Moments later the curtain had dropped and I was in a line waiting to be greeted by Prince Charles. As he worked his way up towards me I could hear the kind of mind numbingly superficial conversation that he had to engage in. This kind of social intercourse clearly wasn’t something that came naturally to him but years of experience had left him accomplished enough in the brief inanity. I felt sorry for him—but for an accident of birth that could have been my gig.
Finally, he arrived at me, having had the relative ease of chatting with performers from Cirque du Soleil who had made life easy for him by coming from all over the world and having performed a spectacular and unusual act involving contortion and acrobatics. It all went rather well—there was even a slight moment of amusement when he asked the Russian girl how she got her body into that position. Then me. The bloke who came on and talked to the audience for six minutes, got a few laughs and then went off again. He shook my hand. I could see from his eyes that the poor guy could think of absolutely nothing to say to me. A moment of complete silence. What is it about me? I haven’t got the rucksack on now. I looked into his eyes—he looked right through mine. He wasn’t focusing, he was trawling his brain for a suitable question.
‘Have you had to travel far to be here?’ he eventually managed.
‘Not really, London.’
I hadn’t given him much to get his teeth into there. He could hardly say, ‘Oh, London—that’s where my mother lives—she’s got a little place in SW1.’ Again the flash of panic in his eye. Come on Charles, hang in there—two more questions and you’re on to Frank Bruno, he’s going to be much easier.
‘And were the audience difficult?’ This was better, but although meant well, isn’t exactly a question a comedian longs to be asked. In an ideal world you would have been so funny and the audience would have tost themselves in laughter to such a degree that a question like that would have been redundant.
‘Oh, they were okay.’
I wasn’t really helping him very much here but I suppose there was a part of me that didn’t want to. What was the point of this? My instinct was to say ‘Look, let’s talk properly or not at all’, but there seemed little point in making this thing any more gruelling for him than it already was.
Prince Charles seemed to relax slightly, perhaps in the knowledge that however unsuccessful his next conversational gambit might be, at least it was his last one with me.
‘And what are you up to next?’
I waited a moment and then offered in my best deadpan delivery, ‘I’m hitch-hiking round Ireland with a fridge, Your Highness.’
His response was a Royal masterstroke. He simply smiled and pretended not to hear. Or understand. Or both. And who can blame him? My answer had invited the kind of follow-up question for which there simply wasn’t time. I warmed to him as he smiled again and moved on—after all, why ask when you don’t care? Oddly our little exchange had afforded him a rare opportunity to show some honesty. For that, I’m sure he will be eternally grateful.
§
The flight from Manchester to Dublin is only forty minutes or so. It feels slightly longer when there is a stag party three rows back. I was sat next to a matronly looking middle-aged woman whose tuts and sighs were more irritating than the unpleasant noises emanating from the stag boys. It was only 11.30 am and they were already quite drunk. Nothing like pacing yourself. The woman was reading a very impressive, thick hardback book. I couldn’t see what it was called but the chapter she was on was entitled ‘Domination and Hegemony’. I concluded that she was either an academic or a sado masochist. I closed my eyes and let the gentie rhythm of the safety instructions lull me to sleep. I was woken soon enough by the stag party who had broken into song. I wanted to stand up, turn round and say ‘Please stop, I beg you’ but I didn’t need to because matronly lady had taken roughly the same approach only with a less supplicatory tone. Needless to say, her words had the reverse effect, causing an increase in volume and the personalisation of a number of songs in her honour. Suddenly I found it all more relaxing. The lyrics were more entertaining now they had found a focus, and the woman’s increasing discomfort somehow had a soothing effect upon me.
