1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge (32 page)

A cheer from the girls who had entered the scissors.

‘An ice cube!’

A cheer from the gang who had entered the ice cube. A pattern was emerging here. It continued, with each one being cheered by its own self-interest group.

‘…a comb! A small plastic fork! A battery! A paintbrush! A drawing of a toaster!…’

I waited for a cheer here because this was my favourite entry, but sadly the response didn’t do it justice.

‘…A tape measure! A spoon! A sewing kit! A lighter! And an empty glass!’

The empty glass was surely the least impressive of all these entries, and yet received the largest cheer, purely on the strength of having been entered by the largest gathering.

‘I don’t believe this! You’re a partisan lot, aren’t you? Surely we can’t let the prize go to someone who has simply handed in an empty glass?’

‘You haven’t announced the dishwasher tray!’ shouted the man who had entered the dishwasher tray.

‘Oh yes—I forgot that. Okay, who thinks the dishwasher tray should win?’

A huge cheer went up and victory was duly claimed. I invited the entrant on stage and sought confirmation from him that he hadn’t simply nicked it from the pub’s kitchens.

‘No, I brought it from home myself,’ he assured me and the audience.

‘I see. You’ve got an industrial-sized dishwasher at home, have you?’

‘I have.’

He deserved the non-existent prize alone for his willingness to lie.

‘Are you sure you’re not lying?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘Well, in that case you have just won two weeks in Barbados.’ Huge cheers.

‘But unfortunately for you,
I’m
lying.’ Even bigger cheers. And some laughs too. I had begun to forget what it felt like to get those.

§

‘Would you like to dance?’ I shouted to Mary from the fringes of the dancefloor.

We were in the club at the back of Westimers which was absolutely packed. Any vestiges of a Fridge Party had been comprehensively washed away by this deluge of revellers.

‘Yes I would,’ came Mary’s reply.

I think I might have gulped. I hadn’t expected her to say yes. I now had to grapple with the possibility that she might fancy me. I certainly fancied her. She had very sexy lips.

We danced like no one was watching, and an hour later, not far from the pub, we sat on a wall by the canal and kissed in exactly the same manner. We were so drunk that we had lost all touch with the fact that we were in a public place and were quite oblivious to the presence of a young guy who was stood over us. When I eventually noticed him, he made no remark about our disgustingly passionate kiss which had presumably resembled two people attempting to eat a meal out of each other’s mouths. Instead he said, ‘Have you got a marker?’

‘What?’

‘Have you got a marker? I want to sign your fridge.’

I had forgotten we had Saiorse with us. How embarrassing, carrying on like that in front of a fridge.

‘Yeah sure,’ I said, and fumbled around in my pocket until I found a marker pen for him.

‘Thanks,’ he said on completing his signature, and off he went into the night.

Mary laughed.

‘Have you ever had a kiss interrupted for that before?’ she asked. .

‘Oh God yes. It happens to me all the time.’

Although we were disgustingly, hideously, and embarrassingly drunk, we kissed inspirationally. On each break for air, both of us felt moved to say things like That was nice’ or That was lovely’, and the thing was, we both meant it. Mary’s kiss was extraordinary. As far as I could tell she had been chainsmoking all evening but yet her mouth and bream bore no trace of cigarette’s stale taste. You could keep your Moving Statue of Ballinspittle, this was what I called a miracle.

‘I feel really close to you now,’ I whispered, kissing her gently on the neck.

‘And me to you,’ she replied, hugging me with a surprising intensity.

Then I fell off the wall.

‘Do you want to come back to my hotel?’ I asked buoyantly, after we had established that the grazes weren’t too serious.

‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, would it?’ came the sinking reply.

Why do girls do that? Say the ‘I don’t think it would be a good idea’ bit, but then add Vould it’ on the end. Like they want confirmation from you. And like you’re going to give it.

‘
I don’t think that would be a good idea, would it?
’

‘
Well, of course you’re absolutely right. It was probably the worst idea I have ever had, and I’ve had some crap ones in my time. Your coming back to the hotel with me was a rubbish idea, forget I ever mentioned it
.’

