Hallowe'en.

It's All Hallows Eve. It's Halloween. I just went trick-or-treating for the first time ever with my little one and it was magical. I thought it would probably be quite fun, but it was really a wonderful thing to be part of. People complain about how commercial it is and all the plastic, in the costumes and wrapping the sweets, and worry about all the sweets and chocolate and treats that children collect and consume, but all of that paled in comparison to the sheer beauty and wonder and surreal joy of it all. To wander the streets, in costume, meeting dozens of other children also all in costume doing the same, and call to the houses of strangers, who are expecting you and want you to call in, who have gone to enormous effort to decorate their homes and who welcome the children at the door with treats they have gotten in specially to give to them, that so many of the adults at the doors have dressed up too, that everyone is participating in this, just by themselves, no organisation or corporate entity behind it, everyone interpreting it in their own way, and it's such a wonderful thing for the kids to experience this, this welcome, this extraordinary amid the ordinary, this community. Above all it was the sense of community. Of everyone doing something together, but in their own way.

To watch it and how my child and the other children were experiencing it, how they loved it, so much joy from so little and yet so much. And it brought me back to happy times in my own childhood, which was also so precious. And it wasn't at all about the sweets or the treats, my child didn't want anything except satsumas and bananas and maybe some jellies, it wasn't at all about getting all this 'stuff' but about the incredible joy of getting to knock on strangers' doors and them be opened happily, getting to have this kind of party with their friends and other children and parents on the street, everyone dressed up, everyone having fun. And many people had made their costumes, or their parents had. There was a cardboard box robot with light up buttons, there was a wrapped birthday present made of a huge cardboard box, there was a giant handmade snake curving out of a garden. There were so many carved pumpkins, many of them works of art, and carved turnips alongside them. There was just so much joy, and so much togetherness, and so much effort and reward. I felt lucky and grateful to be part of it. It was all about community. Another world is closer to us tonight. I hope we can reach it on other nights too.

A blog post.

You know what I didn't do again this month? A blog post.

Mind the gap.

I'm increasingly sad and angry about how little care seems to be put in to public services by some people in Ireland. Today I got off an Iarnrod Eireann/Irish Rail train at Connolly Station. I had come from Malahide, but the train was a mainline commuter train rather than a Dart. This was how the train looked after arriving at its platform at Connolly Station, one of the two main train stations in Dublin, where intercity trains arrive and depart around the country.

This was the gap between the train and the platform:

There was also a high step down from the train to reach the platform:

It was so dangerous, and so inaccessible. Travelling with a young child it was quite frightening, it would have been so easy for them to fall into the gap between the train and the platform, and was quite a maneouvre for me to get them off the train safely. Indeed the gap was wide enough for me as an adult to fall in to. I dread to think what it would have been like for a wheelchair user, or someone using crutches, or someone with any kind of mobility impairment. Or an elderly person. Or a blind or visually impaired person, who would have virtually no chance of detecting the height or width of the gap that awaited them as they stepped off the train. Or a person with a buggy. Or a person just not paying enough attention, because they hadn't expected such a hazard as they merely got off their train.

As you can see from the first picture it was like this at every door on every carriage of the train all along the platform. That's what made me sad and angry. It was planned like this. It was left like this. There is this train, which is not at all unique, and it does not fit the platform correctly, and probably never has, and that is dangerous and inaccessible. There must be many trains like it. And no-one has bothered to fix this. It has been designed in this way, because when the train platforms were built, or when the trains were ordered to run on these tracks to these platforms, the train did not fit the platform or the platform did not fit the train. With hazardous and exclusionary consequences. And that was simply accepted as fine. And has remained fine. Was it even noticed? Either no-one cares, or more precisely, the people who could do something about this do not care. And that's also fine. It would seem like it is someone's job, to have trains that allow their passengers to reach the platforms safely and easily, or to have platforms that have been built or modified to ensure they reach the trains well, again so that passengers can get on and off safely and easily. That doesn't seem like an outlandish expectation. Yet this is the situation. And no-one seems to feel that it is a problem or it is their job to ensure this doesn't happen or fix it when it does.

There are no warning signs, or even announcements to mind the gap. It's not even considered worthy of an alert. It's simply expected. Have people complained? More importantly, has anyone been injured? Impossible to know.

