1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge

by Tony Hawks; Prefers to remain anonymous

  I shook my head, more in disbelief than in answer to the question. What cross circuit of wires in her brain had caused her to arrive at a question like that? A complete absence of the application of any logic whatsoever. She would have a great future in this country.

  Finally a car stopped. But the driver got out and crossed the road to the Convenience Store.

  Tease.

  For the next ten minutes all the drivers seemed to be solitary lady drivers, and for obvious reasons, solitary lady drivers don’t stop. Especially on a Saturday night and when the hitcher has a fridge. A priest went by, but he made a signal with his hand, pointing to the left, meaning that he was turning off very shortly. Quite a few drivers had done this and I respected it as a courteous gesture, even if nine times out of ten it was probably a downright lie.

  Another twenty minutes dragged by. Clutching at straws, I decided what I was lacking was a card to hold up with my destination written on it. Up until now I hadn’t bothered with this hitch-hiking accessory since I had no real need for one. It didn’t matter particularly where I ended up, any kind of lift, provided it was in roughly the right direction, was good enough for me. The nice lady in the Convenience Store provided me with a piece of cardboard, and after a little creative work with the marker pen, I went back to my hitching with renewed vigour, and with a ‘BAL-UNA’ sign held proudly aloft.

  It didn’t make a scrap of difference. Well it did actually, now the drivers knew exactly where it was that they weren’t going to take me. It was almost half past seven. I decided twenty more minutes and then I would give up and call for a taxi to take me back to Anne Marie’s. Three unsavoury looking youths turned the corner and headed towards me. For the first time on my trip I felt a little uneasy. It was Saturday night, they looked a tough lot, and I was something of a target for those in search of alternative amusement. Would they say anything? Worse still, would they do anything? I held my breath and closed my eyes, but they passed by without a word. Quite whether I was all too confusing a proposition for them, or whether they were simply law abiding, upstanding citizens, I do not know. Perhaps the fridge made me look hard.

  I was about to give up, and had just started to gather my irregular belongings together when a Vauxhall Cavalier pulled up. I watched it suspiciously, expecting the driver to get out and go across to the store, but he remained in his seat and looked over his shoulder at me. I ran to the car window.

  ‘Are you going to Ballina?’

  ‘I am too.’

  I had lucked out again.

  §

  Chris had been at a goat fair earlier that day, and afterwards had made a brief visit to friends in Sligo for early evening drinks. He had seen me on the way into town and identified me as the strange fellow he had heard talking about his fridge journey earlier in the week. He hadn’t been surprised when I was still by the roadside as he headed out of town again. He had hitched around Ireland himself many years ago and had found that one of the longest waits he had endured was when he was trying to leave Sligo. He reckoned that Limerick was another difficult place to get out of, so I logged that useful information away in my foggy, weary brain.

  One of the more tiring aspects of hitching is a need to be sociable and make conversation with whoever is driving you. It would be considered poor form to accept a ride, hop into the passenger seat and then simply to crash out until you reached your destination. How I longed to do just that, but instead I chatted merrily away, energy ebbing from me with each sentence, until Chris dropped me at the address of the lady who had offered me free B&B.

  One of the more tiring aspects of accepting an offer of free accommodation is a need to be sociable and make conversation with whoever has offered it to you. It would be considered poor form to turn up, dump your bags, crawl into your bedroom and order an early morning alarm call. How I longed to do just that, but instead I chatted merrily away to Marjorie, energy ebbing from me with each sentence, until the tea was drunk, the cake was eaten and I finally plucked up the courage to mention just how exhausted I was. I apologised and said that I simply had to grab a couple of hours sleep, and Marjorie understandingly showed me to my room.

  It was a beautiful room too, with splendid views over the River Moy, thanks to the elevated position of the guest house at the top of a steep bank. I thanked Marjorie again for her kindness.

  ‘Think nothing on it, Tony. When I heard what you were doing I just had to ring the radio station and offer you a room. I think it’s a great idea.’

