On Hill of the Fairies

[If you would like a tune while you read this post, try this version of O'Carolan's "King of the Fairies."]

You can find "fairy hills" under various names all over Ireland. Sion Mills, a town near us just over the border means "Mill of the Fairy Mound." There's Sheean (Sián) in Mayo and Red Fairy Hill (Shru) in Westmeath.

Some of them are the sites of bronze age ring forts, like Knocknashee in Sligo.  (Knock, Cnoc = hill) (Sí, Shee = means the good people.)

A fairy hill in Leitrim is the inspiration of O'Carolan's tune. Though marred by an illuminated cross, according to Megalithomania there are three impressive passage tombs. It's also crowned by hawthorns, which are often called "fairy trees." 

In the Schools Collection of Irish Folklore you can read old tales of fairy hills all over the island. Sometimes they are topped with ring forts or tunnels. Many stories warn against sleeping on a fairy hill or disturbing the stones or paths. 

A farm in Leitrim contained a fairy hill, and Josie Murphy collected this description from her mother: 

We reside in a farm in Townaleck. It consists of thirty six acres of land meadow and grazing land. From the meadow we get hay which feeds the live stock we rear on the farm.

Part of the land is moss and the land nearby the lake is sandy which crops of potatoes can be raised on in abundance and it is land that is easily tilled. The animals we keep on the farm are four milk cows which supply us with milk, two heifers and a donkey. Most of the land is level especially the meadow land, but the pasture land is hilly and is overgrown with rushes and part of it with heather. The fields are built around with fences made by clay and stones. Then the fields are named in order that we may distinguish them.


One of them is known as the "fairy hill" a small green hill without rush or stone on it. It was supposed that this was the meeting place at night for the fairies. This field is of a very peculiar shape. It resembles in shape a bowl. Nothing ever grew on this hill only short blades of grass, and the old people used to say that foot prints and paths were to be seen in the morning, but the fairies were never seen only a few neighbouring men who one of them related to me this tale concerning the fairies who "played their pins on this little hillock many years ago."


One night when returning late from card playing, taking a rear-way home, as it being late in the night travelling nearby the little hillock, the gay laughter rang out. He stood stock still and with a prayer on his lips looked all around him in the direction from whence the cheery giggle sang and owing to an echo being in the hillock it seemed to him as if children were out playing.


After some time he looked at this ancient little spot and a tiny dancing party was visible. This was an exciting thing for the man and he spent the remainder of his night admiring the little objects in their green and gold uniforms. At last the man got tired of watching this picturesque sight and left his watching spot and decided to go up and catch a little fairy. The bright moon was shining and as the man softly stepped forward his shadow came to the place before him and at once the musician ceased playing and the dancing party vanished in a flash, and the man declares his tale is true. His name is Pat Mc Guire of Drungan, who lives in the next townland to us who told it.

There are two small fields known as "Pullan of the Shiodhs"[?]. There is the remains of an old forth in our farm, but many years ago my forefathers cut it away. It was superstition among the old people, that anyone who cut a tree in this fort something would happen to them. The fairies asserted a sort of claim over the place and one day a poor man being short of fire-wood went into this fort and cut a tree, and when cutting the tree he got a stab of a thorn in his finger, but thought this would not signify. After a few days the finger got worse and turned to poison and had to be cut off. The neighbours said on this occasion the fairies magic proved true. There are other field that tales are told about but at the present day I cannot relate. [link]

Here's a tale from Galway: 

In Errislannon once there was a hill called Fairy Hill. One night a lot of people were telling stories around a fire in a house. This old man listened very carefully. So he heard a story of a stone with gold under it on top of Fairy hill. The old man knew the stone very well and he went to get it the next day. As he went to lift the stone he got a cut on the hand, so a few days after he died. About a year after four men went up to the rock to get the gold so they heard a voice saying "Don't move me." Then one of the men said "I will get the gold," and as he went to lift the rock he fell dead. No one ever went near the rock, only a cow and the rock cut her on the leg and she died. It is said a big tree grew up over the rock and it was very big but no leaves ever grew on it. [link]

There's a Fairymont in Roscommon next to Lisacurkia, the townland from where my O'Callaghan great-grandparents emigrated.

There is a fort at the back of our garden in Fairymount and it consists of large white thorn and black thorn bushes. It is opposite another fort in Eden, it is a round shape and you can enter into it between the bushes. In olden times there were fairies in the fort and the old people used to see them kick football on bright nights in the field joined to it. There used to be an old woman with long teeth seen in the fort combing her hair. The middle of the fort is full with old rock. It is said it was the Danes that made the first fort. It is said that there was wolves in Ireland and the Danes used put their sheep into the fort for safety.

There is situated in the village of Fairymount a place called the "Giant's Bed." It is said by the old people that a giant lived in that village long ago, and that the tracks of his enormous feet are still plainly visible in the cave where he lived.
It is told also that when the giant went out anywhere, he used to carry in his hands large stones. He was so tall and strong that when he threw the stones on the ground, they would sink many feet into the earth. This is the reason that when men are cutting turf, they find many large stones buried into the ground, placed there by the forgotten giant. [link]


The old people often tell stories of imaginary people who it is believed lived in the country over a thousand years ago. It is believed that long ago a giant lived in a cave on the hill of Fairymount. One day he got angry and he grabbed at a piece of soil, intending to fire it at his enemy. He pegged it with all his strength and when it fell to the ground it had travelled three miles. It dropped in a field in Cloonarrow, a village in the parish of Fairymount, Co. Roscommon. It is believed that the giant's handful of soil was so big that it made a large mound. Although this is only a story old people partly believe in it and they repeat it time and again to children as they sit round their homely turf fires on Wintry nights. [link]

The Schools collections includes tales of Donegal's fairy hills.  

Some people built a house in Glenburn near Cnockglass with stones quarried from a "gentle knoll" (fairy hill). Afterwards fairy lights were seen in the mounds around the house. Every child born in the house afterward had some defect mentally or physically. Hare lip was one peculiar affliction.
[link]

There is a woman who lives beside us, and whose name is Cassie Doherty. One day, she picked bluebells in a fairy hill, and she broke some of the stalks. She went to bed that night, but in the morning there was not an any hair on here head. Its grew again, but it was never the same colour afterwards. link

We have a Crockshee on Hornhead near us. I've not yet heard any tales about it. 

