1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge (21 page)

But what could I do? It was too far for me to drag my fridge and bags beyond this other hitch-hiker, and surely the onus was on him to rectify the situation. He must have been rather peeved that this other chap had pushed in front of him, but he showed no signs of marching down in my direction to protest.

This N5 was by far the best stretch of road I had come across since I had been in Ireland, but it certainly wasn’t over-used. Cars and lorries came along at the rate of about one a minute. This was a frustrating length interval between vehicles, in that it was just long enough to feel that there wasn’t going to be another along for a while, and to sit down on the fridge and relax, only to find that the moment I had done so I had to jump to my feet and begin hitching again.

The N5 was disappointing on another front too. Faced with the rare sight of a relatively smooth stretch of road before them, the Irish drivers clearly felt the urge to discover the maximum speed of their chosen mode of transport. This meant that the poor hitcher was only noticed at the very last minute as the driver hurtled past, and was all too quickly an afterthought. Perhaps this is why the hitcher ahead hadn’t protested at my arrival in front of him, calculating that the breaking distance for any car that stopped for me, would be such that it would draw to a halt exactly where he was standing. Clever bastard.

I looked at my watch and saw that I had been there for over an hour. I didn’t mind one bit. I was enjoying some precious time on my own. As a lone traveller I had expected a good deal more of it, but the way things were turning out, these roadside vigils were my only oases of peace.

§

Jack screeched to a halt. An emergency stop. Of course. If you saw the man with the fridge by the side of the road, what else was there for it? Boy, Jack was excited. He was a big fan of
The Gerry Ryan Show
and said that he had been charting my progress since day one. I climbed into the lorry’s cabin which was packed full of boxes. There was only just room to squeeze in. I looked further up the road and saw that the other hitcher was still there. He can’t have been that happy, but was probably consoling himself with the fact that I would be decent enough to iaqdore the driver to stop for him too. I would have done had there been enough room.

As we drove past him I tried to do a kind of apologetic wave, which probably backfired and looked like I was rubbing salt in the wound. She waved back. She? I looked again and saw that, yes, it was a girl. Oh no! This offended my hereditary colonial sensibilities even more. For this, I would surely be hauled before the Viceroy of the Raj.

‘Now Hawks, as you well know, we take a pretty dim view of anyone who pushes in front of the next man—but there is only one thing good enough for a man who stoops so low as to push in front of a woman. Perkins! Take him away, and have him shot.’

Jack was going to Westport, and was delivering fire extinguishers. I had never thought of fire extinguishers being delivered, but I was discovering that everything got to be where it was by being delivered.

Deliveries made the world go around. They were certainly getting me around.

‘Elaine?’ said Jack on his mobile phone. ‘You’ll never guess who I’ve got in the cabin with me.’

Elaine didn’t guess, but Jack told her, and the phone was handed over for me to have a chat with her. It was an unusual conversation which hardly flowed, but the reason why it was taking place was an endearing one. Jack was excited to have the fridge man in his lorry, and he was excited to have Elaine as his girlfriend. I was reminded of something Gerry Ryan had said about my journey after I had spoken to him on my first morning.

‘It’s a totally purposeless idea, but a damn fine one.’

The same could be said of this phonecall.

Jack dropped me in the main street of Westport. I called out to a girl in the chemists, ‘Do you know where Mat Molloy’s pub is?’

‘It’s behind you,’ she said, seven months too early for panto season.

I turned round and there it was, a simple semi-detached two-storey property decorated in red and black. It was odd to think that Marjorie’s one mention of this neat little pub had been my reason for coming here to Westport, but that was the way I was allowing my journey to unfold. I was trusting my intuition. I elected to go in for a quick pint and then head for the tourist information office to sort out my night’s lodgings.

It was mid afternoon and there were only six or seven customers in the pub. However it wasn’t long before the winning combination of fridge and rucksack had everyone discussing the merits and drawbacks of this kind of travel.

‘How much was the bet for?’ said Niamh, who was working behind the bar for the summer.

‘A hundred pounds.’

‘And how much was the fridge?’ enquired an interested bystander called John.

