Everyday magic

I met up with an old friend yesterday. He had just published a book and was looking well. As well as could be expected given his circumstances. We met at Esporta, this fitness chain on the edge of Belfast, and just chatted. Catching up. It wasn't the most atmospheric of places, but it was a good place to share a pot of tea and a bun.

Our lives are amazing. In this little corner of the globe someone is bringing up a family and someone else is going to be on a boat for two weeks doing a marine survey. Back home my mother is sewing a bag from the remanants of a curtain and my dad is doing sudoku online. Oisin is watching the Simpsons and Ghin is preparing for bed. My sister is about to wake up on the other side of the world, to get ready for work. She will teach classroomfulls of boys. Are our lives not amazing?

And it is this quality, of how it is all tinged with magic, the edges of the pages, how in everything, when we stop to truly look at it is fringed with wonder. It is this that keeps me in hope. That in a year's time, these magical edges will seep into the very centre of my life, that once again they will be allowed to inviegle their way into the core of my existence so that even the humdrum, the everyday, the routine and ordinary, the very soap bubbles that grace the dishes in my sink will be bright kernels of poetry, will be a cause of celebration, as i arrange those plates with liberty.