Making It Up as I Go Along

by Marian Keyes

  Anyway, when it arrived it was FAR WORSE that I had imagined. When they’d said stew, I thought the coxcombs would be all cut up into little bits and unrecognizable, but it was just a plate with three ENORMOUS coxcombs on it, looking all rubbery and revolting, and when Himself started into it, the entire staff, right down to kitchen porters, deserted their posts and stood staring, marvelling at the sight of le Rosbif eating it. Meanwhile, I was nibbling little pieces of bread, trying to keep from gagging. Christ above.

  Other than that, our French adventure was FANTASTIC.

  mariankeyes.com, September 2005.

  Ulster Says NO!!!

  KYLIE!!!! Coming to Ireland! The only fly in the ointment was that she was playing in Belfast, not Dublin, but this is how it all worked out: there were twelve of us, and some were coming from London, but for us Dublin people we hired a minibus and a great day was had by all, except when Ulster said NO!

  We’d arranged in advance with the Odyssey Arena people that we could park our minibus, but when we went into the car park we were told by a youth in an orange fluorescent jacket and a walkie-talkie, ‘NO! YOU CAN’T PARK HERE! You’re too big.’ He said there was a separate car park for minibuses, but when we tried to leave for it we were told, ‘NO! YOU CAN’T LEAVE TILL YOU PAY FOR YOUR TICKET!’ We explained we’d only been in for six seconds, but we were told that rules were rules, then eventually we were allowed to leave and we made our way to the coach car park, only to be told – yes! – ‘NO! YOU CAN’T PARK HERE! Normally you could but the council has just said, “NO! NO PARKING HERE TONIGHT.”’

  We were directed to an official – this time in a YELLOW fluorescent jacket – who sent us back to the first car park, saying there was NO size, weight or height restriction on the vehicles that could park there, where – oh, mes amies, it was HILARIOUS – where the original orange-jacketed jobsworth youth came running the entire length of the car park in order to yell, ‘NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!’ at us.

  You should have seen him, he was so THRILLED to have the opportunity to be unhelpful! We made his day, possibly his year.

  ‘NO NONONONONONO! Get out, you’re too big.’

  ‘But the man in the yellow jacket said –’

  ‘NONONONONONO!!!!!! I have an ORANGE jacket. ORANGE trumps YELLOW.’

  Before he kicked us out again and sent us back to the coach car-park bloke (who unsurprisingly hadn’t changed his mind), he kindly directed us to ‘a patch of waste ground around the corner about three minutes’ walk from here’.

  I wasn’t sure which part of that sentence alarmed me most. The ‘waste ground’? The ‘around the corner’ directions in a strange city? The promise of a three-minute walk? Irish people are notorious liars about time and distance, everything is ‘just coming now’ and ‘three minutes’ walk away’.

  Meanwhile, Himself was ringing the woman who had promised parking in the first place but – guess what? – that’s right – NO REPLY.

  Then when we tried to go into the Odyssey Arena, the man took one look at our tickets and said, ‘NO.’ He had already turned away to shout NO at someone else, but when we asked him why we couldn’t go in he said, ‘You need a letter.’ We produced the letter and he was bitterly disappointed, but in the end he had no choice but to let us in. At this stage we were in convulsions.

  Then Eileen tried to go outside for a cigarette before the start of the show but she was told, ‘NO. NO. NO. NO. Go out if you must but NO WAY will you be coming back in.’

  But the best bit, the very best bit of all, was when Suzanne and I went to the loo during the concert. When we came back into the arena, we stood for a second on the top of the steps just to get our bearings and the next thing some official girl yelled in our face, ‘NO! NO STANDING! YOU CAN’T STAND THERE!’

  We were crying with laughter.

  But after all that it was an amazing show: breathtaking sets and costumes and dancers and SHOES. Kylie is a little angel and charm itself.

  mariankeyes.com, July 2008.

