1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge (7 page)

Brendan dropped me outside a B&B displaying a ‘Vacancies’ sign and we arranged to meet for a pint at his hotel later on. There was no need for directions; it was in Donegal Town and given the size of the place, that was sufficient information. There were probably vacancies at his hotel but I felt, and I think there was tacit agreement from Brendan on this, that we were starting to spend so much time together that the taking of different lodgings was somehow an important affirmation of our heterosexuality.

I was greeted by the lady who ran the B&B as if greeting Englishmen with rucksacks and fridges was quite the norm. She had a wavering voice and spoke at a frustratingly dawdling pace in the manner of one who had only just got the hang of this talking business the previous week. In one agonisingly long sentence she explained how I could leave the fridge by the front door, how the shower worked and how she’d prefer it if I paid her in advance. By the time she’d finished it was nearly time to meet Brendan for that drink. I holed up in my tiny room and thought about my amazing day, what I would attempt tomorrow, and whether I’d ever been in a bedroom with less floor space.

I only had time to do a quick circuit of the town before meeting Brendan. It was a shame I didn’t have a little longer because I could have done it twice. Donegal Town is tiny, with not much to see other than the castle, which appeared to be a nice old house with some fortifications thrown in just to get ‘Castle’ status.

Brendan and I drank in three pubs, the last being far and away my favourite. From the exterior there had been very little about it to suggest it was a pub; net curtains, an old lamp and a faded old sign with a surname on it. In much of Ireland they don’t go in for grand pub names like The Coach And Horses’ or The Prince Of Wales’; they simply name it after the proprietor—‘Daly’s’ or ‘McCarthy’s’, the first indication of the more personal experience that awaits you within. I came to call these establishments the old boys’ pubs, where everybody talks to everybody else regardless of who they are, partly because the clientele are very friendly and partly because the clientele are very pissed.

Just like an orchestra will have a Lead Violinist, most pubs will have a Lead Drunk. Or Drunk in Residence. He must have some arrangement with the landlord that he doesn’t have to pay for any drinks which he can still say. His main role seems to be to welcome newcomers with the emission of a loud wailing noise and by flailing his arms about like a drowning man, until his already precarious hold on his own centre of gravity is upset to the point of liberating him totally from his bar stool. This is where the Second Drunk instinctively reaches out with his left hand to stop him falling to the ground and continues drinking with his right, as if the whole manoeuvre has been carefully rehearsed. Which of course it has. Every night for decades.

It wasn’t long before Brendan and I were embroiled in a conversation with the regulars, the theme of which was prompted by highlights of today’s Grand Prix on the TV screen behind the bar. I took a back seat in the discussion, largely due to an ignorance of motor racing and an inability to understand anything that was being said. As far as I could make out, the main thrust of it was the establishment of who came first, second and third.

The Lead Drunk was now almost comatose, the exertions of his initial greeting for us having taken their toll. Many names were put forward and rejected but after ten minutes of animated debate, the fact that Schumacher had won and Eddie Irvine had come third was settled upon and those present seemed content with what had been achieved. Suddenly, and out of nowhere the Lead Drunk blurted out, ‘Who came fifth?’

Everyone turned to him in shock. Where had this come from? This, from a man who had been folded up on top of his bar stool for the past quarter of an hour. Three questions troubled all of us. How had he followed what was going on, how had he managed his first intelligible sentence of the evening, and why did he care who came fifth?

‘Who came fifth?’ He repeated his extraordinary question but this time he felt it would be better bellowed. For the first time that night, (and I suspect for a number of years) the bar’s customers were completely silent. No one knew what crossing of wires in the drunk’s brain had caused this enquiry, when ‘Who came second?’ had been the more relevant and ‘Help’ the most suitable. More importantly there was silence because no one actually knew who came fifth. When discussions finally got under way to solve this mystery Brendan and I decided it was a signal to turn in for the night. Our ‘one for the road’ had turned into ‘three for the road’ and there was a danger of granting the road too much respect.

