1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge

by Tony Hawks; Prefers to remain anonymous

  At Strabane the roadsigns changed and the distances were marked in miles instead of kilometres, marking my return into British Sovereign Territory. This was the province of Tyrone, and we were soon whizzing through its county town, Omagh, where the playwright Brian Friel was born. His play Philadelphia Here I Come was no doubt inspired by these surroundings, and might just as easily have been called Anywhere Other Than Omagh, Here I Come.

  It was another sunny day, with a few clouds around, but threatening to turn into something of a scorcher. But I still couldn’t understand why I was feeling so hot Then I discovered the reason.

  ‘Gary, do you know that the heater is on full?’

  ‘Yeah, I can’t work out how to turn the thing off.’

  I gave it five minutes of my time and achieved very little other than the establishment of the fact that I too was unable to turn the thing off. I made use of the only piece of equipment in the car which I understood, and wound down the window.

  At Aughnacloy we were back on the border again and Gary made a short detour to show me the staunchly loyalist estate where the citizens had seen fit to paint Union Jacks on the paving stones. It was almost as if they had felt the need to be literal about the word ‘flagstones’. Not to be outdone, on their estate the nationalists had the Tricolour adorning their pavements. A battle for souls, under the soles. Would that the conflict had been fought entirely with the paintbrush.

  I consulted the map and alerted Gary to the fact that Armagh wasn’t that far off now and he instructed me to rummage in the back for the fax with the details of our rendezvous.

  ‘Of course, the area south of Armagh is one of the few identifiable danger spots of the Troubles,’ he said, the beginnings of a grin suggesting that he was going to relish what was to come. ‘It’s bandit country. We should see a lot of army activity round there, and there’ll be choppers in the air and all that. Do you know about the sign they’ve put up near Crossmaglen?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a picture of a gunman with the words ‘Sniper At Work’ written underneath. When the nationalists first put it up, the British Army took it down. But then they made another one and put that up, and when that was taken down they made another, and so it went on until the British gave up and they just leave it there now.’

  All rather sinister. I tried to lighten the mood by suggesting that the British Army should put their own sign up with a picture of a sniper crossed out Who knows, it might do the trick; for the most part it works for’No Right Turn’.

  It must have looked odd, my arse being presented to oncoming traffic, but that was an unavoidable bi-product of my back-seat rummaging. I couldn’t find the fax anywhere.

  ‘It must be in the boot,’ said Gary with confidence, and so we stopped the car just outside Armagh and did a joint boot rummage.

  No fax.

  ‘Have you looked under the fridge?’ asked Gary.

  ‘No, I haven’t but-Well, look under the fridge. I bet the bloody fax is under the bloody fridge.’

  We looked, and it wasn’t. It wasn’t anywhere, because the man who only needed three and a half hours’ sleep had failed to put it in the bloody car. He pretended to be unconcerned.

  ‘It’s all right, because I remember that Antoinette said that the meeting point was somewhere on the Armagh to Dundalk Road.’

  I consulted the map.

  ‘But Gary, as far as I can see, there are two roads to Dundalk, a big main one, and the B31, which is much smaller.’

  ‘The B31? I’m pretty sure the B31 was mentioned.’

  Everything about Gary’s countenance suggested that he was anything but ‘pretty sure’ of the BSI’s involvement in the day’s plans. However that was the route we took until I realised what was going on here. I was being driven to an approximate area in Northern Ireland in the faint hope that we would casually run into a mobile TV unit, and the only reasons for suspecting that we might possibly be in the correct ‘approximate area’, were the vague recollections of an overtired man with a hangover. It made little sense and I insisted that we stop at a call box and phone the Live At Three office in Dublin.

  From a British Telecom phonebox, I made an international call to the Republic of Ireland, and a flustered secretary at RTE gave me the address of our rendezvous and I took down the directions. I looked at my watch. It was 1.30 pm. At least we had time on our side, the crew couldn’t be far away and we had an hour before everyone at RTE would start to panic.

  ‘What we’re looking for, Gary,’ I explained, ‘is the Silverbridge Harp GAA Club. Apparently we take the R177 five miles south of Armagh.’

  Gary was now the chief map reader, his cavalier driving skills temporarily rendered surplus to requirements since we had ceased having anywhere to head for. He studied the map and shook his head in frustration.

  ‘I can’t see a feckin’ R177 anywhere.’

  Calmly I took the map from Gary, sure in the knowledge that I would be able to pat the page, point to a specific spot and in a patronising tone, say, ‘There. The R177.’

  And I surely would have done had I been able to see a feckin’ R177 anywhere. Jeez, where was it? The reason for our failure to find this road was not discovered until much later, but it was a result of the numbers and letters of the roads changing when they left the Irish Republic and entered the United Kingdom. At some stage in the past, one government or other had decided that the cultural identity of a nation couldn’t be preserved without it having its own letters and numbers for a road. And, to be fair, you can see their point of view, I mean I’m hardly going to feel British and proud of it if I’m driving down the R177, but if I’m on the A29, then I’m far more likely to be infused with a strong feeling of allegiance to the Crown, and be an altogether more rounded individual. Unfortunately Gary and I remained ignorant of this particular bureaucratic pearl of wisdom and became progressively more lost as a result.

