I had tried ‘re-branding’ twice: both different forms of Carrie O’Hara and one merged into the other…so I had created more of a doppleganger than an alter ego.

It was only when I had dinner recently with the by far most loyal member of my reading audience that I realised I was languishing in blogland obscurity. She encouraged self promotion. I could reach for the moral high ground and suggest that I write only for myself and never glance towards those ’stats’ but that is a summit I would never reach. Writing for me is a communication- every writer wants an audience, words are meaningless if no one is there to hear them and then duly respond. I love an argument, there is nothing I delight in more than meeting someone who disagrees with m.

So I have come back to my blogging routes, back to Carrie O in her unadorned, no longer being saved for a Shakespearean day self…for those of you who did discover me in my less than deliberate hiding place, I apologise that you are trawling through my nonsense once more…for those I haven’t ’spoken’ to in a while, how’s things? I’ve missed ya.

This and these have been the ‘verses’ I’ve brought to the world of late…

Here’s hoping I hear from you soon x

 I have had a stressful work week; there are some days when vocationally believing teaching is where you should be is simply not enough. As Queen of Disorganisation I am coping badly with my ‘teacher on the move situation’; the A2 devised pieces reached tears and tantrums stage yesterday and the ‘London 2010′ trip is going to have to be soul-altering to make up for the hours I have lost in mindless administration. I miss teaching A-level poetry (I miss the English that has ‘disappeared’ from my timetable, despite the opportunities Drama teaching has afforded me) and the GCSE poetry is months away on my scheme of work…although during an msn conversation tonight a ‘friend’ told me that you could be a teacher without being ‘Dead Poets’ Society’ Robin Williams. I was reminded of his inspirational and aspirational monologue about ‘Why we read poetry? We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business these are all noble pursuits necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, and love; these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman “Oh me, Oh life of the question of these recurring. of the endless trains of the faithless of cities filled with the foolish. What good amid these? Oh me, Oh life.” “Answer…that you are here and life exists….You are here. Life exists, and identity. The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.” The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be? It used to be pride of place on my English classroom wall and the first handout I handed to my A level English students…. Tomorrow I vow to be closer to the inspirational teacher I so long to be. The words of my verse are not those that I expected but then again I’m not finished with the ‘writing’….

(First published on Carpe Diem Carrie O’Hara)

I think my apartment is cursed or the gateway to some sort of broken appliance hell… my washing machine and gas boiler seem to be as temperamental as I am. Yesterday I had to replace my microwave (and bought a bargain slow cooker at the same time); and my bathroom extractor fan has given up the ghost entirely. And the hours I have spent at the bedside of my terminally ill iPod have been in vain.

Tonight I spilled a new jar of coffee across my kitchen floor and in an attempt to clear up said mess I kicked a bucket of dirty water across the floor. I then knocked all of the books of my shelf- smashing into sad little smithereens a favourite lamp in the process.

It may be karma for the day I spent hung over last week while my Mum painted my living room; or it may be the return of a borrowed curse from a long ago boyfriend who had weird and downright scary associations with the number 7: what demon possessed me to buy an apartment bearing that number?

I hate being a ’stupid handless woman’ when I first moved in I had a vision of myself, work boots, denium shorts, lumberjack shirt and an American smile: armed only with my trusty pink toolbox and my wits: I would be able to take on the world and at the very least my little apartment…

My Mum is one of those women: she is very ‘handy’: as well as painting my living room  re-attached my ‘fallen curtain’ rail from the wall and is currently searching Ards for some sort of light fitting thingmebob for my hall light to allow it to work again.

But no, once again I sell out the sisterhood- I now have to call an electrician, a gas boiler service person, perhaps the washing machine guy, the scary Apple service people; and I have to somehow circumnavigate that devil that is the MOT service and the Mechanic’s Garage: that’s a lot of testosterone and being called ‘dear’ for one week.

I’m not quite sure how all this (or any of my recent entries) embrace the spirit of carpe diem… unless the ability to call a man, or rather a list of men, to fix this seemingly endless list of things to  right  and take control of my little world once more can be somehow seizing the day!