In the morning, I successfully completed a shower in a much quicker time than that taken for the previous day’s explanation of how to use it, and got dressed with extreme difficulty standing on the narrow stretch of carpet between bed and door. This was quite literally a bedroom. Just room for a bed. Any additional space was there simply to accommodate the opening of the door. As I headed on to the landing, the sudden introduction to wide open spaces frightened me as it would an agoraphobic.

At the foot of the stairs I was a little taken aback to see that the fridge had gone, but it hadn’t been stolen, as the lady of the house painstakingly explained at breakfast.

‘I……put it……in…the…………shop……for…………safety.’

I wasn’t sure what this meant but decided that I would find out sooner by not asking. I was joined at my table by the only other guest, a travelling salesman who had one eye which looked at you and one which didn’t. The trick was deciding which one to focus on. Whilst eating my cereal I plumped for the left eye but by the time I was on to my toast I had switched allegiance to the right, although I was starting to have doubts about that In the end I gave up and focused on his nose, which was quite an unnatural thing to do and had an adverse effect on my appetite. The man was a souvenir salesman and he spent most of breakfast moaning about how souvenirs were hard to sell when it was rainy and cold, as it was at the moment. I felt that it was more likely to be an ocular thing which was frustrating sales.

The previous night Brendan had offered to take me the forty miles or so to Letterkenny after he’d done his morning’s business in Donegal Town, but after that he would be heading back to Northern Ireland, and once again I would have to subject myself to the uncertainties of the roadside. Whilst he made his morning calls I had enough time to visit the tourist office and establish the best method of getting out to Tory Island. I was told that a mail boat left every morning at 9.00 am from a place called Bunbeg, and so reaching there became my goal for the day.

As it turned out, my fridge had been placed ‘for safety’ in the butcher’s shop next door. Why, I don’t know, because when I went round to collect it I found that ‘safety’ had involved it being set down on the customer’s side of the counter in a totally unmanned shop. I coughed to gain attention in the hope that the butcher might appear in anticipation of a major pork chop sale, but to no avail. So I lifted the fridge on to its trolley and headed out of the shop, at which point the butcher emerged, ‘Is that your fridge?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh. Very good.’

My God, security was sophisticated here. If the fridge hadn’t been mine and I hadn’t been able to come up with that clever answer, my life of crime would have been over.

‘How much did you pay for that?’ the butcher added.

‘A hundred and thirty pounds.’

‘Ah, we paid roughly the same. We have one like that upstairs in the flat.’

‘Are you happy with it?’

‘Oh Jesus, yeah. They’re great for a wee place.’

Before we could become involved in the kind of conversation about fridges that motorcycle enthusiasts have about motorcycles, I bad him farewell and he wished me luck, happily reassured that the Donegal branch of Fridges ‘R Us hadn’t ripped him off. I hoped that this knowledge would give him the extra tonic he’d need to make it through another stressful day as Donegal Town’s premier butcher, and watched him as he disappeared out the back to carry on doing whatever butchers do when they’re not out the front.

Brendan, brilliant Brendan, waited patiently in his car whilst, from a phonebox in the square, I gave
The Gerry Ryatt Show
a quick update on my first day. He was most impressed by my progress so far and declared that Donegal Town by the end of Day One was ‘absolutely bloody marvellous’. I explained my plans to reach Bunbeg and then Tory Island and he told drivers to look out for me just north of Letterkenny in around an hour’s time. This really was most kind of him, and given the threatening rain clouds above, could make the difference between good health and a lengthy hospital stay for pneumonia. At the end of our interview, I was told that someone had called in whilst we’d been on air and offered me free accommodation in Bunbeg, and I took down the details, staggered that my quest was being greeted with such a positive response. I hung up the phone and looked nonplussed, but with underlying gratification. It was a difficult face to do.

I read somewhere that Letterkenny has the only set of traffic lights in the county of Donegal, which is either a measure of the remoteness and tranquillity of this province or yet another example of the denial of basic human rights to people in side roads. If it was the former, which could be more likely, then hitching around these parts mightn’t be that easy. When Brendan dropped me on the roadside just north of Letterkenny, I was mightily relieved that it coincided with a temporary respite in the continuous heavy rain which had accompanied the drive there. Having already rehearsed the goodbyes once, they were performed proficiently, and Brendan said he’d come back to see if I was still stranded there after he’d finished his business in town. Quite what he was going to do if I was still there other than offer commiserations, I didn’t know.