I have seen it from the Hornhead road; you can see its round top poking above the hills left of center. I've heard you can hike up it, without incident, but until last week when I took I "wrong" turn, I didn't know how to get to the trailhead. 

We had a visitor a few days ago, and I decided hiking up Crockshee would be a suitable adventure for us, despite the rain and wind. 



It was super windy, but not too wet. The slope of the hill is about 70 degrees, which means crawling up holding on to the heather. 



View from the top. Tory Island sort of visible. 


View to the west. Somewhere in that valley are the antiquities mentioned below in the Megalithomania article about this place. 

Sunday, 13th March 2005It was here that I met a very knowledgeable farmer who told me a lot about the surrounding valley and its antiquities. I'll mention the ones I didn't manage to find here before talking about this monument. In the valley below there is a good fullacht fia. Above that is a very prominent hill with an artificial flat top known as Cashel Mor, which has a hill fort on its top. To the west of the valley is a very round-topped hill that really does stand out amongst its neighbours called Crockshee - The Hill of the Fairies. The slopes around the tomb are covered in mini-cairns, prehistoric walls and enclosures. There is also an odd structure at the top of the hill that consists of an oval enclosure with a dividing wall two-thirds of the way along it. At the base of Crockshee there is a structure known locally as The Druids' Altar. This was described to me as being a flat stone set upon several others, so it maybe a cist or a collapsed tomb.[link]

I hoped I might see a path to the "Druid's Altar" from the top, but didn't. Maybe another day when the weather is better. 

The wind nearly flipped me off the hill, so I walked down the leeward side. While heather covers the slopes, the top of the hill is a fine green grass. I asked my visitor if he'd like to have some quiet time and I lay down in a grassy hollow... I imagined I was in a round house with a fire in the middle, the kind of house Irish people lived in long ago. An old woman sang me a song. I neither ate nor drank, nor did I enter into any bargains. Just a nice friendly visit. 


View to the south with a cloudy Muckish, New Lake, and Tramore. 

Then we were ready to leave. We walked back to the car via a different route, on an old road that we saw from the top of the hill. 

We passed this old wall, and this white lump of marble caught my eye. 




It was then we saw this tall stone structure on the horizon. 

Maybe this was what they described in the Megolithomania site? 

You can see it too, right? 

We walked up the slope, then suddenly we were at the top, in only ten steps. The tall stones we saw from the bottom of the slope were only wee, not even up to our knees. 

What just happened? A trick of perspective, or were we smaller at the bottom of the hill near the marble stone and grew to our full height as we left it? 


No way to know for certain. But it gave me a laugh. 

Upheavals. December 12, 1989

This blog is about our life after we moved from Santa Cruz to Ireland. Though we are far away, we often think of home, and especially in each October: the warm afternoons, empty beaches, turning leaves, and how we felt after the earthquake of 1989. Here's an essay I wrote a few months after, 30 years ago. 


When the dancing ground frightens our feet
it is only the Goddess twitching in Her sleep
a hunting beast
Her dreaming hurts no one; it is falling stone that kills,
the inflexible fortresses we kid ourselves will last
are our own hazard upon the shifting land
and we fear every deep shudder will bring down some town in a storm of mortar and glass;
yet you know these minuscule adjustments only express the fierce inevitable desire of continent for 

continent, release strain; and we must live in tents

translucent, adaptable to time and tectonics
if we hope to live

"Geology," D.A. Clarke 

When you live a historical event, if you are like me, you want to read the history of it. When an October earthquake left Santa Cruz on the front page of almost every newspaper in the world, our damage, death, trials, losses, and sadness ceased being personal events and became history. There it was in the newspapers for all the lazy historians of the future to see.

If you are compelled to read the coverage of your personal up-close disaster by famous out-of-town newspapers, you're not reading them because you need the truth or the “story.” First you look for the mistakes, then the omissions. Then after a while, you start to remember what you read in those papers, and forget what you knew as it happened. And history changes. Your own history changes. You forget what was important to you at the time, because it wasn't in the papers. It wasn't written down. What was your first thought? Was it “Will the world series be cancelled?” Or was it, “Do we have enough apple juice for the children?”

A month after the quaketime, I read the October 18 and 19th editions of the LA Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the London Times, and the Fresno Bee. I was looking for stories about Santa Cruz. I found mistakes; I found out things that I hadn't known. I started to forget what my life had been and shifted, chameleon-like into the trained newspaper reader that I am. Then I asked myself questions until I came back to myself, and lived though yet further upheavals.

What the Papers Said

They say foundation as if it meant forever
that fragile concrete shell they lay down and lay money on
they forget that below foundation lies fundament
the hot black heart of things, dreaming of change
biding its time. they forget we are only sleeping
and build card towers, credit card towers, vying wildly for height and ostentation
building on the hide of the beast that sleeps
carving their little names in it, crowing.
six inches under this broken yellow line
She sleeps; five feet under your kitchen floor,
fifty feet under the crosswalk and ten feet
under the third rail?mere epidermal measures:
no tattoo or encrustation
diverts Her slow ballet: She dances, She speaks.

Santa Cruz didn't appear in the LA Times until the second day. Then we got a one-column side story above the fold which jumped to page 6 where there were small capsule stories about Santa Cruz, Los Gatos, Hollister and San Jose. The Santa Cruz story focused on the destruction of the mall, the two confirmed deaths on the mall, experiences of eyewitnesses on the mall, where the displaced were staying, reports on interruption of utilities, blocked highways, UC Santa Cruz ok with some injuries from falling books, and students now back in their dorms.


A photo essay on page 5 included the photo of the Shandrydan sidewalk with bricks crushing a car and a bicycle. Also a photo of the Ford's rescue. 

Page 8 had a story about Aptos mountain dwellers who were unimpressed with living at the epicenter. Apparently the poor LA writer was sent up there to talk to people who were scientifically at the center of it, but actually far away from the real event. But the epicenters didn't sustain damage. Earthquakes are not tornados. The folks up there didn't have much to say, their houses weren't wrecked and they had generators and well water and propane heat. "It's almost a festival here," one resident is quoted.

We were news in England, on the 19th. The earthquake damage in San Francisco was above the fold of the London Times and the event was referred to as the "San Francisco" quake. Page 2 had five stories. One headline about the rest of us ran: "Buildings in the whole town were swaying." In paragraph 6: "In nearby Santa Cruz and Watsonville, about 40 buildings collapsed. "You could see huge clouds of smoke going into the air." Mr Greg Higgins, who was driving near Santa Cruz, said, "It was complete pandemonium." The "town" in the headline refers to San Juan Baptista. 

