1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge (19 page)

It was a beautiful room too, with splendid views over the River Moy, thanks to the elevated position of the guest house at the top of a steep bank. I thanked Marjorie again for her kindness.

‘Think nothing on it, Tony. When I heard what you were doing I just had to ring the radio station and offer you a room. I think it’s a great idea.’

Of course it was. I had never doubted it.

It was close to 8.30 when I got my head down for a couple of hours’ nap.

When I awoke from the deepest of sleeps it was only 8.45.1 got up to go to the toilet and looked out of the bathroom window, and saw the sun shining on the river. From the east. It was morning. I had napped for twelve and a quarter hours. And I felt rather good for it.

‘Did you sleep all right?’ asked Marjorie, at breakfast.

‘You could say that.’

Having taken note of my choice of breakfast, Marjorie shuffled off leaving me to admire the view of the river and chat to the other guests. I surveyed them and elected not to bother. There were three of them, a young married couple, and a lone obese German man, and they were all sat at one table together and clearly not having a very comfortable time. They were saying absolutely nothing to each other and their silence seemed to have a terrible stranglehold over them. The sound of their cutlery clinking on their crockery echoed round the dining room and seemed to be amplified tenfold. It became apparent that for all of them, the task of introducing words into the proceedings was becoming, increasingly hard with each passing minute. They hung their heads over their plates with grim determination and resolve, knowing that the sooner their food was eaten, the sooner the whole unpleasant experience would be over. I was glad I wasn’t sat at their table.

Marjorie’s voice seemed deafening when she arrived with the most wonderful plate of breakfast. Over tea, the previous day, she had told me that she had written two cookbooks, and even with as simple a meal as breakfast, she clearly wanted to demonstrate her skill in the culinary field. I had no objections, smoked salmon, tomato, and beautiful fluffy scrambled egg suited me just fine. As far as I was concerned, she fully deserved the Michelin One Star she had told me she craved. But what’s the big deal there? I have never understood the need to have one’s cuisine endorsed by Michelin. Who cares what they think? No one is looking for food which corners well.

Marjorie was knocking on the door of middle age, but had the impressive zeal for life of a much younger woman. After the young couple, and the now even more obese German had fled the dining room for the sanctuary of their rooms, she explained how she and her husband had separated, and how she felt she was undergoing a new start and was more positive than ever about the future.

‘I’m going for it!’ she said. ‘I think that’s why I knew I had to make contact with you, because with what you’re doing, you’re going for it too.’

‘Right.’

I knew what she meant, but I had never expected my fridge journey to be used in comparison with a marriage break-up.

‘So, are you taking that fridge back out on the road today, Tony?’

‘Well, Sunday is traditionally a day of rest, and I think I may have been overdoing it a little, so would you mind if I stayed here one more night—I fully expect to pay.’

‘You’ll do no such thing, you’ll stay here for nothing and there’ll be no argument about it. So, what are you going to do with your day today then?’

‘Oh, I think I’ll just take it easy, do some reading and writing, maybe take a walk down by the river.’

‘Oh. My friend Elsie is coming over at one o’clock. She’s a character—you just
have
to meet her. I’ll warn you though, you might need a valium.’

§

Marjorie hadn’t exaggerated. Elsie, an effervescent and voluble woman, cut short my leisure time when she arrived an hour early, and marked midday by planting a big wet smacker full on my lips.

‘You’ll have to excuse me, Tony, but that’s the way I do things,’ she spluttered as I reeled back in shock. ‘Did I come too early?’

She may have done, but I certainly hadn’t.

‘No, you’re fine, I’d nearly finished reading.’

Elsie wasn’t slow in coming forward. Within two minutes of our having met, she showed me a poem she had written and asked me to read it. As I endeavoured to do so, she continued to talk, telling me how she wrote and sang songs too and was making a CD soon. Unfortunately Elsie’s incessant spoken word meant that concentration on her written word was impossible.

‘It’s very good,’ I said, handing the poem back and hoping that she wouldn’t wish me to comment on its subject matter.

