between the rock and the cold, cold sea

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.

Here is a thing that happened today, and rather spoiled my happy I-have-swum-the-sun-is-shining pleasure at the world.
Three in the afternoon. Doorbell rings. It is a man from the gas company. "Hello," says I.

"Is your mum or dad there?" says he.

I make the WTF face and nobly refrain from asking how fucking old does he think I am. "Can I help you?" says I. ("Can I help you?" is code for TELL ME WHAT THE HELL YOU WANT OKAY. I thought everyone knew this.)

"Are you the Man of the House?" says he.

WTF says my face again. With great restraint, I repeat: "Can I help you?"

"But are you the MAN OF THE HOUSE?" he says again.

At this point, I confess, I lost my temper. "Dude, do I look like a guy? GO AWAY." (I have never said "Dude" out loud before.) Closed the door, and retired to seethe, and to recount this funny story to the internets.

Moral of the story: if you have short hair and a t-shirt and shorts, and aren't performing traditional femininity, at least one of Bord Gáis's travelling doorsteppers will go straight to TEENAGER ALERT and/or MAN ALERT.

I'm tempted to write a complaint. ARE YOU THE MAN OF THE HOUSE?

No. THERE ARE NO MEN IN THIS HOUSE. BECAUSE WE ARE AMAZONS. AND MAN-EATING FEMINISTS...

Actually, because it is possible to be short-haired and female-ish. And it is also possible to live in houses without men, it's a thing that happens sometimes, STRANGER THINGS HAVE HAPPENED.

This entry was originally posted at http://hawkwing-lb.dreamwidth.org/616111.html. There are comments there. Comment where you like.

A light fog had rolled in. The sea was chill, just the right kind of chill to take the edge off a humid day without being cold, the colour of milky steel under drifting bands of mist. Just barely choppy enough to slap you in the face once or twice, so you'd know you'd been kissed, clear and pungent with salt. Perfect enough to make you cry.

A jellyfish sighting chased me out after only fifteen or twenty minutes, but god, that was glorious.

As of this day, I am three years shy of thirty.

---

I never thought, when I was younger, that I would know so many interesting people.

I never thought I'd be able to call so many interesting, wonderful people friend.

You guys. You guys. You've made my life better in so many ways. I don't have the words to say how much I appreciate you all, beyond thank you.

From the depths of my heart.

---

My day started with swimming in the sea. At Skerries, where the deep water is: the sky hazed where the sun had yet to burn off the damp, the sea grey and gently choppy and cold beyond the dreams of men. It steals the breath.

Twenty minutes in the water. Emerging to dress and eat lunch and catch a train. The sun burning off the haze, temperatures reaching 24C. The gym deserted, plenty of room to push intense alternating intervals on bike and treadmill.

A good day. I even managed to hand in my paperwork to the travel fund and see my supervisor!

---

Now, dear friends, it is time for cake. And thesis. But mostly cake.

We're all going to die.

The brief but glorious summer continues. I read part of a book on the not-so-busy north strand and swam when the tide was high on the crowded harbour beach. Waves too high and wild to properly swim, but the water warmer (to perception) even than yesterday, almost temperate. Some Polish lads were peeling pink, and some black lads teased me in a friendly manner about going for a dip, and dozens of skinny Irish children screamed in the shallows and jumped into breaking surf.

But soon the summer will disappear, and we will wonder, "Was it all a dream?" "Does the sun even exist?" "Perhaps it was a hallucination brought on by chemicals in the rain." But by the Peeling Tomato shade of healing sunburn, we shall know it was true, and that once, once, the sun appeared in glory.

And the memory of light will endure behind the clouds of another year. *strikes a grand and tragic pose*

Therefore let us continue on towards suppertime. And have cake and grapes, because it is summer.

The Irish Sea proved almost warm at full tide today. Warm enough to stay in for nearly forty minutes, anyway.

Proof below the cut:

( Read more... )

Weather's supposed to break tomorrow, although the week should be mild enough. (12 Celsisus is still mild enough, right?) Provided the winds aren't too high, I might even get in another swim or two while my houseguests are here.

We'll see.

I appear to be mostly packed, and the ash cloud seems to be behaving itself. Be good, little ash cloud! I owe the weather gods a libation of hard liquour if I travel safely and without delays. One for going, and one for coming home.

I've lost one of my flipflops, and I apparently have half as many pairs of socks as I thought I did, half of them with significant holes. The things you learn!

In other news, the grandmother came around to visit today. She seems convinced I will be Eaten by Terrible Uncivilised Americans. Or, you know. Have other dreadful things happen to me and end up Deported In Handcuffs.