There were five other stories about San Francisco mostly and California in general. The Times was interested by "our response": "The absence of panic was perhaps the most striking aspect of the 1989 California earthquake." An editorial confirmed my suspicions that they think we are crazy to live here where the earth moves.

The editors told Californians that it is a good idea to treat the

quake as a dress rehearsal. Curiously, the first paragraph said "One of mankind's oldest enemies struck the State of California on Monday evening," as if the movement of earth is adversarial. The back page continued the stories from the front, and included a map with Santa Cruz on it, and in the right place.

By the next day, however, the paper favored news from West Germany over the "SF quake." It was now found under "Overseas News" with three quake stories, but one about Japanese preparedness and another about the Chinese quake. The other California story was about how Californians are moving out of the state now.

Then there is the paper that doesn't know when to quit, the San Francisco Chronicle. The 8-page "quake edition" was very fun to read, especially since I know they had to resort to the lowly Macintosh computer to produce it. 

The Chron was obsessed with San Francisco, especially her bridges and her wealthy neighborhoods. Santa Cruz was the last county mentioned in a page 5 story called "Quake Damage County by County": three killed, several blocks on fire (not true) and numerous buildings collapsed throughout the county. Highway 17 closed. By the next day the paper was almost normal-sized, but still no mention of Santa Cruz county until page 6 in a story about the seven Bay area counties. Death toll was reported at as many as eight (wrong), a damage estimate in dollars (impossible to know), 40 buildings collapsed, 350 people in shelters (very wrong), water unsafe to drink. But on page 7, a very titillating story called "Astonishing Tales from the Epicenter" was all about Santa Cruz county except for a lead which is about Hollister, in San Benito county, miles from the epicenter. 

In a photo essay, a dramatic photo of Shockley's Jewelry and the car crushed by a tree was captioned: "People were killed at the Santa Cruz mall in a coffee shop (right). The sports car driver escaped." 

The Fresno Bee had the best coverage of any of the out-of-county papers I examined, extremely better; many of the stories contained more true facts and quotations than the Sentinel's. As I read these stories a month later, I learned things I hadn't heard of anywhere else. There were more reporters on the story, and the reporters talked with more people. The stories contained facts from public employees and politicians, which were not solely the duff handed out on "fact sheets" at press conferences.

In the October 18th edition, the lead story contained news from Santa Cruz, and clearly the devastation was much worse in Santa Cruz than in the Marina District, if not as immediately dramatic. There was even news from Capitola (eye-witness account of chimneys down) on the front page, before the story jumped to the back. Though it was reported that someone was trapped in a basement near the collapsed Cafe "Zitoh," everything else was fresh news, bright news, with lots of quotes from folks just like me who were there. 

The writers compared the damage at the mall with the damage at Coalinga a few years before. This kind of experience with a similar natural phenomenon is shown in the language of, and methods used to gather, the story. None of the other papers mentioned lowly little Coalinga. A reporter talked with someone who was on the mall during the quake who said "the mall looks like tanks ran through it," which is an accurate description. The reporter also spoke with a former Fresno resident who attends UCSC who watched the facades falling. 

They got quotes from state and local politicians in both Santa Cruz and San Benito counties. This story had eight reporters, which included two in Santa Cruz, one each in Gilroy, Hollister and Watsonville.

In the edition of the 19th, the Roasting Company vigil was below the fold but front page, nonetheless, with a photo. The story also contained information about damage to houses, people getting supplies, details of the Roasting Company collapse. The story was written by two reporters who were right here, obviously making good use of their eyes and ears.

In the same edition was another story about Santa Cruz on the back page. It is about Santa Cruz getting back to normal, price gouging, people sad about the loss of dishes, and how they just happened not to do something which put them in the right place not to be killed by falling brick. 

There were other stories about rich Fresnans who worried about their second homes in Santa Cruz county and the businesses they had invested in. Also a story about the Gottschalks here, a Fresno-based business.

The Bee continued its coverage for many more days, including front-page stories about the Phoenix pavilions and the starting of the town clock.

I Asked Myself Questions to Establish My Sense of History

still we twitch and speak random truths
in our uneasy dream
and unplanned gates appear in all their fences
They have not built the sea wall nor piled the rip rap
that will keep woman from woman; it is a tide they fight
that recurs. laying out our paths
with a straight rule and a razor
still runways crack, sidewalks buckle, and weeds
push stone aside; it is a seismic activity
that goes on regardless and underground:
conversations they do not hear

What did I learn about newspaper coverage? I learned that England saw only one day of major coverage. That when communication is cut, then the "news" isn't news. For example, The Bee had reporters here who had cellular phones and they could get their stories out. The Chron didn't, and I think the LA Times eventually sent someone down who was overwhelmed and didn't know the territory.

What was my experience when hearing this news for the first time? Almost everything I read in the newspapers I had first heard on the radio. For hour after hour we listened to the radio those first days until the power came on. We listened until we had to shut it off for listening obsessively, even when no news was new anymore.

I think that we listened so much to reify that our present stress, disruption, and chaos was related to some larger order. At the same time that earthquake radio focused our attention on the earthquake, it also distracted us from the upheavals that we could feel but were not being reported by anyone, not even ourselves. I think now that it would be a blessing to know that I didn't have to go to work tomorrow and could focus on being with family and friends instead. That is what I could have done those nights, we were not really in hardship, except for the aftershocks. But we didn't, we kept thinking that the outside world was more important than the inside one, the personal one, and let the radio define our conversation, our focus. 

This is also why I read every newspaper I could find. I really didn't have to; I didn't need news from the outside. I could have used the release from routine commitments and responsibilities as a miracle opportunity to withdraw from the world and focus on what is truly important.

Are these newspapers "my history?" Easy answer: no. The newspapers are not meant to be. They are the history of no individual, nor are they personal histories. These newspapers are what will be remembered in the future when a historian wants to "get a feel" for this disaster. She will not know the experience of one person unless she talks with one. Why should the experience of one person be important? Because that is how people experience history. One person at a time.