After a delicious lunch, which I could only fault in its alarming proximity to breakfast, the two ladies took me on a tour of the sights of Ballina. The fridge had to come too, and at all points along the way, at Elsie’s and Marjorie’s insistence, the fridge was to be paraded as a celebrity for all to see.

We visited Kilcullen’s Seaweed Baths in Enniscrone where I had the privilege of having seaweed draped all over me whilst immersed in an enormous bath full of hot sea water. It seemed a ludicrous idea but was surprisingly relaxing. We dropped in at Belleek Castle, a stately home set in a thousand acres of woodland and forestry on the banks of the River Moy, but we couldn’t look round it because viewings of the castle were by appointment only. That’s what estate agents say, isn’t it? We were hardly going to buy the place.

On the way back, a drink was taken in the clubhouse of the golf club where the ladies had begun taking lessons. I was to learn a lesson here too. As I wheeled the fridge into the bar on its trolley, Elsie announced at the top of her voice, ‘THIS is TONY HAWKS FROM ENGLAND! HE’S BRINGING A FRIDGE ROUND IRELAND! YOU’VE PROBABLY HEARD HIM ON
THE GERRYRYAN SHOW
.’

Elsie’s announcement was greeted with silence. The relaxing golfers eyed me with suspicion and returned to their conversations. Marjorie, Elsie and myself drank our drinks without one person coming over to talk to us or have a joke about the fridge. I felt sure that this wasn’t the customary frostiness of golf clubs we were experiencing here, but more of an example of ‘Irish Begrudgery’. I remembered someone in Hudi-Beags announcing this alleged national trait, and I understood it to mean that people would have little time for you if you forced yourself upon them or announced your greatness, instead of allowing them their own time and space to discover it for themselves. This was something else to log away in my now-crowded brain, but I found room just beside ‘limerick being a difficult city to hitch out of, and ‘England and Portugal being the only EC countries without minority languages’.

Throughout the afternoon Elsie kept up a constant stream of jokes and ribald remarks, each of the latter followed by the apology, ‘I am sorry about that, but that’s the way I am.’

In fact, she said, ‘I am sorry about that, but that’s the way I am’ so many times that I began to wonder whether that wasn’t the way she was, at all. Whatever she was, she was a good friend to Marjorie.

‘A while ago now when I was low,’ said Marjorie, when Elsie was out of earshot, ‘I called Elsie eight times in one day. And when I called the eighth time, she behaved just like it was the first. Now
that’s
a friend.’

Or someone with a very poor memory.

§

It was a beautiful evening, the mile or so walk to the pub hugging the bank of the River Moy, with the setting sun casting its soft final rays over the river’s steadily flowing waters. I felt inspired by Marjorie and Elsie. Two women in their fifties who were going for it. Marjorie with her cookbooks, and Elsie with her poems and songs. I had no idea whether either of their efforts were of a high quality, but that didn’t seem to be the point. Far more pertinent was the joy it was bringing to them.

Sometimes in life you’ve got to dance like nobody’s watching.

The pub was called Murphys, a newly and tastefully refurbished bar which was packed full of young people. Young attractive people. Young attractive girls. I ordered a pint and allowed myself to get a little excited. I leant against the bar and scanned the room for my favourite. She wasn’t hard to find. She was sat at a table in a slightly elevated section of the pub, talking with two guys. She had dark hair, big sparkling eyes and a mouth which I felt needed to be kissed. I was considering how pleasurable an experience this might be, when she looked up and saw me looking at her. I didn’t look away. She gave me a kind of half smile and went back to talking with her friends. Good. The half smile was a good sign.

Perhaps at this point I should take a moment to explain how, in the area of the pursuit of women, I have always demonstrated an exceptional adeptness for deluding myself. I have always been able to convince myself that I’m doing much better than I really am. With an assured grace and on gossamer wings, I fly in the face of reality, never seeing the crash landing that awaits me. On this occasion, for example, I had completely dismissed from my mind the fact that the object of my interest was in the company of two males who, no doubt, were just as aware of the kissability of her mouth as I was.

When she left her friends (for in my eyes that was clearly all they were) she came to the bar to order a drink, and was almost alongside me, presenting me with an opportunity I couldn’t afford to miss. However, I made the mistake of thinking too much about the opening line. By far and away the best option in this situation is to say the first thing that comes into your head and not worry about its quality—the thinking being that if the girl likes the general look of you, she will be moderately forgiving in the first few minutes of your advances.

