1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge (16 page)

‘I’ve never tried surfing, can you do it here in Strandhill?’ I asked.

‘The beach here in Strandhill is excellent for it,’ said Peter. ‘Bingo here is a champion surfer; if you ask him nicely, hell take you out surfing tomorrow.’

Bingo didn’t need to be asked nicely.

‘Ah sure, Tony, we’ll get you a wet suit and we’ll have you up on a board within an hour.’

‘Really?’

‘Ill guarantee it.’

Michael had been observing all with some interest. Now was the moment for his contribution.

‘Of course, you’ll have to take the fridge.’

We all looked at him as if we hadn’t just heard what we had just heard. But oh yes we had, because there was more.

‘Tony, you can’t go surfing and not let your fridge have a go. If you surf, the fridge has to surf—it would be unfair otherwise.’

There was a pause whilst this sank in. Then Peter looked at Bingo.

‘Could you get a fridge on a board?’

He thought for a moment.

‘Yes, I think it’s possible.’

Suddenly everyone became animated on the subject of the plausibility of taking a fridge surfing. Methods for strapping it to the board, and techniques for getting it far enough out past the breakers were discussed with a totally unwarranted gravitas. I started to feel a little odd. My head began to swirl with a combination of all that I was hearing now, and all that Peter had said earlier on the subject of reality. The result was that I now had a less tangible hold on whether I actually existed. The ‘ continuation of discussions about the viability of getting a fridge on to a surfboard in the Atlantic Ocean brought me firmly to the conclusion that I most certainly didn’t.

The arrival of another baby Guinness acted as proof. I should have left it because I had already consumed far too much alcohol, but unthinkingly I drank it My lack of thought proved beyond all doubt that I didn’t exist ‘I think therefore I am.’

‘I do not think, therefore I am
not
.’

I certainly didn’t think I was going to fall over. For anyone who existed it would have been most embarrassing. I was thankful that I didn’t fall into that category. Only into an unsightly heap on the pub carpet.

Morning brought the disappointment of discovering that I did exist I existed big time, with a throbbing head to prove it It was my own fault if I had remembered to take a Drambuie just before I had left the pub, then I wouldn’t have been in this sorry state. I lay in bed trying to remember how I had got there, but failed. Suddenly I thought ‘God, the fridge!’ but then saw it in the corner of my room looking back at me, almost admonishingly. I know that scientists will tell you that a fridge is incapable of feeling or expressing emotion, but what do they know? This fridge disapproved, and it wanted me to know it. It had no right to be reproachful, I should have been congratulated for getting it home at all, given that by the end of the night I was struggling to move myself about the place, never mind a domestic appliance on a trolley.

Sometimes you can lie in bed looking around the room, the dim light and your horizontal perspective bringing a totally different reality to objects that you see. A belt can resemble a snake, the folds of a jumper thrown on the floor might look like a small dog curled up and fast asleep. This morning I could see a small alien rocketship undergoing a mid-air re-fuelling. The more I looked at it the more I became baffled as to its real identity. What could it be? I lay there trying to think of something I had in my luggage which could come to represent such an image, but I drew a blank. I remembered Peter’s words, ‘You see, life is little more than a dream, the world isn’t a physical reality, but a three-dimensional illusion.’

I knew that to sit up and turn the light on was to accept defeat, but I needed confirmation fast that I wasn’t part of a three-dimensional illusion.

No longer reclining, and with the bedside lamp on, I could see clearly that I had been looking at a lead coming from a plug half way up the wall, leading to my new mobile phone which had been charging up overnight. Of course. I had forgotten all about that—my own personal alien rocket-ship for use during my voyage of discovery. I thought of using it to call Anne Marie to ask her if she would come and help me down to breakfast, but it seemed to be an irresponsible use of space hardware.

Beside the mobile phone was a note written in my own drunken scrawl. ‘Meet Bingo at 11.00.’ Of course, the surfing. Last night anything had seemed possible, and now, just a few hours later, even breakfast was a challenge.

When Anne Marie graced the dining room with the tea and toast, she was quite blunt. ‘You had a late one last night.’

‘Yes, I think it was quite late.’

‘Half past three.’

‘I don’t think so, it was closer to two.’

‘No, it was half past three, because my husband and I looked at the clock.’

‘Oh God, I’m sorry, did I wake you?’

‘Ah no.’

I sighed with relief, but then she added, ‘Your fridge did.’

‘What?’

‘The sound of your fridge falling off its trolley woke us up.’

‘Oh. I’m so sorry.’

The tea and toast were deposited in front of me. Anne Marie was showing no sign of any anger, but it was as if she just had a need to
let me know
.

‘My husband and I were wondering why you didn’t leave the fridge downstairs—you know, in the hallway, where you left it before you went out’

Oh no! They were thinking I had taken it to bed with me, that I was some kind of fridge pervert I had to call on all the wit at my disposal to avert an embarrassing misunderstanding.

‘Err, well…that’s a good question Anne Marie, and I…well…I don’t really have an answer for it.’

Unfortunately I had absolutely no wit at my disposal. I simply had a headache and that was all.

