Occasionally a couple would go by and I could see what looked like the beginning of a conversation starting between them.
‘Was that a fridge?’
‘What?’
‘That guy back there—hitching—did he have a fridge with him?’
‘You’re tired, darling. Stop in a minute and I’ll take over driving.’
I thought, don’t talk about it, stop and pick the poor bugger up! Self-centred bastards, you had room in your car. Never again was I going to leave a hitch-hiker by the side of the road.
I started considering the possibility of hiding the fridge and only revealing its existence when the driver had already stopped and had committed to the lift. I concluded that this wasn’t cheating but should be a measure only resorted to after about two hours or if it started to rain heavily. Neither proposition seemed too distant a prospect I stood up. I tried smiling at cars. This didn’t work and probably made me look certifiable. To ease the boredom, I tried to look nonplussed, just to see if it was possible. That must be a mark of a great actor—someone who can look nonplussed at the drop of a hat.
Just when I had least expected it, in fact when I was having a go at looking bewildered, a scruffy red Fiesta van pulled over just in front of me. I couldn’t believe it was stopping for me and ran forward to check. A dishevelled looking old man and his Jack Russell dog surveyed me through the open window.
‘I’m only going as far as Carrerreraragh,’ he mumbled. Not the dog, the man.
At least that was what I thought he’d said, his accent was strong and he obviously felt that talking was best done with the mouth barely open.
‘How far is Carr…err…eraragh?’
‘You mean Carrecloughnarreraragh?’
‘Yes, Car—, yes, there, how far is that?’
‘Carrereraoughnanrrara? It’s about three miles.’
Oh God. Three miles is no use to anyone. From my previous experience of hitch-hiking I had discovered that it was sometimes better to turn down a lift than accept one which can land you in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t like the sound of Carrerrererreragh, or its ability to sound different every time it was said. I tried to ascertain if Carreranoughnara would be any good for hitching.
‘Is there anywhere round there I might—’
‘Throw them in, throw them in.’ He was pointing to my luggage.
‘What’s the road like there in Carra—’
‘Throw them in, throw them in.’ It might as well have been the dog talking for all the progress being made.
‘I’m sorry, it’s just that sometimes it’s best to—’
‘Look, jes’ throw the feckin’ things in the feckin’ back, will ya?’
This did the trick. I responded immediately and against all my better judgement I was loading my gear into his tatty van in order to advance a further three miles up the road. Still, as I’d heard somewhere before, a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.
Both he and the dog watched with interest as I lifted the fridge into the back.
‘What have you got there?’
‘Ifs a fridge.’
‘Oh. You wouldn’t want to be travellin’ with a fridge for too long.’
Wouldn’t you? No I suppose you wouldn’t. I got into the front seat and the dog jumped on to my lap using me as a means of improving its view out of the front window.
‘Where are you headed?’ I asked.
‘The cattle auction up the road here.’
‘Are you going to buy a cow?’
‘No, I’m just going to kill time.’
I suddenly felt a long way from home. I was in a place where people went to cattle auctions to kill time. Then I noticed something which had been obvious all along but had escaped my attention such had been my preoccupation with trying to decipher what he was saying. The old man was covered in mud. There’s some rubbish that biologists or physicists give you about humans being 90% water, but this guy was at least 25% mud. It looked like he’d been rolling in it Presumably to kill time. The strange thing was, his dog wasn’t very muddy at all. How could that have happened? Dogs pride themselves on getting muddy and to be less muddy than your owner must be deeply shameful. I reckoned that’s why the dog was so keen to look out of the window—keeping a check on the whereabouts of other dogs so it could avoid them and maintain some kind of respect in the area.
We arrived all too quickly in Carrerrerarse, the six minutes spent in the company of this mud-covered man and his dog having afforded me a brief respite from the notion that I had made a foolish error in my life. This hitching with a fridge business was possible. The man had stopped and he had picked up both me and my fridge. It was just bad luck that he was only going a few miles. And it was just bad luck that Carrerrerranoughnabollocks was one of the worst places for hitching in the Northern Hemisphere.
