wash your language

  • All Posts
  • Publications
  • Services
  • Contact
  • Fairies at the Stone Circle
You are here: Home / Archives for Uncategorized

Mothers on Buses

July 8, 2022 by EmmaP Leave a Comment

When I got on the No. 4 bus, near its starting point in Monkstown, it was empty and I could take my favourite seat, upstairs in the top right corner. That’s where you used to be able to look down through the window at the driver’s head below, but it’s now simply the best spot for a panoramic view over Dublin Bay as the bus trundles into town.

At the stop in Booterstown I saw some women with children and strollers and bags prepare to get on. They looked a little stunned, as if they weren’t yet used to the routine of boarding a Dublin bus, beeping their Leap cards, folding up the stroller, finding seats. They split in two and one mother came upstairs with two identical little girls, squeezing into a couple of seats down on the left side. They spoke quietly, in a language I recognised to be not quite Russian, the girls sounding a bit disgruntled. Without thinking, I turned around, stood up and nodded towards my choice seat at the front. The mother – who looked no older than 25 – smiled at me and nudged the squirming girls out of their seats and over to the front, while I went to sit further down the bus.

Sure enough, within a minute of settling into their new spot, I could hear their little voices brighten as they started to take in the city unfolding before them – the trees brushing against the windows, cyclists weaving around cars and trucks, people walking. Around Ballsbridge another No. 4 bus headed towards us and the excitement mounted: “babu babu” I heard – could that be Ukrainian for bus? The number four? The colour yellow? I’ll have to look it up sometime.

As much as the twin girls chattered and exclaimed – as only five year olds do best – their mother stayed quiet and barely moved her head. In the space given her, where her children could be distracted by the world, her thoughts must have aired themselves, her mind set free to loosen its worries.

And as much as her hair was straight and black, her daughters had heads of blonde under their matching glittery grey caps: hair they surely inherited from their father. Wherever their father was, just at that moment, I didn’t want to begin to imagine.

I too have been a mother with children on a bus in an unfamiliar country, in a new home that I was now meant to call home and live my life. I know the sense of dread that I might put the stroller in the wrong place, get off at the wrong stop, misunderstand and be embarrassed if someone speaks to me in a language I don’t yet speak.

14 years ago we moved to Oslo with my husband’s job and our second daughter was born there. Four days after she was born, we had to take the tram to the hospital for a checkup. Even before we left our cocoon of an apartment, I knew we’d be late and could miss our appointment. The February snow was heavy and seemed to blow straight in our eyes more than usual. The tram, when we stomped on board, was packed. I felt exhausted and weighed down by this new little creature I had strapped to my chest. There was no seat free, and not one person noticed me and offered me one. Heads were bent into phones, collars were up and hats were half pulled over faces. I held onto a pole, my legs weak and hot within my heavy coat.

My head started to swim with a feeling of being out of place, not wanted, not helped. I was too shy to ask for a seat or even stare anyone out of one. As some students got off, I fell into a seat. And I started to cry.

I’ll never forget that intense sadness and feeling of displacement, and it’s a chord deep inside me that was struck anew while I sat on that No. 4 bus last week as it made its way through the Spring-green avenues of south Dublin city.

My experience can barely begin to compare with the situation of the black-haired woman and her twins sitting ahead of me. Wasn’t I living in a country I had chosen to move to from another peaceful country, my husband was with me, we both had jobs and an apartment. I had a choice about being there. And freedom.

But it served as the barest frame of reference, to offer me some imagination to grasp what might be going on in the head, and heart, of this young mother, of all the mothers sitting on buses and Luases, pushing strollers to volunteer centres, cashing in Dunnes vouchers, settling babies down in stuffy hotel rooms, in Dublin, Waterford, Berlin, Warsaw, Tbilisi.

And I hope that my tiny action, of sharing my favourite seat might help for 20 minutes even one other mum, and two beautiful little girls. Girls who, I think, will surely be speaking Dublin English within the year.

At Merrion Square, as they made their way down the stairs, clutching hands as the bus swayed, I looked out the window. Even if the young mother were to look at me, I didn’t need to know.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Our First Irish Panto

December 27, 2017 by EmmaP Leave a Comment

“Ya eejit!”. So says my eight-year old to anyone she can, whenever she can, since she heard it at the Rapunzel pantomime last week at the Gaiety. This was our first ever family trip to the panto and our knowledge of Irish culture has now shifted up a notch. I’m a Dubliner and I’m sure I went a few times as a child, as you did. But my husband’s non Irish and our two kids have only lived abroad – until this summer, when we moved to Dublin to give it a go, and although we’ve usually come for Christmas we’ve never had time to do the panto before.

