Making It Up As I Go Along (30 page)

It’s happened! It’s real! I am. ON.
THE. TWITTERS! It happened on Friday. Himself set up an account for me, and I hadn’t a
clue what to do, so he said that I should start gently, begin by ‘following’ people
I love, see what they’re saying, see what people are saying back and generally observe how
it all works.

But being me, I wanted to get going immediately,
and I asked, ‘How do I get followers?’ ‘We’ll put it up on your
website,’ sez he.

‘Well, do it so,’ I said.

Very calmly and firmly he said,
‘You’re not listening to me. You’re going to follow other people first and see
how it works.’

And I was a bit disappointed, but he was right
because I DO have a tendency to race into things and get overexcited and oftentimes mess it up
and do it wrong.

So anyway, I picked out seven people that I
‘admire’ (i.e. am obsessed with) to follow. Tom Dunne from
Newstalk
. India
Knight, author and journalist. Davina McCall, needs no introduction. Katy Perry’s blue
hair, but as that wasn’t an entity in itself, I had to follow Katy Perry the person.
Claudia Winkleman. Zayn from One Direction (I need to explain this, I’m not really a One
Direction fan, being about seventy-nine years older than their average fan, but when they were
on
The X Factor
I was MAD about them and him in particular, the strop he threw at his
audition; also, he reminds me of my nephew Luka. But since the year’s
X Factor
finished I sort of forgot about them. But my head
had gone blank when I was
trying to think of people I love, in order to ‘follow’ them, which is strange
because I love so many people, and I’d just read a piece in Friday’s
Guardian
about how One Direction have gone down a storm in the US, so I said,
‘Right, I’ll “follow” Zayn’).

Then I
tried
to follow Louise Moore, my
very fabulous editor, but she’s not on the Twitters, nor is Liz Smith (also from Penguin).

Then I tried Jason Schwartzman (I adore
Bored
to Death
. And Jason Schwartzman wrote the theme music, which is the ringtone on my phone).
But he wasn’t ON the Twitters. Nor was A. A. Gill. Or Mark Cagney from
Ireland
AM
. But even as we were typing in Mark Cagney’s name, Himself was laughing and
saying, ‘No WAY will Mark Cagney be on the Twitters. Mark Cagney would think the Twitters
was a stupid waste of time.’ And Himself was right! Important note here: both Himself and
I LOVE Mark Cagney. He has always been very, very, very, very nice to me, he has a big heart,
he’s a great interviewer, and although he has – he’d be the first to admit it,
I’d say – mildly curmudgeonly tendencies, they just make him extra funny and
interesting. Big love for the Cagney from this household. Himself even more than me, I suspect.

So I managed to ‘follow’ seven people
(I can’t off the top of my head remember who the seventh was) and wasn’t exactly
sure what to do next. Nothing, I realized. And THEN! Someone tweeted me! And not just anyone!
But Tom Dunne from
Newstalk
! Tom Dunne, whom I love with a passion dangerously close to
obsession! Both myself and Himself were SCREAMING with excitement. We really were! And it was a
very pertinent tweet, it was about how the bins hadn’t been collected on Wednesday night
(something to do with St Patrick’s Day, I suspect). We were BESIDE ourselves.

Then India Knight tweeted,
asking if it was really me, and I checked and I was, so I tweeted her back and she did something
with a hashtag (FF? Follow Friday? Still quite at sea in this strange new world) and suddenly
people were FOLLOWING me. Something like 163 in the first half-hour; 270 by the end of the first
hour.

Himself and myself were glued to the screen,
watching as the numbers kept rising. At this point I became a bit overwhelmed and had to go out
for a while, so I went down to Dún Laoghaire and bought
The Hunger Games
.

The youth who sold it to me had obviously sold
about 473 copies already that day. When I asked where it was, he had clearly pointed at that
same spot in the shop many, many times. (Can I just say how thrilled I am that there’s now
a section in bookshops called Dystopian Fiction. Since
The Road
, I’ve been more
and more drawn to this sort of thing, both in books and films, and am thrilled it’s
officially a category.)

