Frustrations

It was great to don wellies when I got home from work and take my little boy into the field again. We didn't go far, and he was on the lead, but we both enjoyed getting out in the sunshine. His leg seems to be much better, but I'm not taking any chances with it. We'll work up gradually to a full run, but yesterday he galloped wildly around the garden, turning on a 5p piece and stopping dead when I put out an arm. He was mad with delight and, like an E-type Jag or Aston Martin, can go from zero to 60mph in a second which he showed me he can still do. Evenings and mornings are perceptively lighter later and earlier, so it won't be long before we can walk farther, uninhibited by the early dusk.

I watched a group of young Irish people sing a song in Gaelic accompanied only by a bodhran, and was infuriated afresh by my complete inability to speak my native tongue. I couldn't understand a bleedin' word they said, and can do no more than count to 100 and recite a few prayers. Also, and significantly, I can ask to be excused, and I can send a nun off on her business after a visit with warm wishes and grateful thanks. I think I can ask someone to close the door, or the window at a push. That'll get me far. I left school in Dublin when I was eight. Had we stayed I might have been an accomplished Irish dancer as well. Being part of a diaspora leaves you with a yearning that can never be fulfilled. You belong neither here nor there, not really. You become more of a passionate patriot than anyone brought up in the home country. At some point during my four years at university in Dublin, beguiled by the many poetry reading evenings I attended, I enrolled on a beginners course to learn Gaelic, but just trying to cope with the spelling defeated me. It's not an easy language to learn, which is why you need to start as a young child. Darn, drat and blast. I'll have an Irish EU passport soon though, organised by my girls balking at Brexit who also qualify for Irish citizenship. I don't think it will be green with a harp on the front anymore, alas, but I'll carry it proudly all the same. Slan leat (pronounced slawn lath)!