Making It Up as I Go Along

by Marian Keyes

  From the moment we arrived, we went all floppy-limbed and soft-shouldered with humidity and relaxation and spent many hours thrun in a hammock, reading. From time to time we roused ourselves to go alligator spotting or get up close and personal with anacondas, sloths, toucans, piranhas and tarantulas the size of dinner plates.

  The best bit of all was going in a canoe into a tributary of the Amazon, then a smaller tributary, then a smaller one, then a tiny one where the boat moved almost silently through a drowned forest where the branches of the trees met overhead and turned the light green and thin lines of blinding sunlight would appear through the cover of branches and I felt like I was in a place where no other human being had ever been before. Eileen said it was like being in Apocalypse Now. Even the shared meals weren’t a problem. It was wonderful, really wonderful, and even if you’re afraid of everything, as I am, I would urge you to go if you ever get the chance.

  After four days we left for Patagonia. The thing is, when we’d been planning the trip I hadn’t appreciated that Brazil is the fifth biggest country in the world and Argentina is the eighth. I had just thought, ‘Well, they’re next door to each other, and if we’re going to Brazil we might as well pop into Argentina while we’re there.’

  Big mistake, mucho grande mistake. It took two full days to get from the Amazon to El Calafate in Patagonia (including an overnighter in Buenos Aires. We arrived at 2 a.m. and left again at the break of day). Also, we crossed back and forth so many fecking time zones in those two days that we didn’t know our arse from our elbow.

  By the time we arrived in Eolo (twenty kilometres outside El Calafate) on a Sunday evening, we were all in FOULERS. Knackered, tired and starving hungry and sorry we had ever left the comfort of our own homes and embarked on so foolhardy an adventure. We made a pact in the car from the airport that as soon as we got to the hotel we were going to demand our dinner. ‘We’re not even going to check in,’ I instructed Himself and Eileen. ‘Do you hear me?’

  So I had to apologize to all the lovely staff at Eolo who obliged us when I insisted that NO, we did NOT want to see our rooms, and NO, we did NOT want a pre-dinner drink, and YES, we WERE going to go into the kitchen and COOK our dinner OURSELVES if they refused to feed us IMMEDIATELY. Yes, I was very sorry indeed. The three of us were very tired and hungry, but I have to admit that I was the ringleader. It was my fault. I led the other two astray. I egged them on. (Hunger-based pun there.)

  In the fifteen minutes before the food was put in front of me I stared sightlessly out the window at the frankly astonishing view and bemoaned the fact that we had ever come away and how I wished I was back home in lovely Ireland. I almost sang a sad song about it, as is the way of Irish people when they are twenty minutes outside of Ireland, except that I was too hungry to sing. (Which just shows how difficult it must be to sing for your supper.)

  In fairness to me, I did get my period the next day, so not all of my bad behaviour can be blamed on my personality but on that wretched pest progesterone (or is it oestrogen?).

  Very, very early the following morning – 6.30 or something ungodly – the other two left to go trekking on a glacier. Himself tried to get me out of bed but, still in the fiendish grip of excessive progesterone, I shrieked that I was ‘going fucking nowhere’ and eventually, after I bit him for the second time, he said, ‘Well, fuck you then,’ and stomped out in his crampons.

  I slept until eleven, then emerged to roam the halls, demanding (yet more) food, and as I shovelled complex carbohydrates into me in front of a floor-to-ceiling window, I was restored to calm. This place was INCREDIBLE. Over our days there we decided it would be a great place to come if you’d had a nervous breakdown.

  Have you been to Patagonia? If you haven’t I’ll try to describe it. It’s all wild and windy and beautiful in a barren, bleak, empty way, and if you stand in Eolo’s hallway and look one way you see the milky turquoise of a glacier lake, and if you look the other you see the limitless expanse of a mustardy-coloured plain, and if you look over your shoulder you’ll see mountains, with another row of mountains behind them, and behind them the snow-capped beginnings of the Andes.