What was important to me during the time that this was being reported to the outside world? At the time I wouldn't have cared about what was in the papers except that they told me this all was important, so I believed them. Sure, I cared about the Bookshop inventory, but I couldn't focus on it—anyway, it didn't seem possible that Bookshop was totaled. The next day, after I went home, I worried about my house's future, my housemates' safety, did we have enough food, was I going to fly to DC on the business trip as planned, would the loan papers for my car come through the mails. These were big stories which were not in the news. I think that if someone at the time had asked, "What are the memorable events of this earthquake?" I would not have said "I wonder if my loan papers are going to get through the mails." I would have said something about the bookstore.

What was missing from the coverage? When I read these papers, I wish they had mentioned that the town wasn't leveled. Later, when I read stories which did, they read like Business Association flack.

The Real Story

you wake the dream in me and She twitches in my sleep
shattering concrete and diverting rivers;
the sudden changes and the slow ones
the walls that lean ponderously and fall, and the silence
and the shout of stone: She dances, She speaks.

All the papers missed it. I came close to not seeing it at all. The Real Story is that earthquake is an upheaval only on a physical plane, and that the Berlin Wall coming down a month later was part of a larger pattern of upheaval, breaking down, collapse, destruction of the Order, a rupture of all that constricts Creative living and the Creative spirit. The poems "Geology," and "Earthquake," which I have quoted in this essay, describe this larger, and Female, upheaval.

My astrologer told me about it ahead of time. "The full moons of October and November will be very intense," she told me in September. "For everyone, and you in particular." She doesn't predict earthquakes. She foresees "upheavals;" the dissolution of structure that is happening all around us, in all worlds, physical, political, social, spiritual, emotional. 

During earthquake time everyone spoke of the upheaval in their lives. They used sentences like "As if dealing with the earthquake wasn't enough?" relationships, new jobs, personal revelations—all changing. All the upheavals at the time were the earthquake. We watched newspapers and TV because it was the nearest representation we could find of what was going on in our lives, in our ancient brick walls, in our fences, in our chimneys. Physical manifestation of these changes in us that we might not want to be examining.

The earthquake time came for me in a two-year period of self-reflection and revelation. Soon after the quake I noticed barriers removed which had separated me from some of the best parts of myself. They have to do with writing things down, and the re-writing, crafting words together to make the finished pieces which give me ineffable joy.

Only since the earthquake have I "allowed" myself to record my random thoughts for no reason. I stop writing, or don't start, for two reasons. One reason pretends to be professional, the other philosophical. First, I don't write because I won't finish the piece, so why not work on something that is possibly publishable but unfinished, and besides, why start something new when there are all these unfinished pieces filling your files? Or philosophically, I tell myself that I need to live life, not record it, not try to get it all down and preserve it, but to just live it and not think about writing it down later while life is happening to me.

For years I have gone around and around on this. I talk about writing sometimes like others talk about giving up booze or bingeing on sugar. I am intolerant of such people and intolerant when I am talking about writing, thinking about writing, praying about writing, even writing about writing as I am now—but not really writing.

I remember a lot of anxiety around writing soon after the earthquake. I didn't keep a journal in the days after the quake; I wrote letters and kept copies of them instead. This was "permissible." 

But soon after the quake—and I mean minutes after—I reported it to myself. I took notes on everything I saw without self-censoring. I was working on my notes for my first draft of history, the one I will be telling for the rest of my life. 

A friend saw me downtown that evening. He told someone later that he saw me emerge from a cloud of dust in front of Ford's—taking notes.

I don't want to tell my "where-I-was" earthquake story. Just let it be known that at 5:15 p.m. on October 17, 1989 I was walking down Pacific Ave in Santa Cruz and I was taking notes:

Shockley's, Woolworth's collapsed

Palomar

Trees down

Payless shoes mountain of boxes

Discount records, collapsed

Trust building, most windows out

Lily Wong's, H'ween wigs in broken windows


Medico-Dental building one wall down, 2 stories gone

rumors of the Bay Bridge collapsed onto itself

people are trapped at Fords? Palace?

(listening to staff of Logos) 45,000 at Candlestick right now

no power, rush hour, millions in BART

right now, no power here

4 newspaper stands, Sentinel only one still vertical

Ford's totaled, all windows broken out

water pours down the Good Times building

BlueMoon/Folk Arts

rescue? at Fords

street cracked

head shop collapsed

Chunks of Del Mar on sidewalk

afternoon sunbeams through roof towards Logo's parking lot, dusty, dark empty

Fake rock at Alcapulco on sidewalk

rumor: Bookshop SC gone

Could it be Hollister quake?

Worlds series canceled

(at the Metro) All the busses came home

plate glass just didn't make it

curb (here a sketch)

sidewalk exploded

Laurel sidewalk broken and weird.

Jan was with kids. "shit was flying everywhere"

Do we have water? turned off gas. Chestnut/Laurel street full of gas

Fires in the mountains

6.9 on Richter scale

Bay bridge collapsed on lower deck

people in the water

do not use phones now leave them open

Where is Ellen?

Karen got water for neighbor

neighbor's house is right off its foundation, tilted like house at Story Land

Highway 101 Watsonville is impassable

Soquel buckled/car dealerships have broken windows

River levee sliding down, cracked

Riverside St.: a woman gathers "quakefall" walnuts

signs of normal life on power poles, rock bands, yard sales. weird now

Evil weird sunset, purple black, like a bruise

its very hot, weird hot

who was saying this was earthquake weather?

My old house lost its chimneys

Del Ray condemned

smoke from woods

Shoppers people left their baskets in the aisles

6:45: now it is cold and hot. Like swimming in a lake. I hope Ellen does have her kids tonight, she will be home.

Notes

What are you doing to me, as you tear me asunder?
Digging deep into my precious veins
Pouring poison into my oceans.
Woe comes to those whose greed exceed

Even my wildest nightmares
My forests are dying, my people are crying
Oh woe!

I feel a deep shaking inside
I feel a deep shaking inside
I have trembled and cities have crumbled
When I shake and roar, it is the end of the dream

Now re-awaken!
You will remember, remember

Remember the ghost of my bruised body
You will build a new world from dreams
With what you remember.

Dreams from dreams?
Wake up, oh wake up!

"Earthquakes"

(soundcloud link)

While I walked down the mall taking notes I wondered what right I had to do this, why I was, and if I should be. Was it appropriate for me to take notes on what my friends were thinking and feeling, right there in front of them?

I told myself that I was taking notes on the Mall because I knew that not everyone was going to be able to see the downtown that night and I was going to report to people what I saw. Now I see that this is how my whole life could be. Some people may be interested in what I have to say.

