Leaving us to think about his reward, Paddy soon returned to his future date, but every so often he gave us an update on our progress, which was that it was too slow. The noises from the sourpusses grew ever louder and people started to really pester Paddy with questions, interrupting his potential night of pleasure. In desperation he announced that he would make a call to the Captain of the ship, who just happened to also be a very good friend of his, and as a special favour he would try and get him to hold the ship for us. I thought it rather strange that from the start he constantly referred to our boat as a ship, and even though I knew better, I could not shake the idea of a sailing ship from my mind.
He made the call and triumphantly announced that the ship would be docked at the London Eye, and that it would wait as a favour to Paddy, but only for five minutes. He stood up and announced that we could still make it, provided we followed him precisely through the crowds milling around the Eye, and we were to not delay the moment Cedric stopped the bus. By then I had decided that we must not lose sight of Paddy no matter what, and as he and I were both small, I wanted to be right at his heels the minute we stopped. So I told JoAnn and Jessica that I intended to be out the back door the minute Paddy went out the front door, and to be right on my heels as we raced for the boat.
I believe the two sourpusses must have overheard this advice, and feeling that the Irish would know their own, they too planned to be out as fast as us and follow me and Paddy to the boat. Paddy shouts, “Nearly there, be ready now. I’ll hold up me hand so ye can see me”. The bus suddenly stopped and Paddy shouts, “Out, out, follow me, and keep me hand in sight as ye head for the Eye and the ship. Don’t delay,” and at that he leaps out the front door, quickly followed by myself and my gang out the back door. As usual I lost Paddy immediately, and I couldn’t see a sign of him. Figuring the boat had to be on the water somewhere, I took off in the direction of the river. My Americans were chomping at my heels, but I didn’t know that. So too were the sourpusses, as well as some Germans, Italians, and about six or so others. Apparently I was running like an ostrich, with my head stuck out in front and tail to the wind, and I had a look of sheer determination engraved on my face. The Ripper Tour group were by then reduced to a bunch of lemmings, all following an Irish ostrich heading for the Thames River. When I did arrive at the wall overlooking the dock, to my surprise, and to the shock of the others, we saw our cruise boat heading out into the current with Paddy’s people all waving back at us. In rage the sourpuss began to shout at me, “He specifically said follow him to the Eye, and you led us all astray”. He seemed to be furious. It was about then that I saw Jessica pull her hood up around her beautiful face, and she said to me, “I think its time we disappeared”. It was good advice, and the three of us took off running once more, this time directly into the middle of a million tourists at London’s famous Eye. We had escaped the wrath of my followers. When it seemed safe we stopped and broke into tears of laughter, recounting over and over ‘my famous run’ for the boat. Then it dawned on me that we had not paid a cent, but the others had paid a fortune, and must be totally lost in London with no cruise, no Ripper pub and no Paddy to entertain them.
We ran the many scenarios of what might happen to Paddy when he found out that he had lost half his tour. JoAnn suggested that we should go on by taxi to the Ripper pub, and when Paddy arrived we should ask him what kept him. This brought more peals of laughter, but I felt sure that, being a Dub, he would blame the whole thing on a fellow Irishman from Cork, and that he was sure to be fired the next day. Poor Paddy had become a victim of a typical Cahill experience.
The evening did turn out to be great for us though as we got to see a huge Mardi Gras and food fair travel along the riverbank. It was a warm beautiful evening as we looked on at the riverboats cruising up and down the Thames. We had no way of knowing that the next day, while visiting St Paul’s Cathedral, we would see the world’s banking system crash with the shock news of the Lehman Bank collapse. On that day I clearly felt it was going to be very bad news for us all in the long run, but I had no idea that it would kill our Celtic Tiger, and end the run of prosperity sweeping through Ireland and the world in general.
Of all the pain JoAnn went through, the worst has always been the missing of her children. Jessica came to visit as did Johnnie and finally her other daughter Julie came to see us as well. She was a young and beautiful teenage girl full of adventure but very shy around me I felt. She had done amazingly well in her graduation and a trip to Europe was her promised reward by her mother. So we picked her up in Shannon and whisked her off to Seville for a few days break in the sun. Julie had already been to Paris with us some years earlier and now it was Spain’s turn and she loved it all except for the jellyfish incident.
