Sunday, June 24, 2007

Ciarán James Garry





there's been a death... another one... it's ciarán...




(was he ill?)



does it make it better if he was? does it make it easier? does it make it less unexpected? I suppose it should, but it doesn't really. not really.



my wife's baby brother, my bruv-in-law, died of cancer



(cancer?! surely you're not surprised then...)


on Sunday.



except not from the cancer because everything was fine, curable, going as expected...


he was best man at a wedding on thursday, buying toys and preparing for da jung and juni to come spend the rest of his treatment time with him on friday, on the phone arranging for his fiancée to get past immigration at heathrow on sunday, and in the car on the way to pick her up when he collapsed...


(did he crash? did he know it was coming?)



he pulled over, just felt weak, and collapsed. they couldn't help him, and the police had to collect da jung at the airport...


the world stopped... it should have stopped... just for a moment before it implodes and discovers recreation,


without Ciarán

(how's sinéad?)



she's not a big sister anymore...



she's a little sister to a brother who's only just returned to ireland after ten years in america... he got his green card just in time...



(thank gracious, a blessing ...)



to be able to come back to ireland to visit his father in the hospital and to bury his baby brother.


(how was the funeral?)





three days. three days of the world on pause. three days of people giving time, extra beds, shepherd's pies, money, flowers, cards, tears, and love...



three days of holding each other.



three days of coming together.


three days of losing someone we don't think we can live without.






i love you, ciarán. i miss you.




Related Links:

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Stand up, Sit Down, Drink Drink Drink

Rising to the epitome of poshness, I have attended a formal Oxford University sit-down, grace-in-latin, students-in-robes, drooling-professors-at-a-head-table-with-crystal-decanters supper in a dining hall with flying buttresses. Needless to say, the vegetarian option included mushrooms.



Also on an Oxford University note (hail to the gownies... I think?), I attended a charity comedy event to raise money for the Darfur Appeal. Featured were the Oxford Imps doing improv as well as loads of sketches. Four hours of comedy and we unthinkingly decided to eat after the show.



All this followed up by a loverly Saturday afternoon with Michelle popping into shops and looking for fab dresses to wear to Miss Jo Finlay's wedding. Having had no luck, we retired to the Turf for a glass of white wine in the sunshine. Unfortunately it was thronged with finishing Oxford students and their beaming parents (*ugh) and after about 20 minutes in line, we determined that it would be a better option to use the 15 quid we were going to spend on a bottle of cheap chardonnay on a much cheaper bottle of white and to sit in the park. This plan was slightly stunted by the fact that we were miles from a liquor store.



Luckily, we stumbled across a small deli (Olives on High Street) with exactly one bottle of chilled white wine for sale. Alas, no bottle opener. A trip down the road found us an overpriced corkscrew and then off to the park, happily stocked with pinot grigio, olives, and brie. Where the realization struck us that we had no glasses. Which is how, at the age of thirty, I found myself sat in the park drinking wine from a bottle. Oh so very classy indeed.





Related Links
Mansfield College

The Darfur Wall

Oxford Imps

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Pirates and Punting and Performances

This has been a full week in my social calendar (not sure if there's any relation to the fact that Ms. Sinéad has been away in Ireland...).

On Wednesday I met some friends at the pub down the street to sit about and listen to some live music, the main act being a friend of Amazonas that she met whilst traveling in Brazil (as you do...). Despite the fact that I've lived a three minute walk from the Exeter Pub for the last eight months, I'd never managed to actually go inside before... a couple of near misses, but never that fateful moment of crossing the threshold. In retrospect, it is with good reason. A soul-less bar, with a limited selection of alcohol and bizarre house rules including not speaking at all while a large dog roams the stage and the patron in a rugby shirt casts dirty looks and tries to keep out the students. Admittedly, Jessica, friend o' Amazonas, put on a decent show (especially considering it was three pound entry) - much of her music seemed Bebel Gilberto inspired which I quite enjoyed. Her opening act, however, did not warrant the enforced ban on speaking, poor lad.

Saturday was a fabulous day filled with capoeira, punting, and the cinema. Despite the fact that I am meant to be hard at work this weekend, I took the liberty of going punting yesterday for the first time ever... Punting is Oxford's sport o' choice. Luckily, I ended up in a punt with a master punter because my five minutes of punting fame consisted of me desperately struggling to get the pole in the water and the punt spinning lazily towards one bank or the other... no forward progress was made. I do, however, highly recommend the punting. I did later find out that I was probably holding the pole upside down and I'd like to give it another try, just to see if having it with the weighted end in the water does make all the difference.

As for the pirates... we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. I thought that it was fabulous, but I honestly think that of the seven people with whom I attended, I was the only one of that opinion. And then Dende ruined it all by making us stay 'til the very end, past allllllll the credits, to see Keira Knightly on a hill with a kid.


Related Links:
Jessica Goydar
Punting
PIRATES! (or, more to the point... JOHNNY!)

of the stalking kind