  We considered stopping and asking directions to be an admission of our own deficient orienteering skills, and so resisted it for as long as we felt it possible so to do. When we found that we were no longer on the B31 but instead on an industrial estate just outside Markethill, we made a U-turn both with this policy and the car. The arrival at an industrial estate is something which always seems to happen to me when lost in a motor vehicle and with alarming regularity. Usually I take the sight of these brightly coloured, pre-fab units as a cue either to become hysterical or tearful. On this occasion I showed great strength and did neither, believing that weeping openly or screaming might undermine Gary’s confidence.

  Having escaped the bleak world of industrial estates, we sought assistance just outside Markethill, where Gary pulled the car over to the side of the road and I wound down the window to ask for directions. I found myself facing a belligerent looking band of labourers, hard at tea break.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, suddenly very conscious of my English accent, ‘but do any of you have any idea where the Silverbridge Harp GAA Club is?’

  They looked at me, and then at each other. No one responded. Gary looked uneasy and leant over.

  ‘Don’t, worry, fellas, sorry to trouble you.’

  He pulled the car away quickly.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ I said.

  ‘I think round here it’s best that I do the talking.’

  His reasoning turned out to be sound enough. Recent violence and alleged complicity in it by the RUC had left temperatures running high in the nationalist communities, and we were in the very heart of one here. Gary pointed out that since the Silverbridge GAA club was a Gaelic Football Club, and something of focal point for Republican unity, it might arouse suspicion if someone with an accent like mine should wish to make a visit.

  ‘They are pretty tight knit communities around here, and they’ve got the wherewithal to have us followed.’

  I didn’t gulp, but I wanted to. Followed? And then what? Would we be ‘dealt with’? In a pathetic attempt to appear unflustered I changed the su
bject and said something which confirmed, beyond all doubt, my country of origin.

  ‘Is it hot, or is it me?’

  ‘Course it’s feckin’ hot, the heater’s on full, you tosser.’

  James was being over familiar.

  The sun won its battle with the clouds and beat down upon us with an uncustomary potency, and Gary and I, now potential targets, drove aimlessly around bandit country in a mobile sauna. This journey could have been going better.

  I looked at my watch again. It was 2.25.1 figured they would be starting to panic at RTE round about now. I was supposed to be the first interview on the show at around 3.05. Provided we found the B78, we were still confident that wouldn’t be a problem. I consulted the map.

  ‘I’m pretty certain the B78 is a right turn, off this road we’re on now,’ I said, with all the confidence of a condemned man.

  ‘And how far to the turning?’

  ‘About six miles.’

  ‘Right, time to put the foot down.’

  This new and frightening resolve left me nauseous with fear and had the effect of losing us valuable time, because as we overtook an Ulster Bus at around 95 mph, I thought I just caught a fleeting glimpse of the B78 on our right.

  ‘We ate that bus for breakfast,’ boasted Gary. It wasn’t just the heater which was belting out hot air.

  ‘Yes, well done. It’s just that I think we may have passed the B78 as we were overtaking.’

  ‘Shit’ Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m pretty certain I saw a sign.’

  Gary slammed on the brakes and we screeched to a halt. We needed to turn around, but the bus which we had just overtaken, had now stopped to take on passengers, and cars were overtaking it at speed. Even the maniacal Gary knew it was suicidal to attempt any turning manoeuvre until the bus had moved off and we had a clear view of the road.

  There seems to be some correlation between the amount of time it takes other people to do things and the extent to which you are in a hurry. This phenomenon (which is a variation on Sod’s law—let us call it Arse’s law) was clearly in evidence at the bus stop behind us. Each passenger seemed not only to have no change whatsoever, but must have been a relative of the driver, who felt the need to bring him up to date with all the family news over the past six months. I haven’t seen a queue move so slowly since…well, the last time I was in a hurry. Gary and I fretted, cursed, and at least one of us smashed a fist down on to the controls of the car’s heating system, shouting, ‘Feckin’ well leave it out with the feckin’ heat, will ya?’

  You had to hand it to the farmer. It was almost as if he had been laying in wait thinking to himself, ‘Why, there’s no point in getting my cattle to cross the B78 at the moment, far better to wait a couple of hours until somebody comes along who is in a desperate hurry.’ His timing was impeccable or disastrous, depending on whether you wanted to do a TV interview or not.

  And so we sat there, having scored a momentary victory in circumventing the bus, watching lackadaisical cows amble across a road, the malicious farmer looking on with a self-satisfied grin. With a stick, he gestured to his cows as if to say, ‘You take your time today fellas, because these two look like they’re most eager to get somewhere.’ Time was ticking away. It was twenty to three.

  ‘Antoinette will kill me,’ said Gary, as the last cow dawdled past.

  ‘There’s plenty of time. No need to panic,’ I said, panicking.

  There had been, of course, no need to panic. It had been our panic which had allowed Arse’s law to manifest itself, and it was only when we resigned ourselves to the fact that we probably weren’t going to make it, that things began to proceed with some measure of normality. As it hap-peaed, we arrived in plenty of time. Well, from our perspective, five minutes before the show went on air was plenty of time. Antoinette didn’t see it quite that way.

