Sean's Space

This was a day that went well for me and in which I was feeling in good form physically and mentally.  In the morning – I was not up very early – I wrote up the minutes of yesterday’s meeting of Greenore Cooley Fisherman’s Association, printed them on two pages and stuck them into the old minute book.  Also sent the file to Dessie.  At some stage during the day I sent an e-mail to Joe Crudden.  Rosanna cooked the striploin steak I bought the other day in Tesco and I ate the bigger portion of it with fried onions and microwaved smallish potatoes with real butter and salt.  Checked the "HowDidIDo" website a few times – but there was no result from the weekend. ???  Rosanna drove me in to Harvey Norman’s in the afternoon in her Hyundai Accent.  I bought two 20 packs of Hewlett-Packard A4 photo paper (for the price of one ~ €19.99) as well as a "bale" of 500 sheets of ordinary printing paper (€4.99).  Also got 5 x 6" x 4" prints made of 080808 photos @ 19c each = 95c.  When we came home I made a further set of 12 x 080808 prints on two separate A4 sheets of photo paper – one sheet of the old paper I had left and one sheet of the "new" HP paper.  Streaks at the bottom of three of the prints on the "new" paper. ???  Put these two sheets into the grey journal display book and tucked the five 6×4 prints into the Pukka Pad project book which I have been putting my handwritten journal into this past few months and in which I filled the final page on Sunday.  Changed the background picture on my PC.  I used an 080808 picture of a boat and the sea viewed from Bellurgan Point.  Refreshing and spacious.  Rosanna went down to Greenore in the evening to meet Pat Closkey who had been playing golf in the ladies’ open.  It turned out – I learned tomorrow – that Mary McGoey won with 37 points.  Rosanna had a chance of going out in the morning – Pat Closkey rang – but she did not bite.  I think her shoulder is sore?  I used a big block and lit a little coal fire beside it in the WEL grate.  Around 9.30 p.m. I drove down to Bellurgan Service Station and bought milk.  2 litres = €2.50.  "I’m going home to get drunk!" I claimed to the girl serving at the counter in Bellurgan Service Station.  "On milk?" she exclaimed wondering.  Alan Ratcliffe rang in the afternoon and I arranged to play golf with him at 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday in Greenore.  Put my dentures in a mug of water before bed with a mouldy Steradent tablet.  The tablet did not fizz although the water from the tap was warm but, tomorrow morning, proved to have done its job!

Rosanna left before I got up to go to Dublin (Westmanstown?) to play golf (with Ann McParland?).  I slept late with the heat on and when I got up I washed thoroughly all the dirty delft.  Having washed the pan I fried two large eggs in olive oil and grilled three or four rashers.  Ate all.  Then had some brown soda bread and butter with marmalade and a mug of tea.  Martina McBennett and a student (John O’Reilly from Clones) at 2.00 p.m. interviewed me in Ladywell.  I told Martina I felt at risk and said the way Rosanna was treating me was outrageous.  Martina suggested a stay in The Moorings (or Solasan?) when I said I would like to identify a way to "retreat."  Anyway she said she would talk to the consultant and let me know and I said I would ring the Ladywell contact number if things get too difficult for me at home.  An injection of 25 mg of Risperdal Consta in the right side.  Bought 2 litres of milk and 2 apple Danish pastries in Aldi.  ~ €5.30.  Dr Peter Connolly expatiating in Aldi.  I saw him clearly and distinctly.  How is it that he apparently did not see me?  Ate the pastries with an interval in between and each with a glass of milk.  Drank a cup of coffee and ate four biscuits in Boardroom 2, Ardee Business Park, at about 6.50 p.m. before the meeting of Louth County Community and Voluntary Forum.  Maria Mullen absent.  She has been assigned to other duties.  "The forum has less of a friendly face!" I whispered to Dessie – who had picked me up in Jenkinstown at 6.00 p.m. and driven me to the meeting.  David Jones and Terese McArdle are baby-sitters to the forum now.  Larry McCarthy ("I told Jim about it") fulminating about the "gerrymander" in The Park Inn Hotel where Larry Magnier had been elected as North Louth rep onto the new LEADER/Partnership board.  What McCarthy failed to mention was that he had tried to gerrymander the election himself.  All that happened was that he was less successful at it than the Blackrock denizens.  Jim Cousins (chairperson) said that there had been "complaints" about the election from the candidates.  I hope he was not including me.  I thought the election was conducted meticulously according to the rules – but I kept my thoughts to myself.  Cousins a mixture of bumbling and officiosity.  Extremely irritating.  He tried to prevent the written reports of SPC meetings being circulated.  There were three of mine, one of Dessie’s and one other by Lucy Rafferty (who was absent).  I hardly said a word at the meeting and neither did Dessie.  Phil Conyngham defeated Eugene Matthews in an election to the board of LEADER/Partnership 7 – 6.  The forum had one place on the board in its gift. Cousins would not allow a discussion about the forum web-site when Dessie raised the issue.  My stomach gave me no problems at all today.  The bin out when I arrived home and total silence in the house.  I washed my teeth, did 125 revs of my upside-down bicycling exercise and went to bed before 11.00 o’clock.  I left the radio on to play for an hour as I prepared for bed.  (Wigan 1, Chelsea 1).  I never heard it switch off.  Had made in the afternoon arrangements by text with Kevin McGeough to play golf tomorrow at 10.00 a.m.