Ignoring the surrounding turbulence I began to study my map of Ireland. I knew very little about the place and had no real idea of the distances involved, but my brain wasn’t up to the taxing task of trying to work them out now. I gave some thought to what I might try and tackle on my first morning. My intention was to get a bus out of Dublin in the direction of Cavan and try and start hitching in roughly the area where I reckoned I had seen the original ‘Fridge Man’ all those years ago. This, I decided, was somewhere around Navan. I looked out of the window. It was raining. Ireland is good at that To cheer myself up I started to scan the map for places with silly names. I noticed a Nobber and another place Muff. Muff was on the coast and I was momentarily amused by the idea of going there and attempting to hire some diving gear. The plane touched down. The Odyssey had begun.
3
This Bus Is Going To Cavan
Shane must be a very good friend of Seamus. I can just imagine his face when he got the call.
‘Oh hi Shane, it’s Seamus here—could you do a favour for me?’
‘Sure.’
He had already made mistake number one by not finding out the nature of the favour first.
‘There’s this friend of mine Tony and he’s going to hitch-hike round Ireland with a fridge.’
‘Hmmmmm.’
‘Could you buy a small fridge and a trolley for it and pick him up at Dublin airport? Hell give you the money when he gets there.’
‘Er—’
‘Good, grand…I’ll ring you Friday with the flight details.’
§
And there he was at the airport, the man who had been entrusted with the responsibility of purchasing someone’s travelling companion for the next month, a role more commonly associated with Bangkok than Dublin. Although we’d never met, we knew each other instantly. He must have been able to recognise the wild apprehension in my eyes and I could see the dismay in his. He greeted me cordially enough and we made our way to the car. That was where the fridge was, he told me, accurately assessing that its whereabouts were my main concern.
I was rather nervous about meeting it. He’d been given detailed instructions and he seemed bright enough, but what if he’d bought the wrong kind of fridge? I suddenly felt it had been a mistake to have abdicated responsibility for this, the most important of all my pieces of baggage. After all I knew so much about fridges having been given the lowdown by an expert like Darren. But it had to be like this because today was a Sunday and not a good day for fridge shopping, and I wanted to make a start first thing in the morning. It was almost like starting a new job—in on Monday morning, bright and early, looking your best and keen to impress.
We climbed the stairs in the surprisingly odourless multi-storey car park. I found Shane to be a reticent man but assumed he was more so today because his thoughts were occupied trying to work out the size of favour he would demand from Seamus in return for having done this one. It was certain to be a biggy, along the lines of ‘There’s this man I want you to kill…’ Then I saw the fridge for the first time. Shane had done well. Exactly what I had been looking for, a white cube about two feet square. I patted it affectionately and Shane looked away allowing us a moment of intimacy. Then he produced the trolley and in reverent silence we strapped the fridge to it, respectful witnesses at the birth of a truly symbiotic relationship.
I wheeled the fridge around the car park a bit like a sportsman warming up, and it felt good. Me, the fridge and the trolley were going to get along just fine. We would have been the dream team if it hadn’t been for the rucksack. Initiation ceremony out of the way we headed off. Shane had exceeded his initial brief by organising bed and breakfast accommodation for me in an area south of the River Liffey called Donnybrook. He started to relax and we chatted more freely. He revealed himself to be quite amus
ed by my prospective expedition and suggested that I get in touch with a radio show on RTE FM 2 called The Gerry Ryan Show. He said that they liked to get behind wacky ventures and mine fitted the bill perfectly. I hadn’t thought of doing anything like that but as we progressed slowly through the gridlocked centre of Dublin the idea grew on me.
We reached Donnybrook and I paid Shane the £130 I owed him for the fridge.
‘By the way, how much is the bet for?’ he asked.
‘A hundred pounds,’ I replied.
He was confused for a moment, then he rather hurriedly wished me good luck and drove off with a look on his face which suggested that he was relieved that I wasn’t in his car anymore.
