Making It Up as I Go Along

by Marian Keyes

  DAY ELEVEN

  Whales everywhere!

  I have made friends!

  6 a.m.

  The bing-bong awakens us with news that there is a pod of TWENTY (20) humpback whales just off the ship. We pull on our thermal long johns and puffy jackets and other warming devices and run for a look. We are just in time to see them before they turn tail.

  2 p.m.

  I watch four orcas for an hour. They are so curvy and graceful and sleek in the vast expanse of navy ocean and I feel very peaceful.

  I should mention that apart from one snowy morning the weather has been magnificent every day I’ve been here. Sunny, and the skies have been gloriously blue. I’ve barely been cold. Admittedly I’ve worn an awful lot of technical clothes, but still.

  5 p.m.

  We take a Zodiac cruise beside cliffs and under flint archways and through staggeringly quare landscapes. There is a fair bit of bouncing and getting splashed and Himself says, ‘This will play merry hell with Sideshow’s hair.’

  I agree but I am also focused on how FABLISS this will be for my telly series – Zodiac chases through the narrow canyons of rock and beneath flinty arches barely big enough to fit a boat and into ice caves and down blue icy tunnels. I tell you! It will be Lost meets James Bond meets a cold place!

  Another thing about ‘my’ show: all of the main characters will have thrilling and interesting back stories. Including – yes! – possibly having died.

  Other news

  Himself and I have made friends with some of the other passengers – an Englishman, a Swiss woman, an Australian man and an Australian woman. Yes! I didn’t want to tell you about it until I was sure it was for real, but it is! We have got into the very happy habit of ‘taking’ our meals with them, and they are great fun and excellent company and very nice.

  7.30 p.m.

  Sideshow Bob appears for dinner and his hair looks much subdued.

  I ask Himself if The Frozen will include people coming back from the dead like they did in Lost. He says no. But secretly I plan to overrule him, and when we are sitting in Harvey Weinstein’s office doing our pitch in LA I will throw in the part about the dead people reappearing and there will be nothing Himself can do about it! Hahahahaha!

  DAY TWELVE

  We head for home!

  Yes, that is the end of our excursions. Now we have two days at sea, until we get back to Ushuaia. I’m a little bit sad, but it has been an incredible trip.

  9.30 p.m.

  … d’you know what? I feel a bit sick …

  10.01 p.m.

  Yes, I definitely feel sick.

  10.11 p.m.

  … Christ, I’m dying …

  DAY THIRTEEN

  In the ‘jaws’ of the Drake Passage!

  The sea is wild rough and the whole ship seems to have the gawks. I spend the day in bed, even forsaking my lungeon. Himself goes downstairs for one of the lectures and he says there were only fifteen people there and they all had their faces in gawk-bags.

  6.03 p.m.

  The ship has reached calmer waters and I am well enough to ‘rise’ for our final dinner, which we are ‘taking’ with our new friends.

  7.11 p.m.

  At dinner I take a last look round at my fellow passengers …

  … and then there were four. Hipsters, that is. The ordinary looking lad’s metamorphosis is complete. His hairs, his clothing, his spectacles, his everything. He leaves the ship a fully-fledged hipster!

  THIRD-LAST DAY

  7 a.m.

  We come into port in Ushuaia and get off the ship and I have a little cry because it was all so wonderful. But still, I feel incredibly lucky – this has been the trip of a lifetime!

  Our flight isn’t until one o’clock, so we go – with our four new friends – to Los Cauquenes, which is the beautiful hotel we stayed in for our first two nights. We have coffee and lovely conversation and at 11.30 Himself and I leave for the airport to go to Buenos Aires, where we will be staying overnight because we’re not in time for today’s flight to Heathrow.

  Our flight is delayed but that is grand. When we were in Argentina seven years ago, we were delayed eight hours at El Calafate airport, so it is all par for the course. The plane eventually comes and we take off and make a ‘short’ stop in a place called Trelew and most of the plane troops off and then comes stomping back on five minutes later, complaining that this is NOT Buenos Aires!