When I came home, Himself opened the front door
and said, ‘It’s over a thousand now.’ It was sort of like watching a
presidential election, as the numbers kept rising. Then Grace Dent ‘followed’ me and
the honour nearly floored me.

I still hadn’t tweeted anything to say
hello, and the more time went on, the more frightened I became. I wanted to set out my stall
with something funny and witty. Also something that encapsulated my gratitude for all the love I
was being shown. But I had performance anxiety. Then it was five o’clock and priorities
shifted. Caitríona and Seán had come home from New York earlier that day (for
Dad’s eightieth next weekend) and they arrived, jet-lagged and looking to be fed. As did
the Redzers and the Praguers. The house was overrun for several hours and everyone was brought
into Himself’s office to admire the tweet from Tom Dunne.

By close of business on
Friday the number of followers stood at over 2,000 and still I hadn’t said hello. The next
day was Saturday, and Himself went off at 6.20 a.m. to go to the UK to the football (Watford v.
Coventry, nil all) and I was ALONE with the Twitters. So I chanced it. I said hello.

Two seconds later I tweeted that it was St
Patrick’s Day and it wasn’t hailstoning and what had we done to offend the gods?
Then people start tweeting me from around Ireland, with their hailstone stories. At this point I
had to go to a meeting and I was late and I am NEVER late. As soon as I came back, I started on
the Twitters again.

I DID manage to do, actually
do
, the
Davina exercise video, instead of just sitting on the couch watching it, but I spent the rest of
the afternoon, into early evening, tweeting. For some bizarre reason that made perfect twittery
sense at the time, I decided to do a hailstone watch and collate accounts of hailstones from
around Ireland.

I even had a mild spat with a woman from Limerick
because I’d accused Limerick of having hailstones when apparently the sun was splitting
the stones, but I’d MISUNDERSTOOD. See, another person had tweeted saying that
‘It’s splitting the stones here in Limerick.’ I thought she meant the bad
weather was splitting the stones, not the GOOD weather.

At this point I had to collect my poor mother and
bring her to Teach a Céilí in the National Concert Hall, and I was late. AGAIN. Second
time in the one day! I am a pitch-perfect Virgo who is NEVER late. Blame the Twitters!

Mick Hanly was playing in the Teach a
Céilí, and my mammy, as a young woman, used to be ‘in digs’ (that’s
what it was called when you were lodging with someone) with Mick Hanly’s family in
Limerick, before she got married. And he dedicated a song to
her from the
stage on Saturday night! She was nearly as excited about that as I was about the tweet from Tom
Dunne.

When I woke up on Sunday morning, I felt
hungover, I literally actually did. Not from drink, mercifully, but from the Twitters. And all I
wanted to do was start again! There we are – full-blown addiction in action for you.

But we were going to my lovely friend
Judy’s lovely grandson Jack’s christening. All the same, I started tweeting, even
though I had nothing to say; all I wanted was to tweet about how much I love tweeting.

Then Himself caught me and told me to get ready
for the christening. Also he said that I should only tweet when I had something to say, not just
tweet about how much I love tweeting.

So fair enough. I’d started reading
The
Hunger Games
and God, I loved it. LOVED it! So yesterday I tweeted that.

In the meantime I started watching the trailers
for
The Hunger Games
film, and DESPERATELY wanted to go, so I looked up the times
– it starts here in Dublin on Friday. But on Friday, the entire Keyes family (there seem
to be several hundred of us at this stage) are going away to a hotel for the night to celebrate
Dad’s eightieth birthday, and even though I was trying to convince myself that I could
just about manage to get to the first screening of the day and still be in time for the birthday
high jinks, it wasn’t really adding up.

And then! Something wonderful happened! Just now!
Himself walked into the room and said, ‘Do you want to go to see
The Hunger Games
today at four o’clock?’

‘How?’ I said. ‘It
doesn’t start until Friday. Today’s only Tuesday.’