  The staff in Eolo were incredibly kind and obliging, and if you go on a walk they might give you a small bag of almonds and raisins, and the place itself is full of cosy gorgeous couches and corners in which to read your book and recover from your nervous breakdown. (Also, there were four puppies, which I think any ‘sanctuary’ should have.)

  After a couple of days I emerged from my slump and went glacier-visiting and hill-climbing and Eileen went horse-riding and all in all we had an excellent wind-blown, outdoorsy, thousand-mile-stare time. (Also, apropos of nothing, the local men were excessively good-looking.)

  Then Eileen left for Buenos Aires and Himself and I went to Bariloche, still in Patagonia but a two-hour flight away – the size of Argentina! – in the Lake District, and it was hilarious. It was like being in Switzerland! Log cabins a gogo. Triangular-shaped houses! Everything made of wood! Jagged snow-capped peaks! Chocolate! (Yes, sadly another lapse from my sugar-free state.) Pine forests! Deep, dark-blue lakes! Stunning, so it was, utterly stunning.

  Myself and Himself were staying in this hotel in Bariloche called Llao Llao (pronounced sort of like ‘Yow Yow’, I believe, or maybe the person who told me was just taking the piss and hoping to make a gom of me).

  Apparently it’s a famous hotel and it’s been there a long time and frankly, mes amies, I found it slightly odd. It sort of had a Swiss/Wild West peculiar identity. Lots of wood and stag antlers and wooden banisters and wooden floors and dead animals looming out of walls and cowhide on floors and … you know. But nice enough.

  In fairness we were in a tiny horrible room with twin beds, although we had asked for a doubler, and if there’s one thing that makes Himself cry and put his back out it’s twin beds (he puts his back out when he shoves the twin beds together, and he insists on doing it even when they’re glued to the floor).

  Basically we got off to a bad start. But then things picked up and we went out in a canoe in the lake beside the hotel and all in all a lovely time was had, but from the lake we noticed that there were massive building works going on which we hadn’t noticed up to that point. (Bear with me, this becomes important.)

  Anyway, two days later, we are in this massive concourse downstairs having our breakfast (I will also explain that) when who do we see wandering in desultory fashion around the breakfast buffet, plate of scrambled eggs in hand? Only John Rocha!

  For those of you who don’t know who John Rocha is, let me explain. He’s an Irish designer and he designs clothing and glasswear and hotels. He ‘did’ the Morrison Hotel. Also, he is a fairly distinctive-looking character, with waist-length, black-but-greying straight hair, and he was dressed in designer black and he looked – the truth hurts but I am obliged to say it – out of place among the Argentine holidaymakers, who were dressed in jolly holiday shades and fleeces and other relaxed clothing.

  Himself and I were TREMENDOUSLY excited to see a famous Irish person and in such an unusual location, and it couldn’t have happened at a better time because we were beginning to get homesick. Anyway, Himself decided to climb to his feet and cup his hands together to form a loudhailer and shout at the top of his voice in his best Colin Farrell accent over the heads of the stylish Argentines eating their dolce con leche (they’re mad for it, I was fairly mad for it myself, it’s like caramel and they have it on their bread, very sweet, gorgeous), ‘John, JOHN!!! JOHN, ya mad bollix, what the FOOOK are YOU doing here?’ (I should at this point tell you that John Rocha doesn’t know me an
d Himself from a hole in the ground.) Anyway, Himself didn’t actually do it, he just pretended to do it, and we got great enjoyment out of it and we concluded that John must be ‘doing’ the new wing of Yow Yow and that hopefully he’d steer clear of antlers and suchlike. (Was that a pun? ‘Steer’ clear? Could have been.)

  Oh yes. I have to explain what we were doing at the breakfast buffet, because although I love buffets, I hate being in the presence of strangers eating their breakfasts. I’m bad in the mornings, jumpy and nervy, everything seems louder and brighter and – yes, forgive me, mes amies – smellier. And the smell of eggs – particularly fried eggs, but I will also include poached, boiled and scrambled and any other way you can think of – makes me want to cut my own throat. So I try to avoid communal breakfasts because if I’m feeling in any way at all suicidal, the stench of eggs tends to nudge me that little bit closer to the edge.