(First published on Carpe Diem Carrie O’Hara)

I’d forgotten that so much of the glory of blogging lay not only in the writing of my own drivel but reading the wisdom of others (and adding too much drivel in response…)

I’d forgotten that blogging was such a time-consuming hobby ( I came home from rehearsal at ten and have only managed to write blogs/ read blogs/ flood my kitchen floor with my washing machine and hoping against hope that dropping my iPod again on the tile floor will prompt it to work again)…

I feel like deleting  both blogs I posted tonight: I fear that each of them exude a melancholy I don’t actually feel. Today wasn’t just about washing machines and iPods breaking, and rain and three self-indulgent hours spent in front of a computer. It was about chosing a bridesmaid dress (both a pleasure and a pain: pleasurable because it was retail therapy of the highest order and such a privilege to be ‘on’ my sister’s wedding, and painful because the measuring tape don’t lie), and spending time with T and my fellow bridesmaids hopefully absorbing the life wisdom these great women exude.

It was about ‘bumping into’ my very talented cousin as I dashed through the rain to rehearsal and his delight at my feeble screaming when we saw a frog (that is how wet it is!) in a puddle in the car park. It was about finally getting hold of an entire Guys n Dolls script; reading it in its entirety and finally understanding what makes it such a good performance choice.

It was about realising that only I can make my apartment/ job/ relationships/ finances/ body image: in short my life work for me… A rather important realisation in the midst of a half term week.

(First published on Carpe Diem Carrie O’Hara)

I am a girl both blessed and cursed with a vivid imagination. I can hear the strains of Schubert’s Ave Maria and despite my well-established and long lamented single status: have in my mind’s eye a vision of myself in white, making my happy and blessed way along the aisle of some religious establishment. I can look at my rather shabby and untidy apartment and imagine a home of stately splendor; a Nigella like me and the smell of mulled-wine and cinnamon  welcoming guests at Christmas through a be-wreathed front door. I can catch a TV image of one of the world’s major cities and imagine the Carrie Bradshaw/ Sex and the City lifestyle that awaits me there.

I love London. I love New York. I love Paris. I even have a rather special place in my heart for Dublin. Once upon a student years I Northern Ireland’s own metropolis of Belfast was ‘home’(admittedly only five out of every seven days and probably only eight out of every twelve months of the three years I studied there). And yet when I got a job and bought my first home (as an independent 21st century woman); the key components of ‘making your way in this world’ I ended up in pretty but rather rural North Down. The seaside town of Donaghadee has much, well the Lighthouse, Pier 36 and Grace Neills to reccomend it but city life it ain’t…

I found myself on a very short solo trip to London for a ‘course’ recently: as close as this lowly Drama (/English) teacher will ever get to a ‘business trip’. As my much braver sister had lived in London for five years and I was a frequent and delighted visitor; as a veteran of perhaps ten visits to the city I was determined to be ‘girl about town’. I wasn’t. I wasn’t even close.

I managed to navigate Heathrow and the tube but when I climbed out of the underground at Charing Cross: faced with real life pulsating London I panicked. Lost my bearings completely and began an unecessary trek around a frightening and on at that time on a Sunday night rather foreboding Trafalgar Square rather than simply walking down the Strand to the pre-booked hotel. I was suddenly fearful, lonely and horribly rural.

Once ensconced quite safely (with the door double locked) in my room I perused the room service menu; tempted to turn on ‘Good Will Hunting’ order a sandwich and put the kettle on. Where was the brave, stylish, designer shoe wearing pavement pounding woman of my imaginings? She would have fixed her face, and walked to a stylish restaurant ordered a cocktail and whatever she fancied on the menu while chatting up the gorgeous waiter…

The real me: fixed my face and headed down to the hotel restaurant (I feel you should applaud my courage: this is a step ahead of the room service sandwich). I asked if they were still open and the admittedly gorgeous waiter grabbed a menu and said ‘Only for you.’ as he led me to a table. I ordered champagne and two courses: I sat and read the ‘Style’ section of the The Sunday Times and I was secretly rather pleased that I wasn’t in the room drinking tea and chatting to my Mummy on the phone.

