Blooming holidays!

You’ve decided where to go, booked flights, organised hotels, packed and weighed your bags, sent the cat to longsuffering relatives, persuaded the dog to take up residence in a home with bars across the windows, and all you have to do is make sure you have something decent to read. Simple? No, definitely not!

To Pisa, Italy, I brought three books: one was ok, the second was awful, and the third I had read before (a ghastly mistake) so I set off for the largest bookstore in town. The English section comprised two sets of shelving in which Charles Dickens and Dan Brown featured among the usual chick-lit and dross of the lowest order; I chose the former and spent the remainder of my holiday with Hard Times tucked under my oxter (not a bad choice as it turned out. I can now visualise Miss Haversham at the table of her wedding feast and the genial Pip as he grew up with a cast of the strangest characters). Note to self: plan better next time.

Albuquerque, New Mexico, with five books in tow, none of which I could read on the flight as I was seated next to Bill for the long haul with whom I talked non-stop, laughed, watched the same movie, and left in Chicago with a nod of regret. No sooner landed than I headed for Borders that was full of luscious temptation that I didn’t resist; next was Barnes & Noble, another house of sin for the likes of me. More books to read but still I didn’t manage a single page due to (a) the time difference that had me in bed by eight; (b) so many relatives dying to catch up on old times; (c) the view from the back garden of humming birds flitting around the feeding table; (d) the wonderful dry heat that did me a power of good. I eventually managed to get stuck into Henning Mankell who kept me highly entertained with his grumpy detective, Wallander (who could do with a good holiday himself), and a bloody crime to be solved by fair means or foul.

My flight home was just as fortuitous with Harry, another of Chicago’s sons, for company who helped me carry my suitcase, bursting with unread books, to a waiting bus.

Next week I’m off to Marbella with three gals from the book club for seven days of fun, fun and more fun. We’ve agreed to take two books each to share after reading so basically that’s one book a day if all goes according to plan. It should be enough, but then again, what if none of them are any good??? Oh the trials and tribulations of being too far away from my favourite bookshops and that steady supply of literary surprises growing like sturdy trees beside my bed, on the sideboard, near the couch and strewn on the hall table.

Having a good book to read is like a security blanket for bibliophiles without which we’d turn into nasty, spiteful, frustrated bores longing for an English box of Cornflakes off which to read (as if we needed to know) the ingredients, nutritional value (ha!), country of origin, and other useless information. Reading is reading when it boils down to it and going mad in a world without books doesn’t bear thinking about.

A Christmas Carol

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon ‘Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.

That's not a very cheerful start to a Christmas story of any description. It would hardly put you in the mood for carol singing, gift wrapping, or hanging decorations on a freshly cut tree. But then, the reality of Christmas is often far removed from the fairy tale version put out by advertisers pimping their wares.

I wonder how many homes live up to the Hollywood image of the festive season. I have had so many ghastly Christmases that I often think I can't bear to live through another one: I've been sick, poverty stricken, terribly lonely, bored senseless, force-fed festive cheer till I wanted to vomit, and often away from home and family.

In 2004 I went to Brussels to spend Christmas week with my sister. We were both invited to spend the day with her friends (who I had never met): a man whose wife had just died in tragic circumstances, whose adult son was mentally challenged but behaved well enough, and with another friend who was dying of some obscure illness and her husband who smoked like a factory chimney throughout the meal. But I loved it! The food was great, there were no emotional attachments (apart from the love I have for my sister), no gifts, hilarious conversation, and mine host walked us home through the snow to a waiting cup of tea and a meowing cat. The downside came the following morning as my sister spent the entire day nursing a migraine with the blanket pulled up over her head leaving me to my own devices in a city that was shrouded in a thick grey blanket of fog. I couldn’t speak French (still can't), and a weird system of locks prevented me leaving the apartment block in case I never got back in again so sightseeing was a non started. So, I read, ate leftovers, brewed tea, and exercised briskly by running on the spot in my room to prevent madness setting in.

Then there was the memorable Christmas when my teenage self cooked the entire meal from start to finish. As I proudly carved at the table, my brother berated me for being over-generous with the turkey and I could feel the tears welling up as I presented what now felt like miserable fare to him and my father. The three of us made for very dreary company.

I still giggle when I think of the time I got up early, before everyone else, and borrowed my sister's present – a red and blue scooter – and used it to zoom down to early morning mass in Monkstown Church and back home again before she even noticed. What on earth possessed me? I was all of six or seven years old with a determined wild streak but also canny, in that while everyone else was trudging off to the obligatory church ritual, I was home and dry and busy playing with my own presents.

