writer might have to write what we think is in vogue and that which publishers are currently looking for. Given the gestation period of any self-respecting work, it is a futile exercise, as the ‘fashion’ will have surely passed by the time the final edits are done.

Kit de Waal made a request that writers should not be ‘lazy’ in their portrayal of class or ethnic groups, as these stereo-types are neither interesting nor acceptable to the intelligent reader.

In the afternoon, we had humour from Paul McVeigh and intuitive interviewing from Ruth Hegarty, whilst the final event was an extended chat between Declan Meade in his interview with the indomitable and always entertaining Anne Enright, reflecting on her tenure as Fiction Laureate and much else besides.

To the young man who asked if Anne’s best work was behind her – well, all I can say, is one day you too will be over fifty and fabulous!

Ballybunion beach 29C – the calm before Listowel

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