I have aspirations beyond my capabilities. When I couldn’t sleep (as London was clearly still wide-awake beyond my street facing window) I started to analyse the differences between the life the imagined I would live at 30 and the one I am actually experiencing. Whatever happened to the idea of the American teaching exchange: the year I would by some miracle of chance find myself doing a much better job in a progressive NYC high school than I ever did in Bangor (meeting of course a Samantha Jones smorgasbord of delightful male dinner dates along the way)? Where were the ‘that was the summer I inter-railed around Europe’ souvenir photographs? Where was the momento from the school I loved but left to pursue academic glory in a city of choice?

My sister moved to London and had a blast for five years, came home met her dream guy and we are planning her wedding.

My little brother having moved from Dublin to Melbourne via a ‘travel the world’ ticket is now deciding what the next part of his adventure may be.

What the hell happened me?In a hotel bedroom, a city I loved I worried that I had fallen into a professional and personal rut. But the reality is that I have a mortgage and too many financial obligations, a job I love and have further obligations too, a family and friend network so buoyant in their support that I know, KNOW that without it I crumble. In my more lucid, less deprived moment I realise that these are huge things to walk away from just to ‘feel like I can make it alone in the big city’.

I have given up on the idea of the husband and babies: they may still come a calling and I will of course fall at their feet and worship at the altar of motherhood but in their absence I need to ‘do something more’ with my life: I have to offer some sort of compensation for not fitting into the cookie-cutter eventualities I thought (and hoped) my life would follow.

…and yet I somehow feel I still have to somehow compensate for the fact that I life has dealt me a less than typical hand; but the problem is I don’t really know where to begin.

Yet again, I am a 21st century woman and to that end I am going to start small (a big dream needs a big wallet and that I do not have) faced with a month of the summer to fill (post my sister’s wedding in July) I am going to take a week: I am going to go to London all my own some, drink champagne in a new restaurant each night, go to West End shows, enjoy museums and art galleries, take that city on.

If I hate it (and I do fear that I subscribe to ‘I’m nobody till somebody loves me’/ ‘What use is the world if you’ve no-one to share it with?’ school of thought) then I will strike city living of my ‘Things to do with your life’ possibility and reach for the next idea. If I love it then….who wants to move to London with me??

(First published on Carpe Diem Carrie O’Hara)

The untimely death of Stephen Gately prompted me to start writing a blog again…I was shocked and saddened by the news when I got an early morning text from a friend’s husband. I cursed the seedy suggestions and homophobia created in the media void that followed (and was grateful yet again that I don’t ever even glance at the scandal soaked propaganda that is the Daily Mail) but I was truly overwhelmed with grief when I stumbled across the footage of Stephen’s funeral on Sky News.

The sheer force of the emotion shocked me. I had had a similar experience when I suffered through George Best’s funeral; as Northern Ireland mourned a much-loved though admittedly flawed favourite son. I had never met George Best, never even been in the same room as the man; am a generation too young to have experienced ‘El Beatle’ first hand: and yet I watched the footage of his funeral and felt my heart break.

I sat in my late father’s chair in my pyjamas wailing in grief. Daddy had been a huge Georgie fan and somehow, knowing how devastated he would have been at Best’s death made the loss of this one time amazing footballer somehow all too personal.

Stephen Gately I ‘knew’ better: or rather his fame had been part of my boy-band  past. Boyzone too, climbed aboard the Take That train of ‘lets get the band back together success’. I dragged a long-suffering friend to Dublin for the weekend, who in turn bribed her sister to keep me company when I went to hear the ‘Boyz’ at the RDS at the beginning of last summer. It was a fun concert; I spent much of it in absolute fits of laughter: their music (the biggest selling band of the 90s) evoking a trip down an exploit filled memory lane.

As I sat once again in my pyjamas; hearing Stephen’s funeral ‘alongside’ the people he had grown up with in Sheriff Street, Dublin I was devastated once more. I listened as each of the band members spoke so eloquently and simply of the ’brother’ they had lost. When Ronan Keating sang ‘In This Life’ I had to try hard to remember how to breathe. I was reminded that behind this trail blazing, closet shattering, very sweet, beautifully talented pop star was a son, a brother, a best friend and a husband.

