1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge (2 page)

Akira Matsushima of Japan unicycled adistance of 5,244 km from Newport Oregon, to Washington DC, from 10 July to 22 August 1992.

Quite impressive given that most people would be chuffed just to make it across a room. But the efforts of Akira must have pissed off another aspiring unicyclist, Ashrita Furman of the US, who wanted to establish a unicycling record of his own, but felt unable to eclipse the feat of the one-wheeled Jap. So, what to do? Of course—it’s obvious, isn’t it? Start practising unicyclying
backwards
.

Ashrita Furnura of the US unicycled 85.5 km
backwards
at Forest Park, Queens, US, on 16 September 1994.

Well, I just hope his parents are proud of him. What an invaluable skill their son has acquired. Further study of this most bizarre of textbooks revealed that Ashrita was one of many who adhered to the school of thought that if you couldn’t break a world record
forwards
, then your best bet was to have a go at doing it
backwards
.

Timothy ‘Bud’ Badyna ran the fastest
backwards
marathon—3 hours 53 minutes and 17 seconds at Toledo, Ohio, on 24 April 1994.

I checked to see whether Timothy ‘Bud’ Badyna had also managed an entry under ‘Biggest Wanker’, but I was disappointed to find that he hadn’t. Congratulations though to the Conservative MP, Edward Leigh.

Before I returned the book to its shelf, I scoured the pages for an entry under ‘Most failed attempts to get into the
Guinness Book Of Records
‘, hoping to see a list of efforts like:

Most amounts of cheese eaten in a force 8 wind.

Most number of years spent attempting to startle a postman every morning.

Shiniest ears.

Biggest piece of wood coloured in, in crayon.

Widest dog.

Tallest fish.

Smallest pair of swimming trunks.

But alas, I found nothing. One day, I hope, the publishers will see the wisdom of introducing such a category.

So, given the efforts of Ashrita Furman, Timothy ‘Bud’ Badyna and friends, I was able to conclude that my plans were rational enough, as for the most part I would be moving in the direction known as forwards’. Happy in the knowledge that I hadn’t lost my mind (in fact I was so happy that I was doing a little jig and singing at the top of my voice in the High Street), I was able to give consideration to another factor in the decision making process. That of regret.

I was reminded of something Nigel Walker had said: There are two words I don’t want to find myself uttering as an old man, and they are ‘If only…’ If only. We all have our own ‘if onlys’. If only I’d studied harder, if only I’d stuck with those piano lessons, if only I’d spoken to that girl at the bus stop, if only I hadn’t spoken to that girl at the bus stop, if only I’d remembered Alison Wilcox’s name in the morning.

Nigel Walker is a former Olympic hurdler who gave it all up and became a Welsh International rugby player. I had the privilege of meeting him at a corporate function I was hosting, where he was giving a talk about his life with particular reference on the ‘need to adapt’. There could have been few people better qualified to talk on the subject. His talk was punctuated with video clips of his sporting achievements, and one particular sporting failure. The 1984 Olympic 110m hurdle semifinal and the culmination of four years of dedicated, exhaustive and sometimes punishing training. As Nigel showed the clip of the race, we all watched in horror as he caught his leading foot on the seventh hurdle and went crashing to the ground. In that moment, everyone present felt Nigel’s disappointment as if it was their own—that sudden destruction of a dream held for so long, aspirations of glory brutally subverted by pain, both mental and physical.

Nigel stopped the video clip and smiled. (It must have been a few years before he was able to pull that trick.) ‘So, what next?’ he said, with characteristic Welsh understatement. He went on to explain that although he had considered a career change at this low moment, it wasn’t until he failed to qualify for the 1992 Olympics that he felt he ought to make the change to rugby. Friends and colleagues advised him otherwise, but he was determined, not least because he didn’t want to find himself saying at a much later date ‘
If only
I’d had a serious go at playing rugby’.

The clips that followed were all the more significant They were a compilation of Nigel’s magnificent international tries for Wales, and they left the corporate audience uplifted in a way that I had never seen before. But never mind, the managing director’s speech, ‘Corporate re-structuring in the domestic marketplace’, soon put paid to that.

