1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge

by Tony Hawks; Prefers to remain anonymous

  That should guarantee a few pervy-looking types turning up for entirely the wrong reasons, and with their own very personalised definitions of ‘high speed wilting’.

  Keith Finnegan, understandably enough, covered much of the same ground as Gerry Ryan and Live At Three had done. ‘Why?’ being the most important and natural question to ask. Once I had explained my case, and told him I was headed south, Keith happily signed up to the merry band of those who wanted to help me, and put out an appeal for a taxi driver to take me to the main road out of town. Within seconds, a driver from Ocean Hackneys responded, and said he was on his way to pick me up. I thanked Keith, hung up, smiled, looked in the mirror, and pinched myself. No, I was awake all right, this was really happening.

  I took out my map and scanned the area south of Galway for a suitable destination. I saw a place called Ennistymon and recognised it as being the town on the piece of paper handed to me in Westport by Tony, the man who had offered to take the fridge scuba diving.

  Ennistymon it was then, unless fate intervened.

  17

  Rescued

  I asked Noel, the taxi driver, why he had responded to the radio station’s call.

  ‘Because you’ve got guts and a sense of humour.’

  I suppose both were prerequisites for what I was doing.

  Noel signed the fridge with a flourishing hand and left me standing with my thumb out just the other side of a roundabout at the edge of a busy dual carriageway. The mobile phone rang again. I heard a cockney voice, ‘Ello, is that Tony?’

  ‘Yes, is that Andy?’ I thought it was Andy from Bunbeg, ringing to see how I was getting on.

  ‘No, it’s Tony. From Swan Rescue.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you tell me whereabouts you are, I’ll come and pick you up.’

  What on earth was going on? An Englishman called Tony appeared to have taken me for a swan and was on his way to rescue me.

  ‘I ‘card you on the radio this mornin’,’ explained Tony, ‘and I thought I’d come and give you a lift, so tell me exactly where you are.’

  I did precisely that, to which he responded, ‘Stay there, and I’ll be with you in ten minutes. Look out for a small white van with Swan Rescue written on the side.’

  It was difficult to imagine a more peculiar set of circumstances. I now found myself by a roadside hitching but not actually wanting a lift, and, to be sure of not getting one, I had to hide my fridge, fearing that its fame would cause someone to stop, regardless of whether I was hitching or not I propped my rucksack up against it and draped my jacket over the top. I had broken new ground in the world of hitch-hiking. I was taking bookings.

  Twenty minutes later I was beginning to think I had been the victim of the world’s oddest hoax call, but sure enough the Swan Rescue van appeared, and I was rescued. It didn’t seem to matter that I wasn’t a swan. The net had been thrown wide enough that day to encompass wayward hitch-hikers.

  ‘How far are you going?’ I asked Tony.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere, but I’ll take you as far as Gort.’

  ‘What do you mean you’re not going anywhere?’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere. I came out specially to give you a lift—you know—to lend an ‘elpin’

  ‘and. HI take you as far as Gort, that’s about an hour from here.’

  The behaviour of the English people I had run into was making it very difficult to nail down a theory that the reason my trip so far had been such a bizarre success, was that Irish people were crazy. One Englishman had spent a morning on the telephone trying to organise a helicopter to take me out to an island, when a boat was leaving only a few yards away, and here was another, making a two-hour round trip for no reason other than to lend a helping hand. Two of the more eccentric pieces of behaviour hadn’t been performed by the Irish, but by my fellow countrymen. However, both Andy and Tony had embraced wholeheartedly a love of the Irish way of living life.

  ‘I spent most of my life in Hampton Court,’ explained Tony, ‘but I love it ‘ere. You live life ‘ere. In England you exist’

  I think it was fair to say that Tony wasn’t exactly rushed off his feet over here either. The fact that he could afford to make this purely philanthropic journey suggested to me that there simply weren’t enough swans in the Galway area that needed rescuing. It seemed an odd life sitting by the phone waiting for an emergency call of a swan in distress. Would he be busier if he didn’t limit himself totally to swans? I was intrigued as to what his response would be if he received a call with reference to an injured duck, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, you’ve got the wrong number—we’re swan rescue. You want duck rescue; if you hold on I’ll get you the number’.