He said, ‘Lovely Maria Dickenson saw your
tweet about the book! She thought you might like to go.’

How lucky am I? I know times
are so hard and it really doesn’t seem fair that the likes of me get to go to a free
movie, and I really am sorry that the world isn’t fairer. What I’m trying to say is,
I’m not gloating, I’m just grateful, very grateful.

And it’s all thanks to Twitter!

mariankeyes.com
,
March 2012.

Oh Sleep, how much do I love you? A lot, oh a huge
lot! But for most of my life, it’s been like a shy, almost-mythical beast that is
occasionally sighted through a thicket of trees and skitters away fearfully when it realizes
it’s been spotted. It is nervy and fragile and will only approach when it is shown how
much it is loved. Every day I must begin anew to win its trust, trying to lure it towards me
with mint tea and valerian tablets and dim lighting and boring books.

Insomnia, on the other hand, is a thuggish
bruiser who barges in whenever it feels like it, putting its dirty boots on my coffee table and
hogging the remote control and breaking out the good wine that I’d been saving for
Important Visitors. I plead with it to leave, and sometimes it does, but always with the
swaggery proviso, ‘You ain’t seen the last of me, gel,’ just like Nasty Nick
Cotton in
EastEnders
.

It is a difficult way to live, my amigos.

I crave sleep – I mean, don’t we all?
My head is a whirry, busy place, filled with anxieties and to-do lists and peculiar memories,
and I like to escape from it once in a while, the way rich people helicopter off from the hustle
and bustle of the city for their peaceful weekend retreat.

Without sleep I spend the following day feeling
queasy and borderline psychotic, and there is no greater misery than lying awake, staring into
the darkness, worrying about all the important things I have to –
have to
–
do when morning arrives.

There are many varieties of
insomnia: there’s the one where sleep refuses to show up at bedtime; there’s the one
where I’m awoken abruptly at 4 a.m. and that’s my lot for the night (with that
version, the sound I dread the most is the first bus – it means the night is over and
there’s no more chance of sleep). Then there’s the 5.15 a.m. version, when –
oddly – I eventually tumble back into sleep, ten minutes before the alarm goes off, and I
wake up feeling like I’m coming round from a general anaesthetic. I’m prone to them
all.

Every day, my preparations for sleep begin about
twenty minutes after I wake up. I have my lone daily permitted cup of coffee and instantly wish
I could have twelve more, but I chide myself, ‘No, no! Think of the caffeine! In fifteen
short hours’ time, you’ll be desperately trying to fall asleep and you don’t
want to scupper all chances by flooding yourself with stimulants. So I’m sorry, but
no.’

‘They’ say that lavender is the
insomniac’s friend – that if, at bedtime, I drench my pillow in lavender mist,
I’ll tumble easily into eight blissful hours of oblivion. But surely I can’t be the
only person who thinks that lavender smells gank? Because, yes, I bought the spray and drenched
my pillow with it, only to wake in the darkness-of-the-night, thinking, ‘Christ
alive
, what’s that
horrific
stench?’ And I was only able to get
back to sleep by putting the ruined pillow outside the front door and borrowing a smell-free
pillow from the spare room.

A long soak in a hot bath is another frequently
recommended sleep-lurer. But I hate water, I hate getting wet, and if I had one great wish for
the human race, it wouldn’t be something worthy like us all being able to live in harmony,
but that we could be ‘self-cleaning’ – that we’d have no need to ever
wash ourselves.

Nevertheless, during a recent bad bout of The
Awakes, I gave the hot-bath thing a go. But when Himself looked in on me, and saw me sitting
bolt upright, among the bubbles, anxiously
watching the clock, he said
sadly, ‘I don’t think you’re really getting the best from this
experience.’

‘Grand,’ I said, eagerly clambering
out. ‘I tried, I failed.
C’est la vee
. Pass me the towel.’

I usually ‘retire’ before Himself,
hoping to be asleep before he arrives, because he nods off in two seconds flat and I lie staring
into the darkness, feeling like a lonely failure.