When I met my Mum the next day for lunch she asked in that quietly all- knowing way of her’s why my eyes were so puffy; why I was so subdued. When I answered her she asked why I had tortured myself? Why not get up of the sofa and out of the pjs and find something to do with my Saturday? I struggled to give her a coherent answer…

I worry that I glory in my melancholy. That I allow every grief-stricken occurence in life to act as a self-indulgent gateway to the personal grief I do a reasonable job of keeping under control in better circumstances…

But a quieter part of my psychosis suggests that maybe the crying for a pop star who I had felt some sort of connection with (no matter how distant),  or even the tears at good movies, great novels act as some kind of release valve. Their catharsis a means of preserving a sanity more delicate than anyone wants to admit….

Why do only the good die young? Is a question without an acceptable answer and I will leave my pondering on the nature of human suffering for a different time and blog space…however there are moments in life that give us perspective. Kick us on the metaphorical ass and whisper with some urgency in the ear we hear best with that,’This is it. This is your chance. This is life. Go…Do!’

I’m not sure that spending time writing about life is truly embracing the spirit of carpe diem (or making the most of the time afforded to me that wasn’t afforded to Stephen Gately) but maybe, just maybe, I am more likely to see the opportunities life presents me with if I can find the discipline to write about their merits…or maybe I will be less likely to have regrets if I am faced with their stark reality in the words that flow from my own fingertips.

(First published on Carpe Diem Carrie O’Hara)

 I’m not sure what happened…one day we all seemed to spend way too much of our time amazed at each other’s ability to write and share their view of the world…leading to the forging of new friendships and the reviving of ones not quite forgotten. Blogging became our individual yet collective way of both embracing and making sense of our world…I miss it. And regret the moments manic and magic that I haven’t captured on paper and are gone forever.

So where to begin….

I last blogged in April when my world was in that state of torture that was looming coursework and exam deadlines and the shadow of the then approaching ‘milestone’ birthday was looming so large upon my horizon that reaching towards light on the other side seemed impossible. 

But as time and tide wait for no woman 30 did arrive… these were the highlights

• Getting a Tiffany’s bracelet from my sister and bro-in-law bought in NYC on the same day they got engaged. Having lost my ‘first’ one during a drunken escapade this was much more than I deserved… N came the whole way from Belfast to D’dee in rush hour for a flying 20 minute visit to be here when I opened that duck-egg blue box. T is a lucky girl to be marrying him; and I’m so blessed by them both.
• Dinner in Grace Neils with T and many great old friends in attendance and seeing one of them blissfully tipsy for the first time since the birth of her beautiful daughter (also coming home with bags full of goregeous presents)
• The much talked about and taunted ‘English department’ day out: an Ards peninsula pub crawl that included great friends, lovely wine, good food and cheerleading on the Portaferry ferry in a pink wig with pompoms! I was humbled by the money, time and preparation the ‘girls’ had gone too.  A day out turned into an overnight stay and my lazy Sunday was capped of with yet another dinner out to relive the glory of the previous day…
• My birthday weekend itself was spent in London with more good friends and those I feel most guilty about; I never see these one time housemates and soulmates from studentville. We were greeted with champagne, spent time in Covent Garden, got to finally discover the glory that is Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. I made the bold choice of spending the afternoon alone watching Les Miserables. Words fail me…. I was worried that the performance would fail to live up to the huge expectations I had of it. By the interval I no longer had make-up on my face and was literally shaking as I drank my red wine at the bar. The theatrical spectacular was all I needed it to be and more. Our London adventure continued with a rickshaw ride to see a very hilarious Chicago and then drinks and dancing in a very trashy nightclub. All I wanted and more…
• Take That at Croke Park had long been pencilled in, highlighted in pink, underlined and asterixed in red in my diary. One of my fellow Take That obsessives had (what turned out to be a great if at the minute very little excuse) not to come; but undaunted Mel and I got the all-singing, all drinking train to Dublin and fell back in love with the boys from Manchester. Circus really was the greatest show on earth: they never, never disappoint and yet raise the bar for entertainment with each new tour. A rather long and misdirected walk back to the hotel was brightened by an encounter with a very comical encounter with a Garda officer who knew we were both so enchanted by his sexy accent, the uniform and high on emotion that the complicated directions he gave us would never be followed.