However, before the managing director proudly strode behind the lectern and embarked on his speech which would deaden the senses of a now uplifted audience, I was required to join Nigel on stage to conduct a short interview. There was one question I simply couldn’t resist asking him.

‘Nigel, was there any point when you thought to yourself, as you were lying prostrate on the Olympic track alongside an upturned hurdle with two badly grazed knees, ‘If only I’d jumped a bit higher…?’

A Prince And A Coconut

O
f course, the question I had asked Nigel had been a tad cruel, but the laugh which followed easily justified its inclusion. (In my book anyway.) Nigel had been able to laugh along with the rest, enough healing time having elapsed since his horrors of 1984. And although I had made a joke about it, the fact was that I believed that Nigel was offering a first-rate perspective on life. I liked the idea of doing all you could to reduce the chances of you, as an old person, saying ‘if only’.

The deeper point behind my question, if I can pretend there was one, was to illustrate that ‘if onlys’ are inevitable, an inescapable part of life. If only that plane hadn’t crashed, if only that volcano hadnt erupted, if only I hadn’t stepped in that dogshit The trick is to be masters of our own destiny in so far as we have control, and take the rest on the chin with a wry smile. But we must go for it. Only a fool would squander the rich opportunities which life affords us. And so it was that I found myself in an electrical superstore looking at fridges.

And my, there are some magnificent models on the market.

Darren was most attentive. I knew his name was Barren because he had a badge on saying ‘Barren’, with ‘I’m here to help’ written underneath. He must have been in his late teens, early twenties, and was sweating nervously. He wore a tie awkwardly and with an obvious reluctance. The company ‘uniform’ of blue sweater and matching slacks hardly communicated a message of corporate success when Barren was its model. For him, ‘style’ was little more than a word between ‘stutter’ and ‘stymie’ in the dictionary. Everything about him suggested that he was in the job not because he was ahead of the rest of the pack when it came to selling electronic goods, but because the reward for doing it was a magnificently insubstantial hourly rate.

We surveyed the fridges. A mass of white filled an entire corner of the superstore. Who says choice is a good thing? This amount of choice wasn’t going to make my life any easier and you could be sure it made Barren’s an absolute nightmare.

‘What exactly is it you’re looking for?’ he said at insufficient volume.

Difficult one that. What
are
you looking for in a fridge? You can’t answer with the obvious—‘Well, I’m after something which will keep things cold.’ What other considerations are there? It’s not like buying a car, is it? I can’t express a preference for an automatic, or demand power steering or even spend time deliberating over what colour. All their fridges were white. White, pristine white. So, denied the comfortable ease of Well, Darren, I’m looking for one in a light blue’, I found myself offering up, ‘What’s the lightest model you sell?’

Darren went pale. Nothing in his superficial training had begun to prepare him for this.

‘Lightest?’

‘Yes, lightest’

‘Why? Are you going to be moving it about much?’

‘You could say that yes.’

I didn’t make a purchase that day. It wasn’t Darren’s fault; in fact his spectacular ignorance of ‘all things fridges’ endeared him to me greatly. I don’t want a load of technical jargon—what I’m looking for is exactly the kind of exchange I was able to have with Darren.

TONY: ‘Ah, this one is another fifty quid, it must be better.’

DARKEN: ‘I suppose so.’

Darren understood that the customer is always right. For him this was founded on the supposition that he was almost always wrong. But I made no purchase because I didn’t wish to become embroiled in the secondary selling which these poor salesmen are required to engage in. Having already got you to commit to a purchase by telling you how efficient and reliable the product is, they then embark on getting you to sign up for an insurance policy by pointing out how inefficient and unreliable the product is. It’s a difficult stunt for the salesman to pull off and I didn’t wish to see Darren attempt it. I had too much respect for the man.

Besides I had some negotiating to do with Kevin before making any purchase. I wanted to take a small fridge which was about two feet square, because one like this would fit on the back seat of a saloon car and greatly enhance my chances of a ride. OK, the original hitchhiker I had seen all those years before had been heroic enough to undertake the task with a full-size fridge with feeezer at the top, but the chances were that he was only going up the road and wasn’t attempting a journey of similar magnitude to mine.