Fortunately I never found out. I had just arranged myself in an appropriate position for hitching and was considering what course of action to take in the event of the next imminent downpour, when a huge truck, and I
mean
huge, slammed on its brakes and came to a standstill forty yards ahead. Leaving my stuff, I ran ahead to see if it was stopping for me or to avoid running something over. The truck was so big, I could only just reach the handle of the cabin door. I opened it and the driver said, ‘Are you Tony?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, go and get your fridge.’

Things were going rather well.

Bunbeg

I
t was a long way up into that truck, and the cabin was surprisingly small, its crampedness compounded by a fridge wedged behind my seat The lack of space seemed a little ironic given that we were pulling a forty-five-foot trailer behind us.

After formal introductions (well, as formal as they could be in this situation), I learned that I was in the company of Jason, a man beaming with excitement, in his early twenties who wasted no time in peppering me with questions.

‘What are you doing with that fridge anyways?’

‘Well, I’m travelling with it to win a bet with someone.’

‘You’re mad. I was listening to you on the radio this morning and I was in stretches.’

I wasn’t sure what stretches were, but Jason was smiling so I assumed they were good.

‘I was just on the way down to Donegal Town when you were saying you were going to be starting in Letterkenny, so I’ve been keeping an eye out for you.’

‘Brilliant. That’s very kind of you.’

‘I didn’t know who you were until I saw that fridge, and then I thought…’

Laughter took him over for a while, before he managed, ‘Ah, it’s all a good laugh.’

Good, he understands.

I took a moment to digest all that was happening. The fridge, far from being a hindrance, had become a positive boon, and the protagonist in; an excursion which was growing ever more surreal.; From the haven of the truck’s cabin I watched the driving rain I pelt against the windscreen and felt somehow invincible, especially I when Jason announced that he was going to my chosen destination—Bunbeg. All right, I’d have to wait while he did some deliveries but I I didn’t mind that. Why should I? Yesterday I’d done toiletry sales—today groceries, deliveries thereof. And I was seeing at first hand what makes the world tick over—good honest labour.

Our first stop was McGinleys in Dunfanaghy, and watching Jason struggling with boxes and crates, I felt as heartened by the sight of his dogged industry as I was reassured by my own lack of involvement in it. It looked hard. Some people are born for this kind of work and others are born to watch it I had no difficulties in identifying to which of these two categories I belonged. For many years I had measured success in my chosen career in terms of how little heavy luting I had to do. Heavy lifting is good for the soul but bad for the back, and tends to interfere with lolling about.

The Mace supermarket in Dunfanaghy suitably replenished with groceries, we embarked on a journey through some of Ireland’s more wild, unkempt and windswept scenery. Austere grey mountains towered over dark tranquil loughs, boglands and streams bordered the apology for a road, and stubborn sheep blocked the route wherever and whenever they felt the urge. Never mind that there was a bloody great lorry hurtling towards them, they were going to move as and when they were ready, and not a moment before. As far as I could see, there were miles and miles and miles of open spaces all around these sheep offering excellent grazing facilities and yet they still chose to congregate in the middle of the road. You’re not telling me they don’t take some perverse pleasure in the inconvenience that this causes. Sheep aren’t stupid. They’re petty, spiteful and bloody minded. Well, fuck ewe’ I thought as the truck was forced to a standstill for the umpteenth time, deciding there was a case for popping mutton on the menu that night.

Somehow we left the sheep ‘conference area’ behind us and Jason made headway through the ten gears of his giant lorry until we started to experience something like its top speed. A lot of European Commission money has gone into the improvement of the roads in Ireland but there was exiguous evidence of any of it having been lavished on the road surfaces of Northern Donegal. Jason had his own particular method for dealing with the road’s over plentiful relief, his policy being to accelerate into the bumps.