I realized with a shock days later that it is ok for me to take notes in a situation like this. In fact, it is ok for me to take notes whenever I want. It gives a shape to my thoughts, an order. I don't notice that my thoughts need ordering. But ordering them does give me good feelings and something to do.

I realized that I am a writer so it is ok for me to write. In the 45 minutes after the quake, my two "reasons" for not writing joined the rest of the rubble. I came so close to not writing down what I saw on the mall. My notes aren't as important as the writing was, and the acknowledgment. I heard many stories about close calls: "If I had been on the other side;" "If I had made one more step into the garage;" "If I had stayed later at work." I came so close to missing it all—if I hadn't taken notes.

Footnotes:

On footnotes: Discovering that I could use footnotes in this essay was yet another rupture in the restrictions around my writing. I feared the essay would be unstructured. The footnotes ended that worry and the computer made them possible. The underground and the subliminal are often the best places to seek the Real Story.

..."Geology" published in To Live with the Weeds, D.A. Clarke, Herbooks, Santa Cruz, 1984. Other sections of this poem follow. This is one of the best poems I've ever read.

...mall. Like most of the papers, they didn’t know that “mall” has more than one definition. Most reports left one with the impression that some vapid climate-controlled shopping mall had collapsed, and what could be the fuss about one of those biting the dust?

...displaced. "Displaced" not "homeless." "Homeless" are people without homes who are no longer newsworthy.

...Ford's rescue. But not the photo made infamous by the Sentinel. Dan Coyro took that photo and the editors responsible should be rebuked and taunted. The Sentinel published a full page above-the-fold color photo of a woman being rescued from Ford's with her leg bent at the calf at a 90-degree angle. Not only did they sensationalize this, but they sent out a caption in error; her leg was not amputated. (However, what is my responsibility in describing the photo so graphicly here? Maybe you have forgotten it, if you did see it.

...Macintosh computers. Macs network together more easily than IBMs and have better and easier publishing and graphics software. Yet big companies hold emotional grudges against it. Imagine. Against a machine. Producing the Chron on Mac was yet another upheaval.

...miles from the epicenter. Except Pajaro Valley, of course, the agricultural and Latino end of the county, where no one important lives.

...coffee shop. The Roasting Company was only three blocks to the right of Shockley's.

...press conferences. I remember hearing these press conferences live on the radio. KSCO would just put them on the air, no delay, no editing. We got to hear it first just like those big-city out-of-town reporters did. And we could see their methods, hear their inane questions, hear what they thought was important and know what we would be asking if we had the chance.

...Cafe Zitoh. This is a phonetic spelling, resulting from the reporter reading the story over the cellular phone to another at the Bee in Fresno.

...former Fresno resident. Probably a friend of the reporter. Personal contacts come in handy in disasters. My dad, who worked at the Bee, told me later that when he couldn't reach me by phone he talked with the reporter here to make sure that he hadn't heard any terrible stories about me. And my uncle in Hawaii called the stringer in Santa Cruz who works for the Honolulu Advertiser to find out word of me. My safety was their real story.

...the right place. This is one of the most important aspects of this whole situation. The Bee is the only paper that mentioned it, but did not make a big deal of it. I doubt the reporter was conscious of the ubiquity of this type of story.

...dissolution of structure. I prefer to call it The End of Patriarchy; other people call it by other names, names less charged. I prefer charge.

...permissible. If I had thought about it at the time, I might have talked myself out of this too. Since traditionally the history of women has been in our letters and our journals, since we have rarely been able to write memoirs or histories, I might have talked myself out of writing these too. But my desire to tell stories to my friends wins out. Of course, many men haven't been able to write their histories either, I know this. But since millions have, who cares if yet another does? Just look for female names in the newspaper. Most stories about women (who aren't celebrities) are really about dead bodies.

...Shockley's. A man stood gingerly in the doorway shouting to the dark rubble, "Is anyone in there? Is anyone there?"

...Payless shoes. (A Payless employee looking in at the pyramids of inventory; "Oh my god, Oh my god.)

...no power. I hadn't realized that the power was out until now.

...Logos Books. This sight touched me most deeply. Picture Logos from Pacific, the entire aisle from front window display to back door. Picture a skylight—but it’s not a skylight, it is a huge hole in the roof—illuminating the otherwise dark and unpeopled room from front to back. Picture shining, beautiful dust motes dancing in the golden light of October sunset.

...Jan with kids. I had arrived at my friends' house on Spruce St.

...River Street levee. At this point I had started walking to Ellen’s [my (ex)lover's], over Broadway bridge, up Soquel to Morrissey.

...Earthquakes. Recorded the LP Possibilities by Ova, (Jana Runnalls and Rosemary Schonfeld), Stroppy Cow Records, 1984. Distributed by Ladyslipper.

...something to do. In situations like this, it is also an escape from having to do other things, like taking care of people, or looking for someone who needs my help more than I need my own.

Favorite Hiberno-Irish words

This is such a great introduction to Irish words I commonly hear that I'm going to republish the whole thing for those of you who don't have Irish Times subscriptions. (source)

Up to 90: Ireland in our favourite words and phrases

From leprechauns, langers and eejits to boycotts, donnybrooks and Tories

Una Mullally

Which words did the Irish invent for our own use, and which ones travelled around the globe? From words emerging from the Irish language via Hiberno-English classics to unexpected words coined by Irish people, this history of Ireland in 90 words covers everything from anatomy and gambling to avocados.
1. ShebeenFrom the Irish “síbín”, this is the first of many words in this list related to general divilment and rúla búla. Perhaps nowhere was the concept of the shebeen more embraced than in South African townships, where they are an important part of the social and cultural landscape.
A history of Ireland in our favourite words: 2 – Gubu. Charlie Haughey, whose response to the discovery of the murderer Malcolm Macarthur in the attorney general’s home, in 1982, Conor Cruise O’Brien turned into the acronym. Photograph: Eamonn Farrell/Photocall