On this occasion it was just unfortunate that the only line which kept forcing its way to the brink of being spoken was, ‘Are you aware that of all the countries in the EC, England and Portugal are the only ones with no minority languages?’

After hearing a line like that, not many females, however much they like the look of you, would think ‘Hey, he sounds like the kind of guy I’d like to spend some more time with’, and the ones that did were probably best avoided.

Her transaction at the bar was nearly completed and I knew that I had to say something, and fast.

‘Is there a pub quiz on tonight?’ I blurted, averting my eyes from the sign saying ‘Pub Quiz Tonight’, which was up on the wall directly in front of both of us.

‘Yes,’ she replied warmly. ‘You can come and be in our team if you like.’

Inwardly I punched the air, whilst on the cool exterior I attempted to give the impression of being rather blase about the whole idea.

‘If you like,’ I said, and then, thinking I’d overdone it, added, ‘Thanks, that would be nice.’

Her name was Rosheen (which I later learned was spelt ‘Roisin’), and she wasn’t with the two guys at the table, but with a crowd of friends who were further up the bar to my left. With great politeness, not normally afforded to a stranger who had just asked you a stupid question, she introduced me to all her friends, one by one, but their names were ju& sounds which I failed to absorb, such was my fixation with her, the mistress of ceremonies. It mattered only that it was her name I remembered. Roisin.

Lovely Roisin. With the kissable mouth.

Annoyingly, Roisin began talking to two girlfriends and I fell into conversation with Declan. I had nothing against Declan other than the fact that he wasn’t Roisin, and therefore had a mouth which I had no desire to kiss. He asked what I was doing in Ireland. I had hoped I wouldn’t have to answer that question for some time, and tried to cope with it without mentioning the fridge.

‘So you’re just travelling around for a month then, are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Grand.’ A beat, then, ‘So what made you decide to do that then?’

The questions went on until the truth, the ridiculous truth, was inveigled out of me.

To my relief, the pub quiz began before word of the fridge could reach Roisin, for although I wasn’t ashamed of what I was doing, I wanted to break the news to her myself. An explanation of what I was up to could sound silly if it wasn’t handled sensitively.

The quiz was about pop trivia and I was a useful addition to their team. I knew the answers to the first four questions and it wasn’t long before everyone turned to me for either the answer, or confirmation of someone else’s. In the second section of the quiz, the quizmaster played the first few bars of a record, and we had to name the artist. I was good at this too, definitely on top form tonight, but I was aware that when it came to pop trivia there was a fine line between impressive and tragic. I crossed that line on the fifth song in, when after only three or four notes I called out, ‘That’s The Time Of Our Lives’ by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes!’

I did it excitedly and with too much gusto, and at a volume which readily offered the information to our rival teams.

Throughout the proceedings I kept a close eye on Roisin, secretly hoping that when it came to pop quizzes, she had a yen for men who could get ten out of ten. She had looked over on a couple of occasions and rewarded me with a half smile, and this had given me enough encouragement to move over to her.

‘How are you enjoying it?’ I said, without inspiration.

‘Oh, it’s a craic. You’re a bit good, aren’t you? I think we might win this.’

‘What’s the prize?’

‘Well, all the names of the winning team go into a hat, and the name drawn out wins a champagne dinner for two at the restaurant upstairs.’

Another half smile. God, she was beautiful. I suddenly realised that we had to win this, and that the way my luck was going, mine would be the name drawn out of the hat, and she would be my date for the champagne dinner. The quizmaster fired the final question, ‘What was Neil Diamond’s first number one hit as a writer?’

The team turned and looked at me. The difference between outright victory and second place probably hinged on this one question. Brilliantly, I knew the answer.

‘UB40—‘Red Red Wine’.’

We had done it! All the questions right. Now all we had to do was wait for fate to decide who got the sexy dinner.

Ten minutes later (to my chagrin, all of which had been spent chatting to Declan) the quizmaster’s PA clumsily halted our conversations.