‘A hundred and thirty pounds.’

‘Jeez, you’re an eejit,’ added Seamus, the pub manager.

‘Niamh, get this man a pint,’ concluded Geraldine, the boss and wife of the eponymous Matt, plus mother of Niamh.

I was beginning to understand how the Irish mentality worked. The more foolish, illogical or surreal one’s actions were perceived to be (and mine surely fell into one of these categories), the wider the arms of hospitality were opened in salutation. I now found myself surrounded by inquisitive customers and staff. Brendan appeared from behind the bar where he had been stacking bottles.

‘Has the fridge got a name?’

‘Well, no it hasn’t.’

‘Well you’ve got to give the fridge a name. You can’t be travelling around with a nameless fridge.’

A chorus of approval greeted Brendan’s sentiments.

‘What sex is it?’ asked Etain.

Things were moving too fast for me.

‘I hadn’t given it much thought.’

There must be a way of telling.

Amidst much amusement, a series of implausible methods were put forward, the most universally approved of which was proposed by John.

‘What you have to do is you have to put it between two donkeys of either sex and see which one of the donkeys makes a move for the fridge.’

I was happy to accept this method as incontestable proof of the fridge’s sex, but a distinct lack of donkeys restricted further progress down this particular scientific avenue.

‘Why don’t you give it a name which covers both sexes?’ said Geraldine. ‘You know, like Kim, Lesley or Val.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ agreed Brendan, ‘but you can’t call a feckin’ fridge Val!’

I concurred. No fridge of mine was going to be called Val.

‘How about Saiorse?’ suggested Seamus.

‘Seersha?’

‘Yes, Saiorse. It can be a boy or a girl’s name, and it’s Gaelic for ‘freedom’. And you won’t get many fridges experiencing more freedom than that one!’ He had a point.

‘Full name Saiorse Molloy,’ said Geraldine.

‘Sounds good to me,’ I said, to cheers from the group. ‘I hereby name this fridge Seersha Molloy.’

Geraldine was clearly moved by this new addition to the family, because she asked, ‘Where are you staying Tony?’

‘Oh, I haven’t sorted it yet, I was going to find a bed and breakfast.’

‘You can stay in the flat above the pub if you want.’

‘Really?’

‘Niamh, go and get the keys. Let’s put him and Saiorse upstairs for the night.’

‘Are you sure? That’s very kind.’

A good portion of my time on this trip was spent thanking people for their kindness.

I couldn’t have expected that a brief mention of the fridge’s surfing activity would cause such a furore. The response was immediate, and it was as if the gauntlet had been thrown down. My new-found friends took it upon themselves to rise to the challenge of coming up with something whacky for me and the fridge to do. The suggestion that Seamus should take it water skiing was gaining in popularity, but Seamus, an apparently practical man, seemed to have some difficulty with this notion, although the rest of us couldn’t see what the problem might be. Attach a rope, start the speed boat, and let Saiorse do the rest.

Geraldine introduced me to a couple called Tony and Nora, friends of hers and Matt, who had been visiting for a long weekend.

‘If you’re ever down in Ennistymon, we’ll take Saiorse scuba diving,’ said Tony, thrusting a piece of paper into my hand. ‘Here’s our address—you’ve no need to bother with hotels and the rest—you come and stay with us.’

‘Are you sure that’s not just the drink talking?’ I joked.

‘I don’t drink,’ he said, holding his orange juice proudly aloft.

This trip was full of surprises.

§

It was early evening before I got a chance to look around Westport. It would have been shameful if all I had got to see of the place was the inside of Matt Molloy’s pub. Westport had been a prosperous landlord town, designed by architect James Wyatt in the eighteenth century. It only took me ten minutes or so to do a full circuit, and discover that its streets radiate from a focal point, the Octagon. There was a monument here with St Patrick on the top, proudly having taken the place of a British dignitary after the demise of British supremacy. The words beneath him made interesting reading:

I AM PATRICK

A SINNER MOST UNLEARNED

THE LEAST OF ALL THE FAITHFUL

AND UTTERLY DESPISED BY ALL

Now that guy had a self esteem problem, no two ways about it.