  Cyprus

  Cyprus! We were going because Ireland was playing Cyprus in the football, and mercifully we were flying from London and not Dublin as I’d gone to the Israel match in March direct from Dublin and Christ, what a NIGHTMARE! For starters the flight had left at 4.30 a.m. and everyone on the plane apart from me, Himself, Tadhg and Susan were out of their minds drunk and wearing green curly wigs and singing ‘The Fields of Athenry’ (why? Why? Of all the songs?). It was like being on a night bus but for six hours, one that they sold drink on and that you couldn’t get off.

  People (well, men, actually) kept tumbling on top of me and telling me I looked like Eleanor McEvoy (I don’t, I’ve nothing against her, she’s lovely, but I just don’t) and asking me to sing a song and telling me to lighten up and offering me a drink and the whole thing was badly hideous and I hated myself for not loving it, but then again I AM an alcoholic, one who doesn’t drink, so it was bound to be hard …

  This time, flying from London, there were a few high-spirited green-jerseyed lads in the queue, and Himself did a headcount and said, ‘That’s good. Just enough to get a sing-song going,’ and I said, ‘I’ll give you sing-song where you’ll feel it.’

  When the green-jerseyed lads got on the plane, they insisted on proving how good-natured and lovable Irish football fans are by stopping to help the air hostess fit a case into a tight space in the overhead luggage thing. ‘Here, let me do that,’ one charmer said. Then, from another lovable rogue, ‘Ah no, Joxer, you’re doing it all wrong, give me a go.’ ‘No, that’s not that way,’ said a twinkly ne’er-do-well. Despite the poor woman insisting she was well able, the lads continued to pull and shove at the piece of luggage and only stopped when they damaged its handle. Then they all piled down the back, roaring for drink.

  Other than that, it was a grand flight and when we arrived in Cyprus it was 82 degrees! All the others were there, including poor Eileen who’d had to do the night-bus Dublin flight, which was so bad that she couldn’t bear to talk about it.

  We had a beautiful time, all nine of us, sunbathing on our own little grassy knoll and having lovely dinners, where I had fried halloumi cheese for starters and Cyprus salad (like Greek salad but with halloumi instead of feta) for my mainer.

  The match, however, was a tragedy. Although we won, we played atrociously. When we got back to the hotel I repaired to bed, as is my way, but the rest of them piled across the road to a bar, where they spent many happy hours drowning their sorrows.

  A lone man in a suit was at the next table, but no one paid him any heed until he stood up to leave and Tadhg suddenly went peculiar. Himself thought that the man in the suit had pinched Tadhg’s arse, so thunderstruck was Tadhg’s face, but then Tadhg pointed a trembling finger at the back of the man as he crossed the road, and said, hoarsely, ‘That’s Ray Houghton.’

  Now, Ray Houghton, for those who may not know, is a hero, oft celebrated in song and story and comedy routine, because in 1988, in Stuttgart, Ray scored the winning goal in a match against England. It’s not that we hold the 800 years of colonization against England or anything, and sure ’tis only an oul’ game, but all the same, to beat England!!!

  Anyway, Tadhg yelled, ‘RAY!’ and Ray turned around, lifted one hand in a gracious salute – and disappeared into our hotel. Immediately Tadhg tried to dash out into the traffic after him and had to be restrained, then he began rounding up whatever the pleasant equivalent of a lynch mob is, in order to find Ray.

  But it was late and no one would join his quest except poor innocent Seán (Caitr�
�ona’s fella). Everyone else sloped off to bed, but Tadhg and Seán apparently spent half the night banging on hotel doors and shouting, ‘Ray! RAY! Are you IN there, Ray? Ray? Are you ASLEEP? Can I buy you a DRINK? I love you, Ray!’

  Then there was talk that Seán was instructed to cause some diversion by the reception desk so that Tadhg could go through the computer system, in order to discover which room Ray was in.