  Of course it was. I had never doubted it.

  It was close to 8.30 when I got my head down for a couple of hours’ nap.

  When I awoke from the deepest of sleeps it was only 8.45.1 got up to go to the toilet and looked out of the bathroom window, and saw the sun shining on the river. From the east. It was morning. I had napped for twelve and a quarter hours. And I felt rather good for it.

  ‘Did you sleep all right?’ asked Marjorie, at breakfast.

  ‘You could say that.’

  Having taken note of my choice of breakfast, Marjorie shuffled off leaving me to admire the view of the river and chat to the other guests. I surveyed them and elected not to bother. There were three of them, a young married couple, and a lone obese German man, and they were all sat at one table together and clearly not having a very comfortable time. They were saying absolutely nothing to each other and their silence seemed to have a terrible stranglehold over them. The sound of their cutlery clinking on their crockery echoed round the dining room and seemed to be amplified tenfold. It became apparent that for all of them, the task of introducing words into the proceedings was becoming, increasingly hard with each passing minute. They hung their heads over their plates with grim determination and resolve, knowing that the sooner their food was eaten, the sooner the whole unpleasant experience would be over. I was glad I wasn’t sat at their table.

  Marjorie’s voice seemed deafening when she arrived with the most wonderful plate of breakfast. Over tea, the previous day, she had told me that she had written two cookbooks, and even with as simple a meal as breakfast, she clearly wanted to demonstrate her skill in the culinary field. I had no objections, smoked salmon, tomato, and beautiful fluffy scrambled egg suited me just fine. As far as I was concerned, she fully deserved the Michelin One Star she had told me she craved. But what’s the big deal there? I have never understood the need to have one’s cuisine endorsed by Michelin. Who cares what they think? No one is looking for food which corners well.

  Marjorie was knocking on the door of middle age, but had the impressive zeal for life of a much younger woman. After the young couple, and the now even more obese German had fled the dining room for the sanctuary of their rooms, she explained how she and her husband had separated, and how she felt she was undergoing a new start and was more positive than ever about the future.

  ‘I’m going for it!’ she said. ‘I think that’s why I knew I had to make contact with you, because with what you’re doing, you’re going for it too.’

  ‘Right.’

  I knew what she meant, but I had never expected my fridge journey to be used in comparison with a marriage break-up.

  ‘So, are you taking that fridge back out on the road today, Tony?’

  ‘Well, Sunday is traditionally a day of rest, and I think I may have been overdoing it a little, so would you mind if I stayed here one more night—I fully expect to pay.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing, you’ll stay here for nothing and there’ll be no argument about it. So, what are you going to do with your day today then?’

  ‘Oh, I think I’ll just take it easy, do some reading and writing, maybe take a walk down by the river.’

  ‘Oh. My friend Elsie is coming over at one o’clock. She’s a character—you just have to meet her. I’ll warn you though, you might need a valium.’

  §

  Marjorie hadn’t exaggerated. Elsie, an effervescent and voluble woman, cut short my leisure time when she arrived an hour early, and
marked midday by planting a big wet smacker full on my lips.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me, Tony, but that’s the way I do things,’ she spluttered as I reeled back in shock. ‘Did I come too early?’

  She may have done, but I certainly hadn’t.

  ‘No, you’re fine, I’d nearly finished reading.’

  Elsie wasn’t slow in coming forward. Within two minutes of our having met, she showed me a poem she had written and asked me to read it. As I endeavoured to do so, she continued to talk, telling me how she wrote and sang songs too and was making a CD soon. Unfortunately Elsie’s incessant spoken word meant that concentration on her written word was impossible.

  ‘It’s very good,’ I said, handing the poem back and hoping that she wouldn’t wish me to comment on its subject matter.

  After a delicious lunch, which I could only fault in its alarming proximity to breakfast, the two ladies took me on a tour of the sights of Ballina. The fridge had to come too, and at all points along the way, at Elsie’s and Marjorie’s insistence, the fridge was to be paraded as a celebrity for all to see.

