Rocky Roads are two euro and fifty cent. Mikey is well used to comparing prices when it comes to cakes. This is the only way he can fully understand the value of money. He is getting awfully excited; I tell him to calm down as we are not about to get into a price war in a bakery. He finds fifty cent on the floor and I swear he is delirious. A Christmas decoration is still in the window and this provides me with a sense of sorrow. It reminds me of my vile neighbour and how he likes to leave his artificial Christmas tree up until March most years. I know that this in itself is insufficient reason to dislike somebody with something akin to intensity that I do, but I admit that I cannot help it. Keogh’s crisps are arranged in old-lady wicker baskets. I think that I may be somehow related to this family of crisp manufacturers and if my mother was correct it may be a loose connection at best that might go back more than one generation, and with this information in mind, it seems on the face of it rather a pointless exercise to trace because deep down I wonder how this information may change my life.

23. Daffodils

July 2017

I haven’t bought Jenny flowers in almost two years and then it was daffodils.

It is not as though you reach a point where you want to cup your hands over your ears and shut everyone out. There are many different ways to listen to children. I give what I can. More and more Jenny retreats into her work. Sometimes I think her confidence issues are fabricated. Sometimes I wonder if it’s all a façade, that really she thinks she’s brilliant. I have read somewhere that confidence comes from love. I love Jenny. Self-love is another kind of love. People with self-love have hobbies and Jenny has a hobby so it makes perfect sense to me that she in fact loves herself. This hobby is occupying her tremendously. I try not to appear worried that it is taking over her life, that she doesn’t have enough time for us. I try not to worry about Jerome.

I find love in places where you wouldn’t expect to find love. In the boys’ sweaty football socks and their football training tops. The pleasure I take in placing them in the washing machine is testimony to that love, but before I do, I bring them close to my face and I drink in their smell, the specific aroma that can only come from young boys. Young boys who attempt things like bicycle kicks on the pitch and skidding on their knees in victory charges and doing the worm. I can hear their laughter and their joy.