2. Gubu
The acronym for “grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented” can now refer to any political or legal wrangling. Conor Cruise O’Brien coined it as his pithy take on Charlie Haughey’s response to the discovery of the murderer Malcolm Macarthur in the attorney general’s home in 1982.
3. Begrudgery
Apparently still the default Irish disposition when greeted with another’s success and happiness. Feck them anyway. The Middle English word “bigrucchen” meant “to grumble about”; the Irish made “begrudge” a noun.
4. Sap
Eighteenth- and 19th-century Scottish and English schoolboy slang (“sapskull”, “saphead”) that the Irish took and shortened. Internet slang now occasionally reinterprets it as the acronym for “sad and pathetic”.
5. Craic
“Craic” journeyed from Middle English (“crak”) via Shakespeare to 18th-century Scotland (both crack) and was then adopted into Hiberno-English in the mid-20th century and given its Gaelic spelling. A disposition, a state of being, a sin to not be any, the craic – like many quintessentially Irish things, from St Patrick to chippers – isn’t Irish at all but is very much our own.
6. Mot or moth
From the Irish “maith”, meaning “good” (but also “well” and “like”), the term for someone’s girlfriend. The word for yer burd, as it were.
A casual Irish word for “mouth” (the toast “gob fliuch”, for example); also used for “beak”.
8. Hooligan
This almost certainly comes from a twist on the surname Hoolihan. In the 1890s the English comic paper Nuggets featured an Irish immigrant family called the Hooligans, depicted in a typically pejorative way.

9. Lock-in
The illegal period of drinking in a closed pub after hours that Saoirse Ronan blew the cover on when she tried to explain the concept to Jimmy Fallon last year.

10. You dig?
The jazz and beat slang about being hip to the groove comes from the Irish “tuig” – or, more accurately, “dtuig”, as in “an dtuigeann tú?”; the “d” is an eclipsis, or urú, before the “t” of “tuigeann” (“understand”). Ya get me?
11. Acushla
An old term of affection, from “a chuisle mo chroí” (“pulse of my heart”). Awww.
12. Béal bocht
An Béal Bocht, the novel that Brian O’Nolan published in 1941 as Myles na gCopaleen, parodied the miserylit of Peig and An t-Oileánach, but “to put on the poor mouth” was an expression before na gCopaleen also parodied the title of An Béal Beo, Tomás Ó Máille’s 1936 collection of Irish words and phrases.
13. Round
According to Condé Nast Traveler’s article “How not to look like a tourist at an Irish pub”, “If you go out in a group with a bunch of Irish people, watch for your companions buying rounds. It’s common here for people to buy a round for the group, then the next round is on the next person.” They left out the social ostracisation and lifelong character assassination that can follow for those who don’t get the round in.
14. Trad
A shortening of “traditional”; an entire music scene.
15. Poker
Possibly originating from the Irish “póca”, as in your pocket, or what’s in it.
A history of Ireland in our favourite words: 16 – Boycott. Capt Charles Boycott, agent for the absentee Mayo landlord Lord Erne during the Land War of 1878-1909. Photograph: Bullock Brothers/Sean Sexton/Getty

16. Boycott
From Capt Charles Boycott, agent for the absentee Mayo landlord Lord Erne during the Land War (1878-1909). Charles Stewart Parnell, as president of the Irish National Land League, kicked it off by urging people to ostracise anyone who attempted to take the farms of evicted tenants. Boycott became one of the first victims when he tried to evict tenants after they demanded a decent rent decrease following a poor harvest at Lough Mask near Ballinrobe. Stinger.
17. Donnybrook 
This term, meaning a very public quarrel, or “brawl”, isn’t exactly common in Ireland, but it crops up in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and North America. It emerged from the notoriously disorderly Donnybrook Fair, which began in the 13th century and ran for 500 years, and itself is derived from Domhnach Broc, or Saint Broc’s Church. (In place names “Domhnach” means “Church”. It also means “Sunday” – or, more accurately given its origins in the Latin “dies Dominica”, “the Lord’s Day”.)
18. Bog
The name for the peaty wetland found across Ireland is the Irish for “soft”.
19. Culchie
The pejorative Hiberno-English term that urban sophisticates use to describe their rural cousins. But where does it come from? Many have suggested “cúl an tí”, as in the “back of the house”: down the country you enter through the back door rather than the front; or, as servants, you entered the back door of your bosses’ homes. Another origin could be from the Co Mayo town of Kiltimagh, or Coillte Mach, with “culchie” emerging from the Irish word “coillte”, or “woods”. Either way, it only really became popular to describe people from the country in the 1960s, when Dubliners needed something to counter . . .
20. Jackeen
Those east-coast Union Jack-waving eejits #DublinForSam.
A history of Ireland in our favourite words: 21 – brogue. Photograph: Richard Boll/Photographer’s Choice/Getty

21. Brogue
Long before Gucci was designing shoes, this basic footwear made from hide was worn in Ireland, and was so commonplace it needed only to be called “bróg”, or shoe.

22. Leprechaun
The earliest known reference to a leprechaun is in a medieval story about the king of Ulster being kidnapped by three of the wily sprites and dragged into the sea. Sound. Although leprechauns appear in little Irish mythology, their international reputation as being intrinsic to Irish folklore was solidified by the 1959 Disney film Darby O’Gill and the Little People – and, of course, by Jennifer Aniston’s 1993 movie debut, in the horror film Leprechaun, tag line “Your luck just ran out.”
23. Baloobas 
A term originating from the name of the Baluba tribe, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mistaking Irish United Nations peacekeeping troops for European mercenaries, some of its members launched an ambush and killed nine Irish soldiers at Niemba, in Katanga Province, in 1960.
24. Slogan
From “sluagh-ghairm”, the call of a crowd (“sluagh” is now mostly “slua”), as in a battle cry. So “slogan” emerged from the battle cries of a clan.
25. Tory 
Oddly enough, the common term for a member of the British Conservative Party comes from the Irish “tóraidhe”, referring to a bandit. In the late 17th century Whigs were those who didn’t want James, duke of York, to succeed Charles II, as he was Catholic. The duke’s sympathisers became known as Tories.
26. Banshee
From “bean sídhe”, woman of the fairies / supernatural / elves, and an Irish contribution to campfire ghost stories.
27. Shamrock
From the Irish “seamróg”, meaning young clover. Our symbol, St Patrick’s way of explaining the deities of Christianity, Aer Lingus’s logo, and a squiggle on the creamy head of Guinness in Irish bars across the globe.
28. Kip
The state you left the place in, and another adopted Irish slang word, from Middle Low German via Middle Dutch, a kip being a bundle of hides – which is probably what was strewn across your bedroom floor if I could even see it under all those clothes.
29. Gowl
Could it be from the Irish “gall”, for foreigner? Or, more likely, “gabhal”, which has multiple meanings, including a fork in a road, gap, junction or, of course, crotch?
30. Gee
On that subject, this probably comes from “Sheela-na-gig”, or “Síla na gCíoch”, carvings of naked Irish women exposing their genitals, which are found across Ireland, primary on old stone churches, round towers and castles.
31. Puck
As in the character from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His name potentially comes from the Irish “púca”, which, although it generally means “ghost”, is slightly more complex than a mere spirit, and could also be a shape-shifter, taking the form of a horse, a goat or another animal.
32. Galore
As in “go leor”, many.
33. Deadly 
Following the trend of using ordinarily negative words to describe things positively – wicked, sick, insane, killing it – “deadly” is a quintessential contemporary Dublin word with which to signify something’s coolness. “Deadly” is used by Aboriginal people in Australia in the same way. It’s not known which part of the world began using it first.
34. Cute hoor
Pretty self-explanatory if you’re Irish, from “cute”, as in sly, and “hoor”, as in whore. Particularly aimed at those in business, politics and anywhere else that deals are cut.
35. Chancing your arm
A phrase that was born in 1492, when the Butlers of Ormonde and the FitzGeralds of Kildare were involved in a dispute that culminated in the Butlers’ going to St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, where they were followed by the FitzGeralds. When the FitzGeralds asked the Butlers to come out, so they could make peace, the Butlers refused, leading Gerald FitzGerald to suggest a hole be cut in the door, to offer his handshake – aka chancing one’s arm. The Door of Reconciliation is still there today.


