Creative Accounting #663

Matthew and Son (Cat Stevens) - all but the start of the chorus = Mad World (Tears for Fears) - all but the start of the chorus

Feis 3 Van

(?)
(?)
?
Real real gone
I can't stop loving you
Moondance
Have I told you lately
(Never let me go)
?
In the garden? No methon no guru *
Girl from the Co Down
Step right up
Walk when I walk **
Gloria

Feis 2 Dylan

Gonna change my way of thinking
Its all over now baby blue
Things have changed
Tangled up in blue
Summer days (and summer nights are gone)
Simple twist of fate
?
Hard rain
Highway 61 **
Forgetful heart
?
Mr Jones *
Rolling Stone ***
Watchtower
Blowing in the Wind

Feis 1

The Undertones
(Get Over You)

The Waterboys
Glastonbury Song(?)
You're a big girl now
September 1913
Whole of the Moon
Fishermen's Blue
Don't you love me(?)

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Reading Jill Dawson's Lucky Bunny in the back garden in the late afternoon sun and earlier with singing wafting over from Martin School fields (punctuated with dozing in the shade and having a love-in with Tommy Boy)

Evening burst of Led Zep in the car on the way to Primrose Hill

Chats with a woman from Cushendun and a girl in Friern Barnet

A&M

I've been spending the weekend at the Krakow Film Festival in Poland. While I was in the hood I thought I'd have a go at finding my great-grandparents' house which is somewhere in a town about 50km East of Krakow. My grand-mother died a few years ago in London and with her went the address. So all I had to go on, beside the name of the town, was a description, based on memories of 75 years ago, of how my distant cousin (of my father's generation) used to get to the house from the train station with all the timings in horse and cart terms; a rough memory of a street name from the Communist era incorporating the glorious name of papa Stalin; and A&M - the letters of my great-grandparents' first names which (the one concrete fact) were on a shield or crest high on the house.
So I set off, with my older son, at 10 this morning in some wheels organised by Adam, one of the friendly admins of the Dragonforum documentary workshop. You're into rural Poland within minutes of leaving the city centre. I was nervous for some reason - I knew we had very little to go on and my phone research of the previous day had drawn blanks and stonewalling, I didn't want to disappoint or be disappointed or lose the link with the family home where eggs were kept in sinks in the basement and from which my grandmother struck out on rides on the first bicycle in the town. Scraps of stories, not quite accurate, Chinese whispered through the family filtered by old age and post-war reticence.
I started with my Hamburg cousin's three quarters of a century old description of the 15 minute cart ride from the nearest station (which bore another name than the town). We got out where my best guess was combining the description (sent via Facebook, fairplay to Anni for being so wired at her age) and Googlemap. I'd been told the crest was near a balcony and the building on a corner. The first corner looked promising but no initials. The diagonally opposite corner looked equally possible. More or less every balconied building felt warm - the right age of building, crying out for a crest. After 40 minutes of searching the confidence was ebbing. I rang my dad's cousin who had found and visited the house in the mid 80s but didn't know the address. Nor whether the house was in fact on a corner. And doubted there was a balcony as the owner had spotted him and called down from a window. So all I had left was the initialed crest. The owner in the 80s name - which was not in the phonebook. And the Stalin street scrap.
We trawled every main street (three) of the sleepy Sunday town whilst the inhabitants stood around the church listening to the amplified service playing I imagine to a packed house of God-fearing Catholics inside. I know my great-grandmother was killed in this town in the view of others and I pictured it in the under reconstruction main square with its piles of cobbles, mass drifting over and my strapping half Irish-Catholic son standing with unconscious strength on its new stones in his Leinster top, blue as the sky.
No joy. So we hit the back streets. No a crest, shield or initialled plaque in the place. It was getting hotter. 26 degrees the day we arrived, 12 the next day, back over 20 today, fluctuating like my confidence in finding this link. We passed a corner shop. Junior needed a Coke (why do they mainly sell Pepsi in this country being one of his preoccupations of the weekend). My other half had given one piece of advice at the outset of the day by text - talk to people. I talked to the middle-aged female shop keeper, she had a bit of English. Do you know where there used to be a video sklep? (I'd heard sometime in or after the 80s the ground floor had been turned into a video store). Or do you know where Stalinska was in the Commiedays? She asked a local fella hanging out by her doorway. A contrary barman from the opposite corner approached. The shopkeeper urged them to help. They went off into Andrej's bar to find an old map. We waited expectantly. A break? They failed to reappear, the shopkeeper chased, they reluctantly got their shit together, had a quick somewhat heated debate and eventually, again at the helpful shopkeeper's urging, the hanging-in-the-shop fella started to lead us off to where they'd concluded the Stalin street used to be. We followed in silence, he spoke little English, we spoke less Polish (like not a single word except Sklep, Alkohole and Computery - this last and first turned out to be on the money). Down one of the three bigger streets we'd already tried then off to the left, pulling up on a three way junction, indicating a not particularly old corner house. I asked him which of the three joining streets was the Stalin one, gave him a few zloty which he was reluctant to take, then walked the length of that street as well as exploring the junction. Nada. Back behind the now deserted church. Mission failed. I'd sent some vibes to my grandmother looking for help (I was favourite first-born after all) but to no avail. Cut along the side of the church back to the rendez-vous with Machek our taxiguy? Or one last look at that Stalin junction? Back to the junction, then retracing our steps earlier with the shop hanger guide... Then out the corner of my eye I spot the only crest in town. A. M. A swirly L for Laub conjoining them. What a moment of pure soaring joy. "That's the first time I've seen a prayer answered" says A and L's great-great-grandson.
We contemplate the letters. Look at the door (beside the Computery Sklep) but there's no bell and it looks pretty unihabited. I spot something in the red brick beside the door - some scratched graffti dated June 1922. My grandmother's childhood era. Any more? No, but high up not easily noticed a bell. I ring. Nothing. Then some movement. A boy the age of my son comes to the door. After a bit of explanation (and he had heard tell of strange Englishman Marcel's 1980s visit) he cautiously let us in, his parents weren't around, and allowed us to get a feel for the place with its high but shallow rooms. I didn't push to see the egg basement.
We headed back up the hill to the square. I now knew for sure Dora's feet had pounded this trail. And I felt she'd be pleased we'd made the effort to see the place she spoke of with affection til her last days despite what had happened there. I was glad to have brought their great-great-grandson to be seen by A & M and to have joined that link.