But I'm over all that now. I've grown older and wiser and I know how to protect myself from the ravages of enforced enjoyment. This year, what started out as a cosy threesome to celebrate the festive season has turned into a party of five and quite possibly a sixth if we're lucky. We will cook and bake and stuff ourselves silly with nary a turkey in sight. I've been asked for a nut roast without nuts, a pecan pie with no eggs, and meat for a lad who thinks that vegetables should only be used as a side dish.

My own order is already in for homemade Sticky Toffee Puddings, a vegan recipe worked to perfection that has me drooling at the prospect.

We don't do presents (Basil can't wrap) cause we have everything we could possibly want. At some stage during the morning we'll all go for a walk and maybe end up at Sandycove where hundreds of swimmers brave the winter chills by diving into the Forty Foot. The atmosphere is absolutely fantastic. Most of the crowd are running around half naked; the rest dressed as if for a Siberian winter. It would almost make you want to strip off and get into the choppy water yourself, but I'm not that crazy! Just being there makes us all realise that we are glad to be alive and living in the moment.

Eventually, we'll head for home, buoyed up by the excitement, where Basil will be waiting for his lunch. The fire will be set so all I'll have to do is strike a match to create instant atmosphere (something no mere radiator can aspire to), light a few candles, and fill the house with music. We'll Skype the prodigal son who couldn't make it home this year; maybe we'll get a turkey to celebrate when we see him next, whatever the time of year.

And wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, I wish you comfort and cheer and the joy of a good book on this single overrated, highly pressurised advertiser's dream day of the year.

Basil

Our current cat-in-residence is a black and white moggie who goes by the name of Basil, or Baz for short. His sleek coat is mostly jet-black with a gorgeous snowy white shirt fluffing up under his proud chin. His paws, usually slightly grubby after an evening out on the tear, are returned to their pristine state with ten minutes frantic washing before he settles down, exhausted, in a heap on his blanket. He wears this fine furry tuxedo with the air of a fellow always prepared to eat a decent meal were I to be so good as to put it in front of him.

Like most of our cats he arrived uninvited, after the demise of our previous tenant. We watched his antics as he scaled the ten-foot wall out back, clinging to the trunk of the beech trees, hiking his way up until he reached a bird’s nest to steal their eggs. Someone had dumped him (probably in a plastic bag ‘cause whenever he heard the rustle of a bin bag, he’d vanish, scared to death of the noise) and he ended up thin and scrawny, scavenging for food, and desperate to come and live with us. "You can feed him, but he’s definitely not coming inside" were my immortal words to my soft-hearted daughters who could never resist an appealing meow. About three days later, Basil moved in to rule the roost for the rest of his natural life. He’s been with us for about six years and he’s hale and hearty, his legs strong, his eyes clear and his heart completely devoted to all of us. When my two sons ring home from abroad it’s, "How’s Basil doing?" I’ve even been known to swivel the camera so they can view him on Skype to assure them that the feline Master of our Universe is being properly looked after. When daughter Jessica drops in to visit she swoops him up in her arms, kissing him, telling him he’s lovely, then spends time brushing his fur furiously as he swoons, splayed out beside her, senseless with pleasure, purrrrrrrrring his head off.

Of the many cats that wandered through my life I remember one in particular who loved to sleep close to me at night. Marmalade must have been near her time and around three in the morning she began the business of producing her litter. I woke up to the strangest huffing sounds emanating from the warm bundle on my stomach, quickly decided that this was something I did not want to witness, slid out of bed and went down to the harbour to look at the boats until it was light. Back in my room sat puss, proud as any young mother, five tiny bodies curled up beside her, no evidence of what had happened in the dead of night.

When Hugh Leonard left Manchester to return to live in Ireland there was the small matter of a beloved cat, Honey, who couldn’t possibly be left behind, nor could she be put in quarantine, so instead, this moggie was smuggled across the Irish Sea, doped up to the eyeballs, turning her owners into possible criminals prepared to do time if absolutely necessary. Rover and Other Cats is about all the cats that dominated Hugh Leonard’s household: Rover the star of the show; Honey the Siamese; Priscilla who turned out to be a he; Tinkle, the amorous feline; Dubh the beloved; The Pooka, Panache (the first cat to have his obituary in a broadsheet) and last but not least, P.S.

Once you’ve read Rover’s introduction into the family you’ll just have to get the book to find out what happened next: "He was an orange blob no bigger than Paule’s hand when he came to us in a shoebox that could have held six of him. A friend of a friend of ours urgently wanted a home for a male kitten; when we protested that he was not yet weaned, we were given to understand that his alternative home would be a weighted sack thrown over the sea wall. And so that shoe box changed hands."

This memoir will make you laugh, cry, and delight in this author’s obvious love of cats.