If I’m still awake when he comes to bed, we
have a little snuggle, but if I feel stirrings in his nethers, I have to say, ‘No. No! Not
now. Leave it till the morning and I’ll see you right, but not
now
. Now I need to
concentrate hard on going to sleep. Goodnight, goodnight, sorry, but goodnight.’

I’ll tell you what
does
work with
insomnia – tablets. Yes. Sleeping pills. They are
lovely.
Ambien, Stilnoct,
Zimovane, those sorts of things. They do all the hard graft, they welcome me on board the
Sleep Express
and soon enough they’ve whisked me away to merciful oblivion. But
after a while they stop being lovely, and higher amounts of them are needed to achieve the
initial blissful effect, and then I find myself in my doctor’s, begging for more and being
told to hop it, that they’re addictive and only intended for ‘short-term use’.
Also, there are countless reports of people doing very strange things while under the influence
of sleepers – eating the entire contents of the fridge and remembering nothing about it,
or more sinister stuff, like driving and crashing, and really, I don’t want to do that. So
actually, sleeping tablets are very
bad
news.

Over time I’ve learnt some tricks to help
me sleep – regular exercise is one of them. (I realize this isn’t exactly breaking
news, but when you’re in a queasy insomniac fog it’s hard to muster the will to
exercise, so you never get to find out that actually it really does help).

And all that blah about
having no electronics in the bedroom is also true. As is reading an extraordinarily detailed
biography of an army general.

Lists, too, they’re handy. Each night I
list all my jobs – from ‘google Gucci nail varnishes’ to ‘lose two
stone’ – then the notebook has to be placed outside the bedroom door because
otherwise I can ‘feel’ it at me all night, disturbing me with its countless
demands.

Next I do some sort of gratitude list; it
doesn’t have to be a
War and Peace
-length opus, but it’s good to write
three or four things I’m grateful for (e.g. a lavender-free pillow, the gift of sight, the
fact that the cold sore on my lip didn’t burgeon across my entire chin, that sort of
thing).

Most importantly, I do a scan of my day, seeking
unpleasant emotions that I tried to gloss over at the time: shame is usually a biggie –
shame that I didn’t stand up for myself, or shame that I
did
stand up for myself.
I try not to bury any negative emotion, because it’ll burrow up through me and emerge as
awakeness at 4 a.m.

Even so, there are still some nights when I
literally don’t sleep at all and I feel like I’m going insane.

Himself says I should just admit defeat and get
up and go to the spare room and read. But I lie in bed in the dark, raging to myself,
‘Sleep is a basic human instinct. It’s like hunger and lust and the desire for
lovely shoes. I am
entitled
to it. It is my
right
. I’m not moving,
I’m staying right here in this bed, where I deserve to be, and I am not leaving until my
needs have been met!’ I’m on the verge of singing ‘We Shall Overcome’.

There is no loneliness like the
middle-of-the-night loneliness, and recently I actually did go to the spare room and into the
emptiness of cyberspace I tweeted, ‘Is anyone awake?’

But nothing happened, and I
felt very sad.

Then my tablet made a little noise – a
tweet had arrived. One word, ‘Yes.’ So someone else
was
awake! Next thing
another tweet arrived: ‘I’m awake too.’ And then more: ‘I’ve been
awake since two’; ‘I’m breastfeeding my baby’; ‘I’m still on
LA time’; ‘I had a bad dream and I’m afraid to go back to sleep’;
‘I’ve got a big presentation tomorrow and I’m catastrophizing.’

And suddenly there were dozens and dozens of us,
all of us awake at the wrong time – then I felt really happy and sang ‘Message in a
Bottle’ at the top of my voice: ‘Seems I’m not alone in being aloooonnne.
Hundred million castaways looking for a HOOOOOOMMMME!’

And from the next room, Himself’s voice
shouted, ‘Quieten the feck down, I’m trying to sleep in here.’

First published in the
Sunday Times Style
,
December 2014.