About five minutes in, a throwaway remark from the blue-eye-shadowed King allows me, and the rest of the crowd, to let loose with our first “oh no he’s not”. “Shhh”, says my youngest, and on my other side, her father gives me a look. “You’re supposed to do that”, I tell them

Within five minutes they’re at it too, and soon the girls’ faces are glowing some more, fitting in with all the other expectant faces around the balconies and stalls, going with the flow, the silliness and shouting “boo!” to the witch and “oh yes they are!” and by the end of the two-plus hours they’re happily singing and dancing (as do all the mums and dads).

“Is that a man?” they ask about the fabulous, wig-and-multiple-skirts-wearing leading dame, Ninny Nanny Noonah, having no idea that this same actor, Joe Conlon, has been playing more or less the same role, with just different lines, for the last 28 years. During the course of this “drama” involving metres of hair, air-guitar-playing heroes, dopey country fellas, a drunken pub scene and farting rabbits, I have to translate a few Dublin expressions that are new to my family: “have some grub”, “like a Fair City kidnap plot” and “Scarleh I was”.

High up in the second balcony (indeed, last minute tickets) we get a top-down view over the satisfied audience, of the terrific band working hard in the pit, the dancers waiting in the wings, and a head-on view of the family of eight in the balcony across the way who are all wearing Santa hats and jumpers, sharing with them the relief of not sitting in the front rows where you get sprayed by water and have your hairstyle publicly insulted.

During the interval I encourage the kids to explore the nooks and crannies of this beloved old theatre, to peek over the other balconies, look at the old programmes up and down those dark wooden staircases, buy something from the bar beside the glittering Christmas tree. “Sure you might as well get the big popcorn”, says the nice woman behind the bar, telling them to enjoy their first panto. She tells me she has four kids of her own, in their teens and twenties. One of them has a little boy, just 10 months old: “he’s so gorgeous, he just doesn’t know how much joy he brings into our lives”.

As for my husband (who’ll go to see a Shakespeare play at the drop of a hat) he was dead impressed by the Gaiety and his first panto: all that singing and dancing and embarrassment and joking that says nothing more complicated than “we will entertain you”. And that’s what all those hard-working people up on the stage of gaiety did for us.

Our eldest girl is so impressed that she wants to go around the back to the stage door off Grafton Street and try to meet some of the actors. We join one other family huddling in the alley and after about ten minutes she gets to greet the two younger stars, Ciara Lyons and Johnny Ward; I don’t think we’d recognise the older stalwarts out of makeup and costumes. We’re not really sure how famous they are but they were great, and they autograph our programme and give words of encouragement for her own now-bolstered dreams of the stage.

Next to the alley entrance there is a street soup-kitchen, popped up in place for the night once the shops were closed. Needy customers loiter and chat, and the volunteers, dressed in yellow vests, do their darndest to make their evening a bit better. One volunteer comes over to our girls as they’re waiting at the stage door – would they like a hot chocolate? They decline politely, they know who the hot drinks are meant to be for. The woman insists: “they have marshmallows in them”. In their party dresses they are actually freezing so they gratefully accept, and in the two minutes it takes for her to come back with the steaming milky cups, they’ve grown up a bit more. A surprised volunteer takes the few bob I offer him, and we feel very lucky to head off to our warm bus and our warm home, having learnt a bit more about the realities of a Dublin Christmas.

This story was published in the Irish Times on December 26th.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized

..Work in Progress..

February 15, 2015 by EmmaP Leave a Comment

To write well you have to read a lot. I’m working on posts about some interesting articles I’ve been reading about language, writing, translation and more. And I’m going to help with ongoing tips on improving your written English.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

A Blog and More

I write about language and the quirks of our family life in Dublin and previously in Italy and Norway. Read More…

RSS
Facebook
Facebook
fb-share-icon
Twitter
Visit Us
Tweet
Instagram

Instagram

Facebook

Cover for Wash Your Language
216
Wash Your Language

Wash Your Language

Musings on language and daily life in Ireland with memories from Canada, Italy and Norway

Wash Your Language

2 weeks ago

Wash Your Language
Here's one from the archives - back before I had a dog, I'd spend many waking hours looking at other peoples' dogs. Whatever the breed. ... See MoreSee Less

Besotted by Bassets - wash your language

washyourlanguage.com

It’s becoming a saga – this business of our family not yet having a dog. My elder daughter and I spend a lot of time discussing breeds and looking at other people’s dogs. Like this little fella ...
View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash Your Language

