Just lately I feel like a character in a Samuel Beckett play. I'm surrounded by the past: instead of it being something I look at occasionally in the rear view mirror, it’s coming right at me. I've had long lost relatives coming out of stasis, finding me via social networking sites and, since moving house, I've discovered that my next door neighbour and I share links to friendship circles going way back. And don't get me started on the photographs I've come across; photographs that purport to be me. Really? I was that young? And I've even got Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep as an Earworm.
But most recently I've been getting flashbacks of childhood summer holidays spent in Ireland - including vivid, high definition, room by room dreams of my grandma’s house in Co. Roscommon. I couldn’t get the images out of my head; so a couple of weeks ago I Googled the town and the street where she lived. What happened next should be filed under ‘s’ for spooky: the house had just been put on the market. One click was all it took and I was being given a virtual room by room tour on the Estate Agent's website. Just like in my dreams.
To those looking for a profound final paragraph asking what all this means and demanding a compact summary of what this says about the state of my head at the moment, you've come to the wrong place. Regular readers will know I'm neither cut out to give such erudite summations and nor would I want to. Regular readers will also know that, truth be known, if I could go back and live in 1972 you wouldn't see me for glitter dust.
Ard-Na-Greine......I also time travelled there, the bizarre thing was the garden was exactly the same (including the washing line) if a little less jungly than in my memory.
ReplyDeleteWelcome back fellow time traveller. It's a long shot, I know, but have you got any snaps of Hessians - the ice cream shop? With the Texaco petrol pump outside? Very Hopper.
ReplyDeleteAnd if old man Hessian was outside, like this, I'd have the money shot.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately not! Though the phrase,
ReplyDelete" Ah, go down tee Hessians and git yeeself a beeenana for your tea" has gone down in our family mythology .