1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge (15 page)

‘Don’t be so silly, you don’t want a duck egg.’

‘I do, I want to buy this duck egg off you.’

‘No, now come on, what would you want with a duck egg?’

Whatever happened to the aggressive hard sell? I couldn’t buy this bloody duck egg off him until I could prove that I really needed it. And I couldn’t, so the duck egg remained in the delicatessen until a more suitable home was found for it.

The one hotel I enquired in was full, but I didn’t like the look of it much anyway. However, we needed refreshing after the drive so Antoinette and I had a quick drink in its dingy bar where I noticed a sign which read:

STRICTLY NO SINGING

Dave, the drunk from last night, must have been here recently. I had never seen a sign like this before, and it struck me as rather harsh. I mean, you may as well go the whole hog and have a sign up saying:

STRICTLY NO HAVING A GOOD TIME

The need for the sign reflected an admirable Irish character trait, and that is—when the Irish get drunk, they sing. I had already witnessed this in Hudi-Beags, and although it wasn’t the most pleasant experience, it was tolerable enough. Signing is preferable to fighting, which is probably why the audio cassette of Ali versus Foreman has been comprehensively outsold by Frank Sinatra’s
Greatest Hits
. It would certainly be a step in the right direction if pub drunks in England forced you into a corner and sang Elton John’s ‘Saturday Nighfs All Right For Fighting’ instead of treating the lyrics as a set of instructions. Singing, however poor in quality, is always preferable to having the shit kicked out of you. (With the possible exception of Chris de Burgh.)

It hadn’t escaped Antoinette’s notice that here in Sligo I had failed to fall on my feet.

‘So, this ‘faith’ of yours hasn’t exactly come up trumps with accommodation.’

‘Not yet, no.’

‘Perhaps it would help if you knew what it was you had faith in?’

‘Oh, one doesn’t want to worry oneself with unnecessary details.’

Antoinette was still a sceptic, but there was time to convert her.

‘You know, I think I
do
know what I have faith in. I have faith in the fridge.’

I sounded like a man who was becoming delirious. Maybe I was. Perhaps the excesses and surreal events of the last few days had taken their toll.

‘You too can have faith in the fridge,’ I said, each word edging me closer to committal. I wasn’t an impressive proselytiser and you needed to be when you were asking someone to have faith in a fridge. During the car journey I had expounded the credo that wherever you go, good things will happen to you, provided that you truly believe they will. As we sat in this third-rate establishment where not even a natural expression of human joy like singing was permitted, it appeared the validity of my philosophy was in question. Then it came to me.

‘Well ask the man in the delicatessen.’

‘What?’

‘Come on, finish your drink, let’s go and ask the man in the delicatessen.’

I was testing this poor girl’s levels of tolerance to the very limit, but her protestations weren’t vociferous enough to prevent a return to the delicatessen and a question for the elderly proprietor.

‘If you could stay anywhere in the Sligo area, where would you stay?’

He wasn’t remotely taken aback. I had thought he would be expecting me to have another crack at purchasing the duck egg.

‘Expensive or not expensive?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Have you got a car?’

‘Yes.’

I rather boldly assumed that Antoinette wasn’t going to tire of my indulgent behaviour and dump me and my fridge on the streets of Sligo.

‘Well, Strandhill is very nice.’

‘Is that where you would go and stay, given the choice?’

He thought for a moment. ‘Yes, I think it is. You could try the Ocean View Hotel, or there are a couple of bed and breakfasts down on the front’

§

And very nice they were too, overlooking a broad expanse of sandy beach complete with panorama of evening sun setting over the Atlantic Ocean. I resolved that this was the place for me, the presence of a nice looking pub within spitting distance having no bearing on my decision. Both B&Bs had vacancies, but I plumped for the one which had bathrooms en suite, deciding that it was worth the two extra pounds, if only to spare other guests the sight of a half-naked drunk struggling to the toilet in the middle of the night.

When Anne Marie, the lady of the house, had accepted me as a guest on her premises, she had been affable enough, but when I began to wheel my fridge up the front path, and she discovered the true nature of my identity, her demeanour altered and I was confronted with an insanely grinning woman.