  Tony dropped me in a driveway at the end of the dreary and sparse Gort main street. Most of the traffic passing appeared to be local, and I began to feel like a swan which hadn’t so much been rescued as picked up and moved on to another less salubrious pond. There wasn’t an awful lot to Gort, and what there was of it, didn’t exactly inspire. Gort. It looked like it sounded. I settled down to what I believed would be a long wait.

  I hadn’t been there long when I was approached by a smiling drunk with no teeth.

  ‘Oi, you’re the man with the fridge!’ he shouted.

  It was yet another English accent. He took a swig from a can of cider and pointed to another one he had in a string bag. ‘Do you wanna drink?’

  ‘No thanks, I’m trying to avoid drinking at lunchtime.’

  ‘Me too, but I’ve got a broken jaw.’

  I recalled Gerry Ryan’s words: ‘I must use that as an excuse myself one day.’

  ‘My name’s Ian, what’s yours?’ he offered in tribute to playground talk.

  ‘Tony.’

  ‘Where are you headed?’ he slurred.

  ‘Ennisrymon.’

  He pointed meaningfully just beyond me and pronounced, ‘Give me five minutes.’

  Was this another booking? If it was, and if this man was the driver just off to pick up his car, I would have to find a polite way of turning it down. It mightn’t be easy, but it would have to be done.

  Five minutes later a decrepit looking vehicle emerged from a narrow lane behind me. Inside it I could see four bodies, one of which was my toothless chum, who was beaming away in the back. He wound down the window and shouted out, ‘Jump in! We can take you as far as Ennis.’

  I needed to think long and hard about this, but there wasn’t time, so I thought short and hard and decided to risk it. In the end, I was swayed by the fact that the driver had no can of drink in his hand, and considerably more teeth than Ian. I know that a glimpse of a full set of teeth isn’t necessarily a tried and tested method of verifying someone’s driving skills, but I believe it’s generally used in an emergency.

  I was bundled into the back with Ian and a small child, and the fridge was unceremoniously dumped in the boot. We were in an old Toyota Carina which was the vehicular equivalent of lan’s face: gnarled, toothless, but still running. It made Antoinette’s car seem shiny and new.

  I was in the company of travellers. Ian was a veteran of twenty years on the road, whilst Neil, Vicky and their small son were relative newcomers to this community existence. They liked it though, preferring a caravan to a semi-detached in Sheffield. We talked about their lifestyle, which seemed agreeable enough, although it was based on a fundamental belief that the rest of society should be prepared to subsidise it.

  ‘How do you manage for money?’ I asked.

  I was given two simultaneous replies of ‘We get by’ from Ian and ‘Don’t ask’ from Neil. I favoured lan’s reply because it had less-sinister connotations. ‘Don’t ask’ left open the possibility that they raised funds by selling hitch-hikers into slavery. I changed the subject.

  ‘Where is your base at the moment?’ I asked, incompetently addressing them as if they were in the RAF.

  ‘Right slap in the middle of the Burren,’ replied Ian.

  The Burren—that rang
a bell. I’d read about that One hundred square miles of sculpted grey limestone formed by glaciation and wind and rain erosion. A surveyor for Cromwell in the 1640s had described it as ‘a savage land, yielding neither water enough to drown a man, nor tree to hang him, nor soil enough to bury’. A summary which rather gave away the principle objective of Cromwell’s excursions in Ireland.

  ‘Are we near the Burren here then?’ I enquired ignorandy.

  ‘It’s just east of where we are now,’ said Vicky. ‘You came from Galway and you’re headed for Ennistymon, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, you would have driven right through the middle of it if you’d followed the coast instead of coming through Gort.’

  Good old Swan Rescue. I had been rescued from experiencing one of the geological wonders of the world, said to remind some visitors of the surface of the moon. Instead I had seen Gort. Still, something to tell the grandchildren.

