So on Sunday it was a bit chilly and windy, but that didn't stop us from heading out in the afternoon to see Edna O'Brien being interviewed by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne at the Dublin Book Festival. Mark really enjoyed Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's book the Dancers Dancing, and I think he was hoping it would be more of a conversation between the two writers than an interview. It was a free event, but as the room was extremely small, you had to sign up in advance. As our luck would have it, Mark got us in, and though I've never read either author, I was pleased to go.

The City Hall building's interior looked as you'd expect it to: ornate, with mosaics and statues, and chandeliers, etc. I took a couple of discrete photos:



We mulled around, looking at different publishers' displays, and then found the line for the Edna O'Brien event. There were about ten people in front of us, waiting at the foot of the stairs for the previous event going on in the room to finish up. No rush. We joined the line, shoulder to shoulder, and then some people got in behind us, and some behind them, etc. Not a huge crowd by any stretch, as the capacity of the room was only about 50 or so.

But then this group of three people suddenly wedged themselves into where we were standing, and instead of standing shoulder to shoulder, I was crowded into the wall, smooshed over to the side and kind of behind Mark. We couldn't talk comfortably, and we're like, "What just happened?" We looked over and the monster edging us over was a little woman not much taller than me. Mark initially went with his usual tactic, putting his messenger bag in her face, but that didn't help me and my intimate relationship with the wall, so I insisted that we switch places. I then stood next to the woman, so close that if she weren't so busy talking her two companions' ears off, I could have whispered sweet nothings in her ear.

So we did the only thing we could do, at that point. We held a conversation about how annoyed we were, right there. But being the "intellectuals" (read pseudo-intellectuals, if you must) that we are, we of course had to relate it to power dynamics, and throw a little post-colonial theory in there for good measure. At the start, we had stood there, in our spots, our feet planted on the floor, happy as clams. The woman edged us in, sure. But she could not have done so if we had not lost our footing at least somewhat willingly. Now, as it happens we were quite annoyed, but I think part of our annoyance, or at least I'll speak for myself here, was with ourselves, for giving up our comfort, our position. But still, one might say, to make a fuss in such a fancy building, that would be so undignified -- what's the harm of moving over for your neighbor?

Something about the incident left me feeling strangely victimised and angry. As we stood there, I hurled insults into the woman's ears, quietly, but well loud enough for her to hear them. But she didn't. She no more heard them than she was aware of the fact she had invaded our little comfortable zone of shoulder-to-shoulder happiness.

But the line started to move, and we stepped up, and reclaimed our place in line, ahead of the fancy cutting foreign lady and her Irish hangers on. And as we climbed the stairs we looked down to see that instead of giving her name to gain admittance to the event, she was yammering about how she wanted to be added to a stand-by list. "She wasn't even on the list!" I exclaimed.

As we entered the room, we considered ourselves lucky because the venue was truly intimate. It was filling quickly, and we figured our little nudgers wouldn't make it. We found a nice seat in the second row and watched the people entering. One older gentleman caught our eye because he looked like he must be a famous writer himself! We puzzled over who he might be, but came up with nothing. So, we imagined that he was someone fantastic. Then of course, in they entered: our line nudgers. The only remaining seats were staggered singles around the room. An unassuming man in glasses, a navy blue crew neck sweater, and a backpack, was going for an empty chair in front of us when guess who came up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder, and said that she had spotted the seat first (though he clearly had, and the proof was that he was about to sit in it when she stopped him). He paused, but being obviously not one for conflict, and a gentleman. But then we watched him floundering around the room in search of a free chair. As it happened, the only seat available was next to our "famous" old man. And then Mark and I watched with glee as the two of them struck up a conversation, and we imagined that in the end, he was much happier in the second seat.

So, what's with all this fuss about queues? Well, because people can really get pissed off over them. And in them, so much can be represented. The woman who cut our line was clearly wealthy, and while I know that "wealthy" obviously does not equal "rude," I think that she demonstrated a great deal of sophistication in sizing up our insignificance, and knew without being conscious of her own knowledge that she could take our space from us with our consent. All she consciously thought about was the fact that she wasn't on the list and she needed to get on the stand-by list as soon as possible. We were, as they say, the weakest link. And it really doesn't feel good to be the weakest link.

On Saturday, the man in the asian shop felt that he was trying to be made the weakest link. Only he refused to give up his space. He fought, and viciously! But he also made a fool of himself. And therein lies the rub.

Regarding the interview itself: Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is reputed to be a very talented writer, but she was not a talented interviewer. It's lucky for her that Edna O'Brien happens to be a compelling speaker, and the entire room hung on her every word (they really did - the microphone was horrible). She looks fantastic for her age (78), and something about her face and her mannerisms reminded me strikingly of my mother (an older version, of course). As a writer, I was inspired to hear what she had to say about writing and her process, and how she felt about the reception of her writing. I enjoyed it very much, and it fired me up to keep working on my novel.

So on Saturday morning Mark and I went to "The Hill" on North Cumberland Street, this small block where vendors come out and put piles of junk out for sale. There are large piles of clothes, tables of knick-knacks, TVs, boxes of tools, junk, children's toys, a guy who sells mostly shoes, some furniture, a couple of bikes, this, that, and the other thing. It's like a flea market, only junkier. Mark's mom has been going there since he was a little kid, and I've been hearing about it for over a year, so being a bargain hunter I was naturally curious about it.

