Memory

A scent can make you hear laughter, feel the gentle touch of a hand slowly stroking your spine, like only a lover can.

A familiar sound can trigger a smile, jolt you back in time, to when you felt the feeling of love reflecting yours – if only for a short while.

A touch of a hand wiping a tear can mean more than a warm embrace. A look in the eye is all it takes to remember the happiness they bring to your face.

The taste of a dish, the thought of an hour when you shared one just like this – a kiss.

And then there’s the trigger setting them all apart. The one that will never fail a heart.

The sight of a person you yearn for.                           Is all it takes.                                                                 For you to forget the memories but remember that they are it.

 

The Orange

She was always funny. And remained so until the end. The untimely end.

Looking at the piles of fruit that people have brought in, my mind thinks back to that first day…

—————————————————————————————–

I couldn’t stop looking at her. Was I staring? I don’t know…I don’t think it’s considered staring when you’re straining to look out of the corner of you eye.

“How much would you hate me?”

She frightened me out of my reverie with her out of the blue question. But she was smiling the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. So I nervously replied “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear-”

“How much would you hate me if I ate an orange right now?”

I couldn’t help but laugh, this was the most random thing I’d ever heard.

“You know, I don’t want to be the person you talk about when you get off the bus! The stranger that ruined your journey by eating a stinking orange beside you!”

She giggled towards the end…what a glorious sound.

“No go ahead. I like oranges.”

I like oranges?? Couldn’t I have come up with something better than that.

“Ah cool, thanks. I’m starving! This orange is all I have with me and I haven’t even got a euro with me to buy a euro saver in McDonald’s. Depressing.”

Ask her out. Invite her for dinner. She’d obviously love to have someone buy her a meal.

“Ha ha'”

Oh god…this was getting worse by the minute! Why couldn’t I speak!!

“I’m Isabelle.”

She smiled and held out the daintiest, prettiest hand I’d ever seen.

“George.”

When I got off the bus I held my hand to my face and smelt the fantastic scent of zesty oranges…and I vowed to find her again.

The Not So Brady Brunch

Living in my house there are seven people…and one constant visitor.

There is a set of male twins, two singular males, one male with an unofficial plus one, one boyfriend and myself, the only female.

In this group there are two business students, one wannabe musician, a self professed entrepreneur, a barman, a Microsoft validator and a student/teacher in training/waitress.

Oh, and the plus one.

In our house showers have to be strategic, cooking rarely happens with hands other than mine…takeaways are frequent, bins are frequently full, despite the lack of cooking, dirty plates are always present, laundry gets done in bulk, on a daily/nightly basis someone is woken up by someone else, but…there’s always someone in the house so you don’t need to worry if you forget you keys.

If I was to assign the generic family roles to our non-generic household we’d have:

A nagging mother, a grumpy Grandad, several lazy teenagers, the Dad who puts everything BESIDE the dishwasher rather than in it, and a friend who never leaves!

In this household…there is never peace and quiet.

And yet, I find myself asking…would I rather live alone?? Variety is the spice of life after all…

I’d love to hear some responses, do you live in a huge household – would you ever change it? Or do you live alone and the hustle and bustle of my house sounds appealing?

Please share 🙂 I’m off to read with some earplugs

I survived The First Day!

The first day of anything is always nerve wrecking. Whether it be school, a job, college, an exercise class…pretty much anything!

Yesterday I found myself in a state of first day jitters as I embarked on my first day of teacher training. I had butterflies in my stomach, I questioned what I was wearing far too many times, I smiled with nervousness and when I tried to eat I just felt ill! And this was only the day I was meeting the teachers!!

Unfortunately my nerves got the better of me at some stage. I did the highly embarrassing thing of asking someone a question…but in a nervous, low voice so that they didn’t hear me…but in front of other people so that I didn’t get away with pretending I hadn’t said anything, eek

Once I’d gotten over my little mishap and the day had ended, I left the building, took a deep breath and realised I’d quite enjoyed it 🙂 The school was lovely, the staff were friendly, my bus left me no more than 2 feet from the front door and I’d heard but kind and supportive things from the other student teachers!

