A brief interlude

Stepping off the travellator

It just hailed again. A thousand tiny entities bashing themselves violently off the roof. Furious nature.

Sun’s out now afterwards. It feels compensatory, and more than a little mendacious. This glimpse of tepid sunshine is fooling no-one- it’s only a matter of time before the sky darkens again and another hailing ensues. The weather is more changeable than Trumps foreign policy right now.

Speaking of which, El Orange one’s latest foray into Iran has resulted in what’s being called the fuel protest here in Ireland- hundreds of tractor/truck/lorry driving folk- mostly men it has to be said- have embarked on a nationwide main road blocking project for the last 3 days- in an attempt to get the Irish government to remove the tax on fuel. These individuals, mostly farmers, haulage contractors and agricultural professionals (not my description, but the media’s) are trawling up and down the main motorways, and have blocked O’ Connell St, one of Dublins widest busiest streets, resulting in commuter chaos. They have now also blocked the fuel depots and the latest hysterical coverage claims we will be fuel-less in 24 hours and that petrol stations all over the country have already run out of fuel, and now the army have been called in to assist the Garda. I can’t help noticing the male-ness of this protest- it’s all about size- look at my enormous tractor that I can block your road with! Scooters or bicycles would definitely not have the same effect.

I am in the very fortunate position where a day or two of no fuel would suit me nicely. As a person who spends a lot of time thinking about their atrophying glute muscles as I bank up another hour in the car ferrying my kids about or going in or out of work, I would gladly leave my vehicle in the driveway for a day or two. We live in the in-between you see- it’s not quite the countryside- more like the hinterland of a mid-size town in the west of Ireland. From our house it’s a 10 minute drive to the shops, but that 10 minutes of driving is along footpathless country roads, with no hard shoulders and no lighting. From October to February it's pitch-black, and you squint against the incoming car lights and endless rain as you hunch over the steering wheel on the way in or out again. Like most Irish non city dwellers we are car reliant to get anywhere. And for the record, I am very fortunate to have a vehicle and a driveway to be moaning about.

when I finally found a petrol station still selling diesel today..

We drivers are hostages to the fuel crises here in little old Ireland. The government, after sitting on their hands for ages, finally took a teeny bit of tax off the fuel a couple of weeks ago, only for it to immediately rise again and their gesture to feel utterly impotent. The check shirted, navy gilet wearing farmers (I feel bad for rural fashion- this workwear uniform is sartorially limited) grimly tuck in their chins, fold their brawny arms on the telly and say- ‘we are standing for the people/we won’t stop until the government comes out and meets us/this affects everyones pockets/my business will be gone in 3 months if this continues so I have nothing to lose’ and so on and so forth. We Irish just love to talk, argue, pontificate and moan and give out and speculate- the media are having a field day interviewing the red faced stubborn protestors and the angry urban commuters.

But there is definitely an air of change, a feeling of expectation, a swell of anticipation of.. something. The Easter school holiday are nearly over and as a solitude loving introvert, getting up early in the morning to savour an hour of quiet while the house sleeps have gotten me through the last two weeks. Since the darkness of January the days have hurtled forward. Time feels like a malleable entity that speeds up intermittently- I blink and a week has gone by. I am moving towards change myself- I feel like I’m at the airport on one of those travelators (what a great word) moving along slowly, but actually quite fast.

I have not written here since last December. I have been writing though. A lot of writing. In fact, I wrote, and wrote, and rewrote, and submitted, and waited. And waited. And wrote more, and submitted again. After the exhilaration and anticlimactic post submission exhaustion had faded somewhat, I settled back into work and life. A freelance artist’s life is after all, writing submissions and proposals and applications. This has to be managed alongside the act of making.

The writing that occupied my January and February (and December) were heavyweight submissions, involving significant time, effort and thinking. The kind of submissions I had promised myself I would no longer undertake, having learned many times over that the the over subscribed nature of the art world means that your statistical chances of success are super slim, regardless of time, effort and thinking. It's a high stakes gamble- you are betting your precious unpaid time on the tiny possibility of success. I have consoled many artist friends over rejected proposals. As have they me. I still have not decided if this feverish period of proposal writing was time well spent or time wasted- so speedily did the days go by however that it did cause me to reflect once again on how treacherous time, the great travelator, can be.

Meanwhile the sky has darkened again and the first smatterings of hail sound off the window. I can hear the murmuring of the radio in the kitchen still yammering on about the fuel strikes. Time to step off the travelator, slow down and listen to the birds. Let it not be so long until the next time.