DIARY: Ruminations, Occasional thoughts & happenings - as they arise
The Big Word - 8 December 2006: Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady
I am absolutely astounded!
At age 74 I am engaged to be married!
Who would believe it? Certainly not me!
Let me tell you the story.
Just over two years ago I left my fine young son Conor over to
Dundee - to take up studies at Dundee University (Pharmacology - fascinating
study of the human body and how we react to drugs, legal and illegal).
While Conor went off to inhabit a tomb-like room in Peterson Hall of residence I
took a room in a local B+B.
Good place:
The Bruce Hotel - once part of a larger hotel complex.
This is it, from the outside.
Grand location, right in the heart of the university quarter.
At breakfast next morning - surrounded by jungle foliage - I remarked to the proprietor, Alexa Olliffe, "You don't know how to fry an egg, do you!"
She was most polite as I went on to explain that my mother and aunts had always
tipped the pan and splashed the yolk of the egg with hot fat, to cook the top
- so that it looked like this
-
not like this!
Cheeky pup, you may say! Correct! I wish I was a proper, polite
kind of person.
Ah me! Where did my Mammy go wrong? Where did I go wrong?
Well - anyway - this polite young lady did not hold it against me, and over
the next two years I would call in to say hello, and sometimes she would come
round to Conor's apartment - just round the corner - to have glass of wine and
more chat.
(That's Conor and Alexa, in the kitchen of his flat.)
I would occasionally say to her, "Sometime you must come over to my little
village in County Down."
"Yes," she would say, non-commitally, and we would hear no more
about it - until in one email I mentioned that a little fire had entered my
heart.
It was the truth - and the truth is important.
There was silence for quite a few weeks.
"Ach well," I said to myself. "That's that! I've put
the young woman off, and who would be interested in a toothless old git like
me?"
I did not use the big word, you understand, the word with
four letters that begins with L and ends with E. - the most important word in
the universe, not be used lightly.
- and then, when I least expected, I opened an email that said, "I'm thinking of coming over for a weekend!"
In like Flynn, come on, come on - house cleaned, flowers
in. I even searched for my dentures!
I've learned, you see. In times past I used to present young women with
tin openers, corkscrews and egg whisks - really useful things. No doubt I was a
poor student of female psychology. Those were the days when dentures and
teeth were not a problem and I was completely uninterested in my increasing
baldness. Who the devil cares about such things?
Anyway, Alexa arrived in Ardglass - looking like this (sitting next to me in my unkempt workshop den):
-
and the spark in my heart became a furnace -
bloody sore; and I
had to use the big word.
I simply had to.
It was even more real than a tin opener.
Painful. Incapacitating.
It's a risk, y'know. But I could do no other.
And it seemed that the feelings were mutual! Astounding! Unbelievable!
Magic!
And
so it came to pass that in the cathedral of a Tayside pine forest, last
week, without any sense of fuss or bother, Alexa struggled with
gift packaging and opened a jeweller's box, so that I could slip a little
diamond ring on this lovely lady's finger.
It would dazzle the daylights out of you if you could see the ring full
size.
(Well, perhaps that's an exaggeration - it's tiny but it was as big as
a Visa Card would stand.)
And the young lady looked reasonable happy, despite my reservations about the age gap.
"I prefer," she said, "To have a few years of something,
rather than many years of nothing."
Who am I to argue with this?
A lovely lady and an elderly gentleman - in this case lunching in the
Portaferry Hotel during Alexa's first visit.
I wish I were ten years younger, but perhaps when I insert new dentures - ordered today (8th December
2006).- I will look more presentable, dapper even, fit consort for a lady twenty
years younger than me.
Till now I haven't bothered about my
appearance. I never had the motive, the interest. Now I have to care how
another person sees me - not inflict unnecessary horror upon her.
I have to tell you - in all honesty - I think the woman is daft to have
me. This love business must be real.
I have never been happier in my life. Jesus - my Lord - is that a tear I have in my eye? Was it You who put
that spark in my heart?
Well, yes. I think it was - or at least an angel.
No, No, It was the Holy Spirit, Who is love. I don't deal with intermediaries.
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Oh, By the way! I forgot to add that, as my immediate family and
friends know, I have a couple of lads from a previous marriage (so-called) since
dissolved, nullified and all that jazz, sixteen years ago Most
regrettable, but it happens. Alexa too has a family - wait for it! - a
glorious seven children! Marvellous!
I've worked it out.. Our children, most of them adult, will suddenly
acquire step-sisters and brothers. No doubt some will look upon such
relationships as a quaint throwback - the prefix "step" originating
from the Old English word "steop", which means
"bereave."
Whatever their view my own is that it will be great gas! Each one of our
progeny is deeply loved, and the love that grows daily between Alexa and myself -
their new 'stepparents' - ha-ha-ha! what a hoot! - will generate an
increase in that precious commodity. It will be fun getting to know each
other. Let's have a party! Whoopee!
I should add that Alexa and I intend to live in Ardglass, my present home, with whoever, whatever children will be with her. I do not know exactly how we will all fit in, and the mind boggles as to how we will accommodate Alexa's three dogs, two cats, a rabbit, a guinea pig, five budgerigars, three cockatiels, assorted tropical and goldfish and six laying hens. (... and a partridge in a pear tree?) The mind really boggles! All in an old end-of-terrace three bedroom house with 2-foot thick walls that have just about bedded down from having a thatched roof replaced by heavy tiles ...... Ye Gods! .........
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