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TALES OF AN ORANGEPEELER

an archive of pleasures, wounds, sublimations
& other curiosities :: profile


11.12.22

Oof! I decided to dance during a quiet spell in the bar, to warm up as the mother-in-law has been leaving it a bit late to turn the heating on (cuz energy crisis) … and a punter caught me dancing! Absolutely mortified. The husband's verdict: "Big fucking deal!"

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My small town is not so small sometimes: in the space of two nights, I saw a lovely French film about grief, childhood, and time travel, a Serbian artist’s elegant sculptures inspired by the Irish elk, and a string quartet performing Mendelssohn.

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I returned from Venice on Monday. The legs were wobbly in Dublin: plagued by mosquitoes and the snoring of my companions, I hadn't slept for days. Nor was I used to solid ground, not after a weekend in a labyrinthine and changeable city sinking slowly into the swamp it had been built on, a city where churches grew like weeds and the boatmen are born with webbed feet, as claimed by a narrator in Jeanette Winterson's The Passion.

As soon as I got to the hotel, I took a bath. I wallowed in the slippery dark, half woman, half seal. Later I slept for longer than three hours at last, waking up only to ring the husband, who was having a late one in the residents’ bar, verbally tussling with Northern Unionists and a wealthy Masonist. The next morning I looked out at the street and noted a protest in front of the Dail. I liked the hotel: old hotels have bathtubs, no one stares into a screen, the breakfast is superb, the residents’ bar doesn’t close early, and you aren't charged extra if you sleep in past checkout time. Perfectly civilised.





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