towels 22 December 2008
I was in my home town in the Wesht (sic) of Ireland last nigh. The girlfriend of my beloved eldest nephew – he’s Jay (he blogged on this site last year when I was in Lviv and could not one night) and she is Karen (lovely). Anyhow, as the train got into Galway, although it was dark, I could see the familiar roads of houses leading to where my clan still live (and lots of great illuminated trees therein) and I was reminded of all the times I arrived or left and the Mammy or Dad would hang a towel out the bathroom window and wave it as I passed on the train (only window you could see of our house for any length from the train) or sometimes the Mammy would walk the dogs by said railway and arrange to be in a particular place and I’d hang out the window and yell or wave back. Strikes me now it must have been hard for them to see their eldest out there in the world and always ‘leaving’. Once I was on an Unusual Rural Tour with Druid theatre company around Ireland and we were in the west somewhere and I was making my way home during the day to the hotel from town (which was 2 or 3 miles away) and my Dad pulled up (he was on his rounds of selling parts of cars in the area) and gave me a lift to where I needed to go – TOTALLY unexpected for us both and SUCH an unlikely thing to happen. It was brilliant and SO heart breaking to have that sort of happenstance/happenchance and then we both had to move on. But what synchronicity!
