1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge (35 page)

‘I believe that you are about to complete your epic journey, well done. Congratulations to you. Now how do you intend to round off a trip like this?’

‘Well, I want to march into Dublin with my fridge and I want people to join me as I go.’

‘Good idea, a kind of triumphal entry.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well, you know Caesar never brought his legions into Rome, but I think on this occasion we can make an exception—you can bring the fridge into Dublin.’

‘And I thought it would be a good idea if people joined me on this march with a domestic appliance of their choice.’

‘Even better idea. Some friends for the fridge.’

‘Exactly, because it’s not just about fridges this, so bring a kettle, a toaster or whatever, because there are all kinds of appliances which need liberating from the confines of the kitchen.’

‘You heard him, folks. The man is talking sense, so unplug your kitchen or domestic appliances and join Tony on the march tomorrow, be it with a kettle, a toaster, an iron—or even a cooker, a fridge freezer or microwave.’

A microwave. I should have done my journey with a microwave, I could have done it in a third of the time.

‘Now Tony, listen closely,’ continued Gerry, ‘whilst I outline the planned route for this march. We want people to join you with a kitchen appliance of their choice at Connolly Station at 11 am, and having gathered there with food mixers, spatulas or whatever, the procession will then move, in triumph, up Talbot Street, up Henry Street, and then into the ILAC Centre in May Street where we will have an extravaganza beyond imagination awaiting you there, for you finally to lay this whole trip to rest. So come on everyone—we want to make Tony’s entrance into the capital city a spectacular Disneyesque-style Roman entrance, we want him to be borne, if not on a real chariot then at least on one in the imaginations of the Irish people. Tony, you rest up now and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’

Good. That was a bit of a result. One phonecall over breakfast and the country was being mobilised in my support. It was going to be difficult to re-adjust to life back in London.

I was rather pleased with the plan, and another pot of tea was in order. I had just begun a daydream in which I was picturing myself being cheered along Dublin’s thronging streets, when a vaguely familiar voice hauled me back to reality.

‘So Tony, how’s the form?’

It was Jim, one of Tom’s mates who I had met in town on Friday night I told him how the form was, and exactly how exhausted I was becoming.

‘Why don’t you stay at ours tonight? Jennifer won’t mind,’ he said generously.

It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, although I suspected that failure to do so, mightn’t meet with universal approval.

§

I needn’t have worried. I had been flattering myself to think that Karen would be remotely bothered one way or the other.

‘God, I wouldn’t want another night in there,’ she said, after I had explained my intentions, ‘besides, I really need to get some sleep tonight too.’

I decided that Karen was a cool girl. That’s not to say that my pride hadn’t taken a slight knock. A part of me had clearly hoped to find myself in the doghouse, for not being in the doghouse.

It was time for me to present her with her gift.

‘Here, these are for you,’ I said with a smile.

‘Wow, fantastic. Are you sure?’

I nodded.

‘Thanks a lot, Tony, I really appreciate that’

They were too big for her, but the red shorts would give her something to remember me by.

The next morning Jim very kindly got up early and dropped me by the Dublin road at 7 am. This gave me four hours to complete the distance which I had been assured was little more than a two-hour drive.

‘You’ll be absolutely fine,’ Niall had said at a quiet dinner party Jim and his wife Jennifer had rather sweetly thrown in my honour, ‘there’ll be loads of cars heading back up to Dublin after the bank holiday weekend.’

It had all seemed plausible enough, but the experience on the ground was offering up another story entirely. Not many cars, and an overwhelming lack of interest in the hitch-hiker with the fridge.

By 8 am I had made it about ten miles, courtesy of a lift from Cyril, a white-haired but healthy-looking man in his sixties. He said that he had thought the fridge was ‘a big white box’, which was accurate enough, and in essence all it had been to me for the past month. I had made no effort to take advantage of its abilities to keep things cool. At this point I was unaware that as the morning’s events unfolded, anything which could keep
me
cool would be a distinct asset.

