Róisín Ingle: You have to be careful about optics these days. Well, some of us do

I was supposed to meet my friend for some exercise but instead she had to collect her cat from the vet. The cat had singed his delicate pink paws walking across a hot stove. Very Tennessee Williams, we agreed. So instead of meeting me for a spot of t’ai chi beside the sea, she told me tales live from the veterinarian’s surgery in a series of voice notes and text messages.

Voice notes have really taken off in this pandemic. I haven’t quite been converted yet. They make me feel self-conscious, like I am creating mini-podcasts for my friends – bland and rambling ones, it has to be said, as opposed to ones that are vibrant and award winning. By contrast, my friend’s veterinary missives were as gripping as any of those true crime podcasts.

A woman had brought her dog in to be put down. The sad deed had been done and now the woman was sobbing loudly in the reception area. My friend, as she waited for her cat, tried to commiserate with open arm gestures and meaningful eyes but their face masks got in the way.

“Cash or card?” the receptionist asked the woman as she stood weeping over her dead dog. “Card or cash?”

Even superstars like Madonna need Sudocrem wonder balm occasionally

---

Lives Lost to Covid 19: Trevor Shiels became a barrister after long career as a garda

---

Róisín Ingle: I decide to check flights arriving and departing on the Dublin Airport site

---

Rosita Boland: A tiny cardboard Galway is not the one I want

---

I was sorry my friend couldn’t meet me but I understood because of the injured cat. Full declaration: we hadn’t really planned to meet for a spot of exercise. I mean, t’ai chi – as if. I only said that in case the authorities are reading. You have to be careful about optics these days, don’t you? Well, some of us do anyway. The normals.

You are only technically supposed to meet people for exercise, a few downward dogs by the canal or a jog in the park. And even if you sit down on a bench or a low seaside wall, then technically you are breaking the Level 5 restrictions. Sitting outside, on your own, with a takeaway coffee is not, strictly speaking, allowed. Sitting with one of those bags of wine, the ones with the cute little tap at the bottom and sharing it with a friend in the sunshine, well it could see you ending up in the Joy. I mean, I exaggerate, but only a bit.

Obnoxious yellow

The outside life is actually the safest kind of life in a pandemic. You wouldn’t know it, though. There’s a cute coffee van in Clontarf and the benches beside it are covered with signs in that alarming, obnoxious shade of pandemic yellow: Sitting Is Forbidden. No Sitting Allowed. SIT DOWN HERE AND YOU WILL BE SHOT. (It doesn’t say that but it might as well.)

I sat down there with a coffee anyway, defying the signs. That’s just the stage I’m at. The sun was shining. I felt it warm up my face. Imagined the vitamin D seeping in. I took off my cardigan. I pretended I was on holidays. I forgot about everything for a few minutes.

My phone pinged. My friend was out of the vet and in the taxi with her cat, who now had a mini-cast on his foot. By way of solidarity the taxi driver showed her photos of his pets on his phone. Dozens and dozens of homing pigeons. He had just bought one more feathered friend for €500.

When I got home I heard that the huge ship in the Suez had been refloated and was off on its travels again. Lucky for some.

Then my friend texted to say they were home. The cat was sedated and staying away from hot surfaces while she recovered.

I got into bed, called one daughter up for a cuddle and rang my mother. She said she thought she might be developing agoraphobia. It’s been five days since she has been anywhere except for the lane behind her house.

We talked about this development where nobody wants to talk on the phone any more. It’s a generational thing, she said. She saw people talking about it on Twitter. There are younger people she would like to ring but she said she thinks they might not answer the phone so she doesn’t bother. She doesn’t take it personally. She thanks a god she doesn’t believe in that she doesn’t live alone.

Three generations

I’ve heard of older, newly vaccinated people who are busting to get out but my mother doesn’t want to. She won’t even walk down to see Brendan Behan at the Royal Canal. She’s afraid. Afraid because her eyes have got worse. And her bad knee is more painful than ever. She’s had the first dose of the vaccine but I can hear it in her voice that this bloody pandemic has stolen some of her sparkle. There is no joie in her vivre. I put her on speaker.

She described herself, walking up and down the lane, she made it funny, to make my daughter laugh. She painted a picture of this 81-year-old wearing a straw hat, with headphones on top of the hat, listening to her audio books, pacing, pacing, up the lane and back down again. “I’m like a mad woman,” she said.

Very Tennessee Williams:

“Why is Carrie pacing?”

“She’s waiting for the doctor to call with her test results, so she’s been like a cat on a hot tin roof all day.”

“You will be okay, Nanny. You are the most determined woman I know,” my daughter said, and tears leaked out of her eyes and then my mother was crying too.

“I’m so sick of it,” my daughter said.

“I know,” we told her.

“I know you know,” she said.

We sat in our different rooms, on different beds, three generations of knowing.

So sick of it.

roisin@irishtimes.com