‘My God, it’s
youl
They’ve been telling people to look out for you on North West Radio. Well done, you made it to Sligo then.’

Apparently so.

‘Come in and have a cup of tea.’

I smiled at Antoinette who looked back at me resignedly.

‘Okay, I have faith in the fridge,’ she said, rather magnanimously.

The three of us took tea together in the living room and I offered my well versed replies to the string of questions which Anne Marie fired off at me. Why are you doing it? When did you start? Is it hard to get a lift? When she went to fetch more biscuits, Antoinette, who was now a devotee of the faith, demonstrated her new-found fervour.

‘So, are you going to take the fridge out tonight?’

‘What?’

‘It’s Friday night, you can hardly leave it on its own.’

‘Are you suggesting that I take it out to the pub?’

‘Yes I am. And if you do, I’ve just got to see it.’

‘Haven’t you got to get to your friends?’

‘They can wait. It’s not every day you see what happens when a man walks into a pub pulling a fridge behind him.’

I wasn’t in a position to say the same.

§

And so Antoinette’s friends had to wait, because their absent guest was taken up with the important business of laughing at a man pulling his
date
towards the Strand pub. In some parts of the world, a stranger pulling a fridge on a trolley into a bar on a Friday night might be a recipe for a good kicking, but here I felt it more likely that if set upon would be held down, and sung to.

Antoinette opened the door and I proudly marched into the pub, the heads of those at the bar turning towards me in unison, as if following the flight of a tennis ball at Wimbledon. A man with a beard who was enjoying a quiet drink with his girlfriend, looked down at the fridge. His face lit up and his eyes sparkled like those of a child at Christmas.

‘Well, if it isn’t the man with the fridge?’

He offered his hand, and I duly shook it and said, ‘Hello, my name’s Tony. This is Antoinette.’

He nodded and turned to his lady friend. ‘Mary, have you heard about this fella? He’s bringing a fridge round Ireland.’

‘Jeez, what an eejit What’s he drinking?’

It really was that easy. My new ‘friends’, Willy and Mary took us under their collective wing and introduced us to everyone they knew in the pub. With frightening predictability, I was involved in another ‘session’, with drinks, conversation, and hospitality flowing like flood water. Amongst the enthusiastic gathering who were now around me, I noticed a big man with blond hair tied in a ponytail, eyeing me with interest He waited for the initial hubbub to subside and then approached me, full jug of lager held proudly aloft before him.

‘I’ve heard about what you’re up to and I just wanted to congratulate you.’

‘Oh thanks.’ I thought for a moment ‘What for?’

‘Look around you. Everyone is having a damn good laugh about you and your fridge. You may not know it but you’re spreading joy.’

I was in the company of Peter, whose loose-fitting; clothes of a predominately reddish pink hue led me to believe he was something of a buddhist. We talked, laughed, bought each other pints, and it soon became clear that we were coming at life from exactly the same direction. I knew as little about his faith as I did about my own, but he clearly
understood
what the fridge journey was all about, and gave it credit where I had never thought credit was due. It was nice to hear how you were transcending the material’ from someone who had a full pint of lager and a fag on the go.

Antoinette came and joined us. She was either having the time of her life or she was trying to postpone contact with her friends’ as long as possible.

‘I’m having the time of my life,’ she said, clearing that one up right away. ‘I’ve just met Bingo. He’s the manager of this place, and you’d never believe it but I interviewed him for a TV show in 1988 after they had the storms up here. You’ll meet him in a minute, he’s insisting that we have meals on the house, so he’ll be over with a menu.’

Bingo. A great name, and one that in my present circumstances it seemed appropriate to shout My numbers were most definitely coming up.

Antoinette fell under Peter’s spell.

‘He’s wise, isn’t he?’ I whispered to her, and as I did so he demonstrated his wisdom with a visit to the lavatories to create more space for lager.

‘He’s certainly got a calmness about him,’ said Antoinette, ‘and there are some questions about his philosophy which I want to ask.’

