Life

Nuala McCann: Pictures of Septembers past embroidered in the memory

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann is an Irish News columnist and writes a weekly radio review.

A series of questions about embroidery stitches put Nuala at the top of the University Challenge leaderboard
A series of questions about embroidery stitches put Nuala at the top of the University Challenge leaderboard A series of questions about embroidery stitches put Nuala at the top of the University Challenge leaderboard

THE stars were aligned as we watched University Challenge the other night. By that, I mean, there was a whole question I could answer that none of those so-called bright sparks had a clue about.

It was not a huge mathematical equation – I usually shout "One" for those answers and sometimes, it's right.

It wasn't astrophysics or even the history of the Weimar Republic.

No, it was the embroidery stitch question.

Yes, that old herring... that's a stitch too.

The picture round in the quiz featured chain stitch, blanket stitch, French knot.

Nailed every one. Bang, bang, bang, all right. But is it really something you should boast about?

It was worth it to raise one eyebrow à la Paxman and proffer a little mock surprise at the teams' sheer ignorance. I mean, daisy stitch, I ask you...

Embroidery and art bring me back to mellow school afternoons when we forgot about the trauma of mental arithmetic.

Maths was for early morning.

The teacher would stand at the top of the class and rattle out sums at us like an ak-ak gun.

He who hesitated over five times nine or eight times eight fell hard.

Compared to that, getting out your embroidery sampler was a time of rest. Bear with me, I'm channelling my inner dinosaur now.

Just thread your needle, bend your head over your cloth, stitch and stitch.

What's not to like?

There's a simplicity about it and a sense of community in a class of stitchers. It's the Jane Austen world after the gentlemen withdraw for a post dinner brandy... A space in your head where you're creating, not thinking. It speaks to the soul.

I was rubbish at art but the joy of a blank canvas and the fun of daubing it with splotches of paint sang to my soul.

What is it about getting lost in creativity that shuts down the voices in your head, that leaves you standing alone before your easel, the divine creator in your own little universe?

It's losing yourself that matters, not judging the outcome.

Down through the alleyways of memory, I wander in search of the joy in the moment.

There he is, our small child crouching at the water's edge, building a sand castle as the waves lap in on a mellow September day in Donegal.

Far away, my mother walks the shore line, wrapped warm in her fleece.

Back in that long ago, it's Christmas, father and son sit cross-legged on the bedroom floor surrounded by Lego bricks, a picture of a Star Wars battle ship and the whole day ahead of them. Oh, easy for George Lucas - he just had to make the films.

On top of the bookcase is a Viking boat – each paddle fashioned from a cocktail stick and cut paper, each shield individually painted.

There is a painted mask of a tiger so beautiful that I couldn't believe I'd married an artist.

Not only walls and ceilings, he paints faces too - he made our son into a Halloween skeleton that freaked me silly and painted a whole party of six-year-old tigers, only baulking at the kid with the very runny nose. There is always one.

And it's September; it's back to school time.

I know because there is a queue outside the shoe shop a mile long filled with the squall of wailing youngsters and parents who can't believe the price of a pair of shoes.

In the long ago, a kindly shop assistant reasoned with me that although the shoes were in the sale and buying two pairs seemed like a wonderful idea, children's feet grow at speed and he wouldn't get much wear out of two the same size.

August meant running around for school uniforms and shoes and books for our boy; September meant a return to trusted routine.

There was joy in the rhythm... places to be and things to do.

Long ago Septembers brought a new pencil case, a set of freshly sharpened coloured pencils, a red pen and a ruler, the snowy landscape of a new exercise book, not a blot in sight.

It was a fresh start, a new beginning.

This September, we walk the park on hazy mellow days.

The paths are strangely empty of children... all back in their warm schools.

But laughter echoes down the empty alleyways and, as luck would have it, there's no queue at the coffee van.