A Moment Trapped In Aspic (In Sketchbook Form)
My husband Marcel is British (he won’t say English). Having come to live here from the foreign land of Great Britain, we have never seen his family as much as we would have liked. Every year, the week after Christmas since 1997 – the year Marcel and I met – we troubled his adorable mother Erika for food and board and stayed at her place for anything up to a week. First it was me and my beloved. Then it was me and my betrothed, then me and my husband and a big bump, then one by one we added grandchildren looking for food and lodging too. By the time we lost our beloved Erika in 2020, the youngest of her three Irish grandchildren was too tall to sleep under the coffee table (she had the option of a bed but liked the rug in the living room, with the intricately carved Chinese coffee table as a ceiling).
During these visits we spent lots of evenings with my sister-in-law and her boyfriend Mark, then with the two of them and their beautiful baby girl Sophia with enormous long-lashed, green-hazel eyes. Then it was with the three of them and their enormous long-furred, golden-eyed dog, then Mark became my brother-in-law. Then along came the pandemic and threw a spanner in the works.
We visited Great Britain in November 2020, (nearly) everyone in masks, to say goodbye to Erika. And then we didn’t arrange more visits, and suddenly it was three years later.
Marcel’s sister Monique celebrated a significant birthday last week, and the Irish wing of the family was invited to the celebrations in Kent. Not only would we see Monique, Mark and Sophia, but Marcel and I would spend precious time with our darling children, now grown; all three have recently flown the coop. Paddy is in France. Honor and Liv are in Dublin. We travelled by plane, train, automobile and bus to be together.
We collected Paddy from Ashford International train station on Friday, late because we mis-read the GPS, and spent the first evening in a traditional Kentish pub, eating traditional Kentish food and drinking Kentish cider and wine.
This sketch is brother-in-law Mark preparing food for sixty in the kitchen of the beautiful converted barn that Monique booked for the occasion: my family and I stayed there, and everyone else had breakfast there on Sunday morning. But this sketch was made on Saturday morning while Marcel and two of our kids were off exploring Kent: Paddy didn’t feel his French was up to telling his local barber exactly what he wanted so went to a Turkish fellow in Tenterden instead, and Liv wasn’t going to be separated from her big brother for a minute of the weekend, so she went too.
Mark has a gift for cooking, but more than that – in my view – he is a superb raconteur. He entertained me while I earned my ringside seat by helping to chop vegetables. In this sketch we have already chopped parsnip, carrots and swede (we say turnip) for sixty, and I have a small blister on my hand from the knife handle, and my other sister-in-law Maureen and I are tired from chopping. Heaven forbid a busy chef would stop moving so I sketched him twice. Here, he is slathering lamb necks in ras-al-hanout and flash-frying them.
The party on Saturday night was like a dream of dancing and old friends and champagne and brazier fires, and family.
As we prepared our goodbyes on Sunday afternoon, I had an urge to say something to Monique.
“Have you got a minute?” I said to her. “I want to say something emotional.” She did.
“It’s just that this weekend…”
But that’s as far as I got. My throat closed up and we held each other.
Would You Join The Queue, Woman
At Gatwick things were much more normal: me sketching people and Marcel losing the plot over my refusal to queue up for anything until the last second. After I drew this fellow – who seemed to have the same idea as me – I hurried to the gate desk where you show your passport and boarding card. There I was greeted – if you could say that – by three angry faces, having stood to one side to let the queue filter past, as I wasn’t there, and all the boarding cards were on my phone.
In the same vein I decided not to stand in the busy aisle with a bag slung over my shoulder to disembark the plane in Dublin. But my timing was bad: by the time I got up there was only one lady ahead of me, who was slow and moved with difficulty. At the exit there was a tape across the exit of the plane, and the only place to go was a lift…full of men in hi-vis vests and disabled people or those who needed some help.
“I don’t think this is for me!” I laughed, as did the pretty steward, letting me through the tape.
Shouted at by tired people on the tarmac. Glared at by very cross husband waiting for me. I don’t blame him, this time. He is always so quick to carry all my bags and the one moment I would have had to carry them, I couldn’t be bothered.
Bad Sketching – Better Than No Sketching
The next morning, on the drive back to Galway, Marcel took the wheel, as he always does – unless he’s falling asleep – and I sketched badly, but happily. It’s a pretty mediocre YouTube video on my channel if you want to see it.
Bickering, laughing, crying, shouting, feeling, embracing…it was emotional.
Love your stories. The first one brought tears to my eyes.
Hello dearest Sasala! Thank you so much. Life passes and you must hug your dear ones, right? Hope you make it back to us sometime, I would love to see you. XXX