leaving rationality behind - hello Ireland!

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade." (Charles Dickens)

And it is a cold, cold March this year. Despite the heat of the midday sun, there is ice in the air. I hurriedly close the balcony door and curl up on the sofa to eat some more Easter chocolates. Surely I deserve it. I have spent the month trying to learn my new job and adjust to my new life, and now, miracle of miracles: I have twelve days off to forget it all and go to Ireland!

Ireland, my second homeland, so well known and so much changed. I will look at it with eyes wide open, buy the Irish Independent and eat Cadbury Creme Eggs and breathe in the smell of turf fires. I will share drinks and stories with some people I love. I will moan about the lateness of spring in a typical Irish manner. And I, a rational person from a rational, logical country where nothing strange ever happens, will fall helplessly under a spell I didn't even believe existed. I will watch with bafflement the weird things that happen and the even weirder things I do myself under this spell.

There is ice also in the Irish air this March, and there is the smell of turf fire and the blaring of a burglary alarm that nobody bothers to turn off, and there is magic.

love is in the aftershave

My honed sense of smell doesn't only register pancakes in the building. I was walking through the supermarket today, tiredly ignoring everyone around me, intent only on stopping briefly at the cheese section and the yogurt section and then making it out of there as soon as possible.

Then it dawned on me that I was feeling loved.  Safe, comforted and happy. It's definitely not an everyday feeling for me. It was so distracting that I stopped in my tracks and couldn't remember where I was going anymore.

What had happened was that I had walked past a man wearing a lot of aftershave. Not only a very nice aftershave, but one that used to be worn by someone who loved me. I can't even recall who. My father? An ex-boyfriend?

Reeling from the experience, I came home with the wrong kind of cheese and entirely too much comfort icecream.

staircase delights

Pancakes! Was the smell in the staircase today.

I love the smell of food drifting out from flats as I climb the stairs ( if you take the lift you miss out ). As a hopeless cook myself, and with nobody who cooks for me either, I sigh with envy. But it's also a lovely, homely sign of human life.

Sometimes it's beef stew or cabbage rolls. I'm very good at identifying the smells. One day it was something with lemongrass in it.

The smell most likely to drift out of my own flat around dinnertime? Something burnt.

pinned down

My days are filled with work - or at least with loitering in the workplace.


My evenings are filled with a few workout sessions and a lot of Pinterest. I'm inundated with inspiration but it's not much good to me when I can't seem to get offline and actually go do something creative.

on wisdom and nervous breakdowns

I love new places. I love new jobs (and hate them, too). I love having a new life.

Spending 8 hours a day in a new place with new people, learning a trade I know nothing about. Stressful, and exhausting. But I learn something new every time I turn around: through glancing at the file folders I'm asked to archive, through eavesdropping on the boss explaining an invoice to someone on the phone, through listening to my workmates complaining about a difficult customer at the lunch table.

But there is so much more than the business to learn. I try to absorb it all. I learn what the boss is like, just by observing how he interacts with the others. I learn the history of the company by finding in the back of the storage room old products it used to import, rather unsuccessfully.

I have changed jobs quite frequently over the years (staying five years in The Little Shop of Harmony was a personal best). Being  the newbie  in the workplace always makes me feel like an inexperienced, insecure teenager again. But I notice, with joy and pride, that my experience and wisdom are slowly accumulating. I may be a newbie and I may be insecure. But I'm no longer inexperienced.

I learn, and I learn fast.

( And the most useful wisdom I have gathered regarding new jobs: awareness of the emotional dynamics. That the first week is the worst and that it gets better after that, but also that the adrenaline wears off at the same time and I get rather fed up sometime during the second week. It gets better after that, too. And when things finally seem to run smoothly, somewhere around the fifth week, I usually have an unexpected nervous breakdown. )

profane, not profound

Back in the normal world, after a few years in the spiritual and slightly magic air of The Little Shop of Harmony.

It feels like a relief, at the moment. I loved the shop, but I can't take too much spirituality. Right now, I need a workplace where I can hear bland chatter from a mainstream radio station and talk to men in ripped jeans who are not averse to the occasional four-letter word. A place where I'm not seen as a representative of something more lofty or profound and expected to act the part.

I'm not sure what I mean. But I'm enjoying being normal.

at the edge, the cutting one

And so I pack a bag with all the stuff that's been cluttering up my locker, and the little presents received from workmates. Last of all, I throw my own beloved coffee mug into the bag, hand over my keys to my boss and, after a hug and a choked-up "I'll miss you", I leave The Little Shop of Harmony.

I congratulate myself for all the things I leave behind. That smelly customer who always talks a mile a minute (but who is kind of endearing anyway). Always having to smile and be nice to everyone (but what a feeling when a sad face lights up in return). The knowledge that I will never get a raise or a real promotion (but always know that the money feeds a starving child instead).

The evening is cold and clear and there is a beautiful sunset in the western sky. People are heading home after work or hurrying towards the supermarket and I walk quietly among them with my heavy bag. The cold air speaks of winter but the evening light promises springtime. It's already March and today I'm starting a new life. A brand new life. There is so much to look forward to.

But right now, I just want to cry.