As the old man pulled into the side of the road, he was greeted by three other elderly farmer types who were also covered in mud. They weren’t as muddy as him, obviously, but certainly muddy enough to be on the committee of the muddy gang. I got out, collected my gear and said goodbye, conscious of the fact that I was outside a cattle auction in the heart of rural Ireland, with a rucksack, a fridge and an insufficient coating of mud to be welcome in these parts.
All around me were the scenes of traffic congestion I had been dreaming of only minutes earlier. Trucks, wagons, carts, Range Rovers and tatty red Fiesta vans were arriving for the cattle auction and they were of absolutely no help to me. In fact they were an enormous hindrance, making it something of a problem finding a place to stand where through traffic might see me. I lifted the fridge on to its trolley, hoisted the rucksack on to my back and started to walk up the road. Needless to say it was muddy. I looked round to wave goodbye, but the old man had gone and instead I saw his Jack Russell eyeing me disparagingly through the van’s windscreen. Instinctively it seemed to know the way I had chosen to travel lacked wisdom. I gave it the finger and continued on my way.
As I walked I could hear the monotone machinegun-fire delivery of the cattle auctioneer over the distant PA I hoped for his sake that his entire audience wasn’t made up of those who were killing time. I walked on. A farmer was staring at me. ‘What’s his problem?’ I thought. I had forgotten that he had just seen an unmuddy man pulling a fridge behind him give the finger to a Jack Russell dog.
Presently I arrived at the hitching location which I considered to be the least unsuitable to those available to me. I was still alongside parked cars but I felt it was worth a try. Just as I had finished arranging myself as attractively as I could, it started to rain. Hard.
I had two alternatives. I could either commence an undignified struggle with my rucksack in an attempt to extricate my waterproofs, or I could go and seek shelter. The problem with the second option was that the only shelter available was the building in which the cattle auction was taking place and I was frightened that a combination of despondency and delirium would see me making a successful bid for a cow. Hitching round Ireland with a fridge and a cow really would be pushing it.
With considerable trepidation I took on the rucksack. I had just opened it up and was subjecting the clothes’at its apex to the full consequences of the weather conditions when, thank God, a car stopped for me. A blue Datsun estate car, a Sunny, or a Cherry, or one of those—no, I know what it was—the Datsun Saviour. I scurried to the passenger door and opened it.
‘How far are you going?’ I said.
The driver looked at me with consternation. ‘I’m just parking here,’ he replied.
Oh. I moved away enabling him to complete his manoeuvre without further interference. Ahead of him another car had stopped and was parking. I really was in a most unsuitable spot. I headed back to my roadside encumbrances. The car ahead tooted its horn. It was obviously having some difficulty parking. Forlornly I went back to rummaging for waterproofs. Then the car ahead did something very strange. Quite suddenly it went into reverse and stopped alongside me. T
he driver leant over, wound down the passenger window and said, ‘I heard you on the radio this morning. I thought you’d be gone by now.’
After a false start, the journey had truly begun.
5
Who Came Fifth?
Brendan, the saviour, was immaculately turned out in suit and tie and had absolutely no mud on him whatsoever. He’d been listening to the radio that morning and knew exactly what I was up to, and why I was doing what I was doing, which given my recent experiences, was more than I did.
He was a toiletries salesman from Northern Ireland who had recently gained clients down in the republic. He scored well on three fronts—he was charming, he was good company and he was heading for Cavan. As his windscreen wipers worked overtime clearing the now torrential rain, we talked about life, love, politics, religion, and the rising price of deodorants. All in the lovely dry interior of his car. Bloody hell, I’d been lucky.