  7.30 p.m.

  I will not bore you with the airport/lost baggage details. You’ve heard it from me too often, too many times before. Then we go to the Park Hyatt, where we discover that we have been upgraded to the Presidential Suite! Oh my God, I cannot tell you! It is beautiful and lavish and HUGE! We have a sitting room and a dining room and a kitchen and TWO (2!) bathrooms.

  We’ve no idea why we’ve been upgraded (I’m not being coy, it is all booked in Himself’s name. Perhaps Himself is famous here …).

  SECOND-TO-LAST DAY

  As we drive to the airport I remark on what wide streets Buenos Aires has and say that some of the streets are almost as wide as O’Connell Street, to which Himself says that some of them are wider than O’Connell Street.

  … but this cannot be true. O’Connell Street is the widest street in the world, no? (This reminds me of when I was visiting this part of the world seven years ago and Eileen and I were in Brazil on a scenic flight across the Amazon and the pilot told us that the Amazon was the longest river in the world and I said, ‘Indeed it is, except for the Shannon.’ And the pilot was a right cranky-arse and said, ‘What are you talking about?’ And I said, ‘The Amazon is indeed the longest river in the world. Except for the Shannon. Which is the true longest. So the Amazon is the second-longest river in the world. Apart from the Dodder. And perhaps the Dargle.’ And he was really, really annoyed and did not ‘get’ me at all.)

  11.10 a.m.

  They are playing tango music at the passport control.

  And I am not lying about that.

  LAST DAY

  Heathrow!

  Then Dublin!

  Boo, we are home! And here ends Marian’s Antarctica diary.

  mariankeyes.com, January 2014.

  MARIAN MEETS …

  * * *

  Tom Dunne

  Right, I’ll tell you the whole Tom Dunne thing. He’s really famous, especially in Ireland, because he was (is? As far as I know they’ve never broken up) the lead singer in a band called Something Happens, which was GINORME in the early 1990s but I was living in London then so I missed it all.

  Then he got a job as a radio presenter on Newstalk and I STILL didn’t know about him because I never listened to the radio except when I was in the car and I was never in the car because I was meant to be at my computer working.

  But then I was at the dentist, I was lying in the chair, having stuff done to my teeth, and Seán Moncrieff was on the radio and he was so funny and dry and witty and clever that it took the sting out of the dentistry somewhat.

  So I changed the setting in my car to Newstalk and I said to Susie, ‘Isn’t Newstalk great?’ And she said, ‘Yes! Isn’t Tom Dunne fantastic?’ And I’d been all set to launch into praise of Seán Moncrieff and I said, ‘Who’s Tom Dunne?’ And she said, ‘You don’t know who Tom Dunne is?????’

  Then she turned to everyone else and said, ‘Marian doesn’t know who Tom Dunne is!’ Then the entire room erupted with laughter and total strangers were wiping away tears of mirth.

  So, yes, Tom Dunne. I started listening to him and very quickly I fell in love with him and veered dangerou
sly close to becoming a Tom Dunne window-licker and that was okay because Himself loved him too. In fact, everyone I’ve ever met loved him and we were all manufacturing excuses to drive places in the morning at the time that Tom was on.

  He has a beautiful voice and I’ve laughed out loud SEVERAL times while listening to him, and he talked about himself and his family and home life and weekends with such warmth and humanity that he is a FORCE FOR GOOD in this sometimes-frightening world.

  Then! One Wednesday he said, ‘Bin night tonight,’ and Wednesday was OUR bin night too, so Himself and myself realized that we must live quite near to him and we obviously had the same bin collectors!

  In my next monthly newsletter I wrote about this ‘connection’ I have with Tom and he must have found out about it because – yes! – he played a SPECIAL SONG for me on his show about Wednesday nights being our ‘special’ night.

  It caused a sensation among my friends and family! A veritable SENSATION, I tell you. It began with Posh Malcolm ringing me and saying, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but Tom Dunne is sending you coded messages on his show!’