I guess sometimes we let our nerves get the better of us. Our worries about saying or doing the right thing often cloud our vision of what we’re actually doing right. But then, nervousness can be a good thing too, can’t it? It shows that we care about something enough to be worried about messing it up.

Embarking on a masters I realise that over the next two years I’m going to have many firsts, first day with my students, first time my inspector comes to examine my teaching, first day in my college classes where I’ll be a student again…the list could go on and on. So I’ve decided, from now on I’m going to embrace my nerves see them as a good thing, take a few deep breaths and talk a bit louder so as to refrain from embarrassing myself 😀

Let’s say it together then… “NERVES ARE GOOD!!!” 😀

A tourist in Ireland

After a recent “staycation” in Ireland I noticed that there are quite a few things that happen in Ireland that we Irish are used to, but that may seem very annoying to people outside our small island.

So here are some tips for anybody considering a trip to the Emerald Isle.

1. Your bus WILL be late. Timetables are used for a rough estimate and should not be relied upon.

2. Always bring a jacket. Even if it’s a gorgeous day there will always be some stage where you will be rained on or made frozen by gale force winds…even if just for a moment.

3. Talk to your barman. He’ll tell you all the best places to go better than a tour guide/book can. And even if it’s just yourselves and himself in the bar he should have some good stories for you and give you a good laugh.

4. If you’re lost or questioning if you’re in the right place because your bus hasn’t arrived yet, just ask someone. We are generally friendly people and if we can help you, we will.

5. Drinking Guinness isn’t a necessity.

To finish this off I’m going to attach a photo I took while away. Hopefully it encourages you to come visit us. And even more so, hopefully these points will help you if you make it 🙂

Death of a Celebrity

The face was everywhere. Every newspaper I picked up. Every web page I went on to. Messages plastered on every social media outlet: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

I felt sadness. But why? How can you be upset over the death of someone you’d never even vaguely known or met or spoke to on the telephone?

It is at times like this that we realise the power of celebrity.

A single “A list celebrity”;

Everyone knows them, or at least feel that they do. Everyone cares for them. Everyone is affected by their leaving the world. Whether it be because they aspired to be like them, were inspired by them, laughed and cried because of their performances or even just loved what they did…they connect us all.

We are all connected to one another through the world of celebrity. You like someone, I like them too, another famous person has loved them their whole life as well. Even though we’ll most likely never meet…we all have something in common. We are all connected through our love for that person on the screen and in the magazine cover.

As a result. With a united front we will mourn the loss of that public figure. Collectively we will remember them, think of how they touched our lives and help them to live on.

Short

When I hung up the phone after speaking to my mother I wasn’t sure what to think, or even how to feel. The truth of the matter was that I didn’t feel anything, but felt like I should be upset or worried or even concerned. But…nothing. My first instinct was to ring Daniel and tell him how much I really loved him. I looked down at my left hand and felt as if my whole body was swelling with the warmth of happiness that I felt when I looked at the promise he had placed on my ring finger. The promise to love me as long as we both lived, to take me as I was no matter what.

I was unsure as to what my mother meant when she had said that she presumed somebody else had told me about what had happened. Why would she have even thought that? James and I had had an extremely short-lived relationship. We had been friends for years but became close when we were reunited working in a sales office. It was not until I had left however that we decided to get together as a couple. It only lasted a few months but during that short period of time I had fallen head over heels in love with him, and thought that he had felt the same. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. One day he had ultimately decided not to return my calls or texts and after days of no communication I realised that this was his way of ending things.

For months I was upset, numb even. I had no energy to leave the house, my room was a mess and I felt like Bridget Jones after her disaster of a relationship with Daniel Cleaver. With the help of my wonderful friends however I pulled myself back together and turned my life around with a new job, a fresh start a new lease for life. When I met Daniel, I knew that what I had had with James was nothing but puppy-love, this was the real deal.

But would this news change everything…?

Blogging is hard!

I’m going to begin this post with what I’ve named it…Blogging is hard!!!

I’ve always loved writing. Even as a ten year old and a Jacqueline Wilson fanatic I used to write my own versions of her stories. So when I decided to give blogging a go I thought it would be easy enough! How hard can writing a post every few days be??

