‘Well, reflexology, obviously. He said that last night you were really keen that he fitted you in.’
‘Oh I was, I was.’ Frightening. I honestly had absolutely no recollection of that. ‘It’s just that…well…’
‘What?’
‘Well, it’s just that the cup final starts at three.’
Antoinette pulled a face that only girls can pull when they are fed up with boys and football.
‘Tony, at worst you’ll miss the first quarter of an hour. You need to relax down after all that you’re going through. Are you really going to turn your back on a potentially profitable new experience forfootball? ’
How is that done? How is so much venom incorporated in the articulation of one word? Football.
Of course she was absolutely right cup finals come and go and are habitually disappointing, and here was an opportunity to discover something new. I’d never had the soles of my feet massaged before. Certainly not by a bloke who I’d met in the pub the night before.
‘Before you do all that, you’ve got to see the Glen,’ said Bingo. ‘You can’t leave here without seeing the Glen.’
‘What’s the Glen?’
‘You’ll see. You’ve got a car, haven’t you? It’ll only take us half an hour.’
And so the relentless programme of events continued with a visit to the Glen. Neither Antoinette or I had any idea what it was, but we had been assured that we shouldn’t leave this place without seeing it, and for two followers of the ‘faith’, we knew it would be wrong to let the opportunity pass.
Bingo must have had second thoughts when he saw Antoinette’s car. He said nothing but his expression suggested that his thought was, ‘And you want me to get in it?’
In the past, Bingo had given detailed directions to holidaymakers but none of them had managed to find the Glen. It was like a secret place, not in any guidebooks and accessible only to a select few who were in the know. After ten minutes of driving, the road started to carve its way round a hill, giving us views across the beautiful bays and inlets of the coast on our right hand side, and steep grassy banks on the other.
‘Right, just pull over on the left here,’ said Bingo.
He led us across the road where there was a tiny gate almost completely hidden by overgrown bushes and long grass.
‘This is it.’
A short walk down a narrow path and we were in a place which was truly special. Just like three children on an adventure, we found ourselves descending into a narrow passage at the foot of two huge walls of stone. There were two theories as to what had caused this vast fault in the limestone rock around the time of the Ice Age, either an earthquake, or the top collapsing in on an underground river. We were now the fortunate witnesses to the spectacular result. Vegetation growing over the rock face and water trickling over limestone stalactites had created in microcosm, Sligo’s very own tropical rain forest The narrow shafts of light battling through the overhanging branches and leaves above us, the sound of running water, and the echoes of our voices, gave the place a mystical quality which required us to stop talking and just listen. Listen to the voice of Nature.
I walked on ahead, sat down on a tree stump and looked up at the huge limestone walls which encased and sheltered us. As I watched the youthful water of a mini waterfall cascading over a narrow strip of stone, I allowed its gentle sounds to waft me into a faintly meditative state. A rare moment of peace in a journey which had become a hectic and clamorous celebration of the absurd. I felt suddenly grateful for all that had happened to me and I looked up and gently whispered Thank You’. This was directed to no one and no thing in particular, but to anyone or anything who was listening and fancied taking the credit I looked around me and saw that both Bingo and Antoinette had found their own private locations for a moment’s quiet contemplation, and I felt deeply privileged to be here in this unique and spiritual place.
But if I had attained some momentary balance, inner calm and enlightenment here in the ‘Glen’, then my next action served as a reminder that I had undergone no lasting conversion to a spiritual path. I looked at my watch and noted that the cup final started in just under an hour.
With the unwelcoming piercing sharpness of a car alarm, my voice punctured the tranquil atmosphere, ‘We’d better go if I’m going to catch the cup final.’
The others turned, initially startled by this intrusion into their solitary reflections, but then became suddenly aware of who they were, where they were and, above all, who they were with. And unfortunately for them, they were with the bloke who wanted to go and watch the cup final.
‘Oh right, no problem,’ said Bingo accommodatingly. Antoinette said nothing, but didn’t need to.
On the walk back to the car we noticed the evidence of trees having been cut down and used as firewood.
‘This has become a popular spot for the occasional rave party, and unfortunately the kids don’t always treat the place with the respect it deserves,’ explained Bingo.
‘Is there much of a drug problem in this part of Ireland?’ I enquired.
‘The police don’t admit that there is, but it’s there all right.’
He went on to explain that an unpopular Chief Superintendent had proudly boasted the absence of any kind of drug problem in Sligo in a quote which the local newspaper had lifted for a banner headline;
WE DON’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH DRUGS
The wind was somewhat taken out of his sails by the opportunist who cut out the headline and used it as the first line for a poster which was duplicated and then plastered all over the town.
WE DON’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH DRUGS
WE CAN GET THEM ANYWHERE
Whatever your views on drugs, it was clear who had won that particular battle.
