The last of the woods laid low

So where to begin. A quarter hour before my departure from the office in the chaotic and completely unmanaged handover of my boss on maternity leave, I learned that my godmother had lost out to the cancer that was diagnosed five years ago. She would have been sixty-nine next month. It felt like being crushed, slowly.

So when I hit Dublin, I went, with a kind and patient friend, to meet for a sleepy jar at the Gresham - Smithwicks, in honour of the lady herself. It was her pint of choice, to be had laughing loudly on the creaky plastic benches on the balcony of the Dalkey Island Hotel. There, I would drink Club Orange (in a bottle with a straw, please) and Scampi Fries, and bury 10p pieces in the garden for our next visit and another round of Pacman in the lobby. We'd look out at the island and pile on more jumpers, pretending it was really summer.

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Behind the scenes parkbenching in Dublin was productive, and met with old friends for pints, dinners, tea and cakes, and theatre, and new friends for chats about books and language. Shared a restaurant with Mr. Black while we ranted and rolled our tired eyes through more Trebbiano and outstayed our welcome with dessert we couldn't afford. Saw Mangan, Poe and Mahony onstage in Daniel Reardon's latest, Bleeding Poets at Dublin's New Theatre, a great space hosted by kind people, filling the gaping voide left by the closing of Andrew's Lane. Sublime, ridiculous and the beginning of a very long couple of weeks.

I was back in London for eighteen hours before taking my first flight to Norway. When I woke up the next morning in the cozy wooden house with the potbellied stove, I saw that in Trondheim, children ski to school.


When we filed out of the cathedral, the snow began to fall.