  Some of this is actually a lie, sadly, especially the bit about the diversion and the computer system. All that happened really was that Tadhg and Seán spent several hours in the hotel bar in the hope that Ray might appear in his pyjamas, looking for a nightcap, but we enjoyed ourselves so much the following day with the ‘Ray! RAY! Are you IN there, Ray?’ stories that I thought I’d write them down anyway.

  mariankeyes.com, October 2005.

  Brazil

  Well, off we went on Valentine’s Day to Brazil and, oh my God, Rio, it’s EXACTLY like it looks in the pictures. Copacabana was a MASSIVE expanse of beach, jam-packed with millions of people all almost in their pelt, playing music and drinking out of coconuts with the top lopped off and beautiful children running everywhere and women not at all bothered if they didn’t have perfect bodies (fair play!) and boys playing volleyball and football and the sun beating down and men selling ice cream and all that.

  Round the next headland was Ipanema beach and that was exactly the same. Granted, it was carnival (or carnaval, actually) and it mightn’t be like that the whole time but I’d like to think it is.

  Being Irish, repressed, full of loathing for my body and having received the message from the moment I was born that my naked self was a disgusting, shameful thing and the best garment I could wear would be an all-over body-coverer knitted in itchy wool, Rio came as a bit of a challenge to me. (Actually, now that I think about it, it’s strange that the burka didn’t originate in Ireland. Not only would it fit in with the message given by priests that all women are shameless hussies who are only gagging for an opportunity to lure good men from the path of righteousness by flashing a square inch of shin or elbow joint, but it would come in very handy with our wet weather. I love a hood. I practically insist upon it when I buy a jacket.)

  We arrived at the bright, shiny hotel and even in the hotel lobby, people were wearing almost nothing. Lounging by the concierge desk was a standard-issue Eurotrash international playboy with shoulder-length hair, bright orange Speedo togs (the really, really small, tight, clingy ones – budgie-smugglers, I believe they’re called), a matching (yes, matching) orange T-shirt and – of course, you could have guessed this – a man-bag (sadly not orange) tucked under his oxter. Himself and myself nudged each other and attempted a snigger, but it was a little half-hearted because even then we intuited we were in over our heads.

  After we washed away the grime of our journey, timidly, tentatively, Himself and myself, in our roomy T-shirts and lightweight but nevertheless ankle-length trousers, left our hotel, stepped outside into the Copacabana mayhem and were instantly flattened against the pavement by the heat.

  But I was reminded of what my friend Nadine had told me about Miami. She said when she first arrived there she was intimidated to pieces by all the tanned gorgeous bodies in dayglo-pink batty riders, driving around in convertibles and playing Shakira, but a couple of days in, she had successfully infiltrated and was managing to pass herself off as a native. And so it proved with me, my amigos! (Well, almost!)

  As the days went on, I wore less and less until the Damascene moment when I bared – totally! – my upper arms. In fact, I actually had a bubble of time when I was able to say, God, I’m really happy. It was when I was on my way back from an AA meeting (it was unbelievable, there was an English-speaking meeting just four minutes’ walk from my hotel) and the sun was setting and everyone was leaving the beach in droves and heading for the Metrô and here I was, walking along, with the lumpy shame of my upper arms on view for all the world to see, and I was feeling great. Alone but not lonely. A person among people. Lumpy arms or no, just the same as everyone else.

  I find it difficult to ever be truly at peace, there’s always something that feels like a shark relentlessly on the prowl, somewhere deep in my psyche. Even though I am the luckiest person on earth and have been given an amazing life, it’s difficult to get the shark to stop moving, but it stopped while I was in Rio.

  Now, I’m not suggesting that a permanent cure for the shark would be to move to Rio, as shark-subduing is a lifelong journey of trying to do the right thing, but it was so nice to get temporary relief, you know?

  Our friends Eileen and her sister Deirdre were with us in Rio and we did all the touristy yokes (Cripes the Redeemer and the Sugarloaf and all that), but the best by a million miles was the night at the Sambadrome. I haven’t got the words to do it justice. I found it very emotional. I actually cried (not something I do often, except in the presence of Russian orphans) because I was so moved by all the work each school had put into their parade.

