Making It Up as I Go Along

by Marian Keyes

  Then I met Miranda Sawyer, the music journalist, who is so cooooollll! But she was extremely welcoming and warm and fun and that did a huge amount to put me at my ease.

  So we were standing around having drinks, and I went mad and had a Diet Coke because of the day that was in it, and before I knew it, I was in the thick of things.

  Initially I was acting, trying hard to chat and act normal and not keel over with intimidation, but after a while it became real – and then I discovered I was enjoying myself. Like, really enjoying myself.

  And when we sat down for the lunch I discovered several things:

  1) A personalized name tag – while we’d been doing our chatting and mingling an illustrator had sat in the room and sketched each of us. I’ve never encountered a more charming, delightful gesture ever.

  2) I was seated on Sali’s right hand, which was a massive honour.

  3) On my other side was India Knight, and oh my GOD! She’s incredible! Utterly hilarious – I nearly got sick laughing – and entertaining and warm and vital and alive and passionate and smart as a whip.

  4) A Bobbi Brown goodie bag next to my side plate. It took EVERYTHING IN MY POWER to stop myself from ripping it open and kissing the things inside.

  5) I was seated opposite Hadley Freeman, who is the nicest, nicest person and was so complimentary about Ireland that I totally fell in love with her.

  6) Maria McErlane was sort of diagonally across from me and she was another one that had me choking with laughter.

  7) Diagonally across from me on the other side was the aforementioned lovely Miranda Sawyer.

  What was very interesting was the atmosphere in the room – there was nothing but love. I’m very attuned to undercurrents and unspoken tension and there was absolutely none. Everyone was so happy for Sali and everyone seemed genuinely thrilled to be in such a beautiful room, eating such delicious food, and being with such lovely people. And there was no one-upmanship or posturing or ‘Oh yeah? So when’s your book coming out? Because my book …’ And believe me, I’ve been at my fair share of those sorts of competitive yokes over the years and this was nothing like them.

  I was having such a great time that the hours rattled by and before I knew it, it was four o’clock and I had to leave to ketch my flight to ‘jet’ back to Dublin (definitely ‘jetting’), and as I was leaving I had a little chat with Lucy Mangan and, to be honest, I was afeerd of Lucy Mangan because she’s such a passionate defender of the poorest and most deprived people in Britain that I thought she’d dismiss me as a fluffy eejit airhead. But! Would you believe that we talked about shoes! Yes! We both have abnormally small feet and we bonded over what a pain in the arse it is to never be able to find shoes to fit.

  Then off I went, and because everyone was so great and because it’s not that long since I was so mad in the head that I couldn’t even get out of bed, it was one of the best days of my entire life.

  mariankeyes.com, October 2014.

  FRIENDS AND FAMILY

  * * *

  This section contains bits and pieces culled from various newsletters written over the years, which will hopefully give you an idea of all the lovely people in my life.

  Various Family Things

  Tadhg and Susan are getting married! This is extra wonderful because Tadhg has always insisted he would never get married, and not that people need to be married or anything to show their commitment, but a wedding can be a great day out. (Also a reason to have a nervous breakdown if you were planning one anyway.)

  The only condition Tadhg (which, incidentally, is my favourite man’s name in the whole world and I’d love to write a hero called Tadhg but no one outside of Ireland would be able to pronounce it) … anyway, yes, the only condition Tadhg has put on things is that he doesn’t want the big, traditional wedding, and this is fine by me because they’re planning to get married abroad and we’ll all get a holiday out of it.

  Initial talk was of the Caribbean, but some older members of the family began cribbing about long flights, so that plan has been abandoned and now Italy is the word on the street.

  I’ve never been to Italy, so I’m extra thrilled, but then yesterday my mother came up with some nugget of information that Irish people have been banned from getting married in Italy because they’ve been causing ruckus and commotion. I don’t know if there’s any truth to this rumour, but in fairness there might be because a reliable woman I know says that at any Irish wedding the most important question you must ask is ‘What time does the fight start?’

