Head over heels – Alison Healy on cupid’s arrow

Irish mammies are known for dropping pearls of wisdom everywhere they go, and Kate Bush’s late mother Hannah was no different. When Hannah Daly emigrated from the family farm in Waterford to work as a nurse in England, she brought her wise insights with her. Kate Bush once heard her mother saying: “Every old sock meets an old shoe” and the phrase delighted her. It eventually made its way into her Moments of Pleasure song, complete with a reference to her mother.
The singer later told BBC Radio 2 that her mother thought it was hilarious when she played the song for her. “She couldn’t stop laughing, she just thought it was so funny that I’d put it into this song,” she recalled.
The genre-defying artist also used her mother in another song – evoking a scene that has often put the heart crossways in me.
It’s that moment when you awake with a jolt in the middle of the night and there is a small child standing silently by your bedside staring at you.
When she had a nightmare, the young Kate Bush would go into her parents’ bedroom and stand in silence in the dark, waiting for her mother to sense her presence and wake up. Imagine awakening to see a small Kate Bush standing in her nightdress in the dark, hair probably askew and clutching a teddy? After Hannah got over the fright, she would lift the bedclothes and say: “Come here with me now”. And so she asked her mother to voice those very words on the song And Dream of Sheep.
Kate Bush’s Irish mammy sounds like a rock of sense. Of course, she was right about there being someone for everyone.
There is indeed a sock for every shoe but sometimes socks have trouble finding shoes, and vice versa. And sometimes the socks have travelled a distance before they find their shoe, or should that be solemate?
That was the case for one couple who met in the strangest of circumstances. It was during that tricky time a few years ago when people all over the world were queuing for the Covid-19 vaccine. Among them were Linda and John, two strangers who lived at the Lakes at Stillwater senior living campus in Minnesota.
Linda was obediently standing on her blue social distancing spot when she felt what she called “a shift in the universe”. She hadn’t had the vaccination yet so that couldn’t be blamed as a side effect. When she turned around, John was coming towards her to stand on the next blue spot.
It seems that all the social distancing signs in the world were not enough to keep the senior citizens apart. After the vaccination, they went into a hall to sit for 15 minutes in case of a reaction.
They found that there was, in fact, an immediate, and very strong reaction, and again, it was nothing to do with the vaccine. They had both contracted a chronic case of lovesickness.
They got married the following year in the hall where it all happened, and the blue dot Linda was standing on was framed for posterity.
It would be nice to have a dramatic “How We Met” story, instead of telling people you met at a disco when slow sets were all the rage and you got free chicken and chips because of a quirk in the night-club licence.
One of the best “How We Met” stories unfolded under our noses this summer when the Villa Vie Odyssey cruise ship was grounded in Belfast for four months.
This is a residential cruise ship so some of the passengers will spend 15 years floating around the world.
A few of them headed home while waiting for the ship to set sail but Canadian Gian Perroni and American Angie Harsanyi were among the passengers who opted to spend their days wandering around Belfast. They fell into step as they walked between the ship and the city and while their ship was going nowhere, it was full steam ahead for their love affair. The couple are engaged to be married in April.
No doubt they visited the Titanic Museum during their perambulations and remembered the Titanic movie and the love story of Rose and Jack. Let’s hope the happy couple did not dwell on the fact that the ship sunk and the movie ended with the Kate Winslet character hogging a floating piece of debris while Leonardo DiCaprio’s character clung to it before succumbing to the icy water.
Rose’s sock may have found Jack’s shoe but when the going got tough, she kicked it off and found another shoe on dry land.