§
I was greeted at the B&B by Rory, a young man who looked as if he’d just graduated and was some way from being the middle-aged maternal lady called Rosie who I imagined ran all these kinds of establishments. He had very thick lenses in his glasses and I found the resulting enlargement of his eyes a little disconcerting. He declared that he had no problems on the vacancy front given that he had no other guests staying. Initially he didn’t comment as I wheeled the fridge into his hall, but he surveyed it in such a way as to suggest that he wasn’t confident that his thick lenses were thick enough. A few seconds passed and he capitulated.
‘Is that a fridge?’ he said.
This was an enquiry I was to hear a good deal more in the weeks to come.
‘Yes,’ 1 replied accurately.
He didn’t pursue this line of questioning and I offered nothing further although I could tell that he was curious. I had made a decision before leaving that I would try not to volunteer information about this fridge unless it was asked of me and then I would tell the truth. I was interested to see how many people wouldn’t ask, either through politeness or a general lack of interest. Rory fell into the former category.
Shortly after I’d settled into my room and was embarking on some gentle unpacking there was a knock on the door. It was Rory asking me if I would do him a favour. I carelessly said ‘no problem’ in a manner of which Shane would have been proud. Rory said that he was popping out for a while and would I mind answering the phone if it went, and once again I obliged with another ‘no problem’. Forty minutes and three bookings later, I decided that the best course of action was to go out myself.
I was feeling pretty jaded, with recent sleepless nights and the trauma of the flight taking their toll, but I had two things I wanted to do before I turned in for the night. Firstly, since Shane had pointed out that the RTE studios were fortuitously only five minutes walk away, I saw no harm in dropping a note into The Gerry Ryan Show giving them details of the journey I was about to embark on and leaving the phone number of Rory’s B&B if they wanted to speak to me in the morning. Also I wanted to take a photograph.
On a previous visit to Dublin I’d gone to a nightclub in a basement in Leeson Street called Buck Whaley’s. It was an evening of no significance other than for an estate agent’s sign which had caught my eye. Two doors down from Buck Whaleys another basement club had closed down but the dormant neon light letters spelling out the word ‘DISCOTHEQUE’ remained. Outside an estate agent had placed a board saying:
TO LET
COMMERCIAL PROPERTY
SUIT DISCO
I was impressed. After all that’s what you pay your money for. Without the particular expertise of that estate agent and for his aptly chosen words ‘surr DISCO’, heaven knows what doomed commercial venture an entrepreneur might have considered for that property, carelessly clearing out the bars and breaking up the dancefloor in order to open up a shoe shop.
I got there to find the photo opportunity was denied to me since the board was no more, someone wisely having followed its sound advice opening it up as a disco. Commission well earned by Messrs Daly, Quilligan and O’Reilly.
I dropped my explanatory letter into RTE, ate a disappointing takeaway, returned to Rory’s, took a shower and went to bed. Fortunately I was so tired that it didn’t take me long to fall asleep. If it had, I might have started to become anxious about what the next day held in store.
§
The next morning I was woken by Rory knocking on my door. I thought, ‘Oh God, I suppose you’re going out again and you want me to man the telephones and make my own breakfast?’ but said, ‘Yes?’
Not such a good line but it came a close second.
‘Phonecall for you,’ said an excited Rory, ‘it’s The Gerry Ryan Show.’
‘Oh. Right.’
Having been awake only a matter of seconds I wasn’t exactly on top of what all this meant I opened the door and Rory handed me one of those cordless phones which nearly always get a bad reception however much the manufacturers promise otherwise. I put it to my ear.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello Tony, it’s Siobhan here from The Gerry Ryan Show, I’ll put you on hold’and you’ll be through to Gerry in a minute.’
Gerry? I don’t know a Gerry. And why can’t he talk to me now? Before I could say anything I found myself listening to Chris Rea and the whole thing dawned on me. Oh no, I was going to be on air after this record! What about my hair? I cleared my throat several times in an effort to make it sound less like I’d just woken up. I tried to ignore Chris Rea’s lyrics; after all the thought of being on ‘the road to hell’ was disturbing enough first thing in the morning, but when you were about to embark on a venture like mine it was almost as if the bastard was taking the piss.
