All that Glitters is not Gold...
The Vienna Boy's Choir, Lederhosen and Fire Hazards...
My father married a German woman called Karin in 1956, and my sister Kristin came out of that. But Karin died of cancer in 1967, when my sister was eleven and my father rushed on to marry my mother in 1968, in a flurry of alcohol and grief. There was a portrait of Karin in the apartment he lived in Monkstown with my mother, a glamourus lady in pearls with blond, coiffed hair, slim, wearing a white evening gown that exposed her elegant collar bones. My mother asked for it, ‘Rebecca style’ to be put away. Which it was. But there were many things about her that stayed. My father had a thing about Germany. He’d been a spy for the East German government in the 1960s, maybe for the Stasi, a thing he laughed off as a sort of drunken adventure as agent Paddy O’Brien, his alias who crossed checkpoint Charlie on freezing cold nights in Berlin. Great interview here.
Apart from the espionage, what remained of German tradition in our house were things like having fish on Christmas Eve, opening presents that night and having the tree lit up with real, beeswax candles in silver holders with clips that he got in Germany. The sound of the Vienna Boy’s Choir singing stille nacht vinyl scratching on the ‘gramophone’ as my extremely technophobic mother called it. But my father did also, in a very old Irish tradition, light up a giant pillar candle in the window on Christmas eve, to welcome lost souls on that night.
My father put a red sticker on the ‘Play’ button on the music deck and would say to my mother, ‘Jenny, just press the red button!’, to help her navigate the challenge of ‘machines’.
My father also put lametta on the tree, thin srands of gold and silver, made from lead, as far as I know. I’m not sure where he got it from. He used to have these very long matches to reach up the tree and light the candles, and a silver candle snuff that looked like a nose to put them out just before the house was burned down.
Well they had all sorts of German friends, in fact there was an Austrian family who put not only candles on the tree but real gingerbread lebkuchen that hung on golden threads from the branches and were covered in icing which was insanely exciting to me. In fact, to me Germans were people who made very good cookies. I wasn’t allowed pull them off the tree but I was allowed to have some from a plate in the kitchen, which was fair enough. The father wore lederhosen and stockings and a waistcoat, smoked a pipe, and was said to not like Jews (by my father). It was strange, because both my childhood friends were somehow of Jewish extraction. One of them had a mother who was an Austrian Jewess. And no, I am not going to talk about the war, any war, on this blog. This is a blog about recollecting strange and peculiar things. I steer as far away from politics as I possibly can.
My parents had other odd friends like the likes of Fay Gilsof (?) a Russian woman who sold eggs on her farm. One warm summer’s day we went there to get eggs, and as I crossed through the cattle gate, her large hound bounded out of nowhere and clamped its jaws arond my left leg. So he had to be held back while Mister Gilsof prized his jaws open to release my leg from the death clamp. I was bundled into the car with a large hole in my leg, to Loughlinstown Hospital where a nurse sewed up my leg with a needle and thread, and no anaesthetic. I can remember it like it was yesterday. “Do you like your Mammy or your Daddy better? Choose one to get you a present.” said the nurse. Funny question to put to a war torn six year old getting her leg sewn up with a rusty needle…
There was another lady who was Norwegian, who’d been married to a nice Maltese man who died, and had been in the Order of Malta. She lived, in my memory, down the road from the Russian Egg Lady and her viscious dog.
Right so Christmas is coming and the geese are getting fat, but nobody eats geese. Those poor turkeys. It’s been a strange time coming to this point of the year, the stillest point. I’ve survived three festivals this year (I’m not great in crowds) a court case and the completion of a very long probate, the final stage in the loss of my sister Kristin. I have her mother’s wooden angel choir out on the shelf, and a few waxy pre-war red and gold waxen angels and santa clauses, and some old wooden pixies.
Well as i said before I have survived recent tribulations and trials by making soap and candles.
Winter alert ! Stay clean and have lots of light in your hovels … this winter season . Pure and natural ones like Cleopatras donkey milk soaps with natural oils and rose
petals … or May Chang goats milk soap bars … and the lights are on with soy and beeswax candles , with or without oils , your choice … very few to spare this year due to adverse weather conditions in our home . Happy season of endless rain and mud . Contact shisheb@gmail.com if you'd like to order. The closer you live to Delgany the better, as I can't face Post Office queues, I'm sorry but if you are desperate... I can endure.
Happy Christmas Winter Feast, Solstice, and may 2024 be at least marginally less stressful than this one. Sure yes upgrades, ascensions, new golden eras, all of it but oh, boy it was a stretch and it ain’t even over yet. Yes, there’s been a lot of war, but hasn’t there always been?
Thank you for reading my blogs and for coming to my workshops if you did, and for buying me a coffee if you did and if you feel like it…
Cheers! See you on the Other Side..
Post Christmas blues killer story. 💓
Lovely read. We come and go to everything, sometimes months pass. Tears even, all cyclic. Read David Whyte's Winter Solstice Poem on his Substack, calls a call for the season. Shine On, Siofra. The purpose of light is to shine, eventually to be viewed by all - as truly sane diamonds in a world of crazy stones. 2024 will be bunoscionn - luck, love and light to all diamonds.