1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge (33 page)

‘Of course, I could just smash one of you in the face and then you’d have to arrest me,’ I observed, prompting hysterical laughter.

I wish I could be more menacing at times.

The two uniformed men got back in their car and called out, ‘Well, goodbye and good luck.’

And with those gentle words my brush with the law was over. I had never had such a relaxed and pleasant conversation with two policemen before and I doubted whether I ever would again.

§

It isn’t often as a hitch-hiker that you get on so well with the person that stops for you that you go back to their house for tea, get driven on a further twenty-five miles so that you can reach your intended destination, go out drinking with them, on to a nightclub, and then finally stay over at their parents’ house.

Such was the way with Tom. He was in his thirties, single, and clearly had something of the charming rascal about him. We had such a lot in common (apart from the rascal bit, obviously), including both having taken part in a bachelor festival. Tom had won his and had gone on to compete at the international festival in Ballybunion.

‘What actually happens at that?’ I asked.

‘You just drink for ten days. Literally,’ he replied.

‘What? Just lots of bachelors together?’

‘God no, there are loads of girls.’

‘Right. And they go there looking for husbands?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘But you can make the interviewing process as rigorous as you want it to be.’

‘Exactly.’

It was an odd concept, and somehow typically Irish. A festival with the express goal of turning bachelors into husbands, places them in an arena where they are surrounded by booze and birds for ten days. Hardly an environment likely to cause a major rethink, and rejection of their bachelor status—‘God, I can’t stand this hellish life anymore, I must chuck it all in and settle down.’

‘Did any of the bachelors go on to get married to anyone they met there?’ I asked.

‘Not that I know of.’

Now there’s a surprise.

Tom lived in Waterford, and that is where we took tea. His parents lived in Wexford and that was where we spent the night. We didn’t get there until three in the morning, having spent all night in a pub called the Centenary Stores which, just like Westimers, happened to have a club as an annexe out the back. When his parents awoke to a note from Tom saying that he had brought a houseguest home with him, and then they had seen a rucksack and fridge at the foot of the stairs, they must have begun to worry about the kind of circles their son was now moving in.

Tom was in the doghouse in the morning, having overslept by an hour and a half for the game of golf we had arranged to play with two of his friends, Baxter and Jeff. When we got to the course we were lucky enough to be granted a later tee time by the stern-looking club professional, and we proceeded to play eighteen holes of pretty dire golf. Hey, but it didn’t matter that the golf was bad, this was a holiday for me. Time off from the fridge.

However, as I loaded my hired golfclubs on to their trolley, it did seem to me absurd to have spent nigh on a month pulling a fridge along behind me, only to choose as my first leisure activity a game in which you pulled gear behind you on a trolley for hours on end.

When the golf was over, Tom was in the doghouse again, this time for not having phoned his girlfriend last night or this morning. We discussed excuses he might adopt for extrication from this tight spot. The truth, which I had advocated, was deemed by Tom simply not to be an option.

‘Oh yeah, I’ll just say, ‘Sorry dear, I forgot to call you because I was busy looking after the hitch-hiker who is travelling the country with his fridge.’ She’ll just turn to her friend and say, ‘Ah, Tom’s on to the more elaborate excuses now.’’

His girlfriend was in Galway where he was about to drive and join her for the rest of the weekend. He reckoned that bringing her flowers was the only answer. Maybe he was right. ‘Say it with flowers’ because nine times out of ten trying to say it with words will only land you in it even further. There isn’t a ‘Sorry’ big enough to match a good old-fashioned bouquet, and most men know it.

Before he left, Tom drove me round Wexford in search of a place for me to stay. Everywhere was booked up. Evidently a large proportion of Dublin’s population descended on this part of the world for the holiday weekend. Tom had a solution, though.

‘You could stay at Butch’s,’ he said.

‘Could I?’

‘Yeah, he’s just opened a hostel.’

Ugh. That word. Hostel.

‘Err…it’s just that—’

‘It’s really cool. Much nicer than most hostels. It’s only been open a couple of months.’

I didn’t have a choice. I was disappointed though. I had promised myself that I would never stay in a hostel again as long as I lived. That was ten days ago. Just ten days. I owed myself a huge bouquet of flowers.