Well…if you’re one of my 5 followers (thank you to you by the way) you’ll know that I haven’t written a post since the first week I started up my account At least once a week I come on for a read and say to myself that I should really write something…I then close my WordPress tab and think “I’ll do it tomorrow”.

It’s hard to get motivated!…isn’t it? I’ve very little followers so who and what am I writing for? Myself? The few followers I do have? Just to write? To get stuff off my chest? I’m not even sure myself to be honest.

But today I thought…Yes. Blogging is hard. But you love to write (or type as it goes now), so do it. Who cares if no one reads it, who cares if it’s nonsense you’re just getting off your chest. If you want to be a writer then you have to write! At least that’s what J.K.Rowling says anyway and I’d be pretty confident taking her advice 🙂

Blogging is hard…but I can’t be the only one who think so…right?

Counting coppers…

There comes a time every year (or month) when I hit an all time financial low. I’m pretty confident I’m not the only person it happens to too. It’s a time when, as someone who gets paid by the hour, work is short, tips are terrible, all my bills arrive at once and I overspend on my cedit card and then immediately regret it!

Usually when this happens I have a sit down with myself, take out my notepad and try and do some damage control, a.k.a putting a plan together to “manage my money”. It entails me working out how much money I have to put away each week in order to pay back each bill, workout how much money I shouldn’t have spent in the last month (which results in me vowing not to do the same this month), convincing myself that I MUST have lent someone money along the way that I am now owed (very rare) and then last but not least…I count my coppers!

I pour out my one, two and five cent coins onto my bed and hope for some miracle to happen so that my three euro and forty seven cent actually adds up eight hundred and thirty two euro and solves all of my problems!

This obviously never happens!! In fact, in the time I spent counting out my hundred little tiny coins that make my hands smell bad I probably could have offered to walk my neighbors’ dog or do a strangers ironing and earn some money that would actually be helpful to me!

At least I can keep it in mind for next time 🙂

(No I won’t 😉 )

Mad About Bridget

I would like to think that many bloggers love reading as much as they do writing. And if they do then I should fit right in. In relation to this, if you’re reading this post (which if just one person does, I’ll be happy), and you’re a blogger, reader, writer, critic or just ended up here by mistake, then I have a question for you.

Have you ever fallen in love…with a character from a book?

Or is that just me? (That’s two questions I know).

Several years ago I found a tattered old copy of Helen Fielding’s “Bridget Jones’ Diary” in a box in my Dad’s shed. How it got there I’ll never know, but I’ll be forever grateful that it did.

I was still in my fanatical “Harry Potter” reading days so delving into Bridget’s world was definitely a big step for me. I went from fantasizing about being called to Hogwarts to wishing I could be best friends with a thirty year old mess who seemed to be a disaster in every conceivable way yet still managed to pull herself into a mini skirt and “Keep Buggering On”!

Looking back I feel that Bridget helped me though a teenage transition where everything seems to be a mess, doesn’t it? Whatever I was going through, Bridget ‘got me’. I came to love the character so much and thought to myself “I wish she were real”.

Several years later and I have been reunited with my best fictional character friend (BFCF for short) and this time was even better than before! The excitement of beginning this brand new book and hearing Bridget’s voice in my head probably brought me an unnatural happiness, but she didn’t let me down. I stereo-typically sat in a Starbucks and delved into my new read. I laughed out loud…people looked…I didn’t care. I cried at home, which brought quizzical looks from my family…I didn’t care. And when my kindle said that I was eighty-nine per cent of the way through the book, I slowed down my reading only to savor what could be my last moments with Bridget and…I did care…A LOT!

It is for reasons like this that, as I said in my first post, I am so happy to have regained my habit of reading. Stories can be so powerful. We can live through them and escape our realities, even if just for a short while. So my thanks today go to Helen Fielding for bringing me my BFCF and to Bridget for always giving me a laugh and teaching me to KBO!!

P.S. None of that is to say I don’t still fantasize about being called to Hogwarts. We’ll leave that for another day.