A history of Ireland in our favourite words: 36 – scoop. The slang for a drink overtook “jar”. Photograph: E+/Getty

36. Scoop
Slang for a drink that was for a time ubiquitous in Dublin, as it overtook “jar”.
37. Sound
Emerging from British slang, and not exactly deviating from its original etymology of being in a state of health, as in “safe and sound”, to mean decent.
38. Soft day
Although this type of weather isn’t unique to Ireland, our description of it is. When rain is misty to the point of invisibility yet still wet, when there’s poor visibility and a hazy sort of cloud, when the temperature isn’t too cold, when the drizzle seems to linger in suspended animation.
A history of Ireland in our favourite words: 39 – quark. Murray Gell-Mann (above, at Cern) called his subatomic particles quorks until he noticed the line “Three quarks for Muster Mark!” in Finnegans Wake. Photograph: Cern

39. Quark
The term for a subatomic particle was inspired by James Joyce. Murray Gell-Mann, the American theoretical physicist who proposed the existence of quarks, spelled it “quork” until he came across the lines “Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark. And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark,” describing the sound of a gull, in Finnegans Wake.
40. Grand
The ultimate Irish response and affirmation that in any other context means something far . . . grander. As well as meaning “fine”, or just “okay”, “grand” can also mean substantial and pleasant, however, such as “grand stretch”, noting the brightness of an evening.
41. Session
Going on “the sesh” – as in going drinking, and possibly consuming other substances, followed by a party at someone’s house – has spawned a vocabulary all of its own. But could the term have emerged from another raucous Irish party, the traditional-music session?
42. Gallivanting
“That’s enough gallivanting for one week” may be a very Irish phrase – so much so that it has ended up on tea towels – but it comes from early 19th-century English (“gallant”), as a term for flirting with women, or “to gad about”.
43. Splitting the stones
As in the sun is . . . Comes from the Irish phrase “Tá an ghrian ag scoilteadh na gcloch.”
44. Gaff
This slang for “house” is especially common in Ireland, Manchester and east London. Its origins are uncertain, but one theory is that derives from a Romany word for a market town. In the 18th century it came to mean an inexpensive theatre or music hall.
45. Lash
Another word the Irish have attached multiple meanings to. To go on the lash: to go drinking excessively. Lashing down: raining hard. He’s some lash: a good-looking fella. Give it a lash: attempt something.
46. Nixer
The etymology of a side job, or a short-term gig for cash in hand, is unclear but surely has to be simply “nix” – from the German “nichts”, or “nothing” – with an -er at the end.
47. Naggin
The word for a 200ml bottle of spirits comes from “noggin”, a drink measure whose name is derived from the Irish “naigín”, meaning a small wooden pail.
48. Give out
To give someone a talking to, from the Irish “tabhair amach”. Giving out yards, gave out stink, and so on.
49. Mar dhea
A great sceptical Irish term, it essentially means “yeah, right” or “as if”.
50. Thick
It’s unclear when “being thick with someone” came to mean being annoyed with them, but it’s a common term.
51. Shenanigans
An Irish-American favourite, it certainly sounds as if it derives from Irish, but its origins are unknown. There’s a theory that it comes from “sionnach”, as in fox – perhaps to be sly or devious, or to mess around.



A history of Ireland in our favourite words: 52 – banjaxed. Photograph: Chema Alba/Moment/Getty

52. Banjaxed
A peculiar word, meaning broken beyond repair, that originated around the 1930s, but its etymology is unknown. The Scottish might be able to shed some light on it, given that to be “banjoed” means to be hit as hard as possible, and subsequently “banjoed” almost means wrecked.
53. Sheila
The Australian slang for “woman” comes from the Irish name “Síle”.
54. On the long finger
“Ar an mhéar fhada”, as in to postpone something; it comes from the Irish proverb “Cuir gach rud ar an mhéar fhada agus beidh an mhéar fhada róghairid ar ball”, which means “If you put everything on the long finger, then the long finger will be too short in time.”
55. Slew
Another word originating from the Irish for crowd, “sluagh”. See also word 24.
56. Feck
Less offensive than the other bad word, and popularised in Britain when Father Ted became a hit.
57. Whopper
Massive, and therefore great. Not to be confused with the burger.
A history of Ireland in our favourite words: 58 – tenterhooks. Dying cloth and then (left) drying it on tenter frames. Illustration: Jost Amman. Photograph: Universal via Getty

