My two travellers arrived back from America and we went off to get cat food with two of the stay at homes. I know, our lives are so exciting. So five of us at the supermarket, varying ages and i.q.'s Flo hasn't been well but I thought she was well enough to go out. I was wrong. It took ten minutes to persuade her out of the car. Once she got into Lidl Greystones, that was it. Primal scream. Security was worried. We assured them there was nothing acute to worry about, this was a chronic primal scream. Eventually I delegated shopping to the kids. We have bought a load of crap, so. An interesting postscript was what happened at the checkout. My lovely boy had balanced a bottle of olive oil on the belt, at the edge... Gravity took it's course. There was a pool of oil and glass about the size of a laptop. The nice security man, definitely thinking we were customers with a capital T was picking the glass out and all ground to a halt while we waited for the wonderful clean up machine. Which turned the small pool into a large slick. The queues were helpful, there were suggestions worth trying. Fairy Liquid, salt, very hot water, lots of paper towels. We managed to lubricate Lidl to a halt. Slippery customers us. I probably shouldn't go back for at least a fortnight, maybe a month.

Tags: shopping public embarassment

I don't really know why but I was immediately attracted to the idea of being a model in the Spencer Tunick installation in Dublin on 21st June. The date was good, I like Midsummer's day. I am feeling very celebratory at the moment, I'm passing anniversaries of last year and the recuperation from my accident all the time, and I'm so happy with my recovery so far. I was able to walk to the installation, I was able to hold the pose, even the one on my right side though it hurt a bit and I'm sure I'll feel it later. It was so worth it. The weather was simply awful. As we waited for sunup it was cold, but not too bad, nobody was all that worried about stripping off, but it clouded over and got colder. A bit of a wind got up and it started to rain. During the fetal pose I was looking at the spotty back of a young man half my age, and watching his arms go blue. I don't remember actually seeing people go blue with cold before, but it happens. Billy Connolly is right, the default colour of the Scots and Irish is a sort of light blue. The rain intensified and the second set up was abandoned, they went straight to the third. We were to go down on the beach and walk out to the water and wade in up to our ankles. I wavered between in for a penny thoughts and feeling that I was really wet and cold enough at this stage. Two things changed that. Firstly they found a suitable pool for us to wade into quite near the edge, and secondly three people appeared on the beach, already nude, laughing and dancing and beckoning. We were like merry lemmings. The security were trying to stop people clattering down over the rocks, they managed to persuade most to a grassy ingress. People were leaping up on 140cm high walls and flinging their clothing off. There was a charge for the beach and such hilarity. Of course we were singing, and what else but the national anthem of Irish people in high good humour, Ole Ole Ole Ole, Ole O-h-Le. Boobs and willies, bellies and bums bouncing, hair flying. Kids on the strand.
And then the pose. Heads down. Heads down! Not the mood at all but people were good humoured and cooperative. Heads down! The instructions were flying up the assembled masses. It was bloody cold then once we stopped dancing. There was some encouragement from the models "Take the fucking picture Spencer or I'll burst yeh" "Me balls are freezing off Spencer, take the fucking picture man"
And then it was done. More dancing, running through the water, which was much warmer than the air, splashing. I'm singing in the rain. Where are me clothes?
Luckily R's sense of direction was better than mine. How I appreciated my wet trackkie bottoms and fleece. Oh lovely crocs. Walking back to the bus stop splashing through every puddle to get the sand from the shoes. And so back to the Custom House on the bus. My last bus trip was to bring a school tour to the aquarium. A watery connection. 
It's up there with the best fun I've had with my clothes off.

Tags: spencer tunick dublin midsummer
Current Location: Dublin
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: It's raining men