  §

  Paddy, a green keeper at the local golf course, was my final ride. When he stopped, he had thought that I had bought the fridge in town and was bringing it home. It was reassuring to get lifts from people who weren’t aware of what I was doing as a result of hearing it on the radio. It proved that the task in hand could be achieved without media assistance, though it was questionable whether it would be so much fun. From the car I called Tony and Nora’s and arranged to meet Tony at a pub called Daly’s in Ennistymon’s main street.

  In Ennistymon I felt like I was in the unspoiled heart of rural Ireland. It was a pretty place with colourful shop fronts and an abundance of small bars, but there was no sense of all this being there for the benefit of tourists. I looked up and down the main street and counted more than twenty bars. Presently I learned that at one time there had been forfy-twe, all there largely to serve the customers for the cattle market which used to swell the town’s population many times over.

  I located Daly’s, a tiny bar directly next to two others—Davorea’s and P. Begley’s. I noted that P. Begley’s was closed and assumed it had Men victim to the intense competition. I walked into Daly’s and was greeted by the usual turning of surprised heads. One head wasn’t so surprised. Tony’s.

  ‘Ah look! The eejit has landed!’ he announced.

  A pint was poured and the fridge was lifted to a place of honour on a bar stool alongside us, and to any pub newcomer it would have appeared like just another regular drinker. Tony told me that he had to go and pick up his daughter from school and that when he got back he’d take me on a sightseeing tour of the area.

  I noticed that a man with a healthy head of white hair and matching beard had been surveying the fridge with interest as he slowly supped on his pint After a few minutes we made eye contact, and he nodded to me, pointing at the fridge on its bar stool, ‘Ah sure, it’s nice enough to see it out of context.’

  I was delighted by the measured delicacy of his remark, which was in stark contrast to the usual uproarious reaction which the fridge would elicit I went and joined him.

  His name was Willy Daly, and he was the owner having a quiet drink in his own pub. A few minutes into our conversation I discovered that he had probably earned a sit down, since he ran a farm, a pony-trekking business, a pub, a restaurant and he had seven children.

  As if that wasn’t enough to keep a man busy, in the month of September he was the chief matchmaker in the Usdoonvarna matchmaking festival. He told me that this festival had been going since before the turn of the century and had started when affluent farmers from neighbouring counties converged on the town to take the healing waters’ of a health spa. They would get talking about their eligible sons and daughters back on their respective farms, and soon a tradition of bringing people together developed. Years ago in rural Ireland, meeting others further than a few miles away wasn’t easy, and close inter-marrying had begun to produce offspring whose only real skill was waving at planes. So any device which would facilitate breeding with someone who didn’t have the same surname and a similar shaped nose, was more than welcome. These days the festival has an international element A lot of men and women travel from as far as America and the Philippines in the search for a suitable mate or life partner. According to Willy, many middle-aged American women who had maybe been married a few times and were financially solvent, would come looking to fall in love with an Irish character with scruffy clothes and bad teeth, who could play a few tunes on the tin whistle and drink a lot.

  ‘They’re not seriously looking for a man with bad teeth?’

  ‘They are too. The biggest attribute for an Irishman from an American point of view is if your teeth aren’t good. In America, the men get to sixty, seventy, or eighty, and their teeth are too good for the rest of their body. I once put a woman together with a man who only had one tooth, and she was delighted. ‘At least it’s his own,’ she said.’

  I knew where Ian the traveller ought to spend his Septembers.

  ‘A lot of these women are successful,’ Willy continued. ‘They’ll maybe find a man who hasn’t had any contact with a woman for many many years. They’ll maybe have twenty or thirty years of unused love to offer.’

  Should make for an interesting wedding night.

  ‘You couldn’t match my fridge with another one could you?’ I politely enquired.

  He laughed. ‘Ah, now that is beyond my area of expertise.’

  Honestly. And he called himself a matchmaker.

  §

  As Tony and I drove off on his sightseeing tour, I learned that there were two alternative spellings for Ennistymon, and that the local authorities had failed to make any decision on the matter. How you spelled it, depended on whether you were coming in or going out of town. As you arrived, you were greeted with the sign ‘ENNISTYMON’, but on your departure, it was a sign with a line through ‘ENNISTIMON’ which had the last word. A totally pointless compromise and fudge.

