Saturday,
10pm, November 11th, 2017
Somewhere
in the West of Ireland.
*For Mam, who has contributed so much to my development as a person, and as a writer*
Dear Reader,
Jupiter and Venus were visible through
Irish skies this evening, and I being a country girl, could’ve seen them. - No city
lights masking their presence and beauty.
If only I had bothered to look.
But I, pacing the floor, saw only
the insides of my walls tonight and the glowing stickers of my ceiling as I lay
on my bed,
thinking.
In
November of last year, I wrote a blog post called ‘How to Like Christmas’ for those who curse the cold (bah humbug) and scowl at the early
arrival of Christmas decorations in shops every year. It’s that time of year
again, when living in the countryside has never felt so apparent: The yellow
weather warning signalling bad rain
means that it’s probably safer to stay inside, the lack of streetlights and
traffic lights makes the darker evenings span for miles, the stillness of the
night evokes a sense of isolation and cabin
fever.
But then, with these thoughts
tonight, I planted two feet on the ground and I realised that I didn’t want to
feel lost at sea while I was still on
land.
So now, I will deem my cabin
fever obsolete. And even though winter in the countryside can be bleak, I
remind myself of how the country life has helped shape me both as a person, and
as a writer.
*
In
the 1990’s, my parents lived in a nice area in the city with my two sisters who
were children at the time. Everything was bliss, except for one thing. The radiance
and roar of the city lights blocked the stars that my Mam so badly wanted to
see. So, they packed up and left; moving to the west of the west of Ireland
where my Dad designed a new house and my Grandad built its surrounding
limestone wall.
Along came my brother, and me,
soon after that.
They say I was a quiet baby.
Maybe I was already too busy writing stories in my head; my inspiration
stemming from the feeling of cold grass beneath my feet, or watching our
sheepdog Judy nuzzling the fur of her nine pups.
In
the early toddler days of my country life, it was just Mam and me. We went for nature
walks: Two-year-old me peering over the side of the pram as Mam identified various
wild flowers and birds’ nests. Some people still get a little scared when I
tell them that my earliest memory consists of those nature walks with my Mam,
and the sheer amount of dead animals we saw on our trail. – Frogs, birds, mice,
all left breathless due to the narrowness and bendiness of our country roads.
But it was this live nature against dead nature that created this happy-sad
mixture in my mind, and from then on out, the stories began to brew.
‘Shame’ was my
imaginary friend. I’m quite sure that his name was supposed to be Shane, but like most children my age I
had a habit of mispronouncing certain words. And so Shame, the little boy of my imagination was the cool friend whom I
loved to brag about at home. He had white hair and a Spiderman coat, and we
played together every day at playschool.
He was the coolest boy in the world
according to me at three – the girl who also spent her time with her other
pretend friends. At this point, Judy the very
real sheepdog and her nine pups had just found alternative housing
arrangements, due to neighbours of ours complaining about them chasing their
livestock, so I, being a toddler of three, invented a new dog to play with. My
imaginary book club soon followed, as well as the cartoon angel and devil
companions who perched on my shoulders, advising me on which actions to take.
The angel was very talkative. The devil was completely mute, which hardly seemed
fair, but I being that well-behaved country toddler, was also oddly self-aware.
When
I was six-years-old, our first ever computer arrived in our country home and my
brother and I, not quite understanding how the world wide web worked, completely
disregarded our older sisters when it came to this computer. We argued over
which of us would use it first,
because my brother couldn’t wait to type in www.eminem.ie,
while I was desperate to type in www.mice.ie;
somehow thinking that what I was looking for would just pop up on screen. You
could compare this to a child’s prophecy of the wonders of Google that were yet to come, but of course I couldn’t go as far as
saying that I predicted Google. Hell, I wasn’t that creative.
When my
turn finally came around to using this fine windows 98 model, the internet was
no longer on my agenda, because my eyes widened at the sight of a note pad
document where you could type words and
words and words.