Before he got to Cavan, Brendan said he needed to make a couple of business calls and he asked me if I minded. Of course not, he was my saviour. He could have asked for anything and I would have obliged. Almost. And so we sped through the rain as far as Cootehill where he sold some toiletries and I took coffee in the quaint tea-rooms. Taking coffee in a tea-room always brings me a certain amount of extra pleasure in that I feel I’m beating the system. It’s like having spaghetti in a pizza house, chicken in a steak house, or having a neck massage in a Bangkok massage parlour. We headed north to Clones, in County Monaghan, which Brendan explained was republican ‘bandit country’. I wasn’t sure how to tailor my behaviour for this area but I decided that if we were stopped by a man in a balaclava wielding a shotgun, I’d cut the light-hearted banter right down and try not to get chatting about my days in the Combined Cadet Force at school. When we got to Clones, I waited in the car whilst Brendan did his stuff in a moderately-sized convenience store. He was quite a while, which surprised me, because I figured that the one place where toiletries would be easy to sell would be a convenience store. He must have started to feel guilty because after a quarter of an hour he brought me out an ice cream, apologised and said he wouldn’t be much longer. I liked this. It was like being eight years old again. Forty minutes later we were in Cavan, my destination for the day. I was feeling rather pleased with myself as we drew close to an area where Brendan knew there were guest houses. It was only five o’clock or so, but the next part of my journey, zipping in and out of Northern Ireland, could be the most hazardous, and I didn’t want to find myself wandering into a paramilitary training camp at dusk and asking directions to reasonably priced bed and breakfast accommodation. In a bleak residential road we stopped outside an unwelcoming hostelry, and I got out and began unloading. I was sorry to leave Brendan, it was like he’d been on my side when the others had been ganging up on me. And he had bought me an ice cream.
I kicked off the playful goodbye stuff, ‘If ever I see you with a fridge by the side of the road in England, I’ll definitely stop for you.’
‘If ever you see me with a fridge by the side of the road in England, you will have just taken hallucinogenic drugs.’
‘Have a good journey back to Northern Ireland.’
‘What?’
‘Have a good journey home.’
‘I’m not going home.’
‘Where are you going then?’
‘Donegal Town.’
‘What for?’
‘I’ve got some business there in the morning.’
We’d got on so well with each other so quickly that we’d forgotten to do the Smalltalk establishing these kind of essential details. I felt it was worth pointing one out now.
‘Well, I’m headed for Donegal.’
‘Not Cavan?’
‘Cavan was only a stopping off point for Donegal.’
‘Right. Well, you’d better jump back in again.’
And jump back in again I did, with some delight.
§
The day had been an exhausting maelstrom of emotions, but now as we drove through the breathtaking lakeside scenery of County Fermanagh, along the banks of the beautiful Lough Erne, I allowed myself to indulge in a new one—triumph. The sun even broke through for five minutes and the freshly doused countryside glistened much in the same way as I did, only with a touch less smugness. I proudly traced our progress on the map and pointed out the absurdity of Lower Lough Erne actually being above Upper Lough Erne. Brendan explained that according to my perspective as a North-South map reader it was above, but the physical reality was that it was nearer sea level and therefore most definitely the lower of the two Lough Ernes.
Triumph was immediately usurped by shame. History had delivered enough cartographical colonial incompetence in this part of the world without my own ignorant contribution. We were, after all, in Northern Ireland. We only had to pass a police station with all its preposterous fortification to remind us of that.
Soon we were in the capital of County Fermanagh, Enniskillen. Enniskillen. The name itself was enough to trigger TV memories of one of the all too frequent atrocities of the Troubles, but here before me was a real town, not a news story viewed from the comfort of England. I had grown up with Northern Ireland always in the headlines, but had built up an immunity to it, never really registering that the people there shopped in high streets like ours, used British Telecom phoneboxes and voted MPs into our government. I mean their government—well, whatever—therein lies the crux of the problem, methinks. The apparently peaceful border town of Belleek behind us, we slipped through one final deserted checkpoint and re-entered the Republic. I had been disorientated by a part of the United Kingdom that I couldn’t recognise or understand but now, as Donegal Town grew ever closer, once again I was filled with a sense of achievement. I know it was only the first day, but I’d covered a lot of miles, and proved to myself that I wasn’t attempting the impossible.