§

Negotiations were easier than I expected. As it turned out, Kevin didn’t for one moment believe I was actually foolish enough to see this thing through, so had no problem agreeing to my request. In fact he was predictably smug about the whole thing.

‘Size isn’t important,’ he quipped.

I have never adhered to this view. As far as I’m concerned, people who say size isn’t important, aren’t big enough to admit that they’re wrong.

Kevin included one stipulation. After a glance at the map he insisted that my journey should take in Tory Island at the extreme northwestern tip of Ireland, Cape Clear Island in the extreme southwest and Wexford in the southeast Apart from that I was free to take whichever route I saw fit, provided I was hitch-hiking. With a fridge. I was allowed the luxury of taking a bus for the first few miles out of Dublin, and my argument was accepted that Northern Ireland be excluded since there was a distinct possibility the fridge might be mistaken for a bomb. It’s difficult to put a price on a bet worth risking your life for, but £100 falls some way short.

§

Now, it would be foolish to take on a journey of this nature without rigorous planning but, given the ridiculous nature of the challenge, making any adequate preparations wouldn’t have been hi the spirit of things. Instead I felt that the best course of action in the weeks prior to my departure was to close off my mind to the reality of what lay ahead. Although I was talking about the trip a good deal and gaining kudos from friends and colleagues who had a nagging admiration for what they saw as a romantic whimsy, when it came down to considering basic logistics I would quickly find something else to think about I was just like any self-respecting schoolkid—I wasn’t going to do my essay until the night before it needed handing in, and then it would be sloppy and rushed, but just competent enough to keep me out of trouble. At least I hoped so.

I had decided that I wanted to make my journey in the month of May, a time which I hoped would see Ireland dryish and warmish but not overrun with tourists. My agent and I had arrived at a suitable departure date. I had been asked to do a six-minute stand-up spot at the Prince’s Trust Royal Gala at the Opera Houpe, Manchester. The plan was to perform in front of HRH The Prince of Wales and a two-thousand-strong audience at one of the star-studded theatrical events of the year, and then bugger off to Ireland the next morning and stand by the side of the road with a fridge. As plans go, it had a nice shape to it. The words chalk, sublime, cheese and ridiculous immediately sprang to mind, but not in that order.

With two days to go, instead of focusing my energies on preparing for a performance at the Royal Gala which could greatly further my career, I was taken up with worrying about what would follow the day after. My imagination was working overtime in providing pictures of bleak rainswept roadsides and uncompassionate drivers. I had begun to do something very close to panic.

What had seemed amusing in the pub had now become a reality. Suddenly I was making calls trying to get a friend of a friend to purchase a fridge for me in Dublin, looking at different kinds of trolleys which might be best suited for its daily transportation and staring at a map of Ireland trying to decide whether to go clockwise or anti-clockwise. But I was scared. I was scared that I was heading towards a deep embarrassment. I’d been embarrassed before—who hasn’t?—but I felt I was headed for the kind of big-time embarrassment which leaves a scar on your soul and can disrupt sleep patterns.

When I was about ten years old I used to go and watch Brighton and Hove Albion football club with my father and we would stand on the East Terrace at every home game. I used to stand on a box and thrill at the whole spectacle. I was mesmerized, not just by the football (
it
was Brighton and Hove Albion after all) but by all the cheering, chanting, ritual display of partisan colours and the rattatatt sound of the rattles. The rattles particularly. I don’t think you see or hear them anymore, they seem to have fallen out of fashion, but then it was very popular for fans to swing a wooden rattle whenever the fancy took them.

One Christmas I got given a toy machinegun. When you pulled the trigger it made exactly the sound of a rattle. I decided I would take it to the next home game and fire it off in exactly the same manner as the other ‘rattlers’. I can’t think why, but my heart was set on it, and my father and I embarked on the twenty-minute walk to the ground and I carried my toy machinegun in my hand. Just before we reached the turnstile two much bigger boys saw the gun and put their hands in the air shouting ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’ Suddenly all eyes seemed to be on me. There was much laughter. I felt humiliated, frightened and ludicrous all at the same time. The moment passed quickly but there were still a few little jokes being made about the gun by the people in the queue behind us. I was distraught, frantic with worry that when we went into the ground the whole crowd would turn towards me and shout ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’