We had gone on a day trip to Tore Molino’s and were laying in the beautiful sunshine looking at the clear blue waters and the swimming urge was getting to my Americans, both expert swimmers. Far be it from me to dissuade such desire, so I told them to go for it. I had an uneasy feeling though, because some geezer beside us kept trying to give us some kind of warning but we just smiled and ignored him, then in they went. I lay and soaked up the rays not being a good swimmer. I saw the huge waves toss them around and they laughed and screamed with delight. It did seem a bit odd that the water was not full of people, but my lot did seem to be having great fun. After a while they arrived back out and lay in the sun. Pretty soon I saw Julie whisper to her mom. “What,…a jelly fish, did you say a jellyfish stung you”. I sat up concerned and sure enough the huge red marks began to show all over Julies thighs. My science kicked in and I suggested the only obvious answer, which was that I pee all over her thighs and that would fix it. I said sure you can keep your eyes shut and it will make you better. Kyrl Cahill’s mantra was at work once again, but no, absolutely not, they would not hear of it. Julie would suffer before I could pee on her, I suppose it was an understandable protest from a teenager to her step dad so she suffered in silence until we got some stuff from a local drugstore. Later that day, I took them to see the zillion shops and once a buying frenzy took over, all pain soon vanished. Later Julie left and JoAnn again was alone and went into a deep sadness. I don’t know how she has ever kept doing it, all I can say is she must love me a lot. Her son Justin has never seen Ireland as yet, and one day soon I am sure his turn will come, but of this I am sure, we won’t go swimming in Toro Molino’s.
We always tried to go away someplace nice for our anniversary and one year I got a feeling that we should go to Venice. Going anywhere in Europe was ok with JoAnn as she loved to travel, so Venice it was. The money seemed to come for it easily; I don’t remember how, but we landed in Treviso, courtesy of Ryanair. The airport shuttle bus dropped us off in a small square, definitely not San Marco’s Square. It was late at night and I had booked our hotel in a place called the Lido because it had a great review and was real cheap for a four star hotel. What I neglected to find out though was where it was. The hotel was not in Venice at all but on another island across from it, and when we got off the bus, all we had was an address and not a word of Italian, except ‘scusi’.
The night was warm and we found our first water bus. After a lot of head scratching and guide book reading, the location of our hotel dawned on me. Then after two hours of getting lost, and in total confusion, we finally arrived at the hotel. The receptionist was a very weird man. He reminded me of the Maitre D in Pretty Woman, having exactly the same looks and mannerisms as he had. I did not know whether to laugh or thank him for his style, so we did neither and just went to bed exhausted.
Next day we rose early and took the waterbus across to San Marco’s Square in beautiful sunshine, and began our three day vacation in the absolutely amazing city of Venice. JoAnn quickly discovered the fake Gucci, Prada and other expensive fashion bags, and she fell into the bargaining mode immediately. We walked for miles and miles that day, lugging our bag of bags and loving every sound and splash of that place.
At dinner a waiter insisted on dancing in the street with my American, much to the ohh’s and ahh’s of the onlookers, while I ate his pizza.
We did the typical walk around San Marco’s Square, which was actually floating beneath three inches of water. The inventive Italians had built wooden walkways to provide access to their shops for the thousands of tourists. Venice is really sinking, of that I am now quite certain. We took thousands of photographs and saw a film crew making a movie while travelling on our waterbus. I’m sure JoAnn is in it as an unpaid extra, because she stuck her head in their camera often enough. The Rialto Bridge was one of my favourite places, and it was great to stand there and watch the world go by. Later that night of our anniversary, after an awesome evening meal and as we water bussed back to our Lido, we noticed that the moon was totally full. It shone across the water in a way that was too beautiful to describe. We stared at it in awe and felt incredibly close and happy. As we looked at the moon and thought of its romantic implications in poetry and stories, I remembered another moon incident I had with JoAnn some years earlier. She had not been living in Ireland long and was feeling very homesick. We had begun a clean out of our house, dumping of all things, an old mirror. This was out in the back yard with other stuff waiting for the skip to arrive. During the night I had got up to go pee and saw that the whole back yard was lit up by a full moon, but the moon was right above our house. It was about two am and I got the mad notion that I could do a really romantic thing for my new homesick wife, if I could just give her the moon.
Out I went in my nightgown and bare feet and I got a stepladder from our shed. Then I tied the mirror to the ladder and kept adjusting the angle until the moon shone directly into our curtainless bedroom, right above the bed. I snuck in and woke JoAnn up saying, “Sit up Punkin”. She did so suddenly saying, “What’s wrong,” and as she sat up she was blinded by the moonlight. I said, “Nothing is wrong love. I might not have got you millions yet, but I give you the moon to show you how much I love you”. JoAnn almost burst into tears. She stared and stared at it saying it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for her. After a while Kepler’s laws of planetary motion pulled my moon out of range of the mirror and soon it was gone, but the memory remained and it was easy for us to go back to it that night as we sailed across in the moonlight to the Lido Island and our bed.