58. Tenterhooks
The hooks on a tenter, a tenter being a large wooden frame used in clothmaking. Fabric was stretched on the hooks and frame, giving rise to the saying “on tenterhooks”, as in to be in a state of tension. The hooks and frames were such a part of Dublin life that the city’s wool-producing district in the 16th and 17th centuries was known as the Tenters.
59. Jacks
Derived from a Tudor term for toilet – jakes – back in the 1500s.
60. Beour 
This term for a girl, attractive woman or someone’s girlfriend, which has various spellings, emerged from the term for “woman” in Shelta, the old Traveller language.
61. Langer
The ultimate Cork term, but where did it come from? Our favourite theory is the India-based Royal Munster Fusiliers being pestered by langur monkeys.
62. Yoke
It’s no wonder the meaning of this word is always shifting, given that it’s used as a catch-all term, from a collar that attached a plough to animals to pretty much anything – grab that yoke – to an ecstasy pill.
A history of Ireland in our favourite words: 63 – A1. Tina Kellegher as Sharon in The Snapper

63. A1
Roddy Doyle’s The Snapper predates the change in the Leaving Certificate grading system, but high praise is still A1, Sharon.
64. Malapropism 
Mrs Malaprop is a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 play, The Rivals, who misuses words, as in her request “to illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory”.
65. After
Are you after having your dinner, or only after washing your hair? The Hiberno-English use of “after” confuses other English speakers, but it represents the Irish conjunction “tar éis”. It makes sense to us, at least.
66. Turf
In English, German, Dutch and Icelandic it means a piece of earth covered with grass. In Ireland it means a sod or sods of peat, and there is no plural.
67. Pure
An intensifier to enhance the word following it. Pure sound, like.
68. The Shades
A term for police, often used to describe plain-clothes police, thought to have originated in Limerick, and may be related to their eyewear.
69. Hillbilly
The pejorative term for people living in rural areas of the United States, particularly around the Ozark Mountains (Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas) and Appalachia, initially related to the 18th-century Ulster Protestant settlers in the Appalachian Mountains. Some think the term comes from supporters of King William III, Billy’s Boys; others point to a Scottish word for companion, “billie”, combining with the hills both the Ulster and Scottish immigrants lived on.
70. Snug
A small, snug area of a bar where women who were less welcome in the main area of the pub could drink discreetly, as could others who wanted a private moment.
71. Hot press
The term for an airing cupboard that only the Irish use.
72. Spondoolicks 
A term for cash that has journeyed around American, British and Irish slang and could actually comes from the Greek “spondulox”, a type of shell used as an early form of money. James Joyce used the word, in its spelling spondulics, in Ivy Day in the Committee Room, one of the short stories in Dubliners, in 1914.
73. Eejit 
The Hiberno-English pronunciation of “idiot”, which we took and made our own.
A history of Ireland in our favourite words: 74 – avocado. Its name emerged from the Aztec or Nahuatl word for testicle. Photograph: iStock/Getty

74. Avocado
Although variations of the word had been written down for years (aguacate, alvacata and avocatas, for example), the first recorded used of “avocado” was by Sir Hans Sloane, the naturalist born in Co Down. He published a catalogue of Jamaican plants in 1696 in which he described the avocado, whose name emerged from the Aztec or Nahuatl word for testicle, because of its shape. Remember that next time you’re smashing one on some toast.
75. Monoideal
A term meaning fixating on or conveying only one idea, as coined by James Joyce in Ulysses, from the psychological concept of monoideism.
76. A rake of
A lot of, or many.
77. Whiskey
From the Irish word for water, “uisce”. Not to be confused with Scottish “whisky”

78. Yer man/Yer wan
One of the reasons referring to someone as “yer man” or “yer wan” is so interesting is that it has contradictory meanings. The first could be a reference to someone whose name or identity is uncertain or momentarily forgotten (“you know who I’m talking about, what’s his face, yer man from down the road”), the second a coded reference that intentionally omits the identity (“we all know what yer wan will think about that”).
79. Come here to me
Listen up and lean in, even though you’re right beside me.
80. Dose
An awful dose of an illness, as in a large measurement of something, but that can lead to having a bad dose itself, which in term can lead to someone themselves being an awful dose.
81. Hames 
To make a hames of something has something in common with “yoke” (see word 62). Again, it’s a term related to fastening collars to animals. The hames are curved pieces of wood or iron attached to the collar of a draught horse, on which you then attach the traces. Put it on the wrong way and, well, you’ve made a hames of it.
82. Cop on
This term seems to have taken the same route by which “cop” ended up referring to police, from the Old French “caper”, or seize. So “copping” something would mean acquiring it, and perhaps therefore became pared down to acquiring sense, but its origins are still a little muddy.
83. Spud
A pretty old word, dating back to the 15th century, that was used to describe a small knife, then various digging tools and, eventually, the vegetable itself. The term “pratie” comes from the Irish for potatoes, “prátaí”.
84. Bard
From the Old Irish “bard”, meaning poet or singer.
85. Minerals
In Ingenious Ireland: A County-by-County Exploration of Irish Mysteries and Marvels Mary Mulvihill mentions how Augustine Thwaites, the apothecary who founded Thwaites & Co, began making mineral waters in the mid-1700s. We can assume that Irish people’s use of “minerals” to refer to soft drinks and sodas comes from mineral waters. When its factory on Moore Lane in Dublin closed, in 1927, the company was taken over by Cantrell & Cochrane (now C&C Group). Ireland has an illustrious history of mineral-inventing. It’s claimed that Thwaites’s son developed soda water while studying medicine at Trinity College Dublin, and ginger ale was invented by the American doctor Thomas Cantrell in Belfast. Side fact: Club Orange was named after the Kildare Street gentleman’s club.
86. Bodge
Although in British slang this refers to a huge error, in an Irish context “no bodge” means “no bother”.
87. Smithereens 
From the Irish “smidirín”. 
88. Sleeveen
A sly person. The term is often used in politics or business to refer to someone who uses smooth talk to get their own way, or borderline-nefarious means for personal benefit. It comes from the Irish word “slíbhín”, which means a trickster, particularly a silver-tongued one.
89. Fooster
Trying to find your keys in your bag, forgetting your phone and then having to go back again for your wallet, messing around with a bunch of belongings, putting things in and out of drawers. That’s right, you’re foostering. Would you ever stop? Comes from the Irish word “fúster”, meaning fussy sort of behaviour.
90. Up to 90
Stressed out, agitated, unbelievably busy. Could it mean at 90mph (similar to “going ninety”, or reaching boiling point, or with a heart rate of more than 90bpm? For some reason, “up to 90” tends to be used more by Irish women than men.
7. Gob

The illegal period of drinking in a closed pub after hours that Saoirse Ronan blew the cover on when she tried to explain the concept to Jimmy Fallon last year.