Up in the Eire

Tomorrow is the beginning of a very long journey, from the south of Spain all the way up to the north of Ireland, and I'm a big ball of restless anxiety. The whole of the past month has been a hellish landscape of uncertainty punctuated by spikes of extra stress and even more uncertainty.

It's a long story, and a dull one, but suffice it to say that selling up and moving to another country is stressful enough at the best of times, and this has not been the best of times. Even now, the DAY BEFORE we move, we don't know whether we'll be moving with a sold house or leaving the agents in charge of selling it again.

Oh well, never mind, no of course I'm not spinning into a homicidal frenzy. Our decision of 'fuck it, we're going anyway' has been a surprisingly calming one, in fact. Moving from a warm country to a famously rainy and chilly one is a grand plan. Bring on the cold and damp, say we!

I'll leave you with a poem, so you can join us in feeling guilty about leaving inanimate objects behind.


A Christmas Tree Waiting

When we packed the car

And drove away for the last time,

Boxes piled right to the roof,

Itself concave under the weight

Of an entire library, we left

A Christmas tree waiting,

In a small and draughty

Storage shed, for the Christmas

That never came.

Still draped with tinsel

Dripping with faux-crystal icicles

Baubles dangling from

Authentic-style branches,

Tinkling in the breeze creeping

Through the gaps in the door.

When, one day, someone finds

Our left-behind tree

With its forgotten decorations, once

Lovingly hung while carols played

A fire sang in the grate,

And glitter drifted into the carpet,

Perhaps they will feel an echo of sadness

To feel the warmth of that Christmas

Discarded.

Or, perhaps they will mark the holes in the foliage,

Sunken branches and fur falling like rain,

The woebegone, lopsided star

Lolling drunk atop its crown,

And curse us for lazy bastards

Who couldn’t even be bothered
To kick it to the ground.