Ireland and Testosterone
Without Prejudice
Ireland is beautiful, breathtaking and the people are funny, charming and fierce for everything, they love a political argument over a Guiness (women have it with blackcurrant) making it into an enormous alcoholic "spider".
Nifty was doing 12 months with his Ma as he had lost his licence for drink driving for 17 months and I persuaded him to go home for a while, just so that he would not end up in jail as he would have defintely been caught again in that time.
And his dad had died the year before and I though it was high time he went and saw his Mother and younger sisters.I cried the day he went not crying till I hit Port Melbourne and saw the very English houses there.
But he rang me soon and insisted I come over and he paid for me to go. I had met his Ma before in 1999 when I had flown to the UK, to catch up with my English Aunts in Yorkshire. I flew out on an Aer Lingus flight from Leeds and within an hour "The Emerald Isle" came into view. it is as green as they say it is.
It's like Scotland, shamelessly beautiful. Nev's mum's house was a three story house with an attic in Palmerstown which is about 20 minutes from the Liffey in central Dublin.
Enya's brother lived around the corner, we met him one night on our way to the local, he was slaughtered. Staggering home with a take away tucked under his arm., he said,
"How it's going?" to Nev
How's it going meaning everything that needed to be said, you weren't expected to reply but Nev stopped and chatted with him just talking irishness about bullshit, mostly.
He took me to Dublin so many times, we caught a bus as the public transport is really good, same as UK, pointing out all the sights. there the nightclub U2 owned, and Browns the USA store and Bewleys for tea and crumpets and the Stores in Grafton Street were amazing and I couldn't stop looking,
the shoes and clothes so different to what we had in Australia. He took me to Trinity University where they filmed "Educating Rita"( His favourite Movie of all time ) and it was so old and held the Book Of Kells, huge libraries with massive rolling ladders to the ceiling so high were the shelves. It was stunning and The Book of Kells was in a quiet dimly lamp lit room, under glass.
We went to irish Movies at Temple Bar and one was called "She went down" and there was another with Jack Nicholson and Sean Penn and UTURN with Sean Penn (and ever after, Nev would judge people on what their review of that Movie was, he loving it)
and we danced in a Pub to irish singers singing Garth Brooks, "The Last Dance" and it became "Our Song", we were engaged and he bought me a Saphire and diamong ring. I don't think I was going to marry him, I had decided marriage was not something I desired but he wanted it so we were engaged and he was happy to leave it at that, for then.
We literally went everywhere together, hand in hand and talking, always talking. He and I would know what the other was thinking all the time, making tiny mental leaps each time. We went to the main pier in Dublin and watched the huge ferry that had always carried Irish people out of Dublin to England.
The waves were huge and we ran back to the shelter covered in light mist and waited for it all to die down, huddling together for warmth. We went to Howth and Dun Lagherie Harry Ramsdens which wasn't as good as the one back home, opposite The Burvale In Springvale Road.
We went to cottages and lakes and old churches built in Norman times, most of them still standing. the weather tends to be mild, even in the winter,
Nev saying one winter toddling home from the Pub he saw a fox creeping its way silently through the snow, his street hushed and white. We went out with Chris,his Ma, and her new beau Noel. Nev wasn't too happy about his Ma seeing a new man so soon after his Da, Tony had died but he accepted it in the end with good grace, Noel being a lovely guy.
We went to a big Hotel on Thurday nights and had a proper dinner and many drinks. The Irish swear a lot, Nev had a soft Dublin accent, as did his very elegant Ma, but fook was every second word and I thought it was a new word at first. my accent stood out so nasally Australian.
And no matter what they all have "proper dinners" with napkins and the best cutlery and plates, I met his numerous Aunties at a Mass said for his Da in the high end of Dublin, the cathedral packed and all the catholics filling every seat, 400 or more, when the Pope visited dublin they had to open Phoenix park and there were a million people there.
we went to the smallest Pub in Ireland bordering on Phoenix Park.
He loved Frank Sinatra and we walked streets, him singing,
"I've got you under my skin", all the time and we laughed and kissed and lived in the attic with its own shower and loo in another room,
figuring we wouldn't be heard by Nev's Ma up there. We always stayed up late as the TV was excellent and better programming than here.
