Never Go Hungry To A Barbeque

A subscriber sent me a lovely message saying:

“I wanted to tell you that your posts make me laugh every single week so it started to get ridiculous that I hadn’t subscribed.”

If you laugh every single week, it is ridiculous that you haven’t subscribed!! And you can do so now, right here:

I’m so happy to be back in the city. I appreciate the weather, the walkability, the beauty of New York City. And then three separate people are needlessly and outrageously rude including one elderly Upper East Sider who screamed “FOR FUCK SAKE” as we crossed the street simply because my kid was scooting in her path (it was also the 5 year old’s path so who knows who was in whose way). Get me out of here and I won’t look back.

I met a college classmate who is catsitting nearby and we enjoy coffee on the roof of his building. We reminisce about college and discuss careers, career pivots, career pauses, aging parents, buying houses, classmates. It’s funny remembering college stories because we are actually 19, 18 - sometimes 17 years old - in those stories. Children! Actual children. We conclude that 20+ years later, if we’re drinking coffee in the sun, in the middle of the day, in a roof garden on the Upper West Side, we’re not doing too badly.

David and I go for dinner in Dirt Candy, a Michelin starred vegetarian restaurant on the Lower East Side. We sometimes say we came to New York in the wrong season of life, that we should have come in our 20s. But walking to the restaurant from the subway station that night, I tell him I’m not sure I would have hacked the pace. If I’d been here in my 20s, I surely would have died of exhaustion. At least the kids slow us down.

Dave popped out during one of the courses to take a work call and it’s so long since that’s happened, I forgot how annoying it is. Anyway, can’t complain. It’s not my Substack subscriptions keeping this whole show on the road, even if I am #100 on the Parenting bestseller list (depending what day you look. A convicted killer writing from prison in Texas and I take turns in that spot).

We get home early and chat to the babysitter. We love her so much. Dave says she is his favourite person in New York and that she’s the only person he fully trusts with the kids, apart from me. “Oh she’s waaaay better than me”, I say. “At least she cleans the apartment”. Dave laughs. Way too hard. A laugh that very much said: “Yes that’s absolutely true but you said it not me so don’t come for me”. She tells us tonight how we need to be positive about our next step (moving to Ireland) and that she herself is considering moving back to Mexico after 25 years in the United States. She has a house there so she’s streets ahead of us in her preparation already.

The First Grader has finished school! This is her first day off! To celebrate, I booked us an 11am afternoon tea at the Plaza! In the couple of hours before we leave the apartment, she said “Do you wanna watch TV with me?” and I said “Not right now, I have to get ready for the Plaza” and later: “Do you wanna play Chutes and Ladders with me?” and I said “Sorry, I have to get ready for the Plaza” and I wondered why the hell I’d organised this extravagant bonding experience when all she wants is right here in our apartment.

We got dressed up as per the recommendation anyway and on the way there, she told me she doesn’t really like fancy things. I’m starting to feel really , really stupid with my organised fancy fun.

When we get there though, it is cute and special and fun! We had a gorgeous time but I vow to keep everything mega, mega low key for the rest of the summer. I’m already looking forward to playing Chutes and Ladders and watching TV.

That evening, I head for a viewing of Bridget Jones at the Tribeca film festival with a Q&A afterwards with Renee Zellwegger and director Sharon Maguire. I love a communal viewing! My mam watched 2008 thriller Vantage Point in the Savoy on O’Connell Street. The premise of the movie is that it shows an assassination attempt on the president from six different points of view. Every time it begins a new witness’s POV, the first 30 seconds of the opening scene of the movie start again and Mam said that that the fifth time they were seeing the opening scene once again, some Dub in the back shouted out what everyone else was thinking: “AH FER FUCK SAKE”.

My brother saw Fifty Shades of Grey in Blanch and in one scene where he is carrying her to bed after they’d already had sex on the couch, an auld one shouted out “AH JAYSUS, SHE’S WRECKED!”

The crowd in Tribeca was less cynical than our Dublin brethren but we were so pumped! We cheered when the opening title came on and again when Hugh Grant appeared. Throughout the movie, I had to reckon with the fact that, despite everything, I prefer Daniel Cleaver to Mark sodding Darcy and what does that say about me?

A friend said I remind her of Nora Ephron which is, obviously, the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Not because of my writing but because I said I was going to a barbeque and was bringing a salad. And do you know what? It was a very Nora Ephron way it came to be. I’ve been cooking my way through Neven Maguire’s Midweek Meals which maybe doesn’t sound very Nora Ephron but I won’t hear a bad word said about Neven - every recipe is a winner. Every day, I simply turn the page and say to myself: “Ooh, I wonder what is for dinner tonight?”. I turned the page this day and the recipe was a Jewelled Couscous Salad with Sweet Onions and Cherry Tomatoes - a perfect barbeque accompaniment. Until I remembered there was a gluten intolerance in our party. I should have just changed the dish entirely but I’m so committed to going through this book in order that I wound up scouring the specialised supermarkets of the Upper West Side for gluten free couscous before eventually settling on quinoa.

I stopped into the farmer’s market that sets up shop at the weekends opposite the Lincoln Center (very Nora Ephron) to pick up some parsley and dill and when I go to pay, the woman says to me “You know that’s not parsley?”. I did indeed not know that it wasn’t parsley and she told me it was lovage. I put it down and told her my mam’s life advice that you can easily leave one to two ingredients out of a recipe as long as it’s not the main ingredient. She said she enjoyed this advice and as I passed another stall on the way out, I picked up some parsley so I’m not actually leaving anything out unless you count that I’m using quinoa instead of couscous. I go home and as well as making the quinoa salad - no lovage - I make us all as the other life advice my mother always gives is: ‘Never go hungry to a barbeque’. Words to live by.