And this is why I'm sad and angry, more and more, in our capital city, around the country, or reading the news. It's not that things are bad. It's that things are intentionally and simultaneously carelessly bad. Avoidably, unnecessarily bad. Yet persistently, consistently, compoundingly bad. It's that so few people who a citizen might reasonably expect to be concerned with and responsible for doing things well seem to care. And that they are not made to care. They can do very basic things badly, they can refuse to fix things for years or decades, and there are no repercusssions. And worse, that there is no sense of responsibility or even shame. That there is no vision, no expectation of better. It's not that things are bad but we know how they could be so much better and we're fighting for that better future. Some of us are. But it seems like those with the most power don't even have an idea of what better could be, they are unconcerned by just how unneccessarily bad things are, and how the status quo negatively affects the lives, deaths and health of so many. There is a vast chasm between how things are and even the basics of a decent public life that citizens have a right to expect, which they can envision and which could quite easily be achieved. The powers that be are whistling into this abyss. And we all, especially the most disadvantaged, are in danger of falling through the gaps.

Eclipses.

I was thinking about eclipses. There was a partial solar eclipse visible from Dublin recently, I thought it was this month, but in fact it was in April. Time has little meaning here. It was cloudy and rainy and the eclipse wasn't visible at all. This made me think of other eclipses I've seen. I was extremely lucky to be in the zone of totality for a solar eclipse in France in 1999. It was an eerie and powerful experience, the strange semi-darkness, the sudden quiet of birds and animals and all of nature around us, the silence and respect of the other watchers, standing outside, all in our eclipse glasses. I don't know if I have any photos of that eclipse, I ought to check. I found some photos I took of a partial solar eclipse on 10 June 2021, so perhaps it was that memory making me think the recent one was in June too.

First I projected it onto a sheet of white card. Look very closely and you can see the white dot of the sun. To the right is the nappy box that I also made a pinhole viewer out of.

A little closer, if blurrier, projection of the eclipse.

A not very successful attempt to take a photo through the pinhole viewer. It was very clear and amazing watching the eclipse inside this box, seeing the crescent taken out of the sun. But it was not very possible to capture it with the camera.

And then there is this photo. I don't actually know how I took this. I know I didn't look directly at the sun, I'm not quite that much of an idiot. And I didn't look at the sun in the screen of my digital camera either. I think I looked at the projection on the card and put the camera pointing behind me up at the sun and took some pictures in that general direction without looking at the sun, the camera or the screen.

Maybe taking these could have damaged the camera. I'm not sure. Or maybe I used a filter. Nonetheless, I'm glad I have these photos now.

All those eclipses, reflecting earthwards. Good to be here.

Here is the link to the blogpost including the (much better) photos I took of a total lunar eclipse in London in September 2015.

And of a partial lunar eclipse in Dublin in July 2019.

Aurora Borealis in Dublin.

I got to see the Aurora Borealis. In Dublin. A life-long dream to see the Northern Lights, achieved from the balcony of my home in Portobello, in Dublin city centre, in Ireland, in May. Incredible.

Spring snow.

On the 1st March we woke up to snow.

Heavy snow falling.

In Dublin city centre.

In the spring.

We went to Iveagh Gardens and made a snowman.

You can see the snow falling in the video above.

It was joy amid the sadness.

Sneachta.

Leap day.

29.02.2024. Happy leap day. A leap year. A rare day. Four years ago on the 29th February 2020, the first case of Covid-19 was reported in Ireland. Then, I was pregnant and scared. Covid-19 was all the news but we knew barely anything. Now, here we are. I tested positive for Covid for the second time exactly two months ago. The disease has been surging in Ireland and the US, among others, but is barely reported or remarked on. We know a lot, but choose to do little. Maybe we're all too busy looking at our phones. While the wars rage and the planet burns and the children are killed. We can do more. Better. Much better. But we need to communicate with one another, we need to hope, and we need to act.

A nice piece by KIN MX on Camden Row in Dublin 2. The spirit's wings are feathered by love, peace, compassion, kindness, community, respect, communication and unity. Resentment, hopelessness, revenge, separation, sadness, fear, media, anger, loneliness, depression, and frustration are the tentacles that try to strangle her. But she is clothed in forgiveness, love, gratitude, unity, hope and trust.