His mum and Noel never ever retiring to bed earlier than 2 am, and the next day as Nev went to work early, we crept down the 3 flights of stairs and kissed and hugged and he wheeled off on his pushbike for the day.
I was left to my own devices during the days Noel and Chris, convinced I would get a job,like that ! and i got one in a big firm in A near by suburb, the money was fantastic, European Company. the Celtic Tiger had arrived and business was booming,
although Nev called it a Paper Tiger and just before I was due to start we had a terrible row at The Oldest Pub in Ireland, Nev drinking so much and meeting up with friends he was thrown out with them and he disappeared with them.
So I had to find my way into Town on my own and the place is not a place you want to be on your own in, believe me, but I took off my heels and walked into the centre of town and there was a queue a mile long for a taxi, took me 3 hours to get home and Nev followed me in not long after.
Apologising and trying to get me to calm down but I had enough, I was homesick as hell, and demanded he take me into Dublin the next day and get me home! And we did, him stone cold sober and me coldly furious, and I flew home the next day after stopping off in Yorkshire for a few days.
I flew home via Singapore again, spent a few days there, shopping and then home, to my house and my things and didn't take his calls for a while. I rented out the house and went to Queensland, The Gold Coast at a great place, Pioneer Mortgages, and did arrears for a long time, just burying my self in work, getting in early and leaving late.
the social life was great as we worked on the 13th floor, in a building right next door to Melba's and went out just about every night for drinks and free finger food, talking shop and getting wasted and I would drive home drunk, every time, God knows how I wasn't caught.
And then September11th happened, stunning us all and Nev rang me up and asked me to come back to Ireland for a driving holiday this time and I asked my boss and he said, Go! So I did and this time everything was different.
We hired a car and drove all over Ireland for a month, taking our time and stopping at bed and breakfasts and hotels and enormous Country Estates, he wanted to show me the Ireland he loved and I grew to love it. And we were us again, his Ma had staged an intervention on him with the beloved Aunts and his Uncle and he had stopped drinking.
So we were fine and he planned his return with care as I was returning to Melbourne to buy another house and we bought one together in Noble Park, 99 Buckley Street, which now has two brand new units on it.
We bought it from a greek lady who was a young woman, who's parents had died and she was a little schizophrenic, she didn't want to sell unless she liked the persom. She liked Nev and followed him around the whole time we were inspecting the place and she let us buy it.
I loved it and wanted to restore it, nev said it neede a bomb or a match, everything was either dirty or broken. but the place was huge and had 3 bedrooms, two lounges, one an enormous Family room with a Coonara heater and two bedrooms off it and a loo.
Then a great big kitchen, main bedroom near the front with its own tiny ensuite. The front hall large enough to become an office for my new computer and a bathroom that was large and bright and airy.
We stayed there for two years but nev never saw the potentail, it puzzled him badly, Houses to him came fully formed like his Ma's house in Dublin, and I would strip paper and sand walls and paint and I bought blind paint and restored the old 70's blinds, learning how to cover some with fabric.
I painted myself into a trance, standing on ladders and boards to reach the 12' ceilings, the radio on with Richard Mercer taking calls from the lovelorn. I had to have a hysterectomy and I was out within two days and still painting working and working and working and I realised a very big part of me had disappeared, my sex drive.
I didn't think about it till a friend came down from Qld and told me she masturbated every day whether she had sex or not with her boyfriend and I thought oh, yeah, I used to have a sex drive a few months ago. So I went to the very patient Roger Johnston and he gave me injections of Testosterone for 3 months.
One a month and the first one HURT, as he had to drive it deep into muscle in my hip and it was a fairly thick viscous fluid. And by the next month I was knocking at his door for another one as it worked so well I was like a man, chasing Nev down every minute.
He would never turn the heater on and we froze the first winter until we decided to fire up the Coonara and we bought tons of firewood and Nev stacked it in the car port, feeling like Lumberjack, he even put a cap on. He was "cack" handed, a leftie and to see him, poor thing, trying to put anything up was always so funny.
We put up a new paling fence and Ivan Muncin made me some Colourbond gates and Kerrie Hancock came down from Korumburra one weekend and she polished the timber floor back to bare boards and I glossed them.
We had to punch in about four hundred nails before we could polish but it was all worth it in the end, the floor looked exactly as I wanted it to in the end and we emptied the dust out of our hair and our noses for hours after,
To be continued.......
