1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge (36 page)

‘Absolutely. Very rousingly put Tony, and not at all confusing. Well, there you have it good people of Ireland, now is your chance to join a march which will liberate the nothingness and pointlessness in all of us.’

‘That’s right. Of course we’re using the word ‘nothingness’ in its most positive sense here.’

‘Naturally. Now Tony, good luck on the rest of your hitch this morning, and we look forward to talking to you later on. Both our crack reporters Brenda Donohue and John Farrell will be giving us a detailed word picture of exactly what’s happening during the triumphant march and the ensuing celebration in the ILAC Centre. It’s going to be quite an event, and remember to get yourselves down there because this is the time to make your domestic appliance count. Tony, good morning.’

‘Good morning Gerry.’

When I emerged from the callbox, a lorry immediately drew up alongside me, and the driver wound down his window.

‘I just heard you on the radio there, if you wait here for twenty minutes, I’ll be back and I’ll take you as far as Arklow.’

And he was gone.

I had no reason to doubt that he would be back, but I couldn’t afford the luxury of twenty minutes, and if I could get a lift before, then I would have to take it.

Whilst hitching, I tried to think of chants which I and my fellow marchers could shout as we strode proudly through Dublin. I came up with a few, but my favourite was one I would have to teach the crowd on my arrival.

TONY: ‘WHAT DO WE WANT?’

CROWD: ‘WE DON’T KNOW!’

TONY: ‘WHEN DO WE WANT rr?’

CROWD: ‘NOW!’

It seemed to strike the right chord.

§

Kevin and Elaine beat the lorry driver to me. They had heard the interview and had made a small detour especially, and since they too were going as far as Arklow, I jumped into their small van and we sped northwards. They were a young couple, both about twenty and probably the youngest of all those who had stopped for me.

‘If I phone ahead, Elaine’s mother will cook us all breakfast in Courtown Harbour,’ said Kevin.

‘I’d love to really, but I’m running really late.’

‘That’s a shame, because she does a fine breakfast’

Just beyond Arklow-1 was back hitching again. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 9.45 am. Meeting my deadline was still possible, but a long wait here and
The Gerry Ryan Show
would need to hastily rethink its last hour.

A red car pulled up, and I ran forward to address the driver.

‘Where are you headed?’ I asked.

‘Dublin,’ came the magical reply.

I was cutting it fine, but it was all still on.

Peter was unemployed at the moment and on his way to visit friends in Dublin. Not long since a student, he still seemed comfortable with a way of Me which was extremely relaxed and laid back. Unfortunately one area where this manifested itself was in his driving. What should have been a horn-honking, tyre-screeching, risk-taking charge into Dublin was a casual Sunday afternoon tootle into town. All we needed to complete the picture was a tartan blanket on the back seat and a tin of boiled sweets.

Because I was spending most of my time looking at my watch and checking how many kilometres were left before we hit Dublin, I failed to focus on the sadness of the occasion. Peter was my last lift. This was it, the hitch-hiking was over. No longer was I to spread myself by a roadside and put myself at the mercy of a nation’s drivers. I would miss it.

Well, bits of it, anyway.

‘I could drop you at Sydney Parade Dart Station, my friends don’t live far from there. It’ll be quicker than suffering the city centre traffic anyway,’said Peter.

‘And do you think I’ll make it to Connolly Street for eleven?’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll be fine.’

Why do people do that? Say ‘
I’m sure’when
they’re not sure at all. So often people will say ‘Oh I’m sure you’ll be fine’ as an excuse for further dialogue on the subject: ‘I’ve got to make this speech to a group of fundamentalist Shi-ite Muslims about the worthlessness of Allah, and I’m a bit worried about how it might go down.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll be fine.’

§

It was just after 10.30 when we arrived at Sydney Parade Station. The barrier was down in the middle of the road.

‘That means a train is coming; if you hurry you might get it,’ said Peter.

‘How long for the next one if I miss it?’

‘They come every fifteen minutes.’

‘Shit, I’d better not miss this one then. Bye.’

I dashed off, barely finding the time to shake Peter’s hand. My last lift, treated with the dismissive familiarity of a spouse on a daily run to the station. Poor fella wasn’t even invited to sign the fridge.