‘But what about your friends—’

It was too late, she had fallen victim to a stealthy advance from Michael, and was now beginning the smiling and nodding that a conversation with him involved. Michael was
almost
the Strand pub’s drunk in residence, fulfilling all the criteria required, but for the fact that he was mobile. Though shaky on his feet, he was still able to move freely about the pub and ensnare innocent drinkers, offering a long-winded, barely intelligible and uninformed opinion on absolutely any subject Antoinette’s eyes glazed over and, with laudable disloyalty, I sidled off, smirking.

Leaving it long enough to make it look like I wasn’t copying Peter’s idea, I set off for the toilets. It was a good forty minutes before I made it back, interest in my fridge adventure apparently having gripped the pub’s clientele, and I felt obliged to offer each well-wisher a certain amount of time. It would have been churlish to have done otherwise, and I found I was now benefiting from what I had learned from Prince Charles, which I attempted to implement, only with less hand clasping. When I got back to Antoinette, Michael had been sidelined somehow, and Peter was in full flow.

‘You see, life is little more than a dream, the world isn’t a physical reality, but a three-dimensional illusion. Our left side knows this, but our right side takes the materialist view. Our left side knows that life is a chosen adventure in consciousness. We are conscious beings who have freety chosen to be physical. Consciousness didn’t emerge from matter; matter emerged from consciousness.’

At this point the efficacy of his enlightened peroration was undermined by someone offering him a pint of lager. He gave the thumbs up and mourned the word Carlsberg. Probably. He continued, ‘You see everything is interconnected—all energy, all consciousness. There are no ‘separate’ objects or ‘separate’ beings. Time, space and separate-ness are illusions. So, nothing actually exists.’

As he said this, a pint of lager was passed to him, which for something which didn’t exist, he looked far too pleased to see.

‘My fridge exists,’ I said defiantly.

‘Ah well, I’ll not argue with that.’

We all looked at it sitting happily by the door. It had grown tolerant of its master’s excesses. Tonight its patience was going to be tested to the full.

§

‘Are you sure you won’t let us pay for those, Bingo?’

‘Absolutely not I hope you enjoyed your meals.’

‘Oh yes, they were lovely.’

Bingo was a handsome man, probably in his early thirties, who seemed responsible and patient. Maybe he looked that way because he was working in an environment where almost everybody else was half cut. He put two liqueur glasses on the bar which were filled with a black drink with a tiny white head on top.

‘They look like little pints of Guinness,’ I said.

‘Close. We call it a baby Guinness,’ replied Bingo. ‘It’s a mix of Tia Maria and Baileys. Try it.’

I took a sip. ‘Mmmmm. Lovely!’

‘Tony had better have mine,’ said Antoinette, pushing hers towards me, ‘I can’t drink any more if I’m going to drive, and I had really better be going, my friends were expecting me hours ago.’

‘I was beginning to doubt if your friends existed,’ I said.

‘According to Peter, they don’t Still, I’d better go just in case. Ill see you tomorrow.’

‘Will you?’

‘Yeah, Peter is going to do some reflexology on me. So I’ll call past your B&B and see how you’re doing at around eleven. Don’t drink too much.’

I already had, and as Antoinette fought her way out of the now crowded pub, another pint arrived from somewhere, and I now had three drinks in front of me.
And
Michael. .

‘Do you know what my cure for a hangover is?’ he said, the sight of my immediate drink obligations obviously prompting the subject.

‘No.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you.’

Yup. I had expected as much. What was it going to be? A pint of water before you go to sleep? Two aspirin as soon as you get home? Of course not. I was way off beam.

‘One Drambuie just as you’re on your way out to the door.’

‘What?’

‘A Drambuie just before you go home.’

I shook my head in disbelief. To prevent the ill effects caused by excessive alcohol, this man was earnestly promoting the taking of one more alcoholic drink.

‘That’s an interesting one.’

‘It never fails.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

The pub closed at around 1 am, but there seemed to be no effort on the part of the management to remove me. I had survived some kind of arbitrary selection process and was one of the drinkers privileged to be part of a ‘lock in’. The net had been thrown quite wide, seeming to incorporate around half the pub’s previous occupants, but those of us who remained, Eke golfers who had ‘made the cut’, felt the need to celebrate. Other survivors included Michael, naturally enough, and Peter, who had moved on from his earlier metaphysical conjecturing, and was discussing surfing with Bingo.