In reaching Donegal Town I had arrived at a point which would be both the beginning and end of a circular tour of Donegal County, and which would therefore have the privilege, along with Dublin, of being the only place in Ireland which I would visit twice. The entrance to the town was marked by a small harbour and delightful views across Donegal bay.
Brendan dropped me outside a B&B displaying a ‘Vacancies’ sign and we arranged to meet for a pint at his hotel later on. There was no need for directions; it was in Donegal Town and given the size of the place, that was sufficient information. There were probably vacancies at his hotel but I felt, and I think there was tacit agreement from Brendan on this, that we were starting to spend so much time together that the taking of different lodgings was somehow an important affirmation of our heterosexuality.
I was greeted by the lady who ran the B&B as if greeting Englishmen with rucksacks and fridges was quite the norm. She had a wavering voice and spoke at a frustratingly dawdling pace in the manner of one who had only just got the hang of this talking business the previous week. In one agonisingly long sentence she explained how I could leave the fridge by the front door, how the shower worked and how she’d prefer it if I paid her in advance. By the time she’d finished it was nearly time to meet Brendan for that drink. I holed up in my tiny room and thought about my amazing day, what I would attempt tomorrow, and whether I’d ever been in a bedroom with less floor space.
I only had time to do a quick circuit of the town before meeting Brendan. It was a shame I didn’t have a little longer because I could have done it twice. Donegal Town is tiny, with not much to see other than the castle, which appeared to be a nice old house with some fortifications thrown in just to get ‘Castle’ status.
Brendan and I drank in three pubs, the last being far and away my favourite. From the exterior there had been very little about it to suggest it was a pub; net curtains, an old lamp and a faded old sign with a surname on it. In much of Ireland they don’t go in for grand pub names like The Coach And Horses’ or The Prince Of Wales’; they simply name it after the proprietor—‘Daly’s’ or ‘McCarth
y’s’, the first indication of the more personal experience that awaits you within. I came to call these establishments the old boys’ pubs, where everybody talks to everybody else regardless of who they are, partly because the clientele are very friendly and partly because the clientele are very pissed.
Just like an orchestra will have a Lead Violinist, most pubs will have a Lead Drunk. Or Drunk in Residence. He must have some arrangement with the landlord that he doesn’t have to pay for any drinks which he can still say. His main role seems to be to welcome newcomers with the emission of a loud wailing noise and by flailing his arms about like a drowning man, until his already precarious hold on his own centre of gravity is upset to the point of liberating him totally from his bar stool. This is where the Second Drunk instinctively reaches out with his left hand to stop him falling to the ground and continues drinking with his right, as if the whole manoeuvre has been carefully rehearsed. Which of course it has. Every night for decades.
It wasn’t long before Brendan and I were embroiled in a conversation with the regulars, the theme of which was prompted by highlights of today’s Grand Prix on the TV screen behind the bar. I took a back seat in the discussion, largely due to an ignorance of motor racing and an inability to understand anything that was being said. As far as I could make out, the main thrust of it was the establishment of who came first, second and third.
The Lead Drunk was now almost comatose, the exertions of his initial greeting for us having taken their toll. Many names were put forward and rejected but after ten minutes of animated debate, the fact that Schumacher had won and Eddie Irvine had come third was settled upon and those present seemed content with what had been achieved. Suddenly, and out of nowhere the Lead Drunk blurted out, ‘Who came fifth?’
Everyone turned to him in shock. Where had this come from? This, from a man who had been folded up on top of his bar stool for the past quarter of an hour. Three questions troubled all of us. How had he followed what was going on, how had he managed his first intelligible sentence of the evening, and why did he care who came fifth?
1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge Page 5