I did the best hurrying I could do given that hurrying with this load wasn’t easy. As I rushed into the station, the train was drawing into the Trains To Dublin’ platform, and I knew this was the train I
had
to get. Another fifteen minutes would be too late. There was no time to get a ticket, I would have to risk any fines which might be incurred. Just get that train! I ran past the ticket office, fridge rattling and wobbling behind me until there, directly ahead, horror of horrors, were mechanised ticket barriers. I had no chance of getting through, over, or under any of these, and the gate which had been placed there to accommodate the heavily laden, needed to be released by the man in the ticket office. I called out to him.

‘Hello, could you please open the gate! Please! I must catch this train.’

He looked up, casually.

‘Do you have a ticket?’

‘I don’t, but I’ll buy one at the other end or whatever, just please open the gate!’

‘It’s just that you’re not supposed to—’

‘PLEASE! I’M THE MAN WITH THE FRIDGE AND I HAVE TO BE AT CONNOLLY STREET STATION TO BE ON THE
GERRY RYAN SHOW!
.’

I’m not sure whether this made any sense to him or whether he was simply terrified by the urgency with which he was being addressed, but either way he pressed the button which released the gate. I bundled myself through and reached the train just as the automatic doors were closing. I tried to grab the inside of a closing door to force it back open again, a trick which I knew worked on London’s Underground, but on this occasion the force of the closing door was too great and I had to withdraw my hand or risk losing it. The train pulled out of the station, and with it went my chances of making my Triumphal Entry on time. I got out my mobile phone and called
The Gerry Ryan Show
. The lines were engaged. No doubt they were busy making last-minute arrangements for a very exciting live link-up with their outside broadcast unit.

While they did so, the main protagonist in all this paced anxiously on a suburban station, somehow believing it would speed the oncoming train towards him. Either Peter had been wrong about the interval between trains or the pacing had worked, because seven minutes later another train rolled into the station.

The train stopped at a disappointing number of stations. Sandymount. Come on train, you could go faster than this. Lansdowne Road. We were just dawdling. At Pearse Street I noticed that passengers were beginning to stare at me. I couldn’t fathom why. Okay, I was sweating, and I had a fridge with me on a trolley, but apart from that I was perfectly normal. Tara Street. Tara Street sounded like a star in a cheap skinflick. A woman got on with twin babies in a double-barrelled pushchair. They were too young to know that there was something odd about me, but they looked up at me in a way which suggested they instinctively knew there was. Bastards.

When we crossed the River liffey I knew that we were nearly there. It was 10.53 am. At Connolly Station a guard helped me down the stairs with the fridge just like a mother might be helped down with a baby in a pushchair.

In homage to Hollywood suspense films, I headed for the rendezvous outside the station at 10.59. Any second now I would be hailed by cheering crowds, thrilled that I hadn’t let them down after all.

I emerged from the main doors and on to the steps, and there before me was—wait a minute, this couldn’t be right—an ordinary street on a Tuesday morning at 11.00? Where were the adoring fans? The hordes of well-wishers? The supporters of the cause with their domestic appliances by their sides? Nothing. No one. Just cars.

I realised that I must have the wrong spot. ‘Outside the main doors at the front entrance’ I had been told. This must be some kind of side entrance. This meant I had missed the eleven o’clock welcome live on
The Gerry Ryan Show
, silly idiot that I was, because I had not been bright enough to go to the right entrance.

I turned round and started to head back into the station. To my left, an old man in a kilt and carrying some bagpipes was approaching me.

‘Is that a fridge?’ he said.

It was going to be difficult to adjust to not hearing that question quite so often in the coming months.

‘It is.’

At least the answer was simple.

‘What’s your name? Is it John?’ the man asked, gently caressing his bagpipes.

‘No, it’s Tony.’

‘Oh. Right, that’s odd, because I was told to meet a John Farrell here at eleven o’clock.’

‘Well I’m definitely not John Farrell.’

‘But they did say something about a fridge.’

‘Who did?’

‘RTE.’

‘RTE radio?’

‘I don’t know. My wife took the call.’

‘Have you been booked to come here by RTE?’

‘I have, yes.’