  Then, on Saturday 28th, baby Gabriel was born to Caron (partner of Chris, Himself’s brother). This is thrilling, thrilling news. (I may have already told you that they’re the parents of the beautiful Jude – two and a quarter) and there are celebrations all round. You can’t beat a new baby for cheering everyone up.

  Then, a couple of weeks ago, we had an unexpected visit from Ema (almost seven) and Luka (five). Niall and Ljiljana had to come from Prague for a funeral, and Himself and myself were put on childcare duties while they went to the funeral. And of course it’s a bad business to profit from someone else’s misfortune, but we had a lovely time.

  I had great middle-class plans for a brisk bracing walk down the pier, pointing out educational things (‘Did you know 4,000 tons of rock were blasted to build Dún Laoghaire harbour?’ and other such boring facts), a healthy home-cooked lunch, educational games in the afternoon, followed by ten minutes of Nick Jr, if they’d eaten all of their organic beetroot.

  Sadly, it didn’t work out that way. First of all, Ema tried on all my shoes and went away with a pair of my very highest and later I got into trouble with Ljiljana about it, then she tried on all my lip glosses and later I got into trouble with Ljiljana about that too. Then, after Luka nearly killed himself messing on the treadmill (Ljiljana doesn’t know about that, but if she had I would have got into trouble with her about that also), they watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail and learnt many new words (notably ‘fuck’).

  Then we got into the car and went – yes! Where else? – to McDonald’s, where they had – yes! – Happy Meals, with crappy toys, then Ema put a bag of excessively smelly fries into my Balenciaga handbag (which she had commandeered) and we traipsed desultorily around Dundrum shopping centre, buying things we didn’t want and didn’t need (except for my jacket, see below), then we went to see Meet the Robinsons and bought loads of sweets. This, I suppose, is the modern way.

  In fairness I had a GREAT time and – of course – got a new jacket. I’d been looking for a jacket and had drawn a blank and then there it was! It’s very nice. Navy, mid-thigh, canvas. My only anxiety is that it has two rows of buttons and I look a bit like Sergeant Pepper.

  However, it is very nice, so nice that when my dad saw me in it he said, ‘That’s very nice.’ Which was highly unexpected because he is a) blind as a bat, and b) a man. He called my mother into the hall in order for her to admire it alongside him, and she looked at me doubtfully and said, ‘Has it an awful lot of buttons?’

  Then Niall and Ljiljana came home from the funeral, and Ljiljana and I sat on the couch for about ten hours and discussed all the different vitamins and supplements we take every day. I know it sounds odd, but it was HUGELY enjoyable.

  Then they went back to Prague and – I suppose triggered by the funeral – Mam and I got into a discussion one night about her funeral. She is incredibly specific about what she wants. She listed out a whole load of yokes – she doesn’t want earrings while she’s ‘laid out’. She does want lipstick but she doesn’t want blusher. Or maybe i
t’s the other way round. Christ! I was meant to write it all down and she’ll come back and haunt me if I get it wrong.

  Honestly, there was a load of specifications: she wants to wear blue and white; she wants her ‘good rosary beads’ wound through her fingers; and she doesn’t care what shoes she wears, because apparently your feet are covered, so no one will see. She doesn’t want a biodegradable coffin because she’s afraid it would be too flimsy and that while she was being carried down the aisle it might give way and she might topple out on top of the mourners and the shame of her bare feet would be there for all to see.

  Although she is a humble woman, she was quite definite that she wanted ‘a decent coffin’. Not necessarily made of ‘endangered species’, she said, but something ‘decent’. THEN we had a discussion about who she wanted to carry her down the aisle. She thought the undertaker’s would have ‘lads’ to do it, but I suggested that having family members doing it would be nicer. We tussled a little and then I got to use words that you don’t often get to use in their correct context, which are, of course, ‘Well [heavy sigh], it’s your funeral.’

