Notes Of An Uninteresting Event

About two weeks ago, I had agreed to buy a secondhand Stanley Stove from a woman. When I arrived at her house to collect it, she opened the door and said, “You worked in Xtravision! I knew it was you!” I’d recognised her too and still meet loads of people, even twenty years later, who remember me from the video store. One of my now friends said, “Xtravision guy!” when she met me and my husband in a pub years ago. I now work with a guy who was 12 or 13 when he used to rent PlayStation games from me, and a guy in Waterstones who still reminisces with me whenever I pop into his shop about missing physical DVDs and the ritual of going in to get a few movies out on a Friday night. And I got my current job because I chatted to someone one afternoon, and the rest is history. 

I remember the incredibly old computer system used to rent out movies and games. There were weekly offers to get a movie, popcorn, and a bottle of something for just ten euros, and I remember the sound of rental boxes getting dropped into the return box at the front of the shop. The back of the shop was filled with stacks of rental boxes, food, and didn’t have any air conditioning, so it was very warm in the summer. I remember having to call people to remind them they were late returning their rentals and that they were being charged late fees. But I loved working there.

I’m not sure when I became aware of Leica as a camera maker, but I feel it was back in the early 2000s. Scrolling through the early internet, I might’ve come across a photo of an M camera and admired them, but they were always way too expensive, so as an amateur photographer, I used an old point-and-shoot camera I got in 1992, a Sony DSC-P30 Cyber-shot that I bought in 2001, a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-V1, and a Fujifilm X70 as my cameras over the years. I also took photos with a Sony Ericsson K750i and T610 phones that I had, plus all the iPhones I’ve had over the years. It wasn’t until a friend let me borrow his Canon AE-1 film camera, which I brought on my honeymoon, and found that I really enjoyed film photography, so started looking at Leica rangefinders. 

I bought my first Leica, a Leica M2 (Silver) from a gentleman in Schull who was selling it on behalf of a man, then deceased, and it was found when clearing out his things. The man had owned it from new, which would’ve been an expensive camera back in the early 1960s. In early January 2021, I paid €930 for the body, a 50mm Elmar 2.8 lens, a 90mm Elmar 4 lens, a leather carry case for both lenses, and a leather case for the Leica. 

I purchased my Leica M6 Schwz (Black) from a gentleman in Meath, who was selling it on behalf of his deceased uncle, Irish photographer Brendan Doyle. It’s wonderful to know that the camera has some history, and I think anyone who is into Leica wants to own an M6. I paid €1,800 for the body and a 50mm Elmar 2.8 lens. This camera has been somewhat of a daily driver for me over the years, since I picked it up in 2022, and I just love using it. 

The next camera in my collection is the Leica SOFORT, an instant camera that uses Instax Mini film packs. I’d seen the camera at Stansted Airport when flying back home but didn’t buy it, and then in the intervening years, the price shot up! I felt I’d missed it due to the popularity of instant cameras, so I was surprised to see a blue one for sale on CEX, which I bought for €175 earlier this year in February 2025. It’s a fun little camera, and recently at my cousin’s wedding, I took photos with it throughout the day and gifted the images to the couple as a wedding present.

My latest camera is a Leica M-P 240 (Black), a digital M-camera which I bought in September and I paid €1,850. It’s a lot heavier than my M6 but still feels good in the hand. I had always used my phone for taking digital photos but really wanted to try and integrate a digital rangefinder into my workflow. It doesn’t have Wi-Fi or Bluetooth so I have to put the SD card into my MacBook Pro to see the photos, but the battery life is good and the screen is off most of the time so it feels like I am shooting with a film camera. All my M-mount lenses fit it, so it was an easy choice to get one.

When we bought our house last year, we’d known there had been a goat on the land, but when everything was signed and we got the keys, he wasn’t there. It wasn’t until we met the local farmer, who owned the goat, that we found out the previous owner had asked for the goat to be removed in case it scared off any prospective buyers. The funny thing was that we bought the house because of the goat, which we’d said to the farmer when we met him first. Now, Billy grazes our front and back gardens, and he’s great— our eco-lawnmower.

A few weeks ago, I saw a reminder on my phone to make a Pavlova with Mum. When I next saw her, I asked her for the recipe, which is below. Pavlova is my mum’s go-to dessert for Sunday dinners or events since I can remember, alongside her cheesecakes. I really wanted to learn how to make it, and as she was giving me the recipe, off the top of her head, she mentioned that she had gotten it from a woman she used to work with at HGW/Dulux Paints, Nuala Hammond. I thought that was quite cool that Nuala’s recipe is still being used to make this dessert and that I might pass it off to someone else. Anyway, I decided to try it out last Sunday. On my first attempt, it turned out really well and went great with cream and an Apple jelly we had picked up from an honesty box earlier that day.

• Egg white (4)
• Put that into mixer bowl (no yoke)
• Put mixer on high and beat until it gets thick (4-5mins)
• 8oz caster sugar
• Turn mixer on again, high, and add in the caster sugar a spoonful at a time for the first 4oz.
• You leave it about 30 seconds between each spoonful
• With the other 4 oz of caster sugar you add a teaspoon of corn flour, a drop of vanilla essence and sprinkle of wine vinegar
• Add all of above into the mix which is still on high to thicken
• Spoon onto baking tray with parchment paper
• Into the oven, at 140degree for about 1hr and 30mins.
• Turn off heat but leave pavlova in the oven with the oven door ajar.
• Decorate

Here’s a photo!