3 weeks ago

Wash Your Language
Ever feel like your day is full of cliches? Check out this piece written by my clever, fellow Dublin writer, Stephen Brady. -------At the crack of dawnI rose and shoneHad a breakfast of championsAnd blew out the stopsGrabbed the bull by the hornsAnd hit the streetTo meet and greetThe great unwashed;I wended my wayTo join the clubWaiting for the rubOf the greenTo set the sceneOf what might have been.I left no stone unturnedWhile the home fires burnedAnd the powers-that-beHad an air of mystery.But the empty vesselsMade an unholy noiseAnd the unstoppable forceMet the immoveable objectAnd the next thing I knewIt was an open-and-shut caseOf “we are where we are”where I was.At the eleventh hourIn my ivory towerI circled the wagonsGot my ducks in a row;I let sleeping dogs layWhere every dog has his dayAnd all the world was a stageWhen we were on the same pageI was flavour of the month‘Til I was yesterday’s newsMy talk was cheapBut I didn’t lose sleepThen it hit me like a ton of bricks!I’d been out of the loopLanded right in the soupAnd I was the last to knowI should have gone with the flow. At the end of the dayIt was a game of two halvesI was ahead by a noseBut got pipped at the postBy the Host with the MostAnd if turnabout is fair playYou could colour-me-amazedWhen the chickens I countedDidn’t come home to roost.For the grass it is greenerWhere the rolling stones gatherNo moss.(No loss.) Too many cooks spoiled my brothAnd a soft answer turn’d away WrathBut there were too many chiefsAnd not enough indians.Many hands made light workOf my best-laid plans(I’d had the whole world in my hands!)So I beat a retreatTo a threadbare roomWhere I quietly fumedTil the sun was under the yardarmAnd the daydodgilydamnablydone.-----Also available on the Inkslingers blog here. inkies.ie/record-of-a-day-rendered-entirely-in-cliches-by-stephen-brady/ ... See MoreSee Less

Photo

View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash Your Language

3 months ago

Wash Your Language
Here's a (true) story I wrote and told at an event in Belfast last year. It's the tale of the accordion that travelled many places with me and which I decided to pass on to someone who would need it more than me. The nice folk at BBC Radio Ulster recorded some of the stories from the event and you can hear it here (the first one). www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0fr7t46 And if you have an instrument to donate in Ireland you can find the Gift of Music to Ukrainians page here. www.facebook.com/groups/5018344234885700with Tenx9washyourlanguage.com/the-accordions-tale/ ... See MoreSee Less

The Accordion's Tale - wash your language

washyourlanguage.com

I wrote down this tale of an accordion looking for a new life, and I told it at a storytelling event in Belfast last November – the wonderful Tenx9 monthly event. The theme was Small World, and so t...
View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash Your Language

4 months ago

Wash Your Language
Amazing! ... See MoreSee Less

South African firefighters sing and dance after arriving at Edmonton's airport

www.youtube.com

More than 200 South African firefighters deployed to help combat Canada's wildfires performed a dance at Edmonton's airport.Subscribe to CTV News to watch mo...

Video

View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash Your Language

6 months ago

Wash Your Language
I've had to clear every last thing out of my parents' house, the one they lived in (and we grew up in) from the mid-60s on. 2 weeks ago it passed along to a new family and it's starting a new life.The deepest reaches of the attic were cleared and I rediscovered some treasures from my life. Starting with this book.I bought it on my first ever trip to Oxford when I was about 19 - took a day trip with a friend while staying with my sister over the summer. I found this gorgeous 1931 edition in a stand at the old covered market, which I think is still there. We also picked up a sandwich which we brought to eat on a bench in Christchurch meadow. The book was inside a paper bag with some postcards I'd just written.An hour later, on the bus, I realised the bag was still on the bench and I'd never see it again. If the police found it they might blow it up, those being the days when every package or bag was a potential threat.Turns out the police did find it, but instead of destroying it they looked inside, saw one of the postcards addressed to Mum & Dad Prunty with our home address, and they posted the whole lot back in a padded envelope. With a compliments slip from Thames Valley Police.How could I have known that in the same city 4 years later I'd meet my husband? And that 30 years later I still wouldn't have read the book? ... See MoreSee Less

Photo

View on Facebook
· Share

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email

Wash my language?

Språkvask is the Norwegian word for proofing text. Literally it means “language wash”; a more poetic way of saying it!

Blog comments

  • Donna on The Wall of Pink Covid Hearts
  • EmmaP on Tunes in an Empty Pub
  • Cathy Hogan on Tunes in an Empty Pub

© 2023 · Handcrafted with d by 2 Pups Design Co.