A Book to Read on Your Holiers

Posted By Daisy



Dingle Harbour

THIS SUMMER, I spent almost three weeks in Ireland. With fabulous weather (it rained twice) and lots of my friends and family around, there's nowhere I would rather have been.

A guy in the nightclub told me I didn't look a day over 37...arghhhh. I blame the over-zealous bouncy blowdry.

In Cork, I met people for coffee and burritos, and spent lazy afternoons drinking beer in the sun. We did laps of the spa pool and snuggled into robes for chats and snoozes on the heated beds before folding chocolate brownies into our mouths during afternoon tea.

Dee's husband does an amazing BBQ- but gets FURIOUS if you open two boxes of tea at the same time.
 'You know that Barry's Tea isn't actually grown in Cork,'  he says.

 

In Dublin, I ate barbecued corn on the cob with butter dripping down my chin, drank 'Away with the Fairies' cocktails (the phrase my family uses to describe me) in Fade Street Social, and danced to old favourites in Whelans. We took a stroll through centuries of Irish history collected in a three-storey Georgian townhouse in the Little Museum of Dublin, and ate Croque Madame in the Powerscourt Centre.

Treasures at the lovely Little Museum of Dublin
Reminders of the good times during the Boom: Gold-Plated Monster Munch by Caroline McCarthy (2011), and the non-ironic 'Nouveau' magazine which folded after one issue. Cover tag lines included 'Dirty Filthy Lucre: And how to Make More' and 'Champagne Powder: Skiing with the Rich'.

We sat on the faded couch of our house in Dingle, eating crisps, reading magazines and drinking beers. We drank rose in plastic glasses while throwing down confident fivers at the races. We listened to incongruous techno  in a secret beer garden, and shot the breeze with lots of chatty drunken strangers, one of whom insisted on walking us home.

I did a dance of terror one morning, as I reached into the box of teabags to find a spider hiding inside and begged M to get rid of it.

I read my book and drank coffee while looking at the amazing scenery at Tig Slea Head, and later we sat in the car smiling at the screams of laughter from a trio of women struggling to get dressed on the beach as a flashstorm blew around them for ten minutes before the sun returned.

I saw Fungi the dolphin from an old fishing boat, and watched G's children making pottery at Dun Chaoin.

'A Rainy Day in Dingle' by Tom Roche

 

I drank crab bisque and walked the deserted beach at Smerwick Harbour with my mother, and ate porridge with cream and fresh fruit compote, and smoked mackerel and blue cheese for breakfast in Benners hotel. I also had a big argument with her over dinner one night (too much wine) and almost walked out of the restaurant. Although, I can’t even remember what it was about now.

 

 

Mini Dingle Tourist Guide:
 Best Cream Slice: Courtney's Bakery (have it with a coffee in the little courtyard)
Best Restaurant (and I've tried most of them over the years): The Global Village
Best Beach Walk: Smerwick
Best View of the Blasket Islands from a Café: Tig Slea Head
Best View of the Sleeping Giant: Clogher strand
Best Pub: Foxy Johns
Best Hidden Beer Garden: Adams Bar
Best Lunch on a Sunny Day: Fish at the Marina
Best fresh scampi and chips: Harringtons chipper
Best Tourist Destination fairly near to town: Pedlar's Lake, Conor Pass

I watched 'Mortified Nation' on Netflix (hilarious) and spent a nostalgic afternoon reading through old diaries in a big box in my mum's house.

 

This is where it all started, aged 15. Big mistake. Huge.
'Guess what. I did it. I smoked my very first cigarette!!.....Actually it was rather gross but we're going to do it again tomorrow.'

Before I knew it, I was on the flight back to London, having a vodka and coke and a cheeseboard and feeling a bit sad while scrolling through my holiday phone pictures.

 

Elevator Pitch: One day, Dr Yvonne Carmichael does something risky. And discovers she likes it.

When something terrible happens to her one evening, she is forced to reveal her recent activities, and ends up exposing uncomfortable truths that may destroy her hitherto ordinary life.

 

It's a cold, uncomfortable thriller, but somehow, even though I read it ages ago, I still remember it very well.

 

(I'm being deliberately very vague but don't want to ruin such a compelling story for anyone who has yet to read it.)





A Book to Read When it's February (Hallellujah)

Posted By Daisy



 

JANUARY is over. Hallelujah. I had two fabulous weeks on Christmas holidays in Ireland.