  I know it sounds horribly morbid, but it was actually very funny. ‘Uplifting’ was the word my mother used. Odd, no?

  Then, on the 17th, I was on The Paul O’Grady Show and it was FABULOUS. I love that show and he was so nice and funny. I have to tell you something. Dad watches Paul O’Grady and loves, loves, loves Buster the dog. I also (even though I fear dogs) love Buster the dog. (Buster the dog is Paul O’Grady’s dog.) Anyway, when I heard I was going on the show I said to Dad, ‘And I’ll meet Buster!’ ‘Yes,’ he sez, ‘and the other dog.’ ‘What other dog?’ I asked. And he said, ‘The other dog, there’s another dog that’s on sometimes.’ ‘Is that right?’ I said, suddenly going patronizing and like I was talking to a small child. That is because poor Dad sometimes gets the wrong end of the stick; that and the bad eyesight made me conclude that ‘the other dog’ was a figment of his elderly imagination. So on I go to the show and I’m telling everyone behind the scenes that Dad is a great fan of Buster and then someone said, ‘But it’s not Buster who’s on today, it’s Olga.’

  ‘Olga?!’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ they said. ‘There’s another dog. Olga.’

  The mythical second dog! I was rightly humbled! Rightly! Dad was right and I was wrong.

  mariankeyes.com, April 2007.

  France en Famille

  At the start of May, we went to Euro Disney. I will list the cast members: me, Himself, Mam, Dad, Rita-Anne, Jimmy, Caitríona and Seán (who had come from New York), and Ema (seven), Luka (five) and Ljiljana (not exactly sure, something in her thirties), who had come from Prague.

  I had worked round the clock before we went in the hope that I’d finish the first draft of This Charming Man and therefore would be able to kick up my heels with great relief in the company of Minnie Mouse, Tigger, etc., but sadly it was not to be. A small but challenging portion still remained to be written and hung over me like a guilt-making, anxious-making cloud as we boarded the Minnie Mouse Express.

  But never mind! Have you ever been to any of the Disney places? Now, I wouldn’t blame you for curling your lip in a sneer and saying, ‘You’d never catch me in any of them places. It’s nothing but a money-making exercise!’ Well, I agree with you that it probably IS a money-making exercise, but not JUST a money-making exercise, because it’s GORGEOUS.

  There were a few hairy moments, such as when Dad overdid it on the teacups and got ‘a reel in the head’ (Irish phrase meaning ‘dizzy’) and had to be led away, weaving all over Main Street USA, bumping into small children and knocking their Mickey Mouse ears off their heads, and he had to be reinstated in his hotel room by my mother. It was her I felt for really because she’d got a gleam in her eye and had fashioned plans for the Aerosmith ride which now came to naught.

  And speaking of which, the Aerosmith ride is just TOO funny. It’s a roller coaster, like other roller coasters, except that they play Aerosmith songs, so there you are doing loop-de-loops and hanging upside down and singing ‘Walk This Way’ and doing the ‘nerdiddynerdiddyner’ guitar bit.

  Another hairy moment was on The Cars ride (or indeed Les Voitures) when I got chastised by an outraged Disney employee as I flicked the Vs at Himself, as Ema and I drove past Luka and Himself.

  Then we went to Paris! Yes, for two days! Where Niall (father of Ema and Luka) joined us and the thing was, and none of us knew it, but Seán Ferguson had planned to ask Caitríona to marry him! Yes! In Paris! How romantic!

  But everything conspired against him. She got a sore throat (oh yes, she is a Keyes, no doubt about it) and refused to go out in the cold for a romantic walk, where he had planned to find an ultra-romantic spot to pop the question.

  So he shelved his plans until after dinner that evening. But guess what! We put on the news and there was a big newsflash saying, ‘40,000 rioters expected in central Paris this evening!’ Because of the election, you see? That right-wing bloke Sarkovy, or whatever his name is, had been elected instead of the lovely Socialist WOMAN, and people – specifically the Algerian-descended youths in the outer suburbs whom Sarkovy had called ‘scum’ – were flooding into the Champs-Elysée to demonstrate their displeasure. As it happened, we were staying two feet from the Champs-Elysée, and the restaurant we were going to for our dinner was approx eighteen inches from the Champs-Elysée.