  However, this was not our first breakfast of the day, but our second. The first we had had several hours earlier, when we had checked out and left for the airport, but en route to the airport we discovered that our flight had been delayed by eleven hours, so we came back to Yow Yow and they let us in and suggested that we kill one of our eleven hours by having a second breakfast. Which we duly did. And to think that if our flight hadn’t been delayed we would have missed the sight of John Rocha nosing around the Coco Pops. (I apologize to non-Irish readers. The sight of John Rocha making his own toast may not be as thrilling to you as it was to me.)

  After four days, we went to Buenos Aires and we were meant to meet up with Eilers but due to the flight delay by the time we got in it was too late and she left for Ireland early the next morning, so that was that.

  Just the two days in BA (as they say). (It would have been three if it hadn’t been for the delayed flight.) After extreme forbearance on the shopping front up until this point, I had a mild shoe-and-bag frenzy in some place called Ricky Sarkovy (something like that). I got blue metallic stilettos and a silvery metallic bag and a purple metallic belt.

  My friend Conor McCabe had assured me, and I quote, that everything in Buenos Aires was ‘dirt cheap’. Sadly, I did not find this to be so. As I may have mentioned, I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about me that just repels bargains. I think it’s because I’ve an eejity face and when shopkeepers see me approaching, they think, ‘This one will buy anything’ (which is true). ‘I’ll just raise my prices by 1500 per cent.’

  And now here I am, back home, with the shakes and mild nausea. (Jet lag.) (Also terror at having to resume work.)

  mariankeyes.com, February 2007.

  The Auvergne

  Myself and Himself went to France on a walking holiday. I know it must seem that my life is one big holiday but honestly it isn’t, it’s just that there was a gap in the schedule: the new book had gone off for the copy-editing and there was nothing for me to do for a little while and soon enough I’d be doing the proofreading, so you’ve got to take your chances where you can find them, so we went to France.

  Also, I feel jackknifed with guilt about going on holiday in these horrible financial times, but this was a very cheap holiday because we were spending our days walking, at no financial cost, and staying in very basic places (lino on the floors, extremely small rooms so that one of us had to stay in bed while the other of us got dressed, that sort of thing. Also, no tellies, not that it would have made any difference, seeing as I can’t speak French).

  So we had the cost of the ferry and the petrol, which obviously is an expense but it’s a bit different from going to Reethi Rah in the Maldives and staying in a villa with its own pool and a butler for two weeks. (I spend a lot of time on the interwebs looking at it and dreaming …) So anyway, off we went to France, to the Auvergne.

  It’s a volcanic region – the place is JAM-PACKED with extinct volcanoes – and the guidebook said it was very remote, and I had visions of inbred peasants throwing stones and shouting, ‘Allez chez vous!’ at us as we tramped past in our walking boots and rucksacks, but the book had it ALL WRONG.

  It was STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL. Lakes and, yes, hills – indeed, you could call them mountains. And – this is the best bit – meadows full of wild flowers, wild daffodils and violets and foxgloves and poppies in the hedgerows, and butterflies and all of that, and it reminded me of the way rural Ireland used to be before they started using pesticides.

  There were cows in the fields, and goats and sheep and – unsettlingly – llamas. Yes, llamas. The Peruvian type, not the Tibetan. Twice I saw them. Once I would have put down to a fragile state of mind. But twice made me think that I probably wasn’t imagining it. And not once were stones thrown at us. We met hardly anyone, but the few ancient oul’ fellas on tractors we encountered were very nice and SALUTED us, like actually saluted us, like we were in the army.

  It’s funny because my mother is a rural type and she uses the word ‘salute’ when she means ‘greet’ or ‘wave’. But I didn’t realize it was something that LITERALLY happens.

  We walked miles and miles every day. Thirteen of them. Miles, not days. Six days. Then in the evenings we would arrive at our lino-floored billet and eat enough stodgy food to sink a battleship. Yes, the food was fascinating. Completely not what I expected from French food, which I always associate with complicated reductions and creamy sauces and general gussied-up fanciness.