By numbers, it went something like this:

Cigarettes smoked: Too many (I fell off the wagon and had a cigarette in my mouth before my suitcase hit the hall floor on arrival in my mum’s house)

Nights out: 10 (out of 14)

Fake fur, elbow length sleeved, opera coats acquired: 1 (Thanks mum)

People who kissed me on the mouth: 1 (a red lipsticked work-friend was delighted I was home and landed a platonic smacker on me)

Resolutions made: 3 (Get one short story published anywhere this year; Be brave and remember, nothing is serious really; Approach men I like instead of waiting and being overly delighted by the eejits who approach me)

Bedroom bins puked into after a night out: 1

Future events during which I’ll drink Dark and Stormy’s all night long: 0

People I insulted: 1 (Sorry, BR)

Pounds lost: Half a stone (with all the smoking and drinking, I didn’t feel much like eating)

Friends I met who were having a rough time of it in the run-up to Christmas: 3

Bar counters sat at on Christmas Eve listening to a lovely friend discussing something sad: 1

Bracing walks by the sea: 2

Men whose girlfriends were 3000 miles away on holidays who came up behind me and tweaked my waist inappropriately in the pub smoking area, before asking me was I still single:1

Minutes spend talking to that guy after the tweaking: 0 (I got out of there fast, realising that if anyone else saw any hint of flirting, it would be me, the single girl, who would be blamed)

Men I greeted as I walked past them on a crowded dance floor who held up their ring fingers in a panic and shouted ‘I’m married’ before whipping out photos of their twins on their iPhone: 1

Previous moments I had ever thought of that man in a romantic way: 0

Cosy bus journeys up the west coast of Ireland at night: 1

Number of men kissed: 0 (disappointment)

Number of men chatted to/ego boosted by: A fair few – yippee for Irish friendly men.

Then I came back to London. I felt shivery and exhausted the first week and thought ‘Feck London, it’s the same here as anywhere else, what am I doing with my life…..’ and other such cheery thoughts.

 

I was also slapped lightly with London unfriendliness on the day I arrived home. Standing outside my apartment block, smoking a cigarette, wearing my new leather cross-shoulder bag, I said ‘Hiya’ to a couple who exited via the door beside me. They both looked at me strangely, said nothing and walked on. As they walked down the road, I heard the girl mutter something and the guy saying loudly ‘I swear, I never saw her before in my life, I promise, I don’t know who she is, honest, I never saw her before, I thought she was a courier….’ I may have caused a fight between a couple by simply saying hi. Seriously.

The second week was spent hovering, washing, ironing, spraying and moth balling every piece of clothing I own, after finding little brown moths burrowing in my favourite fake fur coat (Both Google and my mum told me to put it in a plastic bag in the freezer to kill the critters, but I considered it a fairly major house-share faux pas – imagine, one of my flatmates arriving home from work, whistling as they open the freezer to get out their frozen pizza, and boom, a moth-eaten fur coat squashed in the meat section – so, with regret, I threw it out).

On the third week, I felt better, and on the fourth week, our 17-year-old dog, Benny, died and I cried on the tube while looking at photos of him, and wished I was at home in Ireland. I wanted to get his bowl bronzed but my mum refused, and then had a great laugh with the rest of the family, embellishing the story to become ‘Daisy wants to store Benny’s ashes in his open bronzed drinking bowl on the mantelpiece.’ Despite the fact that the whole family has bite mark scars from him, we’ll still really miss him.

Mainly minor issues, I know. But still. Roll on February.

 

Things I’ve learned over the past month:

• You don’t have to be the life and soul of the party. Sometimes, people appreciate you just showing up. Be brave and show up – you never know what might happen.
• Life can turn on a sixpence. Enjoy it.
• Men in their thirties can be strange sometimes.

'Play it As it Lays' by Joan Didion

My brother in law is working his way through this list of books that promises to ‘change your life’.

Elevator Pitch: Even though the book is set in LA in the late 1960’s, it still feels modern and relevant. Two-bit actress Maria struggles with her failing marriage to a film producer, her relationship with the vapid women around her, her constant visits to her disabled daughter in a care home, and her languid days spent lying by the pool or driving aimlessly down the freeway.

It’s a bleak, almost catatonic book where nothing really happens, but it definitely portrays the languid life of a not-so-successful Hollywood starlet.

(all above drawings by the amazing www.marcjohns.com)