I saw a signpost saying Westport Quay, and since it was a nice evening I decided to walk there. It turned out to be further than I had thought, but worth it. I was lucky enough now to be experiencing weather for which the west coast of Ireland is most definitely not renowned. Clear blue skies and a gently setting sun hung over Clew Bay as I headed up a dusty path towards a grand-looking house I had seen in the distance. It was quite magnificent, and in a wonderful location, with stunning views across the bay. It was clearly the landlord’s home around which the entire town of Westport had been built, to house the estate workers. I climbed through a hole in the perimeter fence of the grounds and indulged in a little trespassing. This was too special a house not to merit further investigation. Subsequently, I discovered that it was Westport House, and that by the following month it would be a commercialised tourist trap, but at the moment it was closed to the public and I genuinely believed that I was getting a privileged glimpse of some palatial splendour which was off limits to the hoi polloi.

On the walk back to Westport, out of nowhere some storm clouds appeared, and the heavens opened. I tried to hitch back, but the irony was that without my fridge, no one was remotely interested in stopping. By the time I got back to the pub, I was completely drenched. There was no one around from the afternoon’s ‘naming committee’ so I took the opportunity to sneak upstairs, dry off, and profit from an early night.

As I lay in bed, the sounds of the pub below reminded me of times when, as a child, I was trying to get to sleep when my parents were entertaining downstairs. There even seemed to be someone down below with the same booming laugh as my father’s, but presumably this man’s raucous guffaws greeted other people’s jokes rather than his own. But once I had nodded off, not even the traditional Irish music emanating from just beneath the floorboards could keep me from eight solid, sound, substantial hours of sleep.

Roisin hadn’t called.

One Baptism And A Blessing

I
woke, washed, decided to fix myself breakfast, and soon found myself in somebody else’s kitchen. An awful place to be, especially if you need to make use of its facilities. There is no such thing as a simple operation, even something as modest as I was taking on—a pot of tea and a couple of pieces of toast—becomes a Gargantuan task and a severe test of patience. In somebody else’s kitchen.

I started well. I located the kettle and even managed to work out how to turn it on. The hunt for the tea bags didn’t go to plan, but after two or three minutes of slightly irritated opening and shutting of cupboard doors, they turned up in the one on the left just below the sink. Silly place for them, but I didn’t let that get to me, and at this point I was still relatively calm. The hunt for the teapot was futile. It had been naive even to consider attempting to locate it. Those of you who are experienced in other people’s kitchens will know that the teapot is always placed in the most idiosyncratic of locations, known only to close family members and passed down from generation to generation by oral tradition.

It got worse. They had no mugs. How could anyone have a kitchen with no mugs? This was a first. I looked everywhere. I covered every square inch of cupboard space, but there was not a mug anywhere. Except for me, the searcher, who for five full minutes was mug enough not to look in the dishwasher. Fifteen minutes later I was on the verge of doing something very silly with a sharp kitchen knife.

Fortunately I couldn’t find one.

‘That was very nice, thank you,’ I said to the waitress as she took away my plate, on which were the scant vestiges of a full Irish breakfast.

I was just heading out of the café when an elderly grey-haired woman approached me.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘you’re not the window cleaning company are you?’

‘No.’

‘It’s just that I’m meeting someone from the window cleaning company in here, and I don’t know them.’

I shrugged and left the café, not at all envious of the morning that lay ahead for her—routinely addressing strangers and enquiring as to whether they were from the window cleaning company or not. Quite why the rendezvous had been set up at a café and not at a suitable address, or why a little old lady should require a meeting with a representative from the window cleaning company, I couldn’t fathom. It didn’t matter, in fact it fitted nicely into the ludicrous design of things.

By lunchtime I was back in the bar, having finished with Westport’s launderette, and I was ready to say my goodbyes.

‘Are you sure you have to leave today, Tony?’ said Geraldine.

‘Well, I think it’s right to keep on moving.’

‘That’s a shame, because my husband Matt is back from Dublin tomorrow and I spoke to him on the phone and he’s dying to meet you.’