  And it continued from there. A torrent of jealousy from other Tom Dunne window-lickers (formerly my friends) was directed my way, but I didn’t care.

  However, I’d never met him and was quite certain that if I did, I would DIE!

  Of course there was a small chance that I might bump into him, seeing as we live near-ish to each other (seeing as we shared the same bin night, like). And even though I’d no idea where exactly he lived, it didn’t stop me having a mental image of it.

  However, Suzanne, who also has a fondness for Tom, she also has a mental image of where Tom lives, which differs from my mental image, and the last time I met her, we drew out a sort of map on the table, using napkins and salt and pepper yokes as landmarks, and we nearly fell out over it. (‘No,’ she insisted. ‘When you get to the traffic lights, you go up the road.’ ‘You don’t,’ I replied. ‘You go straight on and he’s in there on the right.’ ‘No, no, no!’ she said. ‘You go UP the road. Up!’ And so on. And relations between us have been slightly frosty since.)

  Anyway, one cold, sleety, miserable day a few weeks ago, I was ‘down the town’ and I was looking particularly unattractive. I’d overdone the mythic oil in my hair, so my fringe was looking all bitty and greasy (like Tommy’s in Love/Hate actually, just like Tommy’s) and my hair was up in a ponytail. BUT! I’d put a hat on over the ponytail and it was a particularly unattractive hat but good at keeping me warm but all the same I looked like I had a particularly strange-shaped gargantuan head. I was wearing my North Face duvet-coat and was laden down with bags filled with turnips (or something equally grim) and I was feeling knackered and bet-down and I’d just come out of Ecco shoes (I know!) where I’d been looking for insoles and who did I see, when I emerged, only Tom Dunne!!!!!!

  Horror zipped through me. Horror! Our eyes met and he looked sort of horrified himself. ‘Tom,’ I said haltingly. ‘Hello. I’m sorry. About the hat. It’s only because it’s so cold. Tom, I’ve fantasized about meeting you and my hair would be just blow-dried and I’d be looking fantastic and moving in slow motion and, oh Christ, I can’t believe this is happening.’

  With extreme kindness Tom said, ‘You look great, Marian, we both look great.’

  ‘Do we?’ sez I. ‘Okay.’

  I gestured at the sleet, at my appalling hat, at my bagful of turnips, and said, ‘Living the dream, Tom, living the dream.’

  An awkward little pause followed, then I exclaimed, ‘Will I give you a hug, Tom?!’

  So he let me hug him and then I let the poor man go on his way and on trembling legs I made my way home. I couldn’t get my key in the lock and Himself had to open the front door and I said, ‘You won’t BELIEVE what’s after happening!!!’

  Himself looked concerned and I wailed, ‘I met Tom Dunne down the town!’ And Himself looked aghast and said, ‘In that hat? Oh God!’

  mariankeyes.com, August 2013.

  Robert Plant

  Right! Himself! Well, for years and years and years and years, since he was aged about twelve, he has been in wild bromantic love with Robert Plant. He adored him in Led Zeppelin and in more recent decades has been a fan of Mr Plant’s other groups and collaborations.

  I, too, have been a big fan of Mr Plant’s. When I was fifteen, I had a boyfriend with excellent taste in music. Actually, it was his older brother who had the excellent taste in music and even though the older brother hated me (it’s grand, all grand, I hated him too, it was fine) he let us listen to his records. (Yes, actual vinyl records.)

  And many of those excellent records were by Led Zeppelin, so I was well versed in their ‘oeuvre’ by the time I met Himself and it was one of the reasons that convinced him that I was the perfect woman. (At this point I must add a caveat and say that George Michael is my actual all-time favourite music-type person.)