The local commercial radio station, North West Radio, was my only company during breakfast, and at ten o’clock I found myself listening to a phenomenon called the Death Notices. An announcer, doing his best to sound sombre and respectful, read out a long list of people who had died recently. North West Radio were clearly of the view that their listeners would be able to make it through today a lot better if they were provided with a comprehensive list of those who had failed to make it through yesterday. It wasn’t so much the late news, but news of the late.

‘Declan O’Leary from Sligo died at his home after a long illness yesterday afternoon, and the funeral is next Tuesday. Margaret Mary O’Dowd from Inishcrone passed away peacefully in her sleep at half past six yesterday morning. The funeral will be at St Meredith’s Cathedral, Ballina. And that concludes our death notices. A reminder that our next bulletin will be at five o’clock this evening. North West Radio extends sympathy to the relatives of the deceased. May the soul of the departed rest in peace.’

The mournful mood was then brutally punctured by a lively advert jingle and a chirpy voice declaring, ‘Right now at McDonagh’s it’s time to get your new home in order with a vast range of home appliances to choose from…’

Was it just a coincidence or were we witnessing McDonagh’s, at lightning speed, attempting to secure the business of those who were inheriting the properties of the deceased?

I was fascinated by the inclusion of these death notices in the radio station’s scheduling. How necessary were they? Did it matter that much if you were blissfully unaware that the man who once sold you a pair of shoes in Drumcliff had passed on? Surely you were only really interested in the deaths of those with whom you were reasonably close. Had inter-familial communication in this part of the world faltered to such a degree that the radio had to be relied on as the bearer of such news?

‘Hello darling, Grandad’s died, you know.’

‘Really? How do you know that?’

‘Heard it on North West Radio this morning—the death notices.’

‘Oh right. When’s the funeral?’

‘I don’t know, the lads at work were talking and I missed that bit.’

‘Never mind, we’ll catch it on the five o’clock bulletin.’

This is why it was so important to have the two bulletins a day. Plus of course, the listener would be kept up to speed with any additions to the ten o’clock total. The way I was feeling, I was tempted to call North West Radio and tell them to put me down as a definite for the later bulletin, promising that I would have the good manners to call if for some reason I hadn’t actually died by five o’clock.

Anne Marie brought in a plate piled high with a full Irish breakfast which looked a touch too much for a fragile stomach to handle.

‘You’ll have to eat this in a minute because there’s a phonecall for you. Very odd. I answered the phone and they said ‘Have you got the man with the fridge staying with you?’ It’s North West Radio.’

‘How did they know I was here?’

‘Search me. Word must be out.’

Anne Marie led me to the hall where I took the call and listened as a secretary explained to me that the manager of Abrakebabra in Sligo had called the radio station to say that if I turned up at their restaurant today, with my fridge, then I could have a free lunch.

‘That’s nice,’ I said, almost patronisingly. ‘I tell you what, I’ve got a mobile phone now—let me give you the number in case any more exciting offers come through.’

Abrakebabra. What a truly awful name for a restaurant. Still, bang went the there’s no such thing as a free lunch theory.

§

‘Do you want a coffee?’ said Bingo from his familiar position behind the bar.

‘Thanks, that would be nice.’

‘I’ve sorted you out with a wet suit.’

‘What?’

‘Well, you’ll need a wet suit in there, it’s pretty cold you know.’

‘Do you mean to tell me Bingo, that we’re really going to have a go at taking the fridge surfing?’

‘Of course.’

‘But I thought that was all just drunken high spirits.’

‘You were drunk. I wasn’t. We’ll do it all right.’

Surely not. But I looked at Bingo and saw that he wasn’t joking. Then I heard a female voice behind me.

‘Ah, there you are!’ It was Antoinette, perky and alert, a picture of abstemious freshness. She eyed me cannily, ‘Tony Hawks, I hope you have left this establishment since I last saw you.’

‘Oh, I had a couple of hours over the road.’

‘So, what are you up to this morning?’

I looked at her, and saw a woman who had been in the company of friends. Sane, sensible, balanced individuals. ‘I think you had better sit down.’

§

God, it was a struggle. A wet suit is possibly the last thing you want to try and put on when you have a severe hangover, especially a wet suit which is a size too small. Back at Anne Marie’s, I grappled with it in my room, cursing and stumbling and banging into things, and generally creating sounds consistent with the theory that I was a pervert. Fifteen minutes of physical exertion resulted in both legs being ‘in’, but then came the disappointment of discovering that it was on the wrong way round. I let out a wailing sound which might have suggested to anyone within earshot that whatever deviant activity I had been participating in had reached a successful climax. Twenty minutes of further tussling later, and I had succeeded in getting the wet suit on. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, there being absolutely no doubt in my crotch that this wet suit was too small for me.

I opened the bedroom door to see Anne Marie facing me at the other end of the landing. I don’t know why, but I felt strangely self conscious emerging from my bedroom pulling a fridge on a trolley and dressed in a wet suit. Anne Marie wasn’t someone with a ruddy complexion but the little colour she did have in her cheeks had vanished, leaving a pallid ghost-like figure before me, appearing to be in need of resuscitation. I had never, even at the most inspired moments in my life, had the amount of wit at my disposal that this situation demanded, so I chose to smile inanely as I pulled the fridge gingerly down the landing.

As I shut the front door behind me, I was fairly confident that Anne Marie’s next action would be