between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Trying to buy a house with my beloved fiancée is a stressful and involved process.

We got engaged. We then immediately started looking to buy a house, because she'll have to move out of her current situation within the next three to six months anyway.

In the past two weeks, I have spoken to six estate agents and an equal number of solicitors' offices; arranged meetings with a mortgage broker and a bank mortgage advisor (we saw the latter today), got approximate quotes from the solicitors and a couple of surveyors, and seen eight houses, with seven more to come this weekend.

We have also gone through our finances with a fine tooth-comb, made an approximate budget of joint expenses excluding accommodation so that we know what we can afford to pay in terms of monthly repayments, and talked each other back from utter panic no less than four times each.

Basically, in financial terms, we could purchase a property for about €200,000 and pay €700 per month in repayments. Renting a similar property (any property with a market value around €200,000) would start at €1,200 per month.

That really makes the effort of trying to buy worth it in the long run, but right now I'm trying to avoid eternal screaming. The whole process is taking 150% of my cope.

I miss the old LJ community and the sense of a conversation, sometimes.

At the weekend, I went blackberrying with my girlfriend. (She's amazing. Have I mentioned that?) It was an accidental sort of blackberrying: we filled her hat, because there was a patch of dead ground filled with brambles and berries and we just couldn't turn away.

With a cooking apple cooked down with chopped dates for sweetness, we made a blackberry pie:

Today I'm twenty-nine years old. Another year older and still not dead!

It has been my habit on my birthday, the last couple of years, to send messages to people telling them how much I appreciate their presence in my life. This year, I think, there are too many people to make that entirely practical - and I don't know all their emails. So I'm just going to write here what I want to say.

Dear friends,

It's been a tricky year, since this time in 2014. Without you, I wouldn't be here. Without you, I wouldn't have a PhD all but in hand. Without you, my life would be so much poorer and smaller, and contain so much less joy. I am honoured by your acquaintance, and your friendship, your hospitalities and your support: your presence in my life is a gift and a blessing, and it humbles me.

Thank you. Never stop being awesome.

GANDALF: Theoden king stands alone.
Eomer: Not alone. ROHIRRIM!

Watching #hometovote on Thursday night and Friday, that was how I felt.

On Friday, 22 May 2015, the Irish nation voted overwhelmingly to give equal protection to all persons choosing to marry without distinction as to their sex. It - we - voted to affirm the equality of GLBT citizens in the eyes of the constitution.

Today we watched the returns come in. Today we saw history made. Today, in the crowds in the courtyard of Dublin Castle, cheering when every constituency went green for YES (and booing for Roscommon-South Leitrim, shame on you, you let the side down a bit there), today we began a new history.

Can you actually believe it? pic.twitter.com/KtK33f8t7m

— PJ Gallagher (@pjgallagher) May 23, 2015

I have now heard a crowd break spontaneously into the national anthem.

This is not a thing I ever expected to hear.

But when David Norris spoke a few words to the crowd in that courtyard - a rowdy, cheerful crowd that nonetheless went silent to hear him speak - ending on a note of liberté, egalité, fraternité, everyone. Just. Started.

Buíon dár slua
thar toinn do ráinig chughainn,
Faoi mhóid bheith saor
Seantír ár sinsear feasta,
Ní fhágfar faoin tíorán ná faoin tráill.

I have never in my life seen anything like it. There was a crush just to get in to the courtyard where the screen was bringing up the constituencies as they turned green for Yes. And every time another one went green the roar. Laughing. Crying. Hugging people met randomly. And when Leo Varadkar appeared, a Fine Gael government minister who only came out this year and turned into the most unlikely gay icon of our time... the whole crowd started chanting, "LEO, LEO, LEO."

One of the highest turnouts for a referendum ever in this country. A landslide in the Dublin constituencies. A two-thirds majority across the country.

Everyone who canvassed. Everyone who came out on national TV, in the newspapers, on doorsteps all over the country, whose courage and compassion and generosity are an example to us all - thank you. Everyone who came #hometovote, that army pouring over the hill - thank you. THANK YOU.

It took me until this year to realise and admit to myself properly that I was bisexual - queer, primarily attracted to women, whatever words are the words that shape the place where a person fits. It took me so long because I was slow to realise it was even possible, much less normal. Much less safe. (My subconscious has some really odd narratives about sex and desire - and I blame being a bastard in nineties Ireland in part for that.)

And now. Now my heart hurts with gladness because this whole bloody country just turned around and said Ah GO ON. Turned out in droves to say Let grá be the law.

It's in the constitution now, bigots. NO TAKEBACKS.

No, it's not the end of the road. No, it's not a panacea. It will not solve quiet social prejudice, or erase Irish homo- and transphobia overnight, or address any number of other problems. But today, Ireland?

TODAY WE ARE LEGENDS WHO MADE HISTORY.

(And I was there to see it.)

What a day. O what a LOVELY day.

When I went out to do my errands before noon, the world seemed saturated in light. High sun, blue heavens, a heat-hazy mist on the horizon. The tide rising towards full, with a seal bobbing its head at the mouth of the harbour and the water clear and millpond-still, taking a milky hue out around the headland. Chilly to the feet when I went to paddle, but less so than last week - so I hurried through my errands and hastened home for my swimming things.