My first ever short story was
born, entitled ‘A Skeleton Blood on his
Head’. It was a detailed first-person account of flash fiction in which I
described the scary things I saw as I turned around these corners that happened
to be there in the story: bats, pumpkins,
a ghost, oh no…!! A skeleton, blood on his head!
Living in
the countryside left little time to head into the city frequently, so I was always
glued to my notebook and our windows 98 computer, where I wrote story, after
story, after story. My Mam went back to work as a teacher and I started
attending school so we didn’t go for our nature walks that much anymore, but I
still played outside most days, pretending that our cat Tabby was actually a
tiger.
I soon
discovered the wacky characters of the author Dr. Seuss and knew that I was going to grow up to
become a writer. During Ireland’s rare sunny days I would lie on a rug in my
back garden reading The Cat in the Hat,
listening to the cows mooing in the fields behind me, and smiling as the grass
tickled my bare toes. During the more rainy days I stayed inside, writing a ‘novel’ about a girl who could talk to
magpies, and whose destiny it was to save the magpie forest from being chopped
down.
I kept
diaries well into my pre-teen years and continued to write them as a teenager.
Poor Mam assured my numerous English teachers during parent-teacher meetings
that I was in fact normal, following
the short stories I had submitted involving haunted houses and witches burned
at the stake. All I wanted in Secondary school was to write, and paint, and
play music, because as a country kid, these were the hobbies I had acquired.
They didn’t involve slow traffic lights or trips to the city. No beeping cars.
No hustle and bustle. They made me happy. They made me whole. They made me me.
I still
kept a diary during my four years at University, and although I had to visit
the city quite frequently for my classes, I still lived in my country house,
commuting from home every day. The blurred gate between city life and country
life had its ups and downs. – Sweet diary entries on slow Sunday mornings spent
in bed with a cup of tea, stressful diary entries during visits to the library
where I wrote my many assignments, peaceful diary entries on arriving home to calming
silence after a busy day at lectures, sad diary entries on how I wished I had lived
in in the city so that I could see my friends more often, drunk diary entries about
those guys on nights out in the city who thought it was okay to grab my ass
without my consent.
Ultimately, my mesh with city life
proved to be outstandingly
beneficial. I became more independent as my shell of shyness began to crack,
revealing more layers and the confident person who’d lived inside this whole
time.
I was a creative writing student, learning
that writing did not just mean fiction writing. I wrote poetry
and plays and screenplays.
I became friends with so many new
writers, and I discovered so many nooks and crannies and cafes in which I could
write.
In
my third year of University I moved to Paris to teach English and write a novel.
No, not a magpie novel, a real novel. I became comfortable with
city life and I blended in with the French passers-by along the Champs Elysees.
Moving
home, I deemed myself a city girl, but,
I was living in the country again.
It
frustrated me entirely, and it does ‘till this day as I think about winter in
the countryside: the cold, the early arrival of Christmas decorations, the yellow
weather warning signalling bad rain, the
lack of streetlights and traffic lights, and the dark stillness of the night.
Bah
humbug.
*
Jupiter
and Venus were visible through Irish skies this evening, and I being a country
girl, could’ve seen them. - No city lights masking their presence and beauty.
I didn’t get to see them, but
that’s not what worries me anymore.
If only I had bothered to remember
the
stars.
-Burning embers in the sky; the
whole reason why Mam had loved the idea of country life those many years ago,
when she along with my Dad, made the decision to move our family to the west of
the west of Ireland.
These stars are bright and
hopeful and they remind me of the warmer writing days I spent working on a ‘novel’ about magpies, and the mornings I
spent reading colourful books by Dr. Seuss.
I can always see the stars.
I am a country girl today;
perhaps a city girl tomorrow, but I will always
see the stars,
and for that,
I am forever grateful.
Ciao,
Madame Mayreed x