Time was running short but ‘Bingo Tours’ included another brief stop at a derelict old landlord’s house which a local businessman was restoring to its former extravagant grandeur, with the intention of soon opening it as a hotel. The countryside of Ireland is littered with roofless derelict houses, each of which mark an isolated moment in its troubled history. A government tax on roofs had meant that landlords in England had arranged for the roofs to be destroyed on their Irish properties which they could no longer afford to run or be bothered to visit. Britain had seen its own idiosyncratic and unsightly physical manifestation of man’s obsession with tax evasion when the introduction of a ‘Window Tax’ resulted in the owners of many large houses in England having their windows bricked up. It seems that the more privileged in society you are, the more convoluted, devious and determined your efforts became in the evasion of putting a penny back into it Certainly the scars on the Irish landscape of these old and roofless landlords’ houses are monuments to the human weakness for accumulating personal wealth at the expense of social justice. Just at a moment in history when the basic human right of a ‘roof over your head’ was being denied to large numbers of the Irish population, roofs were actively being destroyed in order to preserve healthy bank balances on an island across the Irish Sea.
A pivotal moment in my own personal history was marked by the mobile phone ringing for the first time. It was North West Radio giving me the name and address of a woman who ran a bed and breakfast in Ballina, and had offered me free accommodation if I turned up there. A roof over my head.
Antoinette shook her head in disbelief. ‘Honestly, the doors that are opening to you! I’ve got to get myself a toaster and travel round Ireland.’
‘Ballina? Is that where you’re headed next then?’ asked Bingo.
‘It is now.’
§
I’m not proud of having missed my reflexology appointment with Peter. To choose watching a game of football in a noisy Sligo pub ahead of a relaxing massage from one of life’s natural healers was shallow and immature, but an FA Cup final is an FA Cup final, and if you miss one there is a gap in your personal experience which could put you at a serious disadvantage in a pub conversation at some time in the future.
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The honour of being the first person to sign the fridge was bestowed upon Bingo when we had dropped him back at the Strand pub. With a green marker pen, the words ‘Cheers! Love Bingo’ heralded the process of transforming an ordinary household fridge into a personalised oddity.
The irrational need to watch a game of football had left me with a deadline, and I had been forced into the unusual position of needing a game plan.
‘I thought you didn’t have game plans,’ said Antoinette, as I outlined it to her.
‘I don’t, but today is different.’
It wasn’t actually. It was exactly the same as the previous day, in that I had to be somewhere by three o’clock.
By rushing away from the beauty and peace of the Glen, and denying the soles of my feet the luxury of a good massage, I had freed up enough time to grab a quick bite to eat before the match. So when we reached the centre of Sligo and I got out of Antoinette’s car for the last time, my intention was to find Abrakebabra, claim my free lunch, dump my fridge with them, and go and watch the game in the nearest pub. It was a good plan, although I was the only person in the car who thought so.
Antoinette and I hugged and wished each other good luck.
‘Thank you for the most surreal weekend of my life,’ she said and then drove off back to Dublin and relative normality. In stark contrast, I turned, hauled my rucksack on to my back and wheeled my fridge through the hordes of hurried shoppers in Sligo’s city centre.
Abrakebabra turned out to be a fast food restaurant, and although it wasn’t quite what I had imagined, the ‘fast’ element of its service was going to be crucial, since time was ticking away. The boss, who had come up with the magnificent marketing ploy of donating a free lunch to anyone who wheeled a fridge into his establishment, wasn’t there, but a confused lady called Mary honoured the agreement and allowed me to leave my fridge and rucksack around the back.
At two minutes to three I rushed out on to the street, steak sandwich in hand, and went into the first pub I saw. It was empty, and the reason soon became apparent. It wasn’t showing the match. Time was running out. I dashed outside and there were no pubs in sight. What was it to be, left or right? I went left.
Turning left was a mistake, and led me into the only populated square mile in the whole of this country which had no pubs, but I ran my heart out and made it to one in a time which, had it been in a formal athletics event, would undoubtedly have been a personal best. It had a big blackboard outside advertising ‘Chelsea vs Middlesbrough’. I looked at my watch and saw that it was one minute past three. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Well, that is in normal circumstances. In normal circumstances both teams cancel each other out for the first forty-five minutes in a dull and nervy first half, the game coming alive in an enthralling last twenty minutes which makes the whole experience worthwhile. On the day when I was one minute late—one miserly minute late, Chelsea scored after thirty-five seconds. Thirty-five seconds! That never happens, not in a cup final. I was furious. I badly needed some reflexology to calm me down. Instead, I chose a far less healthy relaxant, and sat back, occasionally sipping at it, hoping that the early strike might open the game up and we might be on for a goal fest.
The pub was large and it looked like three separate rooms had all been knocked through to create an open-plan effect. Two large screens at each end provided the focus for everyone’s attention. Everyone that is, except for the resident drunk. Actually, I think this man was a guest drunk, possibly on loan from another pub, with a transfer fee under negotiation. Confetti in his hair and a smartish suit suggested that he had come straight from a wedding reception. Presumably he had drunk the free bar dry, and his hand had been forced into carrying on his good work elsewhere. At this precise moment this man was the most drunk man in Ireland, and the lead he held over his rivals was a substantial one. Using his tie as a microphone he stood at one end of the pub, just belqw the TV screen and sang his interpretation of Bob Geldof’s ‘I Don’t’Like Mondays’. It was tuneless, loud, and unpleasant. Too close to the original for my taste. He then began jumping around as if someone had put five thousand volts through his body. If it hadn’t been for his exclamation, none of us in that pub would have had the faintest idea what he was doing.
