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The Wall of Pink Covid Hearts

October 11, 2021 by EmmaP 1 Comment

I had some free time while in London for work last week (lucky me) and I stumbled across this stunning wall of pink hearts along the Thames. It’s actually a wall of 150,00 individual pink hearts, each one painted on by volunteers just outside St Tommy’s hospital, directly facing Westminster.

Started quietly as a project by, among others Led By Donkeys, it’s now the semi-official Covid Memorial in #London. I’ve seen other modern memorials, in Washington DC, New York or Berlin, but the simple gesture of taking over this public space and its quiet everyday place in the life of the city was almost more moving.

Volunteers bought up most of the pink Posca pens in the country and spent 10 days creating the 8x8cm hearts, surprisingly unbothered by the authorities. People have travelled to London to write their own message on the wall or had volunteers do it for them.

Why 150,000 hearts? That’s the number of people that have so far died in the UK from Covid. The wall might not last, the hearts are starting to fade – all the more reason to visit and take photos.

Read more in this Guardian story https://bit.ly/3FED9TR

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: Covid, London

The Covid 5 and Me

April 9, 2021 by EmmaP Leave a Comment

For the last few months of this pandemic, my world has been shrunk to 5 kilometres. It’s not just me, it’s been the case since Christmas for everyone in Ireland. (In theory, at least). Now that our Covid radius is going to expand beyond 5km after April 12, I’ve realised the number 5 has actually defined my life in many ways.

There are 5 of us at home. Four humans and one dog. That’s 5 living beings, each of whom needs to be fed, clothed, cleaned, exercised, entertained, and kept in line.

The house is small – smaller than it’s ever been – with just 5 rooms in which each of us can be alone. Two kids doing their school day, two adults working on their laptops, and the dog sitting with whomever looks most likely to next go for a walk.

5 days a week we adults are working, though that often blurs into 7 days. No-one I’ve met can switch off at 5 o’clock. Certainly not my husband, an academic who’s never understood the concept anyway.

5 hours of schooling a day, that’s what the kids have been doing on average. For 5 days of the week they’ve attended school through a screen, sitting on their legs twisted under them, pyjama bottoms sometimes worn below the presentable jumper. This lockdown has been a bit easier as they, and the teachers, had a chance to adjust to it, and the social connections have grown a little stronger.

And after school and any homework are done – there’s about 5 hours of leisure. But what is leisure for them now, if it doesn’t include a screen? It doesn’t seem involve them taking out one of the 5 bikes sitting out in the garden. It’s often being told to take the dog for a walk on their own – 5 minutes at least, c’mon. Before the pandemic, our younger girl was playing 5 sports a week – as you can do when you’re only 11. All of that’s been on hold, while her skills have been put on ice.

She had just over 5 months of being physically in school during 2020. As in, sitting at a desk beside other kids and being led through fascinating learnings and challenges and curiosity through the superstar that is an Irish primary school teacher, running around the yard, kids teaming up and learning about life through companionship. Thankfully that has started back again in the last few weeks and we’re all the better for it.

My older daughter, a secondary student, will soon be pulling out her school clothes again, including the 5 mandated uniform masks they got in September. She’s starting to look forward to seeing her friends and moving amongst her peers, but it’s an awkward setup for a difficult age. Getting the news, about 5 weeks ago, that the Junior Cert is cancelled has lessened the stress.

I’ve been incredibly lucky with the outdoor world I have within my 5km. Best of all, I have the sea, which I’ve never loved as much. I’ve learned to visit it in the morning or in the dark evenings when thousands of other Dubliners who yearn for it are safely back home and not spreading their 99-and-coffee laden breaths in a viral cloud over our heads.

5km also gets me to my Dad’s house, making it that bit easier to manage this last year of spending good times with him and caring for him. We’ve seen about 5 consultants in about as many hospitals for his various conditions, and while we’re immensely grateful to not have been touched by Covid, life and sickness continue in the vacuum of different debilitating cocoons. His vaccine is now complete, which will make his world open up that bit more – when more things to do also open up. That is a blessing.

My 5km lets me reach my office building, which I’ve been able to use sometimes over the year, taking dominion over the four empty floors with its discarded post-it notes, forgotten cardigans, fossilised plants and the sanitising stations still unused by my 80-odd colleagues all still happily working from home in other parts of the city and country. At my lovely big desk, I find space I can’t find at home, either physically or in my head. And I feel ever grateful to have a job and enjoy my work.

We’ve been lucky to be within easy reach of 5 decent parks where our dog (our lockdown lurcher) gets a good stretch and we’ve gotten to know some other doggy people: if I’m honest, that’s been the height of our socialising and meeting new people in the last year. I can count on one hand the number of friends I’ve managed to meet face to face all year.

We did make it to 5 new Irish counties last summer, when the 5km thing wasn’t hovering over us. (To be precise, we holidayed in two counties – Antrim and Sligo – and stopped in about 3 others on the way there, for coffee and petrol). Wonderful stays they were, as we might never have visited these beautiful places – our summers are usually spent visiting family or close friends in the 5 other countries we have called home. We don’t know when we’ll get to see them all again, but sure they’re all in the same situation too (apart from my sister in New Zealand who’s gotten away scot-free).

Netflix and all that? I’ve watched perhaps 5 different shows in the last year. The Crown will be on to season 5 by the time I catch up with season 3. But we have still worn out the couch with about 50 “family films”, board games, charades, and Zoom calls with folks abroad: precious time together, when it comes down to it.

Sure look, at least 5km has been better than the 2km we started with last March, though that didn’t last too long. The next thing the government is giving us now is county travel and a 20km radius. And after that… the sky’s the limit. Well, yes, the sky would actually be our limit then. Sin scéal eile – that’s another story.

Filed Under: Family, Ireland Tagged With: 5km, Covid

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

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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 ...
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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

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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...
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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

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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...

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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

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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

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