Pain and discomfort in my right thigh during the night which was cold.  Snow.  Dressed in my grey Magee tweed coat, grey pinstripe shirt and grey Manchester United tie with brown slacks, tan Chelsea boots and black barred socks.  Wore gold cufflinks and sported in my top pocket an IMPERO black pen with gold trimmings.  Arrived in Ladywell at 2.00 p.m. and got quickly an injection of 25 mg of Risperdal Consta in the left "side" off Emmet.  He told me that Dr. Lyster is still out "sick."  She may be thinking of retiring he intimated.  Met Dessie parked outside the building at the road where I was to meet Dr Callaghan, a young woman doctor.  Dessie was driving Bridget O’Connor who was in to see the "doctor."  Friendly young doctor, quick on the uptake, gave me a six-month appointment.  Called in to Meehan’s.  Gary Morgan the young service advisor told me that the Yaris needs service only after 15 000 km.  I bought a red apron in Atlantic Homecare for €10.  Doubled back to Hill Street and got the Yaris washed for €6.  Bought a display book – grey with 40 "pages" – price €2.95, in Boyd’s.  Had coffee, lemon meringue and cream in The Copper Kettle.  Cost ~ €6.00 total.  Had eaten two singed but undercooked pork loin chops and some fried potato before I left home for town.  Met Rosanna at the exit of the bus station as I walked back in my peak cap and Bugati overcoat to LWSC car-park.  Rosanna threw tea over my display book and good clothes in the evening and annoyed me.  "I’ll put you through that door and I won’t open the door!" I threatened with some force.  I could not stick her auld tongue and retired to the sittingroom and the computer.  "Send a few e-mails to your girl friends," she taunted as I retreated.  I resolved not to travel with her up to Dublin tomorrow to visit Og.  I am not really in form and anyway I don’t want annoyance.  Udaras na Gaeltachta refusing to pay Aisling’s fee for the course she took last week in Galway.  Their excuse – she did not apply in time.  Can Dr. Callaghan picture the indignity of dropping one’s trousers for an unwelcome prick in the bum?  How does any mental patient escape that horrid, stigmatizing and degrading indignity and all the others that flow from it like stiffness, awkwardness, slight double incontinence, dry mouth, feeling older than one’s years, poor vision, attention deficit and restlessness as well as poor morale.  I had a dream last night of being a patient dressed in rough women’s clothes in an English mental hospital and in a lorry or was it a bus with a needle and serum piped like a mini petrol pump into my arm.  Dr McGrath who used to treat me in John of God’s came into it too.  The question was, "Is he dead?"  Put 9 pages into the display book with a neat "fit."  My journal for February 2008.