I rifled through the piles of clothes, hoping to find something made of interesting fabric -- even if it wasn't something I could wear as-is, I might turn it into something wearable. But I didn't come on to anything magical, so I let it be. But I enjoyed poking around at all the stuff!

Somewhat pressed for time because I was due at Seomra Spraoi at noon, Mark and I parted ways, and I thought I'd pop into a couple of the Asian shops that are right there at the end of North Cumberland Street and pick up some Sweet Rice Flour for a recipe that I've been wanting to try.

At the second shop, I decided to check out, and as I approached the counter from the left side, there was no one around but one woman who was checking out. She had a slew of items, and it was a long transaction, and I though to myself that it was taking a comically long time -- as she paid by credit card, even the paper seemed to come out of the machine one. line. at. a. time. as. slowly. as. possible. Then just as the transaction was finished, and she was lifting her bags off the counter, I noticed this man to the left of me edging in with a bag of little brown pods. He was a thin, fair-skinned Irish man, about 42 years of age, medium height, with bad posture.

Now, admittedly, the way people "queue up" here is different than in America, and I'm still getting used to it. People tend to line up to the side rather than one behind the other. But when I approached the counter, I walked up from the left, so I know that he wasn't there. But he had just the one item, and I wasn't terribly concerned, just a little... surprised at his gall. So I said, "That's nice," as he aggressively put his item on the counter, clearly knowing he was cutting me off.
"I was here first!" he very nearly shouted at me, "And you would know that if you weren't so BLIND!" He turned around to face me and flashed this look of pure hatred. I was so surprised at the venom in his reaction that I simply started laughing. Then the man behind him spoke up and said, "Actually sir, she was ahead of you. She was there when you came up."
"She was not!" The man yelled. "I have been waiting here for ages! And she would have seen that if she wasn't such a stupid, STUPID woman!" By this time his transaction was over, and he was beside himself with anger, but I was still laughing and hadn't said one word since my initial "That's nice." So I said, "Have a nice day!"
"You don't have a nice day!" he yelled. "You have a very BAD day!" With this he walked up to me and put his face very close to mine, virtually poking me with his eyes. I noticed that in his fury he'd dropped some change, so I thought I would have a little more fun and really kill him with kindness.
"You dropped some money there," I informed him, pointing to the floor.
"You and the devil can keep it!" he shouted, and stormed out of the shop, leaving guy behind the counter, the other guy in line, and me looking at each other in total bewilderment. The odd thing of it is - I only had two small items, and I was paying cash. My transaction took all of thirty seconds.

But Mark had a theory that it was not the man's perception that he was ahead of me in line that infuriated me so much, but rather the fact that I didn't follow the "rules" of queuing up properly. I was a "blind" and "stupid" woman for not knowing that the line starts off to the side, to the left, and not directly behind the person at the counter. My ill-placed personal space created an inexcusable faux-pas to which anger and dismay was the only answer (at least, in this man's mind).

I was a little scared to go about the business of the rest of my day, feeling like I'd just had a hex put on me, and considering I was volunteering at Seomra Spraoi and then going to my in-law's house, a lot could have gone wrong. But as it happened, I had a fine day. I did get soaked on my bike, but that only made getting home with a bottle of cognac all the sweeter.

On Friday, Mark and I agreed to stay in (well, sort of - we wanted to see the author Pat McCabe spin records, but we didn't realize it was happening so early and we missed it). I looked forward to a relaxing night of sloth.

We live in a part of town called Drumcondra on the upper third of a long street called Richmond Road. If you head up one end of our street, toward Drumcondra Road, where our little grocery store is, a few pubs, and where we catch the bus to town, it's quite nice. But if you head in the other direction, it gets a little shady -- not so much during the day, but later at night. If you're on the bike, you zip through without a care, but walking, I just wouldn't recommend it. For our night in, we decided to check out a liquor store at the shady end of the street to see if they had a better beer selection than Tesco (the supermarket) and the not-so-great Off-License store (aka Liquor Store) nearer to our place. It was still early, before nine I think. We walked there, no problem, went in, made our selection quite happily (they did have a better selection as we suspected!) and then on our way out, there was this group of 4 or 5 teenage boys standing just outside the door. One of them sort of stood almost as if he was going to get in Mark's way and he said, "YAW RYE?" in that lovely Irish way of not enunciating words. I have no idea what would possess any kid, especially a scrappy one about five foot nine in height, to mess with Mark, who towered over him at six foot four. But my theory is that maybe they heard us talking on the way in and thought we were some dumb Americans. Mark replied in as Dublin an accent as he could muster as one of the boys made a farting noise.

There's just really nothing worse than a gang of teenage boys. But you can't give an inch. So Mark and I walked along and instinctively gave a bounce to our walk, the way gorillas do in the wild when they feel intimidated. Having taken self-defense classes, and having been in a position of defending myself against assaults, I know that what they say about the "fight or flight" syndrome really is true. You've got to either run or fight. Anyways, they were just a bunch of stupid kids, the likes of which I have passed tens of times before, but it was annoying to be so blatantly sized up in that way and then have to ready myself in my mind to stick my fingers in someone's eye sockets if need be. Gee. I hope I'm not freaking anyone out. It's safe here, I swear! Just typical life in any city! But I'm writing this because it's leading up to a theme of personal space that you'll see over my next two posts...