  As we went out for dinner the fuss was beginning, but after dinner, when we emerged from the restaurant, preparations for the riot were in full flow. There were riot police EVERYWHERE and sounds of shouting and general chaos.

  I love the French so I do: if they’re not striking, they’re rioting. As a nation, they really care about things.

  At this stage Seán Ferguson was a sweaty wreck but nothing would divert him from his plan, so somehow – and God knows how exactly he managed it – he persuaded Caitríona to go down to the Seine. Himself turned to me, extended a gentlemanly arm and said, ‘Care to take a stroll up to view the riots?’

  Well, being an old lefty, as indeed Himself is, I couldn’t think of anything nicer. Sadly we couldn’t get very close, what with barriers and armed police and all that, but as luck would have it, we were standing outside the very apartment block where Sarkovy was having his celebratory dinner (‘may it choke him’ – Irish phrase meaning ‘Well, yes, I hope some of your dinner gets lodged in your oesophagus because I don’t like you’) and there were 4 million television cameras waiting outside, so we waited too and every time one of the citizens of the building came down to put out his bin or leave a note for the milkman or give his dog his last walk of the evening, the crowd thought it was the right-winger and alternately cheered and booed (me and Himself booed of course. I also shouted, ‘Shame on you, you smelly right-winger. You can’t go round calling people “scum” then refusing to apologize for it. Also it is VERY WRONG to wear a double-breasted blazer with jeans’).

  So by the time we got back to the hotel, the deed was done, the question had been popped, the answer had been in the affirmative, a ring had been produced, the most beautiful diamond, very, very pretty, very Caitríona, and all the Keyesez were sitting in the lobby of the hotel drinking champagne! Fantastique!

  mariankeyes.com, May 2007.

  Sickest Family in the Whole of Ireland

  I find that the best way to enjoy December is to say no to 99 out of every 100 party invitations which come my way. In fact, saying yes but then simply not turning up is even better. That way no one badgers me to change my mind and all the other guests get so scuttered they don’t even notice
that I’m actually at home, tucked up in bed, eating Pringles and watching Strictly Come Dancing.

  Sometimes I even think about pretending afterwards that I was actually at the knees-up and saying things like, ‘God almighty, you were in TOP form there on Saturday night.’ And because there is such a pervasive sense of shame about everything everyone does in December, they’ll think, ‘Christ, I don’t even remember meeting her, I’ll really have to knock off the sauce come January.’ But I am a kind person, one who has experienced plenty of shame herself, so I refrain from that sort of cruelty.

  At Christmas, inevitably all the Keyesez got sick, and I know I’m always telling you about our familial ill health, but this is a real blockbuster of a story and nothing short of hilarious. First I have to give you the list of characters: Mam, Dad, Niall, his wife Ljiljana, their daughter Ema (seven), their son Luka (six), my sister Caitríona, her fiancé Seán, my sister Rita-Anne, her husband Jimmy, my brother Tadhg, Himself and me. (Tadhg’s fiancée Susan was in Gorey, Co Wexford, with her family.)

  Okay, so there are thirteen of us and it all kicks off on the Thursday before Christmas when Dad suddenly started puking his guts up. The puking continued round the clock and when Mam suggested ringing a doctor, Dad begged her not to, as he said he was obviously SO VERY SERIOUSLY ILL that the doctor would immediately summon an ambulance and send him to A&E, where he would have to lie on a trolley for a month and compete for the nurses’ attention with stab victims and those sporting gunshot wounds and no one would care whether Dad lived or died as he is an oul’ lad anyway and is bound to croak sooner rather than later. (And they wonder where I get my dramatic hypochondriac streak from?)