A poignant short story about love and life
Awarded 1st Prize – Sports & Cultural Council City of Dublin VEC Short Story Competition, 2010
I’m delighted to have my short story, The Visit, published in the March edition of Live Encounters along with Irish writers Geraldine Mills, Doreen Duffy and Brian Kirk.
Bridie looked out the window of her terraced house. She smiled as she watched Sam pottering around in the garden, stopping to sniff the carnations.
He may not be very talkative but he never moaned at her for the occasional cigarette she enjoyed with her cup of tea. Opening the back door she called out to him. He didn’t even turn his head. It was hard to know whether he was ignoring her or going deaf. She called again and as he walked past her she looked at the sky tutting.
“It would have to rain today, Sam. I’ll be drenched by the time I get to the hospital – like a drowned rat.”
Sam just looked at her.
“Well I won’t be long,” she said, bending to kiss him on the head. She finished fastening the buttons on her shabby coat, tucked her scarf around her collar and pulled on her faded leather gloves. She gave herself a final look in the hall mirror, patted her grey hair into place, glided the end of her pink lipstick across her lips and frowned at the dark circles beneath her brown eyes. Taking an umbrella from the stand, she draped her handbag across her thin frame and pulled the front door closed, giving it a final tug.
Although it was raining she was glad to be outside. A soft day, her parents would have said, back in her native Donegal. The sky was blue, the sun was fighting to appear and there was even a hint of a rainbow.
Bridie opened the door into Cunningham’s Newsagent and queued at the counter. While everyone was talking excitedly about the millions to be won on the lotto this week, her mind wandered, thinking about what she’d cook for dinner later. Maybe as a treat she’d pick up sausages and white pudding and maybe a turnover that she could slice, toast and smother in Kerrygold butter finished off with a steaming mug of tea – something to look forward to. There were three more people in the queue in front of her.
A flash of green caught her eye, as something fell to the floor in front of her.
‘Storymap.ie brings Dublin absolutely alive… a brilliant idea’ – Tom Dunne, Newstalk FM
I am delighted to have my short story, The Secret Librarian, on Storymap amongst such varied and wonderful Irish writers, poets and historians as: Paula Meehan, Eileen Casey, Roddy Doyle, Colm Keegan, Stephen James Smith, Shane MacThomáis and Paul Howard (aka Ross O’Carroll-Kelly), to name but a few.
What better way to pass your journey than by experiencing the charm of Dublin city. Storymap hosts a living world to spark your imagination – a world of stories, filmed where they happened, ranging from funny to literary; historic to places of interest and everything in-between!
You can watch The Secret Librarian here and don’t forget to check out a few of my favourites on Storymap, listed below, to give you a real flavour of Dublin.
If you like them, don’t keep them to yourself, share them!
|Paula Meehan||The Lost Children|
|Eileen Casey||The Black Ballgown|
|Roddy Doyle||The Spire|
|Colm Keegan||Ode to the Coalman|
|Stephen James Smith||On Raglan Road|
|Shane MacThomáis||Strange bedfellows|
(aka Ross O’Carroll-Kelly)
|I’m afraid this is my stop|
A little about Storymap:
Storymap is the brainchild of two Dublin filmmakers, Andy Flaherty and Tom Rowley. Just back from working abroad, unemployed and in between film projects, the lads became annoyed with all the negative press the city was receiving. The bleak tales of recession, the gloomy accounts of unemployment and the notion that Ireland’s best and brightest had emigrated was completely at odds with what the lads were experiencing being back in their hometown.
“We wanted to do something to get people as excited about the city as we were. While loads of great people have left the country, you only have to walk into any gallery, gig or any of the fantastic spoken word or comedy nights to see that Dublin is a ridiculously fun and vibrant city with wonderful characters and a flourishing art scene. We wanted to bring the charm and character that had been pushed aside by the Celtic Tiger and bring it centre stage” – Andy
The lads came up with Storymap, a web based multimedia project that revives Ireland’s age-old tradition of storytelling and tries to capture the personality of Dublin city through its stories and storytellers. These stories are filmed being told where they happened and integrated into a live map to create a charming and layered collective vision of Dublin city made by the people of the city.
“Walking around the city – everyone has their own stories that they remember on certain streets, stories that flavour their personal experience of the city, that they tell on to friends. We thought it’d be exciting to pool those stories in one place, like one big pub where everyone shares their stories, creating a sense of what the city means to Dubliners. It’s a simple idea, but with complex possibilities, and we’re only just at the beginning of it.” – Tom