The Irish Sea is still officially fucking cold. But rather less so than last week: the submersion less shocking, and I proved actually able to swim for a thirty-count rather than a ten-count. Shocking cold. Feel capillaries contracting. Headrush. Wow.

My skin tingled all over for an hour after I dried off and got dressed again. Now I suppose I should do something that counts as real work, perhaps...

---

I haven't been very talkative here for a while. Mostly because when I feel like talking it is rarely about things I feel comfortable talking about publically, anymore: it's very weird, but I'm more conscious of how much of my self-presentation is - has to be - mediated through various personas now. And since I handed in my thesis (viva date in June! Eek!) I've been engaged in several not-exactly-comfortable processes of self-discovery/self-realisation: I'm not entirely certain of who I am and how I want to present myself - as opposed to my work - to the world these days.

That's taking up quite a bit of my thinking space. And, well. Work and job applications and worry over the future: they take up the rest.

Today I have committed bureaucracy, and also gym. Give us this day our daily bread, and deliver us from waiting in ticketed lines, for lo it is a small evil among many small evils.

It was relatively painless, as these things go, except for the part where I have to go back again tomorrow to collect my new ration of paperwork. Adulting. I am doing it? Especially since I also bought socks. Socks without holes in are important. I probably should not have bought socks, because money, but, well. The sock drawer is deeply embarrassing right now.

And gym.

Benchpress: 1x5 @60kg, 3x5 @65kg
Squats: 1x10 @20kg, 1x10 @25kg, 1x10 @27.5kg.
Sundry other weightlifting things, like military press and other things whose names I have forgotten, at embarrassingly small weights.
Cycling, resistance 8, 10km in 28:45.
Rowing, resistance 10, 2km in 11:00.

It is very pleasant to have energy to go forth and do things. Also it is very pleasant that the sun is shining, even though it remains cold. It is thirdly very pleasant that I know many wonderful people who are kind and appear to like me, which I can appreciate all the better now the thesis is submitted, and fourthly it is very pleasant to have LEISURE TIME.

Fifthly: sleeping normal people hours and waking up in mornings? The novelty and wonder, it has not worn off.

My thesis is submitted. Until my viva voce examination, it is officially someone else's problem.

Now is the time for sleeping normal people hours again and re-learning how to gym and feel things that aren't stress-feelings.

Today I also got a haircut, went to the gym, and found myself borne out to a coffee shop in good company for celebratory foodstuffs. I am amazed at the amazing people whom I have the privilege of knowing.

Gym log:
Cycling: 7.5km in 21:45.
Rowing: 0.4km in 02:00.
Benchpress: 4x5 reps @60kg
Squats: 1x10 reps @20kg, 2x10 reps @25kg. (Though I'm pretty sure my squat form is terrible.)

Not feeling up to much communication. Apparently there's less work involved in finishing up a thesis than there is emotional turmoil.

Nope, still not done. Getting there.

Thanks to Toronto Tourism and INSPIRE! Toronto International Book Fair, I got to take a trip to Toronto this month. Between Tuesday 11th November and Monday 17th November, I was either in Toronto or in transit between Dublin and Toronto.

I flew with Air Canada via Heathrow. The flight out was one of the more painless long flights of my existence. The aircraft was the very latest in shiny passenger-flying, with actual headroom and windows that could be tinted five different shades of green, and they fed us. Recognisable and tasty food: dinner, a snack, and then a hot wrap thing that actually tasted of its ingredients. Plenty of soft drinks: I had some Canadian ginger ale and discovered I liked it.

I landed to sunset in Toronto, and felt as though I’d stepped onto a film set.

I find the skyline, and the layout, of North American cities surreal, when I see them in person. They are so much a part of English-language television, and so different to the cities I am used to, that visiting them feels rather like stepping out of reality and into a fictional dream where people might be uncommonly handsome and even the tenor of street noise is different. The straightness of the roads and the height of buildings messes with my sense of scale. The sky seems larger.

Surreal, like I said.

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Five things make a post, as the ancient wisdom goes:

The physiotherapist says no running for me, not for a while. She pointed out I have puffiness and inflammation. I can do other things, but nothing high-impact.

I may have overcompensated on the cycling machine in the gym. 15km in 43:15, at moderate levels of resistance. I also lucked out and found two people willing to share the weights cage for benchpress, so I got to talk to nice people in between sets. 6x60kg, 5x65kg, 5x67.5kg, 4x70kg, and 8x60kg to finish. Basically an easy session, just cardio and benchpress.

The college counseling service had room for me to see the bloke I remember being helpful before next week, so I'm going to hit that up on Monday.

I slept before 0300 last night and made it out of bed before 0930, which is a milestone. I just have to keep that up every day for the rest of the year.

Today really feels like autumn. It's 1930 with twilight gloaming in under high and misty cloud, where the morning came in bright, and the air has a touch of damp and chill. I used to like autumn. Not so much anymore: autumn is too much a season of endings.