Is there a place you know, where whenever you visit, you instantly relax, and feel the tension of the daily routine flow out of you, and where when you arrive, you feel that you want to open your mouth and take a huge gulp of air, because for the first time since you were last there, you actually feel as though you can just *breathe*?
Most of us have somewhere like that, and it needn’t be anywhere exotic. It could be the familiar childhood comfort of your parents or grandparents’ house, the local coffee shop where you meet old friends once a month for coffee and a catch-up session, or perhaps the local park, where you can take a stroll and feed the ducks, with nothing more than your own thoughts to worry you. Some people may be fortunate enough to have their own home feel like their sanctuary, though for most of us I suspect that our special place is somewhere further afield, where maybe we don’t get to visit as frequently as we would like.
Until 2003, the year she moved to live with my uncle and aunt in Kent, my breathing space was always my Nan’s bungalow, just two miles away, and where I would stay the night at least once or twice every single week. Nan came into Lewes three times a week as well, so even once I had left school and was working, there were only two or three days most weeks where I wouldn’t see her. I was always the closest of her eight grandchildren to her, partly through geography, since distance meant she only saw most of my cousins once or twice a year, and partly because she and Mum were always close, so that closeness continued down to me.
In November 2003, just before I turned 28, Nan moved to the far side of Kent, with my uncle and aunt. The plan had always been for her to live with Mum and me once she could no longer live alone, but for various reasons, that didn’t happen, and she moved with them when they sold their own house and moved closer to my aunt’s sister. To say I was devastated would be an understatement, and the fact that she would be spending two weeks with us at least four times a year was no consolation at all. I wouldn’t always be able to get holiday at the times she would be here, and the joys of retail shifts meant it would be highly likely that on most days she was with us, I would see her for only a couple of hours before or after my shift, thus spending minimal time with her during her visits.
On the day she moved, she had been staying with us for several weeks while my uncle and aunt cleared her house, and arranged their new house, setting up Nan’s bedroom so it would be decorated and ready for her. When the time came for her to leave, I was determined to be strong, and to not get upset, because I knew that would upset her as well, which was the last thing I wanted, but that all went to pieces when they all got up to leave, and take Nan’s bags to the car. I hugged Nan goodbye through my tears, and clung to her as if I’d never see her again, before managing to rein in the tears and let her go. I never did get used to not having her just a ten minute bus ride away, even by the time she died last June, nearly eight years after she moved.
A few months after Nan moved, in May 2004, my friend and colleague Daniel and I planned a trip to Dublin, where he wanted to see a wrestling show. I’d never wanted to go to Dublin, or even to Ireland, and I knew nothing about the city at all. We flew into Dublin from Gatwick, on a Tuesday morning, and left again on the Thursday evening, giving us two nights and three days there, and in that time I had fallen in love with the city. We didn’t have much time there, but we made the most of it, and fitted in so many things, even now I look back and wonder just how we managed it all!
In July 2005 Daniel and I returned to Dublin, with his sister Clare, and our friends Dom, Maryke, and Maryke’s eight month old daughter, Eszmey. All of us adults worked at Safeway, and had been friends for some years, but the trip, although enjoyable, wasn’t without its tensions. The journey home was stressful to say the least, and by the time we were all on the train home from Gatwick, some of us were barely speaking, simply because of how tired and fraught the last few hours had been. It didn’t diminish my love for Dublin, however, and I was still eager to return in the future.
March 2006 saw my first bonus from Waitrose, who had taken over our store a few months earlier, and it was enough for me to book myself a two night, three day trip to Dublin. I’d never really been away on my own before – only to Birmingham and Cornwall when I had been met by the friends I was staying with. I booked the trip, and then started panicking, with a “What have I done? I can’t go away on my own!” freak out, which continued until the taxi driver knocked on the door at 3:30am the morning I was leaving! It was only with the friendliness and chattiness of the driver that I stopped panicking, and started to enjoy the idea of three days alone!