  We visited Kilcullen’s Seaweed Baths in Enniscrone where I had the privilege of having seaweed draped all over me whilst immersed in an enormous bath full of hot sea water. It seemed a ludicrous idea but was surprisingly relaxing. We dropped in at Belleek Castle, a stately home set in a thousand acres of woodland and forestry on the banks of the River Moy, but we couldn’t look round it because viewings of the castle were by appointment only. That’s what estate agents say, isn’t it? We were hardly going to buy the place.

  On the way back, a drink was taken in the clubhouse of the golf club where the ladies had begun taking lessons. I was to learn a lesson here too. As I wheeled the fridge into the bar on its trolley, Elsie announced at the top of her voice, ‘THIS is TONY HAWKS FROM ENGLAND! HE’S BRINGING A FRIDGE ROUND IRELAND! YOU’VE PROBABLY HEARD HIM ON THE GERRYRYAN SHOW.’

  Elsie’s announcement was greeted with silence. The relaxing golfers eyed me with suspicion and returned to their conversations. Marjorie, Elsie and myself drank our drinks without one person coming over to talk to us or have a joke about the fridge. I felt sure that this wasn’t the customary frostiness of golf clubs we were experiencing here, but more of an example of ‘Irish Begrudgery’. I remembered someone in Hudi-Beags announcing this alleged national trait, and I understood it to mean that people would have little time for you if you forced yourself upon them or announced your greatness, instead of allowing them their own time and space to discover it for themselves. This was something else to log away in my now-crowded brain, but I found room just beside ‘limerick being a difficult city to hitch out of, and ‘England and Portugal being the only EC countries without minority languages’.

  Throughout the afternoon Elsie kept up a constant stream of jokes and ribald remarks, each of the latter followed by the apology, ‘I am sorry about that, but that’s the way I am.’

  In fact, she said, ‘I am sorry about that, but that’s the way I am’ so many times that I began to wonder whether that wasn’t the way she was, at all. Whatever she was, she was a good friend to Marjorie.

  ‘A while ago now when I was low,’ said Marjorie, when Elsie was out of earshot, ‘I called Elsie eight times in one day. And when I called the eighth time, she behaved just like it was the first. Now that’s a friend.’

  Or someone with a very poor memory.

  §

  It was a beautiful evening, the mile or so walk to the pub hugging the bank of the River Moy, with the setting sun casting its soft final rays over the river’s steadily flowing waters. I felt inspired by Marjorie and Elsie. Two women in their fifties who were going for it. Marjorie with her cookbooks, and Elsie with her poems and songs. I had no idea whether either of their efforts were of a high quality, but that didn’t seem to be the point. Far more pertinent was the joy it was bringing to them.

  Sometimes in life you’ve got to dance like nobody’s watching.

  The pub was called Murphys, a newly and tastefully refurbished bar which was packed full of young people. Young attractive people. Young attractive girls. I ordered a pint and allowed myself to get a little excited. I leant against the bar and scanned the room for my favourite. She wasn’t hard to find. She was sat at a table in a slightly elevated section of the pub, talking with two guys. She had dark hair, big sparkling eyes and a mouth which I felt needed to be kissed. I was considering how pleasurable an experience this might be, when she looked up and saw me looking at her. I didn’t look away. She gave me a kind of half smile and went back to talking with her friends. Good. The half smile was a good sign.

  Perhaps at this point I should take a moment to explain how, in the area of the pursuit of women, I have always demonstrated an exceptional adeptness for deluding myself. I have always been able to convince myself that I’m doing much better than I really am. With an assured grace and on gossamer wings, I fly in the face of reality, never seeing the crash landing that awaits me. On this occasion, for example, I had completely dismissed from my mind the fact that the object of my interest was in the company of two males who, no doubt, were just as aware of the kissability of her mouth as I was.