  The thought of people in the favelas, where I’m sure life is not easy (I don’t intend to be patronizing, I really mean it), working so hard and doing it with such pride and producing such a jaw-dropping spectacle (6,000 people dancing along in amazing costumes and on massive floats as big as a four-storey house) overwhelmed me. Human beings are incredible, they really are.

  Another thing about Rio, I hadn’t expected the people to be so warm. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because we’d been warned the place was so dangerous. (We were warned many times to be on the lookout for ‘mugglers’. It’s my new favourite word.) Or maybe it’s because the natives are so good-looking. But they were astonishingly kind and likeable. Even the journalists!

  After six nights in Rio we said goodbye to Deirdre, then Himself, Eileen and myself headed for Manaus, gateway to the Amazon. (That’s not their slogan, that’s just mine.) Manaus used to be a thriving rubber port (not actually made of rubber), with its own opera house (I know!), but it all went to hell when the arse fell out of the rubber market around 1910. It was an atmospheric place, reeking of decayed grandeur. Himself said he felt like he was in a Gabriel García Márquez novel.

  After one night there, we went up the Amazon. Ontra noo, Eileen and I were dreading the whole Amazon thing. We were staying ‘upriver’ in a lodge with no electricity or hot water, where we expected to be overrun with mosquitoes, anacondas and tarantulas and – worst of all – where meals were communal. God, there’s nothing worse, is there? Having to make small talk with strangers over breakfast. Having to ask where they’re from and what they do and where they’ve been and where they’re going next (then – aaarrrgggghhh – discovering that you’re going to the exact same spot, that you’re not in fact an intrepid traveller at all, merely the pawn of a travel agent).

  Things got off to a bad start when, just before we got on the boat, I discovered that I’d lost my sunglasses, so I had to very quickly buy a pair in Manaus, and on account of having an abnormally small head my choice was limited. On the boat, watching the banks of the river whizzing past, despair began to creep over me. I was quite surprised as – after a lifetime of depression – I’ve perked up a bit recently. Yes, everything began to appear malign and tinted with desperation, then I took off my sunglasses – and everything cheered up! Put the sunglasses back on – and I spiralled back down into gloom. Took the glasses off again – and once more all became cheery!

  Then I realized that the problem wasn’t me at all, it was the fecking sunglasses! There was a yellowish tinge to the glass. Not on the actual outside of the glass – I wouldn’t run the risk of wearing the same kind of sunglasses a
s Bono, as the chances of me being mistaken for him are already quite high: we are both short, stout, stocky-thighed, have dark hair, an Irish accent and always wear high heels. Also, I am quite a good singer. (This is a lie.) Also, I have met the Pope and called him ‘dude’. (This is another lie.) Also, I have met George Bush and said to him, ‘Hey, man, why can’t we all jus’ get along?’ (This is yet another lie, but I am on a roll now and appear to be unable to stop.) Also, we both drive Maseratis. (Would you believe it? This is actually true. There are – apparently – only six Maseratis in the ROI (Republic of Ireland) and Bono owns one, and I (well, Himself really) own another, and often, yes, often when I am out ‘motoring’, you see people nudging each other, going, ‘Doesn’t Bono drive one of them yokes? It couldn’t be Bono, could it?’ And then when I get closer and they see me behind the wheel, short, stout, stocky-thighed, dark-haired, Irish-accented and singing, ‘In the NAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMEHHHH of LOVVVVVVVE! WAAAHHHLURGHHHH ijeh name of LOVVVVVVE,’ they go, ‘Christ! It is! It is Bono!!!

  Yes, so, anyway, the sunglasses. From the inside, looking out, the sunglasses made everything look sort of jaundiced and appalling. How does Bono do it? No wonder he goes around doing good works and badgering the oppressed and the needy if he is looking at the world through jaundice-tinted spectacles. You’d have to try to improve things, or else commit suicide.

  So once that little problem was sorted out, all was top notch and my time in the Amazon proved to be the greatest surprise of my life.