§

I was greeted by Butch and Karen, who were young and normal looking. Somehow I had expected everyone involved with hostels to look like extras out of the movie
Hair
. They both got the giggles when I put them in the picture about me and the fridge, but eventually calmed down enough for me to explain my reservations about hostel life.

‘I just can’t sleep if there are loads of other people in the room.’

‘Ifs all right,’ said Butch, ‘I’ll put you in a room with only one other guy. He’s from England, like you.’

It sounded bearable, although I was fully aware that his being ‘from England, like me’ was no guarantee that he didn’t snore.

Tom had been right though, this was a cool hostel. Over a cup of tea, which was reassuringly unherbal, Butch told me how he and his girlfriend had bought up the derelict property and converted it into the hostel. It bore no sign of the starkness and deference to self reliance of the one in Letterfrack, and appeared to be closer to a kind of hostel for the less hardy, who drank Coca Cola, ate meat and popped things in the microwave to save time.

‘She’s gone, though,’ Butch added, a touch ruefully.

‘Who has?’

‘The girlfriend. We split up just before the place opened.’

‘Oh. Well, who’s Karen then?’

‘Ah, she’s not my girlfriend,’ he laughed, ‘she’s from New Zealand. She stayed here for a few days and then asked if she could work here for a while to get some money together. She’s a good worker.’

She came in carrying a dustpan and brush, as if to illustrate Butch’s point, but then she sat down and joined us for tea, throwing it into some doubt again.

‘I’ve finished for the day. Thank goodness for that,’ she said.

The subject turned inevitably to fridge travel and I found that now I could almost answer every question by rote. I got off the subject by firing questions at Karen about her travels which she must have been equally familiar with answering.

‘Do people just assume you’re Australian at first?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. But the accent is different, you know.’

‘Yes. Don’t you say ‘sex’ instead of ‘six’?’

‘Apparently. Australians are always trying to get us to say it, so they ask questions like ‘What’s eight minus two?’ But we’re wise to it and we just answer ‘half a dozen’.’

I looked at her and decided that she was rather attractive in her own way. I found myself contemplating what ‘half a dozen’ with her might be like.

‘I like your red shorts,’ said Karen. ‘They’re cool.’

‘Thanks.’

I was unable to return the compliment with a flattering remark about what I had just been admiring about her. It wouldn’t have been considered good manners.

A balding man in his forties came in and broached a familiar subject ‘So you’re the guy travelling with the fridge then?’

This was Dave, my roommate. He proceeded to ask the entire set of questions that I’d just been asked, only in a Yorkshire accent This was a pain, but provided he didn’t snore, I could forgive him anything.

The plan for the night was simple enough. Sit like a couch potato alongside Butch and Dave and watch the Poland versus England World Cup qualifier on the TV in the hostel’s pleasant little lounge, and then grab some rejuvenating and much needed sleep in the form of a very early night. But something happened which changed all that.

The hostel filled up.

Wexford is a vibrant but compact little town, and it was evidently brimming over with holidaying Dubliners. Butch had even checked in two married couples and their kids, such was the extent to which the town’s boarding facilities had been stretched. Butch was delighted actually, announcing that this was the first night the hostel had been full since it had opened. I found it difficult to share his enthusiasm. It now meant that there were six people in my room instead of just me and Dave, and one of them was bound to be an inveterate snorer.

So, instead of the quiet night, I went to a barbecue with Butch, wandered into town and drank steadily in one of Wexford’s many splendid pubs. I ended up at the Junction, the kind of club where everyone leaves saying ‘Right, I swear that’s the last time I go to that cattlemarket’, honouring the oath until the next time they’ve had a skinful, and someone says ‘Ah come on, it’s not that bad.’

§

When I woke at 9.30, the mission had been successfully accomplished. Six hours of undisturbed sleep; okay, not sleep, unconsciousness. The room smelt as if experiments in germ warfare had been taking place in it during the night. I soon found out why.

‘It’s the four teenage lads down from Dublin—they’ve been farting non-stop since they got in,’ said Dave, as I joined him, Karen and Butch for breakfast in the hostel’s small rear garden.

