IN PRAISE OF BACON, AND A GOOD DAY... BUT MAINLY BACON. BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

 

IN PRAISE OF BACON, AND A GOOD DAY… BUT MOSTLY BACON.

BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

Every now and then, you get a lovely day, don’t you? One that shuts your complaining trap for five minutes, lol, and makes you realise how lucky you actually are to be alive. Today was one such day. I had a nice walk in the sunshine with my son, who was off school for an appointment, which got cancelled and left us with some unexpected free time. I love it when that happens, when something just unexpectedly frees you up like that!

 I took him for a haircut after we’d done our errands and shopping and such, and, while he was chatting away about football to his barber, I had a bizarre but highly enjoyable conversation with a total stranger, a college student who lives locally. It turns out that this young man, not a native Dubliner, hails from the same place where my mother’s family comes from.

I named him all the places where my different aunties lived, he knew them all and furthermore informed me that all the places I’d named were rough, even no-go areas, which I found hilarious. My own posh accent tends to make people think I come from good stock, and here are all my aunties living in places where the Rottweilers apparently have to go round in pairs. It was so funny.

Coincidental, too, as a clear-out of some kitchen cupboards yesterday turned up some items I hadn’t laid eyes on in over two decades. Well, in fairness, they were situated right to the back of the cupboard, into which I rarely need to venture. But anyway, these little items of crockery and cutlery are the only possessions I own which once belonged to my grandparents, my mother’s parents. Yeah, yeah, the ones whose daughters all live in rough areas now, haha.

Three little cups, two dessert spoons and two butter knives marked with the imprint, S. WILLIAMSON & SONS, STAINLESS STEEL, SHEFFIELD. I remember those knives of old. They’d be used to slather butter onto thick slices of an uncut loaf of bread, after a similar knife, but one with a serrated edge, had cut the slices. You don’t really see anything like them any more. My grandparents have been dead for years, and would probably be about a hundred years old if they were still alive. And, yes, I wish I’d known them better, but they died when I was still quite young.

Anyway, back to my lovely day. After Sonny Boy’s haircut, I brought home a hot bacon and sausage sarnie from my favourite little deli, and the butter was melting into the bread, it was so hot. The bacon was crispy and sort of crinkly and in no way tough, the sausages equally sublime. The time I spent eating it was the happiest five minutes of my life to date, that’s how good it was. And that’s when I accidentally discovered the meaning of life, which was nice.

It's the few little truly perfect moments you have every now and then that make life worth living. Like my bacon sarnie, or that moment when you’ve got your hamster snuggled against your heart and they’re looking up at you like you’re Jesus/Allah/Buddha all rolled into one.

It’s breathing in the smell of a gorgeous new book you’ve treated yourself to, it’s the QUEEN CD that’s on your stereo right now that’s making your heart soar. It’s when you finish a difficult or annoying task that’s been hanging over you for ages and now you’re finally free of it, it’s when you pay that last bill and you know there won’t be another one due for a while. (Stupid unforeseen expenses excluded…!)

I realise that I’m talking here purely about the things that would constitute perfect moments for me, but we’d all have our equivalents. Like the perfect pint, or that half-hour you can’t use your laptop because your cat is asleep on the keyboard looking utterly adorable and you wouldn’t dream of disturbing him. The football match where your team is winning and the referee isn’t a blind bollocks, or, if he is, it’s in your team’s favour for an effing change.

Finding that extra fiver in your coat pocket. Someone texting to cancel plans you were dying to get out of but didn’t think it’d be possible to. Those perfect little moments make up life, see? Don’t bother spending big bucks on some kind of mad happiness guru. Just give me all your money, lol. After all, it’s not every day that someone shares the meaning of life with you.

I’m well aware, by the way, that tomorrow I could well be the proverbial Bear with a Sore Head. An unexpected giant expense could crop up. COVID-19 could rear its ugly head. I might need to- God forbid- call out a plumber or a lecky or something. That’d knock the dopey smile off my boat race. My Netflix could be on the blink, forcing me to interact with my kids for a change. Ah, I’m only joking there. My kids are actually pretty cool.

But you get my point. Not every day is made up of orgasmically good bacon sarnies and random funny chats in the barbers’ with strangers who intimately know the place where one entire half of your family originated. But today was one of those days and, for that, I’m grateful.