I shouldn’t have accepted the lift from Cyril. Evidently when it came to hitch-hiking I had learned no lessons in the last month, because I made exactly the same mistake that I made with my first lift of the journey. In my desire to get the day’s travels kick-started, I had accepted a lift from someone who was only going a few miles, and in so doing I had relinquished a favourable spot for hitch-hiking, only to find it superseded some minutes later by an extremely poor one.

I was attempting another first. As far as I knew no one had ever hitchhiked to a live nationwide broadcast before. Chauffeur-driven cars are more the norm. I had been arrogant enough to assume that the reputation that went before me meant that I could do it with no difficulties, but I hadn’t reckoned on Cyril dropping me at this particular location, the hitch-hiking equivalent of a barren desert with vultures circling overhead.

I was standing beside the R741 at the junction of the turn off to Castieellis. The junction was in the middle of a long stretch of straight road where the cars were getting up far too much speed to consider stopping for any hitch-hiker. The only ones going slow enough to stop for me without causing a major accident were ones who were turning off, and were therefore no use to me anyway. It was a hopeless situation. By 9.00 I was getting desperate. I tried waving at cars, but this made me appear like a crazed convict on the run, and consequently reaped no reward. My growing concern edged towards mild panic when I got a call on my mobile phone from
The Gerry Ryan Show
asking me to talk to Gerry after the next record finished. I was just preparing myself for the interview when the signal disappeared and the line went dead. Not only was this an appalling stretch of road for hitching, it was in an area where the phone signals came and went with the same regularity as my breaths.

For the first time in three and a half weeks I was distinctly awcalm. I
had
to be in Dublin by 11 am, and yet I was going nowhere with little prospect of change in that position. I had to try something different.

I left my fridge and rucksack by the roadside and began to walk down the narrow lane towards Castieellis. I had no idea what I was going to do, but all I knew was that I couldn’t afford to stay where I was. After a hundred yards I passed a driveway and saw three men struggling with the task of loading a mare and foal into the back of a horsebox. I waited until the job was done and then called out to them.

‘Excuse me, but you don’t happen to know if there’s a callbox around here do you?’

‘Well, there is,’ one of them replied, ‘but that would be in the village, and that’s some walk now.’

‘It’s just that I’m supposed to do an interview on the radio, and I can’t get a signal on my mobile phone.’

‘Well,’ said another, ‘we’d give you a lift, but the Range Rover’s full of gear and there’s barely room for the three of us.’

They seemed friendly, and circumstances required a degree of pushi-ness. So I pushed it.

‘I couldn’t squeeze in with the horses could I?’ I said, desperately attempting to disguise my desperation. ‘It’s a matter of some urgency.’

I was a desperate man.

‘Well…it’s just that the foal’s not used to travelling in the horsebox.’

‘Maybe I could calm it down. You know, soothe its nerves with some gentle words.’

I was a very desperate man.

Well…

‘I promise not to sue you if I get kicked or anything.’

I was heading off the desperation scale.

Time was an issue now. No lift here and a long walk into the village would mean I’d need Damon Hill for my next lift. It was a possibility because he had a house in Ireland, but even so we were looking at very long odds.

The tallest of the three looked at me, shrugged, and then pointed to the horsebox.

‘Oh, all right then, in you get.’

Yes! Boy, was I grateful.

‘Oh thank you so so much, that’s such a help,’ I said, possibly overdoing the gratitude. ‘I’ve got some luggage I’m afraid.’

‘That’s not a problem.’

They hadn’t seen it yet.

I walked back and waited for them at the crossroads and as the Range Rover pulled up, the driver caught a glimpse of the fridge. His jaw visibly dropped.

‘I don’t feckin’ believe it!’ he said. ‘I’ve been listening to this fella for the past two weeks!’

‘What do you mean?’ said the one in the back seat.

‘I’ve been listening to him. He’s been all round the country with his fridge.’

‘With his
what?
‘ gasped the passenger.

‘With his fridge. His fridge—this is the fella with the fridge.’

The passenger leaned out of the window.

‘Jesus Christ, you’re right—he’s got a feckin’ fridge!’

‘Never!’ said the one in the back, whose view was obscured by a pile of saddles.

‘He has! Get out and look.’

He got out and looked.

