Making It Up as I Go Along

by Marian Keyes

  Then he considers the fact that we’d have to sit opposite each other. And talk to each other. And not be able to watch telly. That makes his mind up. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Let’s do it the usual way.’ So we sit on the couch and eat our dinners on our laps in front of Bryan Dobson and we are happy.

  Of course, Ireland is a beautiful country with much fresh air to partake of, and that’s nice for the tourists. For us locals, it was enough to visit Glendalough once a year, usually on a bank holiday Monday, admire the lake for seven to ten minutes, then proceed to the Mr Whippy van.

  So I’m at a loss, a total loss, as to how to explain how I’ve taken up hill-walking in Wicklow.

  There are some mitigating factors. Fact one: Wicklow is on my doorstep. Fact two: Wicklow, like lots of Ireland, is very beautiful. Fact three: Wicklow, unlike lots of Ireland, has actually marked out some walks. (I have visions of debates in county-council meetings around Ireland where councillors are genuinely baffled by the benefit of laying out way-marked walks through their beautiful countryside. ‘Enough of that nonsense, lads, let’s get back to granting planning applications for eyesore buildings in places of stunning natural beauty.’)

  And it’s not like I’ve never gone for the odd walk in the past. The first time Himself and myself met Rita-Anne’s future husband Jimmy, we went for a walk where the weather was so shocking that the wind actually blew away one of my contact lenses, but because I barely knew Jimmy, I had to pretend it didn’t matter, the way if you accidentally break your ankle in front of someone you don’t know well, you can’t let on you’re in paralysing agony. ‘Ah no, I’m grand, I’m grand. No, I’m grand!’

  But anyway, a while back some of us started going on regular walks, every two or three weeks. This is the cast of characters: myself, Himself, Posh Kate, Posh Malcolm, Hilly and Mark the Communist. And we all have roles: Himself plans the walks (oh, he loves it, consulting his maps and his special book and whatnot); Posh Malcolm takes the photos; Hilly and Mark give reviews of all the latest films (they see everything); Posh Kate provides condensed versions of The Late Late Show (also she talks about her cat, which is nice for the cat-lovers in the group); as for me, I’m not sure what I bring to the party, except maybe to make up numbers.

  Then there are the sangwidges … Sangwidge-making ‘rotates’ from person to person and there is definitely sangwidge one upmanship. Posh Kate is grand because her egg and bacon on granary bread is legendary. But the rest of us try very hard to delight. Posh Malcolm is gifted at showcasing sandwiches featuring horseradish or basil picked from his very own garden. Mark the Communist (or is he Mark the Socialist? I must check, these things are important) recently wowed us with a batch of ‘Iberian ham and Manchego cheese’. (He even told us where he’d bought the ham – some lovely shop on Camden Street.) And Hilly always makes us go ‘OOOoooh!’ because she’s so inventive with the bread – recent examples are bridge rolls, pitta pockets and focaccia.

  I must admit that when it’s my turn, I fret terribly – should I go for a profoundly traditional (and easy) cheese and tomato, which could perhaps be passed off as a retro treat? Or would everyone see through my lazy-arse ruse and should I do Kobe beef, where I actually cooked the beef myself? And where could I get some blaas, seeing as they are a delicacy only available in Waterford, and Waterford is a three-hour drive away?

  But sandwich-anxiety aside, I’ll readily admit that beforehand I never want to go on the walk, but I feel a duty to the others. So I go and afterwards, no matter how tough it’s been, I’m always glad. Who knew there were so many great walks half an hour from Dublin? Mountains and lakes and forests and streams. Did you know there’s a Seamus Heaney walk (featuring quotes on benches)? And a densely forested valley called the Devil’s Glen, dotted with spooky magical sculptures and strange, hilarious sentences carved into the stone? (For example, ‘When we find the ring, I’ll propose.’ And in front of a moss-covered bundle of rocks that looks a bit like a staircase is: ‘I must clean these steps.’)

  The six of us have kept up the walks while one of us went through cancer and chemo, another of us (me) had a nervous breakdown, and another of us had to endure the death of their mother. Maybe it even helped us, who knows? During the worst of my madness, I was advised to take a ‘mindfulness’ approach to my walking. Mindfulness? Are you familiar with it? It’s (allegedly) a method of treating depression by urging a person to stay in the moment. (Many people swear by it.) So I’d be walking along and saying to myself, ‘There’s my foot on the ground and I’m looking at a leaf and it’s very green and the stream running beside me is making a right racket and there’s my other foot on the ground and … God, I’m sick of this mindfulness shit!’ So I gave up on it and went back to discussing The Killing with the others and it seemed to work just as well.

  Obviously, living in Ireland as we do, the weather doesn’t always work in our favour so we have to take the attitude that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes. Over time, we’ve gradually accumulated technical raingear and proper walking boots and suchlike.

  When we first started walking, you’d hardly ever see anyone else, and if you did it would provoke great consternation. ‘Oh Christ! People.’ It would take everything in my power not to jump behind a rock and wait till they’d gone – because the Walkers’ Greetings Etiquette was a tricky one.

  Initially the only people who said hello to us were beardy Germans or Dutch, and you could tell they were longing to stop and exchange a bit of guff. Or rather, they were longing for you, the Irish person, to provide the guff and they would listen and marvel at your beautiful, colourful, curlicued sentences and perhaps even write it down in a little notebook to report to their pals when they returned to Dortmund or Rotterdam.

  But when we encountered other Dublin people, we’d all put our heads down and blush a little and shuffle past in silence. We were a bit mortified because this new outdoorsy business was uncharted territory for us all and we didn’t know the rules.

  However, things have changed … As the recession deepened, the numbers of people out walking increased and there was a sense that we were all in it together. So these days we smile, we speak, we say hello, we comment on the day, we admire people’s dogs, we warn of boggy bits ahead or congratulate people on how far they’ve come and tell them the worst is nearly over (even if it isn’t, but that is the Irish way. We are a nation of liars).

  Sometimes – it’s always the men who do this – we will enquire about a bit of kit, perhaps a fancy-looking walking pole. But it’s more out of politeness than actual interest – the way a woman would admire another woman’s nail varnish.

  Walking people have lovely manners: say you’re going at a gentle pace and you’re aware there’s a group behind you who are gaining on you, you don’t slow down to annoy them the way you might (only might, I’m not saying you would) in a car. Instead you move out of the way to let the faster people past and everyone smiles and is nice.

  And nice is so … well … nice. This walking business brings out the best in people. It’s no wonder I love it.

  First published in Irish Independent, August 2012.

  ON. THE. TWITTERS!!!!!

  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 tod
ay 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.

  Sleep

  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.