Today, I got a text from my dad to say, ‘We’re back in the CUH again; they may keep her in tonight. She’s very weak and a bit nauseous’, to which I replied, ‘Thanks for letting me know ❤️’.

This year, she’s probably spent around eight to ten weeks in hospital. The cancer treatment has caused a lot of side effects, including fluid in her lung cavity and her abdomen. A few months ago, she was not able to breathe and needed to be admitted, and the fluid drained from her pleural cavity to relieve the pressure on her lungs and heart. During the summer, there was a build-up of fluid in her abdomen, making it difficult for her to eat, which caused her to lose a lot of weight. That fluid was then drained to help relieve the stress on her bowel and stomach so she could eat.

These setbacks meant she missed many chemo treatments, which are meant to fight the disease, but I feel she’s not been given the opportunity to do that with everything else that’s been happening. It’s been a very tough year for her, and the constant back and forth, in and out to the hospital is both tiresome but now becoming a routine. My dad’s hanging in there, or at least he says he is but when I ask enough questions he eventually tells me how he’s really feeling. I do hope she gets better, or at least to a point where she can go back to the routine she had before cancer.

#fuckcancer

My husband sent me an Instagram Reel of someone sharing a conversation with their mother. They said, “We never worried about you. You always knew how to take care of yourself.”

The person continued, “What sounds like pride also feels like loneliness. It means no one ever really looked closely or wondered if the strong one was tired. I learned to carry the weight so well that no one thought to help me set it down. Maybe that’s the silent cost of being capable: you stop being seen as someone who also needs softness. You become the safe place for everyone, but never quite have one of your own. In that moment, I realised strength had been my survival, but it had also been my isolation.”

This hit me because lately I’ve being feeling like I’m being forgotten when others in my family, especially, aren’t because I can take care of myself.

For the past couple of years, we’ve had an annual tradition of visiting our married friend’s house for New Year’s. Before the clock strikes twelve, we’d play a few games on Jackbox.tv. It was a lovely tradition where we’d all draw on our phones, depending on the game. The hilarious results of trying to decipher each other’s really bad renditions of what the game asked us to depict were priceless. I’d often fail miserably at illustrating a phrase, person, or place, but that was the fun of the game. I say it was a lovey tradition because, sadly, our friends are no longer together. My husband and I thought our duo would be forever, but they’re in the process of parting ways. On a recent trip to England, we talked about it, and we were both sad, but also that we were losing close friends we’d cherished for so long. I guess time will tell how their journey ahead pans out, but I’ll miss playing those silly games together and then going up the nearest hill to see all the New Years fireworks ignite across the city they lived in.

Last evening, as I sat in my car waiting for the light to change on the way to my parents’ house, I caught sight of a familiar movement in the sky. Blackbirds, hundreds of them, flying over the German’s house. It’s something I grew up with, a late-summer ritual when school had just started back, the evenings light fading stirring that colony in the woods. The sky would be full of them over my parent’s house.

The German’s house was always a landmark, though I don’t think any of us really knew much about it. An old house tucked into the small woods, bounded by housing estates, a petrol station, and the L&N Supermarket (its name growing up and now a SuperValu). We called it the German’s house because, or so I was told, a German family once lived there or still do.

Even now, with so much changed, that sight feels like stepping back into the rhythm of my childhood.

With our city house going ‘Sale Agreed’, the lead up to today meant the past few weeks have been incredibly hectic! The house underwent a thorough cleaning, decluttering, and was painted, fixed, and more. On top of all that, we faced a roof leak just before the estate agents photographer was scheduled to take photos of the house for advertising. We also had to replace the rusted, beyond repair gas boiler. Amidst all these renovations and financial outpouring, we celebrated two significant birthdays for our dads: one at 70 and the other at 60. The latter necessitated a quick trip to England to celebrate. My husband, who’s just started learning to drive, needed to find his own car before we moved to the country house. So, in addition to our regular trips to the hardware store, we visited car dealerships and explored secondhand car websites to find the right car for him. After some disagreements, he finally bought the car he wanted and picked it up last Saturday. At least that ordeal won’t need to be repeated for a few years (^_^).

In the meantime, we’ve settled into our country house, but we’ll officially move down this weekend. We’ll move the rest of our belongings when we hire a moving van to transport the remaining furniture from our city house. While we wait for the sale of our city house to complete, we’ll start finishing that new house, which needs a lot of work, but at least we’re living there now. It’s so beautiful there! And I haven’t even mentioned how we’re progressing with our surrogacy journey, which we’ve also been quietly working on in the background. There’s some hope that it might soon come to fruition. Amidst all these changes, last week, we received devastating news from a close friend. Her sister, who was around my age, married with three young children, had been battling cancer for over a year, coinciding with my mother’s health struggles. Tragically, she passed away. The news came as a shock to my husband and me after the hectic few weeks we had endured. I held on for a bit longer when I hugged our devastated friend at her sister’s funeral. Since then, I can’t help but think about my mom every day, hoping that she’ll recover from her latest cancer diagnosis and pull through.

We haven’t officially declared it a victory yet, but after weeks of meticulous cleaning, decluttering, moving, painting, fixing, and more, we received a promising offer for our city house last Friday. We accepted it, and today, it was officially marked as ‘Sale Agreed.’ This was always part of our plan: to sell the city house once we’ve renovated our country house. With the looming trade war and other factors, I’m hopeful that the sale will proceed swiftly. I purchased the city house fourteen years ago, and my now-husband lived there for ten of those years with me. As one chapter closes, we embark on a new adventure in the countryside, in a house four times the size to accommodate hopefully new members to our family. Fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly with the sale. Exciting times ahead!