‘Oh, I get it now. They’ve got you to play us through the streets on my triumphal entry. John Farrell is the reporter on the ground. I’m supposed to meet him too. The trouble is, we’re both in the wrong place, we’re supposed to be at the main entrance.’

‘This is the main entrance.’

My heart fell.

‘What?’

‘This is the main entrance of Connolly Station.’

‘Oh.’

Well, maybe for some reason the crowd had assembled somewhere else. At that moment a man came towards us, holding a mop in his hand, and gesticulating. He may have looked a worn out, intense, and slightly crazed individual, but you couldn’t expect to attract the most balanced members of society to march through Dublin with kitchen implements. At least we had one marcher.

‘Hello Tony, I’m John,’he said.

Make that no marchers. This was John Farrell, the crack reporter.

‘Nice to meet you,’ he continued. ‘God, you look great—look at the colour on you, you look like you’ve been round the West Indies, not Ireland.’

Suddenly he didn’t look crazed at all. It’s amazing how something as little as a person holding a mop can change the way you view them.

‘Come on, we’d better get going,’ he said, eagerly.

‘But hang on John, there’s no one here. Are you sure we’re in the right place?’

‘We’re in the right place all right. These things tend to kick off slowly.’

He’d done this before? He went on, ‘When you start it then everyone sort of finds it and gets involved. Have you got a radio walkman with headphones?’

‘I have.’

‘Well, put it on, and listen. Gerry is just setting the whole thing up now, and if we cross over there to that callbox, I’ll give him my first report. Keep listening because I may put you on to him at any point.’

As we crossed the disappointingly uncrowded street, I put on my headphones and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Dramatic music, in fact the soundtrack from
Ben Hur
, was building to a climax. Then Gerry Ryan’s voice cut across it, in a sensational and melodramatic tone.

‘He came across from the pond, the young man and his fridge travelling over land and sea searching for a meaning and purpose in their lives. We speak of Tony Hawks, the Fridge Man. Tony Hawks who came to live amongst us for all but a short while, a Messiah of sorts. We felt ourselves not worthy to touch the hem of his fridge, but then we realised that he was but an ordinary man, his fridge but a little fridge, the son of a bigger fridge—the Big Fridge—the huge, gigantic Fridge in the Sky.’

My, he was certainly going for it.

‘He travelled the length and breadth of our nation—he became part of our lives. We received Tony Hawks and his fridge into our hearts. Today is the end of his fruitful odyssey.’

His tone now changed and the epic music faded as he tried for the first live link-up.

‘Brenda Donohue is in the ILAC Centre in Dublin, wondering where Tony and his fridge are. How is your wondering, Brenda?’

‘Good morning to you Gerry Ryan. We have a big crowd here just by the fountain at the ILAC Centre and we are awaiting the arrival of Tony Hawks. This is his final destination, this is his final port of call, and people have turned up from all over the country and I have to say that the atmosphere this morning is one of high expectation. You know that feeling of calm before the storm, there’s tension in the air, there’s longing, there’s expectation—we can’t wait to see him, we’re curious about what he and his fridge look like. We have Mrs Burn who has come all the way from Drogheda, I am surrounded by the women of the Portobello School of Childcare who’ve all turned up with some domestic appliances, and not just that, they have a chant for Tony, so if he’s listening, if he’s making his way to the ILAC Centre here in Dublin, we have a chant for you Tony, on the count of three, tell Tony what you want to say to him. 1…2…3…GO TONY GO TONY GO TONY GO! GO TONY GO TONY GO TONY GO!

This was all unbelievable. What was happening at the procession’s point of destination was in stark contrast to the scene at its inception. Where I was, there was no real feeling of ‘calm before a storm’, more a worry that not even a light breeze was on its way.

Meanwhile, back on national radio, Gerry Ryan responded passionately to the girls’ chant, ‘Isn’t that wonderful! If I was Tony Hawks, and I was standing beside my little fridge outside Connolly Street ready to make my triumphant entry into Dublin, then that would touch my heart.’

Well, I was. And it did.

John started waving to me from inside the callbox where he was waiting with the receiver to his ear. On air, in my headphones I heard the reason why, from Gerry himself.

‘We now make our way to Connolly Station in Dublin where John Farrell our reporter on the ground is with Tony. John?’