The Escape Artist

I’m not gonna lie…life is not that exciting of late. If you are flouting all the rules, living your best life for the last 6mths then you may not feel my pain but if you, like me, don’t want to be a plague-spreader then you’ve been up to very little, and your social circle has become smaller than that time you had no friends.

Plenty of online gigs and plays to keep us amused but I’ve only watched a handful coz let’s face it, it’s just not the same as being there in person. I miss live music and theatre, cinema and going to the pub for a pint of Guinness and a chat, but desocialisation has become a reality. I fear when I have to re-enter society I am going to have to be resocialised, much like a neglected, unruly dog. My table manners are still intact but my ability to interact on anything but a video call is sorely lacking.

After spending 3 months confined to a small part of Dublin, it was inevitable that, when the weekend lockdown travel limits lifted in July, I was in the car heading west to see my folks. The sheer joy of seeing them, the wild Atlantic, fields of cows, hills for days and breathing in fresh country air fuelled me for weeks after.

A holiday spent in Kerry last month gave us that classic mix of showery outbreaks, sunny spells, gale force winds and wildly varying temperatures that Ireland provides daily during the ‘summer’. Still, once you hit the top of the Conor Pass and the clouds clear, you couldn’t care less that you nearly got blown off Slea Head an hour previous.

The south west of Ireland was a visual confection as always and we managed to sneak in a few dinner/pints moments which was the icing on the cake. Yes, there was also cake and yes, the only reason we bought dinner was for the pints. COVID rules and all that…

Thankfully, I’ve managed to spend the few months between the end of Defcon 5 lockdown and the start of Defcon 3 lockdown chasing butterflies, going on road trips, swimming in the sea and kidnapping bugs for short photoshoots. You can see the fruits of my leisure on my Instagram with a few to make an appearance here on the site.

Now that we are back in no touchies, no meeties, no breathies plague-mode again I shall have to start taking pictures of household objects. Brace yourselves for an awe-inspiring future exhibition titled The Spatula and The Sieve.