Who knows where the time goes?

For about five years I was an avid card maker. I have drawers, shelves, and magazine files worth of kit to prove it. Lately, I have lost my mojo and cannot seem to get it back. I don't know if the commuting I was doing was wearing me out, or I got sick of the cutesy projects, (though I liked some of the techniques) or whether I never really found a kindred spirit amongst the other makers. Maybe the lack of space...who knows? I am not that bothered. I have enough kit to last me the rest of my life (or sell) and creativity is a stubborn mistress.

However, my younger sister was about to turn 40, so naturally I pulled out all the stops to make this card, using a paper folding technique called tea bag folding. No actual tea bags were harmed during the making of this card.

Back in July 1972, we lived in Dublin, Ireland, and our mother was expecting her sixth child, with no husband in attendance (He had decided not to come home from Mexico for the latest birth, apparently). This must have been a grim time for our mother, who went to bed every night with her little blue attache case packed, just in case...

I got up early on the morning of the 6th July to go to the loo, and saw my mother sitting on the bed, case in hand, so I knew it was Time. Oddly enough, I just went back to bed, merely remarking to my younger sister that the baby was coming. I was eight years old. Mother's friend Moira picked her up in her blue Mini, and they raced through the traffic to the city centre. The baby was born almost as soon as they got to the nursing home.

Back at home, we children waited for the call and, when it came, we held hands and danced around the hall, shouting,

'It's a girl! It's a girl!"

All of us danced but one. My brother B sat down on the orange carpet and cried. Tears dripped onto his zip up blue nylon slippers. He already had three sisters, he said. What did he want with another? My Grandmother comforted him, telling him that this one would be younger than him, and therefore more biddable. She may have been wrong...

Later, we visited the nursing home and took turns to hold the baby girl, who ended up being called Tittlemouse, or Tittle, or Mouse, for years. Well, she was nearly born in a Mini...

I remember, over the next few days, standing by the window, looking out over the street. The room was various shades of cracked and faded brown, with linoleum flooring. My grandmother was constantly trying to shoo away a fly. The baby's eyes were blue, but one could see already that they would turn brown. The radio news was of Fischer vs. Spassky in the World Chess Championship. One of them was complaining that the powder blue carpets were putting him off his game. "I'll give him powder blue!" snorted my grandmother.

In 1996, I went back to Earlsfort Terrace to look for the nursing home, to view from outside the same room, where I had also been born. I expected to find the same nursing twins - The Gaffneys, and the same brown lino, the same smell of Milton.

The street was unrecognisable. Shiny new buildings rose all around me, and I think, though I cannot say for sure the Stella Maris nursing home had been swallowed by the Rothschild bank. Now, there's a place to be born!

Song, Who knows where the time goes?