  When she left her friends (for in my eyes that was clearly all they were) she came to the bar to order a drink, and was almost alongside me, presenting me with an opportunity I couldn’t afford to miss. However, I made the mistake of thinking too much about the opening line. By far and away the best option in this situation is to say the first thing that comes into your head and not worry about its quality—the thinking being that if the girl likes the general look of you, she will be moderately forgiving in the first few minutes of your advances.

  On this occasion it was just unfortunate that the only line which kept forcing its way to the brink of being spoken was, ‘Are you aware that of all the countries in the EC, England and Portugal are the only ones with no minority languages?’

  After hearing a line like that, not many females, however much they like the look of you, would think ‘Hey, he sounds like the kind of guy I’d like to spend some more time with’, and the ones that did were probably best avoided.

  Her transaction at the bar was nearly completed and I knew that I had to say something, and fast.

  ‘Is there a pub quiz on tonight?’ I blurted, averting my eyes from the sign saying ‘Pub Quiz Tonight’, which was up on the wall directly in front of both of us.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied warmly. ‘You can come and be in our team if you like.’

  Inwardly I punched the air, whilst on the cool exterior I attempted to give the impression of being rather blase about the whole idea.

  ‘If you like,’ I said, and then, thinking I’d overdone it, added, ‘Thanks, that would be nice.’

  Her name was Rosheen (which I later learned was spelt ‘Roisin’), and she wasn’t with the two guys at the table, but with a crowd of friends who were further up the bar to my left. With great politeness, not normally afforded to a stranger who had just asked you a stupid question, she introduced me to all her friends, one by one, but their names were ju& sounds which I failed to absorb, such was my fixation with her, the mistress of ceremonies. It mattered only that it was her name I remembered. Roisin.

  Lovely Roisin. With the kissable mouth.

  Annoyingly, Roisin began talking to two girlfriends and I fell into conversation with Declan. I had nothing against Declan other than the fact that he wasn’t Roisin, and therefore had a mouth which I had no desire to kiss. He asked what I was doing in Ireland. I had hoped I wouldn’t have to answer that question for some time, and tried to cope with it without mentioning the fridge.

  ‘So you’re just travelling around for a month then, are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Grand.’ A beat, then, ‘So what made you decide to do that then?’

  The questions went on until the truth, the ridiculous truth, was inveigled out of me.

  To my relief, the pub quiz began before word of the
fridge could reach Roisin, for although I wasn’t ashamed of what I was doing, I wanted to break the news to her myself. An explanation of what I was up to could sound silly if it wasn’t handled sensitively.

  The quiz was about pop trivia and I was a useful addition to their team. I knew the answers to the first four questions and it wasn’t long before everyone turned to me for either the answer, or confirmation of someone else’s. In the second section of the quiz, the quizmaster played the first few bars of a record, and we had to name the artist. I was good at this too, definitely on top form tonight, but I was aware that when it came to pop trivia there was a fine line between impressive and tragic. I crossed that line on the fifth song in, when after only three or four notes I called out, ‘That’s The Time Of Our Lives’ by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes!’

  I did it excitedly and with too much gusto, and at a volume which readily offered the information to our rival teams.

  Throughout the proceedings I kept a close eye on Roisin, secretly hoping that when it came to pop quizzes, she had a yen for men who could get ten out of ten. She had looked over on a couple of occasions and rewarded me with a half smile, and this had given me enough encouragement to move over to her.

  ‘How are you enjoying it?’ I said, without inspiration.

  ‘Oh, it’s a craic. You’re a bit good, aren’t you? I think we might win this.’

  ‘What’s the prize?’

  ‘Well, all the names of the winning team go into a hat, and the name drawn out wins a champagne dinner for two at the restaurant upstairs.’

  Another half smile. God, she was beautiful. I suddenly realised that we had to win this, and that the way my luck was going, mine would be the name drawn out of the hat, and she would be my date for the champagne dinner. The quizmaster fired the final question, ‘What was Neil Diamond’s first number one hit as a writer?’

  The team turned and looked at me. The difference between outright victory and second place probably hinged on this one question. Brilliantly, I knew the answer.