Gerry Ryan’s voice cut through the fading record.
‘Now, I’ve got Tony Hawks on the line. Good morning Tony—now you’re about to make an interesting journey—would you care to tell us about it?’
I can think of easier things to do one minute after you’ve woken up.
Actually I didn’t do a bad job of explaining what I was up to and why, even managing to be faintly amusing from time to time.
‘I’ve no idea if I’ll stay this jolly,’ I said to Gerry at one stage, ‘it’s only because I haven’t started yet that I sound this happy.’
‘Well, I think maybe if the weather is good for you, you’ll probably get a very good response, and indeed knowing the way the national psyche of the people in this country works, you’ll probably be made extremely welcome—and it will be a great thing for the peace process.’
‘Well, I hope to be passing through Northern Ireland later today, so if I can do anything to smooth things over up there I’d be more than happy—maybe we should all get round the fridge. People have tried getting round tables and it doesn’t really work out, the whole body language thing behind a table is all wrong—so let’s all get round the fridge.’
‘I think you may have hit on something there, Tony—that could be our motto for the peace process—‘Let’s get round the fridge’.’
We must have chatted for six or seven minutes, which surprised me because I was so used to English radio where they want a few quick soundbytes from you before they whack on another record. We even took a call from a pub landlord offering to throw a fridge party’ when I got to Cork. I thanked him and promised to take him up on the offer, but wondered if he had any idea as to what a fridge party might involve. It didn’t seem to matter.
In Gerry Ryan I could tell I was dealing with a very accomplished broadcaster who had mastered the art of calmly coping with four things happening at once whilst talking at the same time. He also seemed to be genuinely intrigued by the absurdity of my undertaking and wound up the interview by saying, ‘This is exactly the kind of thing that we like to keep an eye on—we will put the full weight of RTE behind you, will you call us tomorrow?’
‘Absolutely, Gerry, I’d be delighted.’
‘Good morning.’
‘Good morning.’
§
I sounded happy and indeed I was. But only because I hadn’t woken up properly, both in the physical and metaphorical sense, to the reality of what lay ahead of me. Furthermore I hadn’t looked out of the windo
w so I was blissfully unaware that it was sheeting down with rain.
Through the phone’s earpiece I heard Gerry’s summing up, ‘Good luck to Tony…well, you have to say it’s a completely purposeless idea, but a damn fine one.’
I hoped that the rest of Ireland would feel the same.
On my way to the B&B’s dining room I was intercepted by a beaming Rory.
‘So that’s what the fridge is for, you madman.’
He led me into the kitchen and sat me down at a table where I could watch him prepare breakfast. Presumably this was an honour bestowed upon guests who had just been on national radio. In the next few minutes Rory really opened up to me, telling me about his studies, travels and his business partnership with his father, all at the expense of my bacon. He didn’t mind. He simply tossed the burnt rashers away and extravagantly produced some fresh ones. All at the expense of my eggs. He wasn’t very good at this breakfast business and it might have been easier for me if I hadn’t been coerced into watching. It didn’t bother him though, he was too busy telling me about the Five-year Economic Plan he and his Dad had worked out.
I don’t know what had caused the conversational floodgates to open but I suppose there must be something about knowing why someone is travelling with a fridge that sets your mind at ease, however irrational the reason may be. Overnight Rory may have felt that he had a dangerous psychopath as his only guest but now he knew the truth. I was a good-humoured eccentric for whom care with breakfast wasn’t a priority. In fact he lavished a service of complete neglect upon me; he disappeared off to answer the phone three times and his prolonged absence necessitated my self-promotion to breakfast chef. Not a problem, for I was a better cook than him and I was pleased he was getting more bookings. Last night’s level of occupancy wasn’t in accordance with the Five-year Plan.
1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge Page 3