‘EAT YOUR HEART our MICHAELFLATLEY!!’ he bellowed at the top of his voice.
Ah, that was it then. He was doing River Dance. His exertions were such that I thought he was going to have a heart attack there and then. Instead he took a huge swig from his pint mug and distributed an equal share of the beer within it, between his mouth and his suit.
This man was creating an enormous distraction for the majority of those, like me, who were in the pub primarily to watch a game of football. But there wasn’t a sign of any antagonism towards him. The drinkers simply smiled, laughed or shook their heads good-humouredly. This hadn’t been my natural reaction, but I soon realised that the best way to diffuse my irritation was to smile along with the rest If you can’t beat them or join them, laugh at them.
I was grateful to him really. He was more entertaining than the football and his ‘songs’ helped to drown out the commentators’ bland analysis. I could just make out the distinctly nasal tones of Trevor Brooking.
‘That’s five times that Ravanelli’s been offside, and it hasn’t even been marginal—he’s comfortably off.’
I should say he’s comfortably off, I heard he was getting £20,000 a week.
Chelsea won 2-0. They scored their second goal when I was in the toilet. I felt a little for Middlesborough; after all, their season had involved them getting to two cup finals, losing them both and being relegated from the Premier league. What does a manager say to his players after a string of such devastating failures? I’m not aware of there being a satisfactory euphemism for ‘you are a bunch of losers’.
I bet it wasn’t as bad for the players as the fans. Most of the players would be transferred to another club within the week, but the fans would continue to live in Middlesborough with their shattered dreams. It’s probably just as well they don’t have the Death Notices on local radio up there.
As I sat in this Sligo pub I momentarily forgot what I was doing here in Ireland, such was my empathy with the Middlesborough fans. I knew the pain. I had been there. The last team to lose an FA Cup final and be relegated in the same season had been Brighton and Hove Albion. I had been to Wembley and seen my side lose 4-0 to Manchester United, the largest margin of defeat for any club since the second world war. Frankly it had been an embarrassment. Still, at least I hadn’t taken along a toy machinegun.
When I left the pub, the most drunk man in Ireland was increasing his lead over any potential rivals, having just lost a head to head race to down a pint of beer, and was now shouting at the bar staff, demanding two large brandies. He must have had a strong constitution—but few would deny that it was in need of some reform.
At Abrakebabra, I collected my stuff, said I had enjoyed the football even though I hadn’t really, and ordered a taxi on my mobile phone.
‘Could you drop me on the road to Ballina?’ I had said.
‘No problem, it will be about five minutes,’ they replied.
I waited outside Abrakebabra for twenty minutes. Eventually a thickset man in his twenties, who I had seen eyeing my fridge with interest, approached me.
‘Were you on the television yesterday afternoon?’
‘I was.’
‘I thought I recognised y—…well, the fridge. Where are you headed?’
‘I’m waiting for a taxi to take me out to the road to Ballina where I’m going to start hitching.’
‘Wait here, I’ll go and get my van. I’ll take you out there.’
Excellent. I had mastered my art to such a degree that I could get lifts now without even hitching.
§
Kieran made fruit and veg deliveries. (But in his busy daily schedule he obviously found time to watch daytime television.)
‘I was just on th
e way home when I saw you. I had packed up for the day but then I realised I had forgotten to deliver six cucumbers, so I had to get the van back out again.’
All part of the stresses that go with the job. So, I owed this lift entirely to six cucumbers. Tick that one off—another first.
‘It’s very kind of you to drive me out here like this.’
‘Ah it’s a pleasure. You don’t meet an eejit like you every day.’
Fair point.
Kieran drove me about five miles out of Sligo past the beautiful Ballysodare Bay.
‘Look at that,’ he said, ‘God’s television.’
We arrived at a fork in the road where the smaller N59 branched off to Ballina, and it was time for me to get out and set myself up on the roadside. It was just after five thirty, and I was on the road again. Literally. I didn’t know what was coming next. I was getting hooked on the unpredictability of this whole fridge experience. There was only one thing I could be sure of, and that was that it wouldn’t be long before one of the agreeable drivers in this agreeable country plucked me from the roadside and bore me ever onwards.
12
Roisin
An hour and a half later I was still waiting, and I was beginning to feel rather low. With an over-confidence bordering on arrogance, I had thought that I could just leave a town whenever I felt like it and pick up a lift with great ease, but the reality was that in another hour it would be dark and I would have to give up and get a taxi back to Sligo. Could my liver handle another night in the Strand? I slumped down on to the fridge, tired and despairing.
Two very young children, a little boy and a little girl, walked past. The boy viewed me with some interest and asked, ‘What are you doing?’
It was a question I had begun to ask myself.
‘I’m hitch-hiking.’
He nodded. He seemed satisfied even though he clearly didn’t know what ‘hitch-hiking’ was.
‘Are you just after coming from school?’ the little girl asked.
1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge Page 14