And despite the long list this doesn’t begin to cover what my dreaded 30th birthday became. I had dreaded it because I’d looked only for the things my life was missing: the truly successful career(as opposed to the one I feel I do badly), the husband, the house (rather than the apartment increasingly in need of work), the baby, the completed world trip and had instead missed the blessings of the life I have at the minute: the overwhelming generosity of family and friends, the social opportunites and fun that lies in favourite cities and here on my doorstep…

One of my many birthday cards quoted Brigit Bardot as saying, ‘ When you’re thirty your’e old enough to know better, but still young enough to go ahead and do it.’  She’s right.

 may have made an important realisation: I may have had an existential epiphany.

As a reluctantly single girl, with a stressful job, feeling the credit crunch biting and  approaching a milestone birthday it is all too easy to see the challenges my life presents me with. However numerous and wondrous recent events have provided me with the opportunities to experience life’s blessings: the birth of a friend baby, a truly blossoming God-daughter, a friend’s second and much happier marriage; and most significant an engagement of actual epic proportions: Central Park, NYC; St. Patrick’s Day sunshine and a Tiffany’s solitaire for the sister I love.

My realisation? That when the people you love experience something wonderful and life changing, if you open yourself to it you can radiate in the warmth, love and happiness this ’something’ creates (and still, somewhere get to feel the hope that one day you will be able to return the favour).

To All that this concerns:

Yet again, this small country we live in, finds itself at a significant and desperate crossroads….

 We turned to our varying media sources this weekend to once again be horrified and outraged by the news of the murder of two British soldiers in Antrim. 

I was horrified that the threat of the  ulitmate sacrifice these boys faced in Afghanistan (where they were due to be deployed this morning) was not enough for the ‘dissidents’ who wanted them dead.

I was outraged and truly sickened that delivering a pizza is considered grounds for being a ‘collaborator’.

The deployment of Special Forces had grabbed the headlines earlier in the week; a cause for further fury. To those politicians who stood on their Republican soapbox to bemoan the presence of an ‘occupying force’ : I ask how they want the government to protect their obviously endangered citizens?The loud and powerful voices of Republicanism need to condemn this atrocity; and call for justice for the dead; they need to rid their society of this murderous threat; for the preservation of all their peoples.

That Unionists politicians used the news of Special Forces as a taunt against their political enemies; the men and women they entrust much of the running of their country to; is too insulting to draw any further attention to.

Despite my paid up membership of Amnesty International: I believe that the Special Forces should have been deployed in silence; their job is one we can’t begin to understand the complexities of. I don’t at any juncture believe that to face the terrorist threat we need to erode the civil liberties so central to our democracy.  But I think that the greater threat to our society lies in the hands of wannabe terrorists; and we need the men and women who infiltrate these groups and stand between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and bullets they fire.

We are once again living in a powder keg; afraid of the next spark. We have to, at all costs, avoid the inclination to retreat to entrenched, polarised positions of the past. We have to instead remember that there has already been too many casualties as we all crawled with trepidation and fear across No Man’s Land. Remember that we reached a place of democratic agreement. We were the architects of a fragile peace and we cannot let a cowardly act destroy what those two soldiers were willing to die to protect.

Yours in hope

It had been a manic day: busy and flustered in school: having to work through break and rehearse through; I was the last teacher to leave this afternoon’s parent teacher meeting. I had to dash to tutoring and then had a coffee/ cinema date with my sister T….

As EXTREME DIE HARD, SATC fans we’d decided to go see the almost spin-off film ‘He’s just not that into you…’ . It was a true ensemble piece; unpredicatable enough to keep me entertained and amused (despite the slow pace) and predictable enough that I didn’t feel cheated out of my ‘went to see a chick flick and therefore I need it to be happy’ ending!

T complained that it was too depressing; I disagreed; enjoying its almost (well within the cinematic construct) realistic view of contemporary relationships…and the pitfalls attached no matter what state of relationship you find yourself in.

I saw myself, and lots of the great women I know in quite a few of the women on screen; and will no doubt spend too much time this week, deciding which of the ‘endings’ I want to be mine…I forgotten the simple joy of sitting in the dark, switching your intellect off and your emotions on: pure escapism and the perfect antidote to my crazy day.