Grainne

Well, I was unhappy today because I left the house with neither camera nor cell phone, so was unable to take a picture of our little lunch group...and we had such a good time sitting there for nearly two hours at the University Retirement Community deli.

The reason for the lunch was to get together with Grainne Wilson, who is from Ireland. Grainne made friends with a couple from Davis back in the 1970s, when they were spending a year in Dublin. They invited her to come and visit them, and that has evolved into her coming at least twice a year to Davis, where she house sits, dog sits and does...I don't know what all...for friends she has made here.

The photo on the right is a photo I took when we had lunch a couple of years ago. She is here with my friend Joan, who was also at the lunch today, along with three other Davis women I have known for decades -- another Joan (whose kids are good friends of ours), Pat (who, with her husband was a member of the Davis Comic Opera Co.) and Judy (whose kids also went to school with ours).

For her 60 birthday, last year, a group of some 80 "Friends of Grainne" (FOGs) held a big party for her and some of her relatives even traveled from Ireland to be here for the event--and to see what the lure to Davis sometimes three times a year was.

Grainne reported today that when they left here they said they understood ... and she told them not to come back again, because she didn't want them taking the attention that she had been getting.

The picture below was from an article that ran in the Davis Enterprise about her 60th birthday.  I think this was the birthday where a bunch of FOGGIEs bought a bench in Central Park, dedicated to her ("See?  You don't have to be dead to have a bench!" she says, with delight).  She got to choose the quote that went on the bench and she picked the last line of a poem by Yeats at the end of his life, contemplating portraits of his friends at the Municipal gallery: 

Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends. 

In truth, I came late to friendship with Grainne, and I'm not really a official FOGGIE, though I have met her at several parties, enjoyed chatting with her, and have had lunch with her a couple of times on her recent trips here.  Demands on her time when she is here are great and I felt privileged to be a part of this lunch group today. I always enjoy her, especially because, as an Irish woman, she tells a great story.   And she had lots of them today.

 

Joan S. asked her what she had been doing while here this time and she recounted a trip she had taken to Santa Cruz where she discovered that every Saturday a group of some 30 or more ukelele players gather and just sit around and play for awhile.   She loved the experience and told us about a famous British ukelele player, George Formby, and his most famous song, "When I'm Cleaning Windows," which Joan C immediately called up on her iPad so we could all hear it.  Now I want to go to Santa Cruz some Saturday and sit in on the jam session by all those ukelele players.

She also regaled us with tales of the various troubles which have befallen pets she is caring for this time (including one dog apparently so intent on chasing a squirrel that he didn't see a tree and ran smack into it).  The thing about seanachais (Irish story tellers) is that they can make the most mundane stories delightful. 

I'm sorry that I had no camera today, because it was such a fun group.  But in place of a group photo, I can now forever remember George Formby and the deightful Irish woman who introduced me to his music.