Carlingford -Yesterday's and Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Sat 30th

Reading the paper in the sunshine on the grass at the corner of the harbour (by James Murphy's childhood home)

Drawing Carlingford from the far pier, warmed by the sunshine in a gentle breeze

Watching Thor with a bunch of 11 year old boyz

Sun 1st

Breakfast reading the paper in Dan's Stonewall Caff

Chatting to Meabh about her art

Walk with Des, Orla, Meabh, D & N along the beach in Rush, lively sea over to Lambey Island

Thursday's Happiness Experiment entry

Shelagh Fogherty's last show with Nicky Campbell on Radio 5 Breakfast - end of the second golden era

Canoeing round Lusty Beg in an Irish-built North American wood and fibre-glass canoe

Drawing one of the eight stone figures on White Island

Royal Wedding Day - Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Watching Kate's wedding dress emerge (complete with Irish-style lace) with the staff of Lusty Beg

Drawing in the walled garden of Fountain Court near Enniskillen, lying on the well tended grass in the afternoon sun by a fountain

Jogging the length and breadth of Lusty Beg in the morning, no-one else to be seen

Lusty Beg - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

D lying on me on cairn by Drumskinny stone circle

Winning a round of drinks in the Lusty Beg pub quiz as The G-unit

The smell of cut grass wafting around the old gravestones in St Mary's churchyard, Ardess

Art Vandals

Music in the Tuileries Gardens - Manet
Man waved/hit with? walking stick
See Julian Barnes review of Manet retrospective in Paris - Guardian 16/4/11

Carlingford - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Sitting reading outside Dan's Stonewall Cafe (The Heather Blazing)

Walking along the harbour in the evening with U

Reading The Brigade to N

Rush / Ros Eo - Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Making the Creature of the Irish Lagoon with D on Rush beach at sundown (after a jog down together)

The sound of the low tide whilst in my headspace on my morning run

Walking the beach with U in the evening

Bob Geldof on Robert Elms (Radio London)

I get into this melancholic state, it's not a depression ... you can use it [depression] as an animus, I mean physical things can spark it like twilight - I get very edgy if I'm not doing stuff
...
If there's nothing going on I have to have a book that I just get lost in, somebody else's world
...
If you have an idea, this is the city to live in if you have ideas, I mean London is driven by the culture of ideas ... so this is the place to be if you want to be in music and the arts, that's my view, it's the most exciting city in the world, and I could choose to live elsewhere so I choose to be here

Thursday's Happiness Experiment entry

Following up GTD/PWD with Steve

First shadowing day with Noah C

Booking Olympics tickets

To Ireland - Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Reading The Heather Blazing (Colm Toibin) in the air above Ireland

Laying and playing on the beach at Rush in the evening

Watching Starsky and Hutch en famille

Torquay - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

The sound of the steam train chuffing away from the beach at Paignton

N's rugby runs

The sight of orange sheep on a hillside

Torquay - Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Finding out by chance that I'd met Pete H's mum unknowingly at Clive's QC do in the museum

Jogging down into the valley to the next village (Daccombe)

Walking along the beach-houses in Paignton beneath the gardens

From Derry to Torquay - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Randomly crossing paths with Alice Taylor and Cory Doctorow in some motorway service station near Taunton

Breakfast at the Beech Hill overlooking the pond and green bridge

Reunited with D after me being in Derry and him in Brixton

Yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry - Antibes

Walking to le vieil Antibes, the square between the Musee Picasso and the cathedral

Dinner with the Maverick folk en plein air after the Digital Emmys

The hip bones of the girl on the jetty at the far-point of my run