  The tour included the dramatic Cliffs of Moher, the village of Doolin, lisdoonvarna itself, and the Burren Smoke House, where Tony’s sister-in-law worked. She was a bubbly woman who insisted on showing me a video usually shown to tourists of how a salmon is smoked. I patiently sat through it despite a spectacular lack of interest (I had never considered being au fait with the procedure involved in smoking a salmon a social advantage), and afterwards I was rewarded with a good-sized portion of the final product to take away. The irony was that I had no way of keeping it fresh even though I was touring the country with a fridge.

  Apart from the woman who was serving behind the bar, the evening clientele of Cooky’s were entirely male, and I was the youngest by some margin. There was a chap playing the banjo rather well up at the far end of the bar, and a less competent guitarist attempting to accompany him. As Tony and I walked in, the resident drunk called out, ‘Hey Tony, go and get your box.’

  At first I thought it was someone calling for me to go and get my fridge, but the other Tony disappeared outside and made for his car. I smiled to those present, keen to give the impression that I knew what a ‘box’ was, and why one might be needed on a social occasion like this.

  The drunk, doing his utmost to focus his bloodshot eyes on me, put his hand on my shoulder in a gesture of friendship which serendipitously also prevented him from falling over. He explained needlessly, ‘He’s gone to get his box.’

  Yes, I thought, and there was a good chance we would be putting this fellow in it at the end of the evening.

  Tony returned with an accordion, and musicians and instruments materialised from nowhere. The resident drunk suddenly produced a pair of spoons from his pocket, and proceeded to play them with great skill and dexterity. After the ability to order a drink, this must have been the last of his faculties to go. I had always thought of the spoons as being played as a novelty purely to get laughs, but in the correct hands it made an authentic percussive instrument. The four-piece band became a five-piece when Willy Daly entered carrying a bodhran (the tambouriney thing hit with a stick) and joined the me
rry band of players. He must have had a device within him which could instinctively sound out a session when it was beginning.

  What followed was a great treat for me. This was Irish traditional music as I had hoped to see and hear it, spontaneous and from the heart, and not produced for the sake of the tourist industry. As I sat there with my pint in my hand, enjoying the jigs and the reels, I watched the joy in the player’s faces and in those around them who tapped their feet and applauded enthusiastically. Music the joybringer. No question of being paid, or any requirement to perform for a certain amount of time. Just play for as long as it makes you feel good. This was self expression, not performance. Someone would begin playing a tune and the fellow musicians would listen to it once through, hear how it went and join in when they felt comfortable, until, on its last run through, it was being played with gusto by the entire ensemble. This process provided each piece with the dynamic of a natural crescendo which could almost have been orchestrated.

  The banjo player was from out of town, but his playing assured him the hospitality that might be showered on a long-lost son. He had an extremely large belly hanging over his trousers, which were held up by a belt which looked incapable of withstanding the strain. Were it to break, then his weight would be re-distributed to such a degree that he would surely topple over forwards. It was too much responsibility for a belt which was showing signs of fraying.

  He bonded with Tony, recognising him for the accomplished accordion player that he was, and they smiled at each other in mutual admiration. The less talented guitarist continued to play, providing the right and wrong chords in equal measure. Though at times he spoiled the sound that the combo were producing, he received no admonishment or looks of censure, and was made as welcome as the most able musician.

  After an hour or so, the unaccompanied singing began. For this, each singer would close their eyes and present their party piece to a reverent audience who would offer their comments on the lyrics at the end of each song. Songs were sung in turn, much in the same way that drinkers in an English pub might exchange jokes. Some patiently waited, anxious to display their talents, and others had to have a song coaxed out of them. Significantly, the ones who had to be encouraged gave the best performances, but there was no competitive element and each singer, good or bad, was given commensurate respect I racked my brains for a song I could sing should I be asked, but happily the honour wasn’t bestowed upon me. I made a mental note to come up with something for these occasions, because I liked this approach to singing—closing your eyes and belting it out from the heart. It seemed like a style tailor-made for the drunk, but Tony proved that intoxication wasn’t essential, as his contribution, which was the product of four soft drinks, was one of the more heartfelt and soulful renditions of the evening.