Sean's Space

Thursday 30 May 2013.

Up c 05.30. Performed my usual routine making my bed, breakfast. Showered but did no exercises. I have been dilatory about my morning stretches now for over a week? Unusual breakfast of a sandwich made of 2 sliced tomatoes and the ends of some mature cheddar blocks + tea. Eamonn delayed his departure from Jenkinstown so as to reach Park Street around 09.00 so that he could shop for paint, tape; for the exhibition he is creating in DkIT. The exhibition opens on Wednesday and later on tonight when I met him in McGeough’s pub he invited me to attend the opening. “If you like?” Bought a pack of 4 butter croissants in Tesco this morning, milk, a sliced pan. Ate 3 generous croissants with coffee for lunch. Rang Óg at 10.30. He goes into the Bon Secours again this evening. “A few days,” he said. “A week,” Lisa mentioned later on in the day when she replied to my text of the other day suggesting a visit here from Gavin. She wants Óg to come down here with Gavin later on because she thinks Gavin would not come on his own. Anyway Óg sounded in good form on the phone. Played 6 with Alan Ratcliff starting at 11.00 in a strong N breeze beneath blue skies. Alan; 7, 8, 9, 10, 8, 7: 49. Me; 5, 5, 4, 8, 9, 4: 35. I left my Nike white golf cap draped over the umbrella in my golf bag so as to let the sun play on the skin of my bald head. “You could get sun-stroke that day?” I remarked to Alan as we walked through the hedge departing to the car park from the 18^th green. “The medication I am on leaves me prone to that,” I informed him. That led to a discussion over coffee of drug treatment, the medicalisation of mental illness, cancer, old age. “You are ill; take a pill and you will be healed.” I conveyed as eloquently as I could to Alan my paranoid outlook that that paradigm which underlies all of modern medicine owes more to superstition than science. I was riding my favourite hobby horse. Somehow I think Alan shares my point of view. “I must be made of steel to have lasted so long!” I asserted paradoxically about my medication. Alan has his own problems with steroid medication for rheumatism which he has been taking for years. Alan travels to Gatwick on Monday for a scan on Wednesday in connection with his aneurism. Alan paid for coffee. It was my turn but I was tardy over changing my shoes in the locker room. Took a siesta 14.30 à 18.30. Chicken, gravy, roasted vegetables, 2 smallish boiled potatoes; cold. Lit the fire in the living room. Took a call from Dorie about the old snooker table and about Seán Óg. I took a call on my mobile from Dessie when I was having coffee in the club today in the early afternoon. Reply to my text re IMPERO meeting on 15 June. I paid €2.60 for a small bottle of coke in McGeough’s tonight when I went in to collect Eamonn. He refused my offer of a pint. “I would not be ready for work in the morning if I drank another,” he lamented. We did not reach Jenkinstown until a little after 23.00. “I am tired and I do not want to talk or anything,” Eamonn said addressing his mother when he carried his dinner in to The White Elephant Lounge. I kept my distance sitting in the corner by the fire in the living room. I wrote longhand my notes for today’s journal and yesterday’s before I retired to bed around mid-night, after the others.