‘And what time did they get in?’

‘Eight o’clock.’

‘Blimey, that’s impressive.’

‘They made a hell of a racket when they came in,’ Dave went on, ‘I’m surprised they didn’t wake you.’

‘They would have done if I hadn’t drunk myself into a sufficiently comatose state, but I can’t do that again tonight, my body simply won’t take it.’

‘I think you’re going to have to,’ said Karen, ‘because everywhere in Wexford is full for the next two nights, and you’ll find it the same all the way up the coast between here and Dublin.’

‘Well, I’m not going back in that room except to get my stuff out,’ I protested. That room is the smelliest room on earth. It’s frightening to think that only four arses could produce such a putrefying stench.’

‘Just another one of the many miracles of the human body,’ said Butch flippantly, who proceeded to point to the corner of the garden. ‘You could always sleep in the doghouse.’

Everyone laughed. Except me. I looked. The doghouse. The doghouse, eh? I immediately got to my feet and wandered over to have a closer look at it. It was a small wooden structure about six feet long, and four feet high at the apex of its pitched roof. I looked inside and saw that it was full of junk.

‘Where’s the dog?’ I enquired.

‘That went with the girlfriend, but the doghouse stayed. It’s a kind of shrine to the failure of our relationship.’

Never mind shrine, it was an oasis. In present circumstances, a very appealing piece of real estate. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled in a little way. It was dark and had a musty smell, but compared to my room, which was presently occupied by a quartet of farters, this was a relative herb garden.

‘Tony, get out of there, it’s full of bricks and building shite,’ said Butch.

‘Yes, but I could clear that out.’

‘Don’t be stupid man, it’s a doghouse. You’re not seriously thinking of sleeping in it?’

‘I am. It’s got everything. A secluded location, privacy, and an en suite toilet,’ I said, pointing to the garden.

My earnestness was greeted with incredulity. Butch, Karen and Dave couldn’t see what I could clearly see—that sleeping in the doghouse was by far and away preferable to what was on offer in my present room. Above all it meant I could get an early night and allow sleep the healer to repair some of the mental and physical damage of the past three weeks. Without it I could collapse.

‘I bet you wouldn’t sleep in there,’ said Karen.

‘Careful,’ said Dave. ‘He’s a dangerous man to bet with. I mean look what he’s doing with that fridge.’

‘He’s too tall to fit in it. He won’t do it,’ reiterated Karen.

‘I bet I do. I bet you a hundred pounds I do.’

‘I haven’t got a hundred pounds.’

‘You will have in the morning,’ interjected a very amused Butch.

‘All right then, 16p. I bet you 16p that I sleep in this doghouse tonight,’ I said, proffering my hand for the sealing handshake.

‘Okay. 16p it is.’

Karen took my hand in hers and we shook. It was a long, lingering handshake, in fact it just seemed to keep going. Karen made no attempt to release my hand, and for some reason I felt that the onus was on her to do the releasing. As we shook, we looked into each other’s eyes, a moment which was almost embarrassing in its intimacy. In the corner of my eye, I was aware of Butch and Dave shuffling in their seats nervously. I gulped. I must learn to stop doing that. I don’t think it’s particularly cool.

It was I who released the handshake. I had become unnerved by the eye thing. Some different form of communication had just gone on, and although the meaning seemed clear enough, history had shown that this was a language I was well capable of misinterpreting. Karen, I suspected, spoke the language fluently. Most girls do. Boys don’t speak it at all, but just understand a smattering of key words. Their job is not to make a pig’s ear of the translation. They normally fail quite spectacularly.

It took an hour and a half to clear out the ‘building shite’, as Butch had so eloquently described it. On completion I surveyed the new sleeping quarters. Spartan, yes, a little bleak maybe, but they were dry, and the weather looked set on remaining glorious so the suspect roof was an irrelevance. All in all it was accommodation fit for a King of Tory.

§

Most of that day was spent like Sundays should be, sitting around and doing not very much in particular.

‘Dave, Karen and Butch, do you want another cup of tea?’ I said. It sounded like I was addressing a 1960
s
folk band.