Ireland is beautiful, breathtaking and the people are funny, charming and fierce for everything, they love a political argument over a Guiness (women have it with blackcurrant) making it into an enormous alcoholic "spider".
Nifty was doing 12 months with his Ma as he had lost his licence for drink driving for 17 months and I persuaded him to go home for a while, just so that he would not end up in jail as he would have defintely been caught again in that time.
And his dad had died the year before and I though it was high time he went and saw his Mother and younger sisters.I cried the day he went not crying till I hit Port Melbourne and saw the very English houses there.
But he rang me soon and insisted I come over and he paid for me to go. I had met his Ma before in 1999 when I had flown to the UK, to catch up with my English Aunts in Yorkshire. I flew out on an Aer Lingus flight from Leeds and within an hour "The Emerald Isle" came into view. it is as green as they say it is.
It's like Scotland, shamelessly beautiful. Nev's mum's house was a three story house with an attic in Palmerstown which is about 20 minutes from the Liffey in central Dublin.
Enya's brother lived around the corner, we met him one night on our way to the local, he was slaughtered. Staggering home with a take away tucked under his arm., he said,
"How it's going?" to Nev
How's it going meaning everything that needed to be said, you weren't expected to reply but Nev stopped and chatted with him just talking irishness about bullshit, mostly.
He took me to Dublin so many times, we caught a bus as the public transport is really good, same as UK, pointing out all the sights. there the nightclub U2 owned, and Browns the USA store and Bewleys for tea and crumpets and the Stores in Grafton Street were amazing and I couldn't stop looking,
the shoes and clothes so different to what we had in Australia. He took me to Trinity University where they filmed "Educating Rita"( His favourite Movie of all time ) and it was so old and held the Book Of Kells, huge libraries with massive rolling ladders to the ceiling so high were the shelves. It was stunning and The Book of Kells was in a quiet dimly lamp lit room, under glass.
We went to irish Movies at Temple Bar and one was called "She went down" and there was another with Jack Nicholson and Sean Penn and UTURN with Sean Penn (and ever after, Nev would judge people on what their review of that Movie was, he loving it)
and we danced in a Pub to irish singers singing Garth Brooks, "The Last Dance" and it became "Our Song", we were engaged and he bought me a Saphire and diamong ring. I don't think I was going to marry him, I had decided marriage was not something I desired but he wanted it so we were engaged and he was happy to leave it at that, for then.
We literally went everywhere together, hand in hand and talking, always talking. He and I would know what the other was thinking all the time, making tiny mental leaps each time. We went to the main pier in Dublin and watched the huge ferry that had always carried Irish people out of Dublin to England.
The waves were huge and we ran back to the shelter covered in light mist and waited for it all to die down, huddling together for warmth. We went to Howth and Dun Lagherie Harry Ramsdens which wasn't as good as the one back home, opposite The Burvale In Springvale Road.
We went to cottages and lakes and old churches built in Norman times, most of them still standing. the weather tends to be mild, even in the winter,
Nev saying one winter toddling home from the Pub he saw a fox creeping its way silently through the snow, his street hushed and white. We went out with Chris,his Ma, and her new beau Noel. Nev wasn't too happy about his Ma seeing a new man so soon after his Da, Tony had died but he accepted it in the end with good grace, Noel being a lovely guy.
We went to a big Hotel on Thurday nights and had a proper dinner and many drinks. The Irish swear a lot, Nev had a soft Dublin accent, as did his very elegant Ma, but fook was every second word and I thought it was a new word at first. my accent stood out so nasally Australian.
And no matter what they all have "proper dinners" with napkins and the best cutlery and plates, I met his numerous Aunties at a Mass said for his Da in the high end of Dublin, the cathedral packed and all the catholics filling every seat, 400 or more, when the Pope visited dublin they had to open Phoenix park and there were a million people there.
we went to the smallest Pub in Ireland bordering on Phoenix Park.
He loved Frank Sinatra and we walked streets, him singing,
"I've got you under my skin", all the time and we laughed and kissed and lived in the attic with its own shower and loo in another room,
figuring we wouldn't be heard by Nev's Ma up there. We always stayed up late as the TV was excellent and better programming than here.