  ‘Jeez, where in. Christ have you been? We were just working out how to fill seven minutes of air time.’

  She looked me up and down.

  ‘Hello there. You must be Tony, the nutter with the fridge. I’ll have to get to know you on air because we’re on in five.’

  Why the producer had chosen this location for a roadside interview was a mystery. Quite apart from it being in another country to the one I was hitching in, it was probably the noisiest stretch of road for miles around. No doubt the producer had his reasons, and no doubt they were crap.

  The viewers of Live At Three must have been puzzled as to why its make-up department had thought I would look best in bright red. The flurry and fluster of the journey with its constant blast of roasting air had made me resemble a ripe tomato. I was certainly not looking my best and was unlikely to become the focus of the amorous attentions of the octogenarian ladies who chose this show for their afternoon’s entertainment Another missed opportunity. I chatted well enough though, my conversations with Gerry Ryan having left me adept in the patter required to explain all that I was about, and the interview went very smoothly. I stood by the roadside with my fridge, and Antoinette fired questions at me whilst I hitched. It couldn’t have gone much better. Okay, the occasional juggernaut hurtled past drowning out everything that was being said, but this didn’t seem to bother the producer who was more than happy. Gary stood by, smiling a proud smile which said, ‘Against all odds, I got that guy here.’

  At the end of the interview Antoinette presented me with three indelible marker pens, with which I was to get those who had given me lifts to sign my fridge. What a good idea. Then, as I had been asked to do, I announced that I was going to look for a better spot to hitch, and pulled my fridge up the road and away from the cameras, allowing Antoinette to do her final piece to camera. When we went off air, I stopped and looked up at a road sign which was now above me. It had a picture of a man in a balaclava, and below it were written the words:

  SNIPER AT WORK

  Thank you RTE. They had brought me to one of the most dangerous locations in all of Ireland and had encouraged me to swan around with a fridge. All of this had probably been noted by one of the Republican paramilitary’s intelligence units, who, as we showbiz types said our emotional goodbyes, were back at headquarters struggling with one of their more difficult reports.

  ‘We discovered what the film crew were there for.’

  ‘Yes? What exactly?’

  ‘They were talking to a guy who stands by the road with a fridge, and then pulls it along a bit on a trolley.’

  ‘Eamonn?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When did you last have a holiday?’

  10

  Surf City

  This is brilliant, thanks very much,’ I said to Antoinette as she drove us towards Sligo.

  ‘Don’t thank me, thank Kara, my series producer. She thought it would be a good idea if people could get hold of you, so she rang a mate at Eircell and they came through with the goods. The phone is yours, provided you mention them on the radio a couple of times and do a pho-tocall with the fridge and the phone when you get to Dublin.’

  This was quite something, a mobile phone. I was going up in the world.

  ‘Have they given it to me for the duration of my trip?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they were rather taken with the idea of a man hitching round with a fridge.’

  I let it sink in. Then, ‘I love this country.’

  Antoinette was the new James. She had taken over from Gary as my personal chauffeur. The considerable improvement in the standard of driving was offset by the retrograde quality of the car. The Republic of Ireland’s government doesn’t require its vehicle owners to obtain the equivalent of MOT certificates, and Antoinette’s car was testimony to the lack of wisdom of that policy. To call it a deathtrap would be to pay it a compliment. A trap is usually a device from which you can’t get out, but the doors and windows on this car threatened to throw themselves open at any given moment, liberating the anxious passenger from the bare springs of the passenger
seat.

  ‘Sorry about the car,’ Antoinette had said, ‘it’s a bit of a disaster area. The only thing which really works properly on it is the heater.’

  Well, that was a relief.

  Antoinette was charming, intelligent and a mother. She didn’t look old enough to have a fourteen-year-old son, but she assured me that was the case. The destination of Sligo suited her because she had friends close by who she could stay with after she had dropped me off. It was agreed that it was a likely enough place for me to have reached in a day’s hitching from Bunbeg, and my delivery to such a point had been the deal I had struck in exchange for my appearance. The mobile phone was something of a bonus.

  The drive to Sligo through Monaghan, Fermanagh and County Leitrim was a pretty one, and even though I was becoming accustomed to that, the latter stages still prompted a drawing of breath, with Glencar Lake on one side and the imposing Dartry mountains rising above us on the other. We were in Yeats country, so called because Sligo was where W. B. and his famous family once resided. They were quite a talented lot, the Yeatses; his brother Jack and father John were both considered to be fine artists. W. B. Yeats himself always professed to have a deep affection for the countryside of his childhood and wrote, ‘In a sense, Sligo has always been my home.’ In what sense? In the sense that he chose to live almost anywhere else? Honestly, the stuff poets get away with, just because they’ve got a good turn of phrase. All right, he chose to be buried there, but it has always struck me as more of a compliment to a place to spend time there when you’re alive, rather than dead. like Yeats, I too would choose to see out my days on the French Riviera, but where we differ is that I don’t give a toss where you bury me.