  This was proper rural stodge. Their signature dish is half an acre of potatoes, mashed with a warehouse full of cheese and 112 pints of cream and the side of a pig. The PORTIONS, amigos. MASSIVE. Like rural Ireland, where the woman of the house feels she has failed as a hostess if her dinner guests don’t spontaneously develop a hernia in the course of the dinner.

  And for breakfast there was no chopped fruit or granola or ‘lifestyle’ food; what you got was a ginormous croissant and a bucket of coffee, and I was fecking DELIGHTED because I adore croissants but won’t let myself eat them because of the continual war that rages between my appetite and the size of my arse. But I had no choice but to eat my ginormous croissant because there was nothing else and I had a hard day’s walking ahead of me, so it was great.

  Then we’d buy cheese and stuff to bring for our lunch and one day I insisted we purchase ten slices of Parma-style ham, only to discover many hours later when we’d collapsed beside a lake to refuel that it wasn’t Parma ham at all, but raw bacon. A low moment, amigos. Yes, some disappointment and – sad to say – a shameful attempt to reapportion the blame, as I sought to absolve myself of responsibility.

  But other than that little hiccup, we had un temps merveilleux!

  mariankeyes.com, May 2009.

  Slovakia

  While the Praguers were living in Prague, I visited them regularly. And when it transpired that Ireland were playing Slovakia in the European Championship qualifiers, the two things tied in very nicely. So I went to Prague with Himself, Tadhg and Susan, then we drove to Bratislava with Niall to see our glorious boys in green thrash the living daylights out of Slovakia.

  Okay, Slovakia. Well, we went there thinking a) the Irish football team would bate the living daylights out of the Slovaks, and b) that the Slovaks were lovely people (Ljiljana had said they were). Neither of these things turned out to be true.

  We set off from Prague on the Saturday morning, full of good cheer. We then proceeded to stop at about fifteen different McDonald’s on the way, partly because of my bargain-basement bladder and partly because we were all hungry at different times and partly because it was the month for Himself to have his once-a-year McDonald’s.

  We arrived at the SAS Radisson in the centre of
Bratislava to discover that only one of our three rooms was ready (even though it was later than three o’clock). We could hardly hear the conversation with the surly, surly, oh very surly desk person because of the singing of ‘The Fields of Athenry’ from the bars across the street. Undeterred, we went to the one ready room and Tadhg leant out the window, looking at the hordes of Irish fans out there, and said, ‘There it is! I’ve seen my first green inflatable hammer!’ And so festivities were declared open!

  Out we went. Irish fans everywhere, full of niceness. Slovak police also everywhere, not full of niceness. Making people take down Irish flags. Telling people to shut up the singing. Slovak bar staff. Not full of niceness.

  Back to the hotel to see if the rooms were ready. Revelation from (different other) surly desk person: the hotel was overbooked. There was no room for Niall. The whole town was full. But they had secured him some rude lodgings outside the town, halfway to Budapest. All of us very distressed. ‘He’s our brother!’ we exclaimed. ‘We don’t see him that often! Don’t send him halfway to Budapest!’

  But nothing doing. Mood low. Arrangements to meet in the lobby at 6.15 for food before the match. However … however … as luck would have it, weren’t we staying in the same hotel as the team! Yes! Before 6.15, Himself and myself were ‘grooming’ ourselves (i.e. putting on our green gear) when we heard an extra-loud commotion down in the street: a coach had drawn up outside. THE coach. To collect the team and bring them to the grounds.

  We were so excited we climbed out the window and on to the roof and then we decided we should rush downstairs to see if we could see them in the lobby. And sure enough we did! They all appeared out of the lifts, seconds after myself and Himself arrived, and they disappeared into some back room for a ‘chat’. Then they appeared again, a long line of them, being led by Damien Duff. I’ve always been fond of him because of his alleged predilection for twenty hours’ sleep a night.