‘Fuck me, it’s a fridge.’

‘I told you.’

‘This is the fella off the radio. The fella with the fridge.’

‘What in feck’s name do you mean, Des, fella off the radio?’

‘I told you, he’s been travelling round the country—I think it’s for a bet.’

‘
Abet? A fridge?
’

Lucky I wasn’t in a hurry.

It was a further ten minutes before who I was and what I was doing had been sufficiently discussed for us to consider going anywhere. One of the three fellas simply couldn’t believe what I was doing.

‘But a feckin’
fridgel
Why a feckin’
fridge?
‘ he kept saying.

It didn’t matter how many times I told him why, he still shook his head in disbelief.

I climbed in the back with the horses and did my best to be a calming influence on the foal. The reality was though that it was much calmer than I.

Time was ticking by.

This was one of the most bizarre journeys I had made in my life. In less than two hours’ time, the last hour of
The Gerry Ryan Show
was being given over to a celebration of my journey around Ireland. Yet here I was, the lead player in that event, stuck in the back of a horsebox with a mare, a foal and a fridge, being towed through the country roads of County Wexford by three hysterical horse trainers.

I slumped down on to the hay floor of the horsebox and considered my position. To be precise, it was below a horse’s arse somewhere in southern Ireland. But it had a greater significance, and there was a profound parallel to be drawn, at least for someone with a mind as confused as mine. Three Wise Men. A stable full of hay. A Triumphal Entry into a nation’s capital city. Wasn’t it obvious? I was the new Messiah.

Maybe my journey wasn’t over, but was just beginning. Perhaps the lessons I had learned and the wisdom I had attained in the past month heralded an era of pre-eminence for the fridge philosophy. The future was pre-ordained. I had to take the message of the fridge out to the people, I had to spread the word.

‘I am the Lord!’ I exclaimed. ‘Don’t you see, horses, I am the Lord!’

And with those words, the mare raised its tail and ceremoniously dropped three large dollops of quality manure into my lap. It was too well timed not to be a reaction to my risible claim. Had I made it to another human they might have turned to me and said ‘Horseshit!’ but the mare had been able to offer a practical demonstration of the same sentiment.

Apart from the unholy response of a horse, there was another reason to doubt my Messianic credentials. According to the New Testament, Jesus actually managed to turn up to his Triumphal Entry. It was looking increasingly more likely that I would have to rely on second- and third-hand accounts to find out exactly how mine had gone.

The Three Wise Men dropped me by a callbox in Ballycanew, just out side Jericho.

‘Good luck,’ said Des. ‘We were just saying that we haven’t named the foal yet, so we’ve decided we’re going to call it ‘Fridgy’.’

Fridgy. New life, in the form of a young horse, had been named after the fridge. I was quite touched. The fridge had become part of a family when it had been christened Saiorse Molloy, but now in its own peculiar way, it had started an adopted equine family of its own. I thanked my three friends and told them that if in years to come I saw a horse called ‘Fridgy’ win the Grand National, then it would be the happiest day of my life.

§

‘How is it going, Tony?’ said Gerry, as he kicked off the interview.

‘Not that well, so far. I’ve had a slightly dodgy morning’s hitching, and I’ve only got as far as Ballycanew.’

‘Goodness, if you don’t hurry it up, you won’t make it Well if there’s anyone in a car, bus or van anywhere in the vicinity of Ballycanew, then do look out for Tony and his fridge and speed him on his way to Dublin, it is after all a matter of national importance. We’ve got to get him to Connolly Station for eleven o’clock so you can join him with your chosen domestic appliance, in the triumphal procession to the ILAC Centre. Obviously Tony, people will be turning up in their droves, but have you got any last words which may encourage the undecided to get down there and show their support?’

‘Well, all I can say Gerry is that some marches
are for
things and some are
against
things, but never has there been a march for
absolutely nothing
. Now is our chance to put that right. Grab your toaster and kettle and discover like me, how great it feels to devote yourself to something truly purposeless. By doing something with absolutely no point to it, we eliminate the possibility of failure, because in a sense the worse it may go then the more it can be considered a success.’