His mum and Noel never ever retiring to bed earlier than 2 am, and the next day as Nev went to work early, we crept down the 3 flights of stairs and kissed and hugged and he wheeled off on his pushbike for the day.
I was left to my own devices during the days Noel and Chris, convinced I would get a job,like that ! and i got one in a big firm in A near by suburb, the money was fantastic, European Company. the Celtic Tiger had arrived and business was booming,
although Nev called it a Paper Tiger and just before I was due to start we had a terrible row at The Oldest Pub in Ireland, Nev drinking so much and meeting up with friends he was thrown out with them and he disappeared with them.
So I had to find my way into Town on my own and the place is not a place you want to be on your own in, believe me, but I took off my heels and walked into the centre of town and there was a queue a mile long for a taxi, took me 3 hours to get home and Nev followed me in not long after.
Apologising and trying to get me to calm down but I had enough, I was homesick as hell, and demanded he take me into Dublin the next day and get me home! And we did, him stone cold sober and me coldly furious, and I flew home the next day after stopping off in Yorkshire for a few days.
I flew home via Singapore again, spent a few days there, shopping and then home, to my house and my things and didn't take his calls for a while. I rented out the house and went to Queensland, The Gold Coast at a great place, Pioneer Mortgages, and did arrears for a long time, just burying my self in work, getting in early and leaving late.
the social life was great as we worked on the 13th floor, in a building right next door to Melba's and went out just about every night for drinks and free finger food, talking shop and getting wasted and I would drive home drunk, every time, God knows how I wasn't caught.
And then September11th happened, stunning us all and Nev rang me up and asked me to come back to Ireland for a driving holiday this time and I asked my boss and he said, Go! So I did and this time everything was different.
We hired a car and drove all over Ireland for a month, taking our time and stopping at bed and breakfasts and hotels and enormous Country Estates, he wanted to show me the Ireland he loved and I grew to love it. And we were us again, his Ma had staged an intervention on him with the beloved Aunts and his Uncle and he had stopped drinking.
So we were fine and he planned his return with care as I was returning to Melbourne to buy another house and we bought one together in Noble Park, 99 Buckley Street, which now has two brand new units on it.
We bought it from a greek lady who was a young woman, who's parents had died and she was a little schizophrenic, she didn't want to sell unless she liked the persom. She liked Nev and followed him around the whole time we were inspecting the place and she let us buy it.
I loved it and wanted to restore it, nev said it neede a bomb or a match, everything was either dirty or broken. but the place was huge and had 3 bedrooms, two lounges, one an enormous Family room with a Coonara heater and two bedrooms off it and a loo.
Then a great big kitchen, main bedroom near the front with its own tiny ensuite. The front hall large enough to become an office for my new computer and a bathroom that was large and bright and airy.
We stayed there for two years but nev never saw the potentail, it puzzled him badly, Houses to him came fully formed like his Ma's house in Dublin, and I would strip paper and sand walls and paint and I bought blind paint and restored the old 70's blinds, learning how to cover some with fabric.
I painted myself into a trance, standing on ladders and boards to reach the 12' ceilings, the radio on with Richard Mercer taking calls from the lovelorn. I had to have a hysterectomy and I was out within two days and still painting working and working and working and I realised a very big part of me had disappeared, my sex drive.
I didn't think about it till a friend came down from Qld and told me she masturbated every day whether she had sex or not with her boyfriend and I thought oh, yeah, I used to have a sex drive a few months ago. So I went to the very patient Roger Johnston and he gave me injections of Testosterone for 3 months.
One a month and the first one HURT, as he had to drive it deep into muscle in my hip and it was a fairly thick viscous fluid. And by the next month I was knocking at his door for another one as it worked so well I was like a man, chasing Nev down every minute.
He would never turn the heater on and we froze the first winter until we decided to fire up the Coonara and we bought tons of firewood and Nev stacked it in the car port, feeling like Lumberjack, he even put a cap on. He was "cack" handed, a leftie and to see him, poor thing, trying to put anything up was always so funny.
We put up a new paling fence and Ivan Muncin made me some Colourbond gates and Kerrie Hancock came down from Korumburra one weekend and she polished the timber floor back to bare boards and I glossed them.
We had to punch in about four hundred nails before we could polish but it was all worth it in the end, the floor looked exactly as I wanted it to in the end and we emptied the dust out of our hair and our noses for hours after,
To be continued.......
