Ordinary people, at picnic

Apparently Michael Jackson spent some time in Ireland a couple of years ago. He was trying to find a place to live here. None of it worked out, but some stories have emerged from that time. This anecdote was one I thought illustrated something very nicely. Something about massively different worlds, at picnic.

Pat O'Hagan of estate agents Savills showed the star and his children around a "large, important country house in Co Meath" in September 2006, then priced at "around €20m".

Picnic

He was told to arrive at the house to show around an unnamed client and that there was to be nobody else on the premises. There was also a request that the party be permitted to have a picnic on the grounds of the property. "The picnic request made sense -- they could hardly stop in McDonalds or Supermacs on their way back, and he had to feed the kids. We had salad and sandwiches and crisps and a glass of wine," said Mr O'Hagan.

"Michael chatted away . . . He spoke about doing three concerts a day from the time he was very young. He had a certain amount of resentment against his father because of the amount of pushing that was done when he was young.

"The kids were there, rolling down the lawns, which were wet, and they went to feed the chickens in the yard. They were lovely, they were very well-mannered kids and he was very attentive to them. It was a group of ordinary people having a chat and a picnic out of the boot of the car."

Ok one more

For Reuben

I think you will like this.

Eamon

There is another reason for turning the volume down on one of your facebook friends. It is because their status updates and comments and links and posts drive you crazy and you don't understand it but they make you feel tired, just to read them.

One such is a man I met in a garden in New York, on my last day in the city in 2003, until I returned almost four years later. He turned out to be my third cousin. Pretty remarkably closely related, his father and my grandmother were first cousins. This kind of detail matters to me, a lot. I have found a long-lost cousin in remarkable circumstances, in every place I have lived in, now.

My cousin in Denmark I had not met since we were both 2, in Limerick. I met him again when I performed at an arts festival in Denmark. As I left the stage, and the venue, he came running after me, shouting, "Lucy come back! It's your cousin, Brian!" He said I hadn't changed much since I was 2. He recognised me. Fucking Nora (Nora was the name of a grandaunt to both of us).

And this one in New York, we met in a garden, as I said, in the east village. He started talking to me, asking about where in Ireland I was from. His surname and my grandmother's were the same, and they came from the same place. That was an epiphany, a kinship made in the city, a sign to return. I have made some overtures toward contact, facebook being one of them. But he doesn't seem able to say hello. It is easier, I suppose, to click 'confirm' on a friend request in your inbox, from the safety of the distance of your familiar computer, than to meet the unknown yet blood related, in another human being.

He is a rocknroll musician and I think he is probably very lonely.

A bit too boy; a bit too girl, but mostly we have fun

A six year old takes a picture of how it is.

The Curious Case of Lonesome George

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Nana's

It seems that I've moved into Nana's, the last couple of days. She's got wifi (nobody knows how) and I love it here, what can I say? It's also closer to town and right now I need the proximity.

Anyway, nana's kitchen is a bit like Freddy's, only with slightly more frenetic activity, constant coming and going, and EVERYBODY's a regular at nana's. Cousins, aunts and uncles, various inlaws, neighbours in gigantic curlers and headscarves, the occasional visit from a blonde lady with a nice bottle of wine, and Pinky the dancing queen labrador, who watches it all happen behind her glass door (and oh how she loves to dance)... it's all going on at nana's.

Me n my cousin Ross

Me and my cousin Conor

Mum n me

My uncle-in-law Noel, me and my cousin Conor

Jetlag hell on wheels

I'm having the jetlag horrors. Have you ever had the jetlag horrors? Are you having the jetlag horrors somewhere in the world right now, dear reader, and sending out thoughtwaves that I am all too susceptible to picking up, strongly suggesting that LUCY TAKES OFF transforms your jetlag feelings into words, and liberates you from the pain of your jeglag aloneness? Well, I'll do my best, dear reader. And bookmark this page for future reference. I'd rather not have to go through this experience again.

I'm in Ireland, and my body is fully and entirely on new york time, while still being subject to the normal human daytime demands of this strange new timezone. There was no other option but sleep when my plane got in at 6 am, and when I heard my dad play the piano downstairs a hundred years later, it was 4.24 pm. Bollocks.

My folks are not much help, having had no experience of this phenomenon, and have been encouraging me to sleep the way my body longs to. I lay in bed awake last night for about five hours, until I finally got up and took my Paul Auster book downstairs to the kitchen to eat some leftover smoked salmon sandwiches and chocolate and tea at 6 am. Got to sleep finally, around 7.30. Mum woke me up this morning at 9 as I asked her to, and I told her, I've had an hour and a half sleep, mum. I'm still on new york time. Well stay there so, answered my accommodating mum; dad will drive you in later. That sounded good to my ears, which were looking for any kind of easy answer that means more sleep. Ten minutes later, she's back.

So, what do you want to do? Um, I say, searching.. I'm thinking of cycling in a bit later.. And when I hear myself saying that I've just got to laugh because although I sometimes expect myself to be capable of Big Things Regardless of Circumstance, the notion of cycling into the city from my folks' country place, and back again, inevitably, later this afternoon, is just a step too far into the lunatic zone. Anyway, I chuckled at the eejit making excuses, and dragged myself out of bed. It's not so bad actually, but it's not yet noon. Limerick city is moving, but subdued. I've been taking a walk.

Visited some backalley backyard parts of the neighbourhood I grew up in, here in Limerick. My folks moved out to South East Clare as soon as they had me reared, and I kicked my own arse off to college at 17 years of age, and so when I go back to Ireland, I tend to spend most of my time out in Clare, and with visits to my nana's house, which has traffic from all the rest of the family.

It's like a play set in nana's kitchen. People show up suddenly, after years of absence, and immediately get offered tea and cake. Since I've been living in fancy cities, surrounded by schedulers, I've developed a lingo. I asked dad last night, so, what's your schedule tomorrow? And caught myself. He said it's okay, I use that kind of language too, now. It's just the way things have turned. But to phone my nana in advance of showing up in her kitchen, through her ever-unlocked back door, would just be the most weird and unnecessary thing to do ever in the history of weird and unnecessary things. I will go there today, when I've finished my city stuff, and sit there in her kitchen, getting fed tea and brown bread, and chatting until somebody comes to take me away.

Right now, I'm sitting in the Marriot hotel, on the site of what was once one of the most beautiful, elegant theatres in Ireland. I was born next door to that theatre. It's been torn down now, to make way for a Marriot hotel and another shopping centre. However, it's a pretty ace spot to work in and I've been here all day with one pot of tea, a massive comfy sofa, relaxed environment and free wifi. Nice. I think I'll be coming back here.

Here come the hotstepper

My dad sent me some post that had come to their house for me since I've come here. One of the letters was an invitation to my cousin's wedding in October. I'm flying back to Ireland for it on the 8th. It was a sweet invitation, no doubt chosen with intense deliberation, and I have a feeling that they hired someone to write the names by hand in fancy calligraphy. There was also a handful of little shiny winged angels with bugels, confetti-style, scattered in the envelope. Anyway, somehow the angels have found their way all over the place. I'm stepping on angels as I move through the flat.

It makes it a bitch to hoover, though.