Tuesday, September 27, 2016

a year of cheese and heartbreak

From my diaries: the year 2001 ...

* New Year's Eve - a rare visit in my old university town with an Aussie boyfriend. Church, art and kissing under the fireworks, feeling tense and too nostalgic.
* Beautiful Finnish winter days, showing the Aussie snowy forests, sauna and sledding, onion-domed cathedrals and reindeer kebab.
* Return to a damp and cold Irish valley and learned to sleep with five blankets and a woollen beanie as well as work on my social skills.
* My social life that winter: a roommate issuing death threats and a boyfriend with a broken heart.
* Midnight mountain hike that showed me that deer really freeze when caught in the lights.
* Foot-and-mouth outbreak that closed down most of Ireland and had me watering welcome mats with disinfectant.
* Meltdown with surprising results.
* Birthday with cheesecake, stolen daffodils and dancing to the jukebox.
* Game of pool with a movie star.
* Weekly Dublin days for half of the year, stay-at-home life for the other half.
* Hotel receptionist life: The War of the Boots, invisible weddings, scaring Spaniards shitless, white-hot truths, and the occasional cheese-and-wine picnic by the river with the boyfriend.
* Whispers from God through dreams, mountains and ancient oaks.
* Late summer holiday in Finland with all that's best of summer by the sea, family and friends, exes and future exes.
* Watching 9/11 in an Irish pub, crying.
* World's oldest building and the world's strangest rocks on a tour of Northern Ireland with family.
* Heartbreak autumn with lots of cheese and weddings.
* Accidental live performance by the Chieftains in a back room of the hotel.
* Running away to Kilkenny and finding comfort among strangers.
* Halloween ghost wrapped in toilet paper.
* Badminton and a bike.
* Losing my love on a frosty night.
* Finland Christmas tour of all significant places and people.
* Quiet winter reading Proust.

2 comments:

Aruni RC said...

where Swann lost his way (shamelss Proust plugin)

Different Pen said...

You can never go wrong with Proust!