The fact is though, I knew that it probably wasn’t a good idea. We needed to pass out in our own spaces.

‘I’ll get you a taxi.’

We kissed again. Kissing her really was terribly good fun.

‘Come with me,’ I said, as we separated ourselves.—‘What? I thought you were going to get me a taxi?’

‘Not, come with me
now
, come with me
tomorrow
. Come with me to Dublin. Let’s finish my journey together.’

Mary looked at me like she hadn’t had a drink all night. Shock can have a very sobering effect.

‘Come on,’ I continue bravely, ‘just you and me…well, and a fridge.’

It couldn’t have been more romantic. Remarkably, she was starting to look tempted. I persisted.

‘Mary, do it! Take a chance in life. Come with me. It feels right—we feel so close.’

‘I can’t, I’ve got work tomorrow.’

‘Oh. What exactly is it you do?’

Maybe we weren’t as close as I had thought.

In The Doghouse

I
felt battered and war torn as I made the short walk to Westimers to say my goodbyes. As I trundled along, I couldn’t understand why my elbow was aching, but on raising my shirt sleeve I saw that it was grazed, and then remembered the heroic way in which the injury had been sustained. Just like Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who returned from his expedition to the South Pole with frostbite so serious that three of his toes only just escaped amputation, I too had paid a price for my valiant exploration. I studied my wounds and decided that severe though they were, the need for amputation would be unlikely, at least until my return to the UK. I rolled my shirt sleeve back down and resolved to get on with the day without giving it another moment’s thought. I couldn’t complain. I had known the dangers of both sitting on a wall, and kissing, and had chosen to do both at the same time. I was in pain, but the hurt wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t carry on. Heck, you get used to it when you’re a risk taker.

§

A guy in a car which had just passed leant out of his window and shouted, ‘Hey, Fridge Man! How ya doing?’

I assumed that he must have been at the party last night, because I had left the fridge back at the hotel and was therefore in ‘anonymous’ mode. But when the same thing happened again, moments later, the truth dawned on me. Of course. I had ‘Fridge Man’ written on my back.

I had surrendered my advantage over Madonna and Michael Jackson.

‘Hello there, Tony, how are ya?’ called another driver, who stopped this time.

That was odd. How did he know my name? I didn’t have Tony written on my back as well, did I?

‘How have you enjoyed your stay in Cork?’ he said, getting out of his car. He was the taxi driver who had driven me and the wedding party from Baltimore to Cork. When he heard I was about to set off on the road again, he said that he’d be back to Westimers in ten minutes to take me out to the main road.

Things happened fast in Cork.

‘Where are you headed then?’ asked Alan as he and the rest of the staff stood outside the bar to see me off.

‘As far as I can get. Waterford would be good. Wexford would be even better.’

Today was going to be my last day’s hitching for a while because I had learned that this weekend was a big bank holiday weekend in Ireland, and holiday traffic was useless to me. I wasn’t going to ‘do it Dunmanway’ again. I was going to hole up someplace and enjoy the holiday weekend in the same spirit as the rest of the country, before the final leg to Dublin.

From the taxi, I called Mary at work to say goodbye. It felt odd. In a matter of a few hours she had turned from soul mate back into relative stranger. The feeling was compounded when the girl on the switchboard said ‘Mary who?’ and I didn’t know.

‘Well, what does she do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘We’ve got three Marys here.’

‘Oh. Well, all I’ve just got is a number written on a piece of paper.’

‘We’ve got one Mary in accounts, one in admin, and a newish girl—I’m not sure what she does—but she’s just gone home feeling sick.’

‘That’ll be her. Definitely.’

‘Hold on, I’ll just see if I can get her.’

Before I could point out the lack of wisdom of this course of action, my line was hijacked by some irritating jangly synthesizer music which someone somewhere perceives may make people more relaxed whilst they are waiting on the phone. My views are quite forthright on this one—I think it’s an affront to one’s personal dignity. Before I could become truly exasperated, the jangly sounds were interrupted by the voice of ‘Oh Bright One’.

‘I’m afraid that Mary isn’t here today, she’s just gone home feeling sick.’