My grandmother, she does not always look on the brightside.

My mother is less convinced of the likelihood of being Eaten By Cannibals. On the other hand, she tells me if I fail to check in with her every day, she's getting on a plane herself to come track me down.

I'd be irritated by all this parental concern, except, well. It's remarkably warming to know that should anything happen to one, there will be a search party mounted. Loudly. Possibly with the brandishment of sticks.

Anyway. Tomorrow is set to be a fine, sunny day. There might even be swimming. So I must consider what books to take on the plane now, with care.

Flickr finally worked. Yay!

Clicky for pictures. :P

I woke up this morning stiff as a fricking board, and as a result slept in two hours past the time I'd meant to be up. But guess what! Today, that was just fine. Because today, instead of sticking my nose into dusty books and academic articles, I was going for a hike.

A short hike, and one that started in the afternoon, because even on a Mental Health Day, articles on Social Complexity in Prehistoric Cyprus still exercise a siren call. But eventually I got going, and together with the long-suffering parent, headed out to Howth Head for two hours of joyful walking.

Howth's a brilliant place. I spent most of my childhood there, and going back every so often to walk Deer Park or around the cliffs is a kind of ritual. At this time of year, with the gorse in full bloom and the rhodendrons just beginning to peek out among the green, it's beautiful.

And let's not forget the fact that views from the Ben of Howth and Black Linn - I've never hiked Shielmartin, since to do so one has to cross a golf course full of enthusiastic hard flying objects - are incredible, on a clear day. (On a foggy one, sometimes you can't see your feet.) You can see clear across the north county, and south as far as Dalkey, not to mention the city, and the islands of Ireland's Eye, with its Martello tower and ruined church, and most distant Lambay, opposite the harbour. (The Vikings named them. You can tell.) And Howth Castle, of which the oldest bits still standing (the gatehouse) date to the 15th century.

So the parent parked us in the hotel carpark, and we made a brisk run of it up to the Ben. It's only twenty minutes up, give or take, up a path almost like a tunnel through rhododendron bushes. The view is well worth it. If flickr ever lets me upload my pictures, I'll share 'em.

The top is barren rock and gorse. Two sides are mostly sheer: one side slopes - through many overgrown trees and bushes and the steep path up - to an unused reservoir: the final side slopes more easily down to the dip that lies between the Ben and Black Linn. Standing here, you can see forever. Twenty kilometers easy on an ordinary day: farther, today. And I had my pocket binoculars in our backpack (one of the reasons the parent still consents to go walking with a bouncy twenty-something-year-old: I carry all our crap) which meant we could even see the airport.

We carried on down into the dip. The path was clearer today than it usually is: it's been such a long winter, despite the fact the gorse is out everywhere, under the trees, the ferns haven't had time to grow back from their winter-brown absence. The dip - it's a little gulley: it runs from the flat flank of the golf course to the edge of the reservoir and along towards Howth village proper - is a bit of a wind tunnel, and it was weird to be there, surrounded by new green growth, and not a fern in sight.

Where the slopes of the Ben are forested and bushy, Black Linn's a barren scar of rock. Only gorse and heather grows on it, though in sheltered spots the gorse can grow over head height. It's half an hour from the top of the Ben to the top of Black Linn, if you're pushing: the slope up to the peak is at a greater than 45 degree angle in places. At the top there's a hearth pit: it's been there since before the parent was born and could well be older than a couple of centuries. I've never had the opportunity to try and track down its date.

From Black Linn, there's a couple of ways you can go. If you have all day, you can head up by the quarry for the summit and the cliffs, and hike down for a couple hours to the Asgard Road and the harbour or around by the Bailey Lighthouse to Red Rock and Sutton Strand. Since we didn't have more than an hour to spare, and we wanted to arrive back at the car in timely fashion (these other options rather work better when your goal is the Dart station or a bus stop), we opted to head up towards the radio mast by the quarry and circle back around the shoulder of Black Linn to the Ben, and return the way we came.

And man, was it beautiful. It was still and empty up there, a handful of birds in the heather and the wind in the gorse just chill enough to cut the warmth of the sun and make walking with a pack comfortable. The area of Howth Head is protected by legislation as an area of natural beauty or something or other, legal nonsense that for once actually makes sense.

Two hours of walking, and my calves are letting me know all about it now. But it was worth it.

( Howth Head: )

And now I return to the mines of JSTOR for an hour or two. Wish me luck. And give flickr a kick for me, so it starts uploading my pictures.