  Over the years, I’ve been to Robert Plant gigs. There was one night, many years ago, when Robert (you’ll have noticed I’m now referring to him as ‘Robert’ as if we are friends …? Yes, well, pay heed) … yes, there was one night when Robert was coming to Dublin to do a gig and I couldn’t go because I was down the town learning how to make beef casserole. And when Himself came home (it was late), I woke up to ask him how it had gone and he said, all dreamy and star-struck, ‘He was a golden rock god …’ And I couldn’t get a word of sense out of him for several subsequent days.

  When Led Zeppelin reformed for that one gig in 2007, we paid a large sum of money to a charity for tickets. And in more recent years we’ve seen Robert with Alison Krauss (twice) and with the Band of Joy. So we are TRUE BELIEVERS.

  Right. Having established these facts, can I fill you in on some more stuff, basically about my day-to-day life. See, you might think that I live a high-octane life of extreme glamour, but I really don’t. I eke out a small, local existence in a suburb that is partly pleasant and partly unpleasant. (It is on the sea (pleasant) and they welcome you to the neighbourhood by burgling your house (unpleasant). Do you see? Pleasant and unpleasant. Yin and yang.)

  And the people I cross paths with are not fabby famous types but the likes of my mammy, the Redzers, Posh Kate and Posh Malcolm, Steve from DHL, Mary and Owen from round the corner, Fuzzy Mahon, Lovely Judy, Nawel from the second-hand furniture shop, and occasionally Tom Dunne, but only when I’m down the town and looking spectacularly dreadful.

  I’m very happy with my set-up. But the odd time, I leave my pleasant/unpleasant suburb and am thrust into a situation that is extremely glamorous and sometimes during these glamorous events I meet people who are very nice; and that happened to me recently. I was at a thing and got talking to a wonderful, wonderful woman who is a great raconteur and as an adjunct to an anecdote she mentioned that Robert Plant was her neighbour and I immediately began to choke but The Lovely Woman (henceforth known as TLW) was already several sentences ahead of me.

  I flailed and coughed and waved my hand and eventually managed to croak out, ‘Stop! STOP! For the LOVE OF GOD, you can’t just say that Robert Plant is your neighbour, like that’s something unremarkable. This is the most REMARKABLE thing I’ve ever heard in my life.’

  So TLW came to a halt and she thought about it and agreed that yes, perhaps, Robert Plant was a bit of a legend. And a very nice man. ‘You’ll meet him next month,’ she said. ‘When you come to me for tea and then I take you to visit a local knob-shop.’ (To buy knobs for my furniture-banjoing, not the other kind of knob-shop …)

  Well! There was so much in that sentence that was
abundantly wonderful – I was being invited to TLW’s for tea! And we’d go to a knob-shop! And I’d meet Robert Plant! Then she said, ‘Unless he’ll be away on tour.’ And the thing was, she was right – I knew she was because Himself and I had tickets to see Robert Plant and the Sensational Shapeshifters in Dublin on 24 November.

  So I told TLW that and she said, ‘Okay, leave it with me. I’ll sort something out, get you backstage passes or something.’ And she said it with such confidence that I sort of believed her. But at the same time, it seemed so incredibly impossible that I was already throwing buckets of cold water over the flames of my appalling, painful hope.

  A few weeks passed and we moved on into November and Himself’s lovely mother, Shirley, went into hospital to have open-heart surgery and it was all a bit tricky: the first attempt to operate on her had to be abandoned and although the second attempt had gone okay, she was still in intensive care.

  I was at home one day when Himself rang from the car and he was on speaker and he sounded a bit odd, so I asked, ‘Are you okay?’ And he said, ‘No, not really.’ And I thought, ‘Oh Christ! His lovely poor mother’s after pegging it.’

  So I said, very gently, ‘What is it, sweetie?’ And he blurted out, sort of half-crying, ‘Robert Plant’s just rung me on my mobile. I might never be right again.’ And then we were both shrieking and shouting and I was jumping around the room but quickly I realized I had to be sensible. ‘Pull in,’ I said. ‘Pull in. You’re not safe to drive.’ However, it transpired he’d already had the cop-on to pull in and he promised to stay parked until the shaking had stopped.