It feels so good to be back home, despite the Salthill Warshow!

Gee it's good to be back home! Traumatic times are hard enough to deal with at home, but trying to operate during them whilst being away for weeks on end really takes its toll.
Anyway, now I am home, and it's time to run around like a mad thing and try to catch up with the life I have been missing.
Time is of the essence when I return from England, because for a few days I'm so knackered, on so many different levels, that there are only a couple of hours in which I can function.
In my absence, the Snapper has done a splendid job of keeping our seedlings alive, and my first job is to get out the back, to tend and tie and water and feed our plantlets.
I'm not blind to the significance of this: thrust my fingers into the soil; get mud under my fingernails; splash water around and generally interact with the earth and the Earth, the real nature of what is home to me.
Next up is a long self-indulgent soak in a lovely hot bath. Personally I find other people's bathrooms - and their loos, for that matter - are never quite as good as your own. Last week I wrote about the luxurious life I lived in my sister's house, but even her huge bath and monochrome minimalist hoo-haa bathroom cannot compare to the feel of my average Salthill space.
Ahhh... now a flick of the radio, catch up with what's going on in Ireland...
'... claimed that he had been falsely accused of being molested by priests when he was a boy...'
Ahh, yes, back in Ireland. Nothing has changed, but just what exactly did the newsreader mean by '...being accused of being abused'?
Maybe I just heard it wrong, and maybe I didn't. Don't care, 'cos I am home, and long may I stay.
England has its plus-points, but I am happy to be back in a country where strangers smile at each other, and even chuck in the odd 'howya' when they pass walking.
Despite being a native-born Londoner, I now have to de-Irish-ise myself over there, because if you happen to cast a smiling eye towards anyone at all, you will be greeted with a verbal or physical reaction that translates as
'Wot va fuck do you fink you're lookin' at?',
which it is vital to completely ignore. The required and often desired response would be along the lines of 'Don't know, it ain't got a bloody label on it!' or 'You tell me mate, my dog died years ago, so I didn't expect to see its arsehole again.'
Any and all of the above will precipitate a fight, whilst the gentle Wesht of Ireland 'Howya!' threatens only to be followed by 'Moity morning!' or somesuch harmless nonsense.
Just as Americans are infinitely more likeable on their home soil, so too the Irish are certainly at their best when their feet are firmly planted on Irish ground.
Put it another way; for some reason, the Irish are a pain in the arse to fly with.
To be fair, I'm not talking about all the Irish here, just my 'Anns'.
For those new colyoomistas among you, my 'Anns' represent certain members of the female population aged 45 and up, who, I presume, have never enjoyed an orgasm.
Such sexual deprivation is the only reason I can come up with for them being so permanently pent-up and furious. With deep inhalations of breath snorted through flared furious nostrils, they chorus as one
'And another thing... and another thing... and another thing!', all 'things' being reasons to be verra verra angry.
I have learned to deal with them simply by dehumanising them all into a single prototype, called 'Ann D'Another-Thing'.
Anyway, put an 'Ann' from the Wesht into any airport in the world, and she becomes agitated beyond all reason.
At this juncture I have to confess that I am not allergic to a queue, and when boarding a plane with open seating, I prefer to avoid the scrummage endured by the last few on board.
Hence I will try to be as near as I can to where the queue for boarding might start. What I absolutely will not do is join my 'Anns' and their red-faced white-shirted tired-eyed hubbies in a queue for a plane that has not even arrived yet.
What in god's name is the point of queuing for something that is still 33,000 feet up and quite possibly flying over Norway?
Why do these Irish women get so worked up about flying? I accept that for some of them it might be a new and exciting experience, but the majority, I am sure, have flown many times before, yet they squabble and push and give out and snort and flare their nostrils as if there were only one seat on the plane, and imminent death awaited those who did not make it.
These women have lived their lives in an Ireland that barely exists any more. I should be more patient and appreciative of the fine people they are.
Right, sure, yeh, but I'm not. They drive me crazy with their yabbering impatience and pumped-up sense of self-importance.
Hang on a mo. If you put it like that, don't they sound just a tad like me?

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Talking of the Irish and their relationship with planes, this Sunday sees the return of my own personal bête noir, the Salthill Airshow.
Every year at this time my home town becomes packed to the gills. The local shops and restaurants make a fortune. Families have a great day out. The Airshow is really good for business.
But so is war.
War is great for business. In fact, since the end of the Cold War, the military-industrial complex has had to work overtime to keep alive the need for the planet's most expensive, effective and profitable product ranges.
By Oooh-ing and Aaah-ing at the flying death machines, you will be doing nothing more than giving your approval to the waging of war; saying that you don't object to limbless children dying of radiation poisoning on distant desert floors; admitting that global famine and illiteracy are fine as long as the powers-that-be can waste trillions upon trillions of the world's major currencies on the pretty flying machines, and their beautiful payload of cluster bombs and depleted uranium.
cadley1@eircom.net