In 1998, my family at home in Carrantanlass, County Galway, experienced our second Christmas in a row without electricity due to storms. We had Christmas dinner  by candlelight at my cousins next door. For about four days, we otherwise congregated in the kitchen, where my Dad had oil lamps lighting. The smoke from the lamps blackened everything so badly that the enormous Pyrenees Mountain dog had to be washed in the bath and my Mam had to repaint the kitchen ceiling when the power eventually came back.

On Stephen’s day, darkness ushered in once again and I sat at the kitchen table with an open copy book and a pen left in front of me. I decided to take them and write down the dialogue going around me, unbeknownst to everyone until they finally caught me out in the end. This was just another symptom of my compulsion to record. Today, while I am at home again in Carrantanlass, I wondered if I had any photographs from that powercut and was tickled to find a  photograph of my  Mam reading by oil lamp at the kitchen table, the very copy that I used to write the dialogue  just visible in the corner of the image. I still have the copybook, too. My handwriting is surprisingly neat, considering I was transcribing so fast; I can’t handwrite that well nowadays, now that all my writing is via phone or laptop.

I love reading back over it now – an entire, still-recognisable family dynamic reeks from the short conversations, including the cats and dogs who inhabited the house as equal as the humans. Thirty new books arrived in the household that Christmas, as gifts: most of us were avid book readers. I’d like to say we still are, but I know smartphone technology has changed how we read –speaking for myself, certainly; we’re more likely to be found with our noses in iPhones as books now. Marx Brothers references abound. My aunt brings the local news, the better of any professional roving reporter: still to this day, my parents need never leave the house to know what’s going on beyond.

These are the unwitting players.

Mother                Catherine
Father                  Aidan
Carmel                 Aunt
Adrienne             Me                         (19)        transcribing the following dialogue
Alan                      Brother                 (18)
Alicia                    Sister                     (16)
Aaron                   Brother                 (13)
Padraic                Cousin                  (12)
Tomás                  Cousin                  (11)
PETS
Extremely large dog
Éanna, cat (4)
Eire, kitten

Alicia and I sit on benches on either side of the kitchen table. Carmel sits at the head of the table. Aidan sits beside the oil range, which isn’t working due to the powercut. A gas heater is lighting on his other side. Mother is making supper at the gas cooker. Alan, Aaron, and Tomás are in the spare room down the hall. Padraic has just gone home to next door.