Next day we headed for Verona, the city made famous by Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. I was really after the coliseum though; the second largest one in Italy, being just beaten by the one in Rome. I had always wanted to see this place, having seen it on television when the rock band Simple Minds played an amazing concert there. We travelled by train and crossed beautiful Italy at a great speed, arriving in the station quite early. The day was wonderful. We went to the markets, saw museums, and the famous window in Shakespeare’s play. We took a zillion photos and finally arrived at the coliseum.
I’ll never forget it. The sheer wonder of how it was built blew me away. I could not wait to get inside and walk around the upper rim so that I could say I did the rim. JoAnn was petrified. The building was so well designed that every onlooker had a clear view of the sport below, if it can be called sport. The only problem they would have had was that the sunshine would have killed them as they sat. We had a most wonderful day in Verona and I absolutely loved Italy. The train headed back to Venice.
About a mile or so out from Venice station, we heard the announcement that we would soon be at our final destination, so we got up and were waiting in the exit area beside the doors. I saw the yellow buttons come on and knew these were to open the doors when it stopped. As we stood there I got a crazy idea. I had always wanted to jump off a moving train and always tried the buttons when they came on, but they never opened for me. I was telling all this to JoAnn as we stood, and we decided to check our buttons on the off chance, so I pushed and whoosh the door shot open with a gush of wind coming inside. With that I saw my chance and said to JoAnn, “Well here goes, I’m off,” and I jumped right out the door. This happened so fast that she could not even stop me, and as I sailed through the air I realized the bad news. We were not actually travelling as slow as I thought, nor were we near the platform. Then bang; I landed hard on one leg and crumpled to the ground, rolling over a few times on the hardcore, three or four feet below the level of the train. The pain then hit. My knee seemed to be stabbing me and I hobbled along to the platform to be met by a very annoyed wife. She said the train announcers were screaming abuse and all kinds of Italian gibberish and was I ok. I pretended I had no pain and that I was fine. Inside I was over the moon with happiness as I had achieved the lifelong dream of jumping from a moving train, and in Venice too. I ignored the pain and we proceeded to get totally lost in Venice as the evening closed in. We learned a very good lesson that night. It appears that virtually the whole city closes down after nine pm. To make matters worse for me, we got on a waterbus which landed us on a remote island and we were on the last bus to it. After pleading in gestures, the driver agreed to land us back in Venice, but in his zero knowledge of English he was trying to tell us that we were on the very opposite side of the city from San Marco’s Square which had the bus to our island, the Lido. It got totally dark, very foggy, eerie, and quiet. We were trying to find anyone who could guide us in a direction of people. JoAnn informed me that she took an intense dislike to the idea of being mugged or worse, and what were we going to do. My answer was to hobble along faster than ever, getting us even more lost. Finally we came across a young couple out walking. The man had perfect English and told us the news that we were on the wrong side totally. He proceeded to draw a line on our map that we were to carefully follow. This would get us to the square and off he went. Pretty quick I saw a new problem, as he had drawn the line across the street names on our tiny map, and after five minutes we were again navigating by the ‘force’ and it was letting us down. The pain in my knee by then was becoming very uncomfortable and yet we began to run along aimlessly, hoping for a sign saying San Marco. It was getting so late too that if we didn’t make the square by midnight, we would have no boat to our hotel, and that would be a disaster. I think we must have crossed a hundred bridges that night, but eventually we did run out an alleyway into the square to the strains of a Beethoven symphony being played there. It was five minutes to midnight and our bus was about to leave. JoAnn wanted to stay on, but I dashed for the boat and by one a.m. I was laying in bed with a bandage around my knee. Thank God for first aid kits. JoAnn persuaded me to take some aspirin for the swelling, and by the next day I was considerably better. Just as well too, as we left Venice that morning. My stupidity could have gone very wrong, but like my Seville incident it didn’t, and now it’s a dearly held memory that always brings a smile to my face. Kyrle, my brother, may have jumped off a train in Buttevant while drunk, but I did it in style while sober in Venice. JoAnn has said many times that I should tell no one of my train jumping escapade as it was clearly the act of a madman, and I take that criticism as the ultimate compliment for a Cahill, as we were all supposed to be mad. In truth I suppose by all rights I should have been killed many times in my life, but had that tragedy happened to me, I would never have experienced the truth inherent in Eleanor Roosevelt great saying:
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”.
This inspiring quotation was given to me years earlier by my son Kyrl, who noticed my sadness and despair after I returned from a particularly sad trip to America. Even though I myself could see no way to happiness then, he believed in the power of my dreams for me, and I end this account of my life with the proof of that power, when we finally took my journey of dreams.
Two Walls and a Roof Page 40
