Ten years ago during the big snow, I lived in this little alcove in Dublin 8 for a wee while, in a gorgeous cottage that was hidden behind big apartments on Cork Street. It turned out to be a bit of a threatening place, in the end, it took a while before I noticed the needles thrown out with the nappies on next doors’ doorstep, or the window opening in the night above my head, or the sound of people downstairs tripping over my clothes. I loved it as it was, the new stories and experiences unfolding, I knew I was ultimately safe too, for I can talk the leg of a donkey. —
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On my walks home from work I would draw the empty streets, clean and shiny when everything was freshly fallen, silently scattered. The little cottages looked so snug tucked in the piles of snow. The crunch beneath my feet still echos in my memory. Dublin was so silent. One night a man slipped in front of me and broke his leg. We waited for a vehicle but there were none on the road. We called an ambulance, the lady who answered sounded worn, I imagined she was wearing an Aran jumper. She said, “Are you sure it’s an emergency?” I wasn’t, so I put the phone on to the man who was screaming on the icy pavement. We waited for an hour and a half until a siren resounded through Cork Street while the ambulance van crawled the road. He should have screamed more loudly I thought to myself as I slid and shimmied home, numb and purple.