Wedding Weekend in Ireland

I left you last week at the departure gate of the midnight flight to Dublin out of JFK. I landed Friday lunchtime in Dublin to the widespread smell of sausages once again but the competence - the competence was decidedly absent this time.

I ordered sausages at the airport cafe but the man behind the counter said the smallest breakfast I could get had 3 items. I told him I’d pay for the smallest breakfast but that I only wanted sausages. He simply could not get his head round this. “But there are three items?”, he said to me confused. “Sausages are one item.” He put the sausages on a plate then proceeded to individually offer me every single item at the buffet: “Rashers?” - no. “Beans?” - no. “Tomato?” - no. “Pudding?” - no. After we got through the full panoply of the constituents of a full Irish breakfast, I asked could I get two slices of plain bread to go with my sausages and he looked at the mound of toast and said no they only had toast. “You don’t have untoasted bread?”, I asked him. “How do you make the toast?” He told me he’d have to put in a special request to ‘chef’. God, it’s really hard just making your way through the world when everyone else around is so thick, isn’t it?

Anway. Moving on.

I collected my car rental and found myself promising an internship in my husband’s law firm to the law student daughter of the man at the desk. I am absolutely not in a position to do this but he promised me free satnav so I gave him David’s work email and took the keys and the satnav and left. I took the full upsell on insurance so who knows who really came out on top.

The shuttle bus driver was the same one I had when I was home recently for a funeral. An absolute riot. He told the woman sitting in the front seat alongside him that there’s strictly no touching the driver but that if she forgot, he’d pull over and give her five minutes to remember. Outrageous!

I drove to our house that we love, to check the post and the gas and all the other things an absentee landlord (boo hiss) has to do. I took a photo of the sale agreed sign at 15:07 to send to David and it was 4pm before I got inside the house because any time we call back to that street, it is like a play, with a cast of characters passing by one by one to deliver their lines, then exit stage left to make way for the next character to come in and tell their story. Three people stopped for a chat over the course of the hour and we mostly remarked over and over on the passage of time during the four years we’ve been away.

Example: “The girls are 5 and 6! Where did that time go?”

Example: “Your son must be in secondary school now? He’s doing the JUNIOR CERT?! The little boy that was in fifth class four years ago is doing the junior cert??”

Example: “Your daughter’s going to America for the summer - how old is she??? She’s TWENTY!!! My 16 year old babysitter from 4 years ago is now 20…WHAT!!!”

Etc etc

When all the house checks were done , I beat a retreat down the M7…the start of many a bank holiday weekend 💃💃💃💃💃

I was on my way to a two day family wedding.

It’s wedding day and the whole day went exactly like this, right down to the pitstop for the newspaper and cash for the card. Special shout out to amazing salons Bella Beauty Salon for makeup and Crown Hair and Beauty across the street who at one point in time, was accommodating me, my mam, my sister and (counts on fingers) five of my cousins.

My brother, Dave and the kids watched the wedding in New York so were able to see, live from the webcam of St. Mary’s Cathedral Kilkenny, the priest roast my cousin endlessly from the altar for being an older groom (42!!).

I was sitting beside my mother and she’s reached that age where, when she thinks she is whispering, she is, by any metric, absolutely not whispering. In her loud non-whisper whisper, she gave a running commentary throughout, on the dresses she thought would get a second wear (Bridesmaid, definitely. Mother of the groom, definitely not). My sister-in-law was in front of us and during the prayers of the faithful, I noticed she had covered her face entirely with her hands. “What the hell?”, I thought. “Does she really not like Catholic prayers?? Why is she disrespecting our culture??!!” but then she hinged her hands open, then closed them again, and I realised she was playing peek-a-boo with a baby in front.

I used to take a really principled stance on not receiving Communion because I didn’t want to actively participate in the ceremony but I’ve loosened my principles and I always go up for Communion now.

1. Because it breaks up the Mass.

2. Because it lets people know I’m there (doubly important at a funeral), and

3. It’s a perfect opportunity to show off my outfit…which has always been the real purpose of Communion, let’s be honest. What is the aisle if not a readymade catwalk. Brief pause at the top, turn, face to camera (literally I looked up at the camera because I knew the kids were watching) and back to your seat to pretend to pray but actually just look at everyone else’s outfit. The Saw Doctors were the first ones to say out loud what we all were thinking when they sang in 1990:

“But I useta see her up the chapel when she went to Sunday mass

And when she’d go to receive,

I’d kneel down there, and watch her pass

The glory of her ass”.

We reminisced with cousins and laughed and cried through the speeches but the highlight of my day was when my family stepped outside between courses to have a family photo taken. It’s a lovely portrait of the 6 of us, standing and smiling. In the next shot, we look like we are following that tenties trend of pretending to laugh like a fucking donkey in photos except we are not fake laughing: we are genuinely bent over, heads thrown back in uncontrollable laughter because we’d just seen my cousin, behind the photographer, walk straight into a window thinking it was an open door and it was the funniest fucking thing that ever happened.

Life’s been coming at the family pretty hard recently and it’s important to celebrate and mark the happy occasions too and this was a really happy occasion and we marked the point where he collided with the pane of glass. We literally marked it like this:

Mam and I were booked into the spa at the hotel. We filled in the forms at the spa reception and headed to the relaxation room where our therapists picked us up. On the way to the suite, I told the therapist I’d forgotten to pack cleanser and had last night’s make-up on, did she mind if I washed my face first. (Skanky, I know. I’d actually spent the few minutes in the relaxation room pulling yesterday’s lashes off). Anyway, the therapist goes “Yeah I just want to talk to you about that”. She clearly was in uber discreet mode and I wondered what the hell she was going to say to me. Maybe my card was declined at reception? We get into the room at last and she says to me:

“Now, because you’re only one week pregnant, we won’t be able to do the massage today”.

“I’m not pregnant”, I tell her.

Usually the person themselves is the foremost authority on whether they’re pregnant or not but the lady looked down at the form and said “but it says here you’re one week pregnant?”. Instead of confidently telling her again I’m not pregnant, I walked over to look at the form myself, even though I was the one who had filled it in, mere minutes before…just in case I had relaxed so much in the relaxation room that the fact that I am one week (one week??) pregnant flew out of my head.

“Oh no, it says botox”, I point out. “I ticked the botox box. I had botox one week ago”. Still not satisfied, she said:

“but this line for ‘weeks’ is for pregnancy only?”

“Yes, I see that now. That was my mistake but I am telling you, I am definitely not pregnant”.

“OK”, (she really was determined to find a rule she was going to stick to) “seeing as though you had botox a week ago we’ll have to forego the facial element of the treatment”. Nooooooo!!! Arrrrgggghhhh…can I go back to pretending to be one week pregnant???

Sunday passed like all day 2s of a wedding do: with a barbeque and actually getting to talk to the bride and groom but not before I squeezed in a trip to Dunnes to buy the kids a pink t-shirt I spotted yesterday in town. I ended up buying them a dress and three t-shirts as well and all of the t-shirts I would wear myself which caused me, in MacDonagh Junction Shopping Centre, to have the sudden realisation that I dress like a child 👍