‘Oh right,’ I said, pretending to be surprised. ‘Never mind, thanks anyway. And hey, you hang on for that promotion.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

§

I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long for my first lift. Almost everyone in Cork must have known that the eejit with the fridge was in town. I’d been on national radio advertising the world’s first Fridge Party (and probably the last), and my picture had been plastered all over the
Evening Echo
.

‘Oh, I recognised your fridge straight away,’ said liam, my first lift of the day, a policeman who had just come off duty.

He took me twenty minutes or so down the road to a place called Middleton, where he signed the fridge and posed for a picture in his uniform, pretending to bust me for having a fridge trolley with bald tyres. A good sport.

At Middleton I had a few problems. The particular stretch of road on which I found myself was extremely popular with hitchers and I found myself at the end of a queue of three. Slowly but surely I worked my way up to pole position and other hitchers arrived to take up the vacant number two and three slots. I was immensely irritated when these two newcomers got lifts
before
me. What was going on? I wanted to call out, ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?’

I assumed that the drivers must have known the hitchers, for I could see no other reason for the flouting of the ‘first come, first served’ convention, unless fridge fatigue’ had set in. Maybe I had become overexposed. It was over an hour before I was invited to hop into the car of Tomas, a fisherman who had been to Cork to see a chiropractor.

‘I’m in my fifties now, and things are beginning to pack up,’ he said. ‘You’re a young man, you won’t get the aches and pains yet.’

That depended on how many walls I fell off.

‘What are you doing over here in Ireland?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I’m just travelling around having a look at the place.’

I could have said more, but I was intrigued by the fact that Tomas had watched me lift the fridge on to the back seat but had said nothing about it. Secretly I was hoping that he mightn’t ask.

His knowledge of European history and politics was extensive. Much of the journey was spent discussing Tito’s achievements in unifying Yugoslavia, and a savage recent past which had see his work undone. He was a bright man with an active interest in the world. But, brilliantly, he had no interest at all in why his passenger had apparently chosen to travel Ireland with a fridge for company. As he dropped me just outside Dungarvan and drove away, the subject had never been raised, and I punched the air.

‘Yes!’

I had wanted that to happen.

Five minutes later a police car did a U-turn and drew up beside me. Two policemen got out For the first time I began to wonder if what I was doing might transgress some ancient Irish law. Perhaps hitching with a domestic appliance on a public highway carried a maximum sentence of five years.

‘Look, he’s even got ‘Fridge Man’ written on his back,’ said one to the other as they giggled their way towards me.

It was clear that I wasn’t in trouble.

‘We’ve heard you and seen you on TV. Some weather, isn’t it? My, but you’ve got a colour on you. We were driving by and I said to John, ‘Jesus Christ—that’s the man with the fridge!’’

He continued to effuse for some time. I fended off questions about my trip for the next ten minutes, missing the opportunity of countless Ms as they sped past a scene which to them must have looked like two cops booking a fridge for speeding.

‘Have you had any bad experiences?’

‘Not one.’

‘Ah well, when we get good weather in this country everyone is on good form.’

And the weather was good, and a long way from the driving rain normally associated with bank holiday weekends. It was hot. Really hot. Almost as if someone up there had got Ireland mixed up with the south of France. It was glorious.

‘Can you give me a lift then?’ I asked the two officers, cheekily.

‘Oh jeez, we’d love to, but I don’t think we’re allowed to. You wouldn’t be insured.’

‘Well, what about if you arrested me?’

‘Ah now that’s a good idea. We could arrest you, and then release you saying that we had decided to prosecute you by summons.’

A discussion then followed in which we attempted to decide upon the exact crime I could have committed. Murder was considered too harsh, drunk and disorderly not serious enough, and loitering with a fridge apparently wasn’t an offence. I wanted them to charge me with ram raiding. A special kind of ram raiding in which the offender hurls a fridge through a shop window, arranges it nicely, prices it up and pops back the next day to see if it’s been sold.

Unfortunately, one of the policemen finally decided that he was too close to promotion to risk this kind of bogus arrest, and that they couldn’t be sure that their superior officer would see the funny side.