mns  2008-11-05 13:06   

They came. They destroyed my house and then they left. So long tenants, and thanks for all the silverfish.
That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. I must admit I don’t feel stronger. I just feel exhausted. It is four months since we moved back to Dublin to repair the damage, and in that time we have three rooms up and running but found we had no choice but to replace the kitchen. It wasn’t just the insects, or the destroyed electrical apparatus (fridge, cooker, dishwasher), it was also the burn marks in the worktops and the fact that they had split, water had got in and they had swelled and separated. Getting the kitchen replaced has meant that we have had to put a lot on hold until next Spring, but we are just coming to the end of this phase and are going to get on with our writing and enjoy Christmas.

There are wonderful things about being back in Dublin. I sit at my desk overlooking the garden and it is full of birds and the leaves have almost all fallen from the trees, and today the sky is blue and clear and I feel happy.

Of late I have thought a lot about happiness and about not always understanding that I am happy until one more awful thing happens and I realise that the happy moments slipped past while I was not looking.
I was sitting in the car last week waiting for JC who was at a meeting. I was reading Indian Summer (if you have the vaguest interest in the Raj and the incredible changes that took place in India in the last century, then do read this wonderfully written historical account of events there) and I was totally engrossed in the book. I was happy but I didn’t realise it until suddenly someone drove into the car and my peaceful half hour came to an abrupt and noisy end.
Nothing happened that cannot be repaired which obviously is great, but like when any accident occurs there are irritating consequences, getting estimates, feeling shaken and then the realization that I had been totally happy just prior to it and I hadn’t really known it.
So as I sit here writing this I am now conscious that no matter what is happening around me, and all of the awful things of the last four months, I am happy. The sky is blue. The bird feeders are full. The garden is full of birds. I am not going to fret over the rest of the damage done to the house and the fact that we have neither the energy nor the time to do more at the moment. I sit here with my espresso and I can hear Rachmaninov’s music wafting through the house from JC’s study, and I feel totally at peace.
Today I rejoice that my German publishers have told me that they have sold 15,000 copies of Ohne Eine Spur (which is Missing, my second novel). I rejoice because an Italian student has just done her PhD on me and The Lost Garden, and she sent me a copy of her thesis and I was amazed that someone could find so much to write about me and my work and I was and am so pleased.
There is happiness in a single moment and I am very glad to realise that.