A family member was clearing out the attic in their house when they came across these little beauties
Exhibit A
These family heirlooms are bridesmaid's dresses.
No, not from Miss Haversham's ghostly bridal party but rather
A. My sister Geraldine's bridesmaids
B. My sister Jacqueline's bridesmaids
As proof, here is me, looking very fetching in the latter, circa 1980
Sorry Geraldine, I can't find a photo of your wedding!
I was in the changing room after my swim. There was an older lady beside me and we exchanged the usual pleasantries. I went up to the mirror to dry my hair and she went off to the loo.
When she came back, she switched on the full Karen mode.
"Where are my flip flops! I left them here," pointing to the floor in front of where we had been sitting.
I looked around helpfully and replied "Sorry I didn't see them."
"Well they were here when I left and now they're gone. Has anyone come in or out of the dressing room in the past two minutes?!
I responded no, and then realised that meant I was the only other person in the dressing room.
She looked at me and said
"They were special orthopedic flip flops that my son in America sent me. I am going to bring in the manager to search the area" while looking accusingly at my locker.
I took a closer look at her and said
"What are those things on your feet?"
She glanced down and let an embarrassed chuckle.
"Oh silly me, I was wearing them the whole time".
I let it go and said no more. I mean, I hope that when I'm old(er) and doddery, people will give me some leeway :)
Is it just me, or does anyone else love Lent?
For those not in the know, Lent is the 40 days before Easter when Catholics are meant to prepare by prayer, fasting and alms giving.
It begins on Ash Wednesday when we get the sign of the cross marked on our foreheads with ashes. I remember as a young child, the priest would come into each class to "distribute" the ashes. I also remember the complete relief when I learned that the ashes came from the Palm leaves that had been burned the previous Easter and were not from dead bodies of people who has died in the parish during the year!
Which I had originally thought.
Now I could be forgiven for believing this grisly thought, seeing as we had been instructed for our Fist Holy Communion that the bread would be changed into the body of Jesus and we would be eating His flesh!!!
Thankfully that has been changed and we now talk about The Bread of Life with the children and not The Body of Christ.
Those were also the days when we as children gave up sweets for the duration of the seven weeks. We just got sweets from Dad after mass every Sunday. He continued to buy them for us but we would place them in our biscuit tin and store them away squirrel-like, under the bed. We would open the tin occasionally just to have a look and a smell of the "forbidden fruit" but there was no way we would ever "break Lent" by eating even a square of chocolate.
One exception to this was the year I opened my tin to discover my brother had eaten all mine.
Yes, John Lynam I'm looking at you!!!
But that was over fifty years ago and of course I've gotten over it by now.
Still slightly fuming!
Anyway, back to the present. I love the whole idea of taking a long hard look at how I'm living my life and seeing where I can make improvements. The idea is not as archaic and out of touch with modern living as some people say.
Firstly it has been proven by social studies that it takes 42 days for a behaviour to become an automatic response. And guess how many days are in Lent!!!
Back to early childhood in Ireland, toddlers were given tea with two teaspoons of sugar, in their bottles. Talk about rotting our teeth before they even sprouted. Anyway I was about eight years old when I gave up sugar in my tea for Lent. The first few days, it tasted vile, but I slowly got used to it. To this day,, fifty years late, I have never taken sugar in my tea. So I suppose that proves that point.
There is also the tradition of not eating meat on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday, or the even older tradition of not eating meat on any Friday. Unfortunately fish got a bad press among Irish people and the tradition stopped. But now dietitians and environmentalists are telling us that we should have at least one meat-free day a week for our good and the good of the planet.
Yep, we were ahead of the curve there.
So yes, I love the whole idea of taking a cold, hard look at how I'm living my life and seeing what I can give up or start doing, in order to make it better. This year I'm cutting out the pointless scrolling on social media. I figure I can regain the 3 to 4 hours I spend on it daily and use that time more productively.
So if you see that I am online on any social media platform, feel free to tell me to get off it NOW!
After my only meltdown of the entire holiday, I finally arrived home. Every night during my trip, tucked up in bed, I checked the stat...