When I was in Dublin, I took the opportunity afforded me by the very fact that I *was* alone, and did the things that I wanted to do, when I wanted to do them. I caught the DART out to Howth, a beautiful little village where modern life is still very much centred on the harbour and the fishing industry, and spent some time wandering there. We had visited the previous year, but spent most of our time around the harbour, and this time I wandered up to the ruined Howth Abbey, along to the Martello Tower (now Ye Olde Hurdy-Gurdy vintage radio museum) and then back down to the harbour, where I walked the length of both harbour walls, one of them leading to the old lighthouse, and one to the modern one which has replaces it I recent years. The sense of solitude and peacefulness I felt there was nothing short of amazing.
Other things I did on that first solo trip included Trinity College and the Book of Kells, the hop-on hop-off bus tour, Dublin Zoo, a half day tour to Powerscourt House and gardens, and of course, what had become the obligatory traditional cooked breakfast at a lovely little bakery-cum-café which Daniel and I had discovered on our first trip, two years earlier. I was back in my hotel by 7pm most evenings, which in the lighter summer months I would consider a waste of the evenings, but as a female travelling alone, I didn’t have much desire to do anything in the city after dark, and it was a treat to have to evenings completely to myself, to relax, read, watch TV, have a long bath, etc.
It was on that trip, six years ago, that I realised that I not only had the ability to handle travelling alone, but that I thoroughly enjoyed it. For the first time, I tasted complete freedom, and at age 30, it felt good. In hindsight, perhaps a large part of why I love Dublin so much is that it was the first place I ever travelled to completely alone, and where I enjoyed total freedom from the stresses and worries of work, daily life etc for the first time. That doesn’t negate the fact that I love almost everything about the city though, even if it is the cause of some of my adoration for Dublin.
I didn’t get to go back to Dublin in 2007, but I did go twice in 2008. In March I went alone, and found new places to enjoy, like the cliff top at Howth, where I spent a perfect hour or so one morning. I looked out over the Bailey lighthouse far below me, over the Irish Sea, shimmering silver in the cold morning light, and in that spot I was the only person in sight, surrounded by brilliant yellow gorse bushes, as far as the eye could see. I was far enough away from the road for the traffic sounds to be completely muted, and with the wind and the calls of the gulls and other seabirds, it felt as though I was the only person in the world. Bliss!
In June that year I returned to Dublin with my oldest friend Clare, having finally managed to coordinate our schedules enough to find a few days where we could both be available at the same time, for the short break we’d been promising ourselves for a few years. We didn’t do anything that I hadn’t already done, with the exception of the Kilmainham Jail tour, but it was fun to experience my favourite city with someone to whom it was al completely new. We got soaked on the first morning, after a sudden cloudburst in Howth, but that was more than made up for by the fact that for the first time we saw the group of seals who live in the harbour. We ate at the Hard Rock Café, and Eddie Rockets 50s style American Diner, went to the Guinness Brewery, the zoo, Powerscourt, Trinity College, the GPO, and walked back to our hotel on the first night along the Liffey as the sun set.
My most recent trip was my third solo one, which was also my sixth trip in total. It was April 2009, and I decided to go for slightly longer this time, for three nights and four days. I stayed at the same hotel I always do, and did most of the same things I had done in the past, though I added a full day coach tour, which took in the ruined 6th century monastic settlement at Glendalough, as well as the previously visited Powerscourt, and a scenic drive back to Dublin through the Wicklow Mountains. It was a damp and overcast day, but that couldn’t spoil the beauty of the scenery for me … I loved it, and felt that I was beginning to see parts of the ‘real’ Ireland.
Since that trip, I’ve not been able to afford to return. The Euro has been strong against the pound, and added to the fact that Dublin is one of the most expensive European cities anyway, it just hasn’t worked. When I say expensive, I *mean* expensive – these are the prices I paid on my last trip, and remember that was three years ago! I spent the equivalent of £8.60 on a ham sandwich and a can of Diet Coke at Powerscourt, £15 on a 9” pizza and garlic bread, from a takeaway near the hotel, and just over £12 on cod, chips and two sachets of ketchup, again from a takeaway. After that I stopped doing the conversions, but I had taken £300 with me, and apart from food, soft drinks, my 3 day bus ticket (€25), entrance to the zoo (€15) the coach tour (€28) and €20 on a pair of headphones, I came home with nothing left. I dread to think how much the prices will have increased by now, and though the Euro is slightly weaker, and I’ll get almost €1.20 to £1 instead of the €1.06 to £1 I got then, inflation will certainly more than make up for that, I’m sure! One thing is good though, and that is that now I’ve been several times, I no longer feel the need to buy countless souvenirs and postcards to add to my collections. These days I may buy one or two small gifts for people back home, but for myself I usually buy nothing, unless it really is something that I need. Otherwise I’m content with the memories and hopefully some good photos of each trip!
I’m finally going back to Dublin in two weeks time but not exactly going alone. Daniel is taking his dad Rob over, for Rob’s 60th birthday, and since I have time off at the same time, and it’s the cheapest time for me to go out of all the holiday I have booked this year, I’m flying out and back on the same flights as Daniel and Rob, and we’re all staying at the usual hotel. I’ll be doing my own thing while I’m there, but it’ll be nice to have a bit of company through the boring airport bits! For me it’s a very much needed break, but as well as a three day holiday, I shall be saying goodbye to Nan while I’m there.
Nan was 92 when she died in June last year, and although she hadn’t ever really wanted to travel far, and never left the UK, she had always wanted to go to Ireland, but she never made it. When we were in the car on the way back from the crematorium to the house, my uncle raised the subject of what everyone wanted to do with the ashes, and after a few seconds of silence, when nobody spoke up, I said that I’d like to take them to Dublin with me the next time I went, since Nan had always wanted to go to Ireland. To say there was a stunned silence and that everyone (uncle, aunt, great uncle, mum) spun round and stared at me, would be understating things.
When I asked why everyone looked so shocked, Mum said that she’d thought of asking me to do that, but thought I would say ‘no’ outright, and I could tell they were all surprised that I’d said I would do it, and was willing to do it alone. It was fairly obvious that most of them were expecting me to change my mind, and my uncle asked me about three times before we arrived back at the house if I was certain, which I absolutely was. It seemed obvious to me – Nan always wanted to go to Ireland, and I go there as often as I can, with my own favourite spot being on top of the cliffs at Howth. Nan couldn’t have her ashes interred with my grandad, as his ashes are with his second wife’s father and Nan’s second husband’s ashes are in his daughter’s possession, plus there’s the fact that Nan had no real connection to Kent, even though she’d lived there for the last years of her life. Since there was really nowhere that she would have wanted to have her ashes scattered, why would I *not* scatter her ashes in Ireland, and make her wish to visit come true?
It also means that I’ll have a special chance to say my own private goodbye to Nan, in a spot which I love, and which I think she would have done as well. One of the biggest regrets from the last time I saw her, which was in hospital on her 92nd birthday, and when I had a sense that it would be the last time I would see her, is that I didn’t ask for a few minutes alone with her. I would have told her I loved her, and that it was OK for her to go if she was ready, which I know she was.
I’ve rambled on for far longer than I intended, and probably lost all focus on the original topic of this post! Dublin isn’t a perfect city by any means. There are still gritty, run down and derelict areas, where I wouldn’t venture in the day time, much less under cover of darkness and there is an ever present drug problem within the city. On any given even especially in the Temple Bar area, groups of drunken tourists, stag and hen parties spill out of the hundreds of pubs and bars, which can be intimidating to walk through, especially alone. But no city is without its problems, and I’ve walked down O’Connell Street at midnight, and felt completely safe, which is more than I can say for walking down the High Street in my own small town at that time of night!
Ultimately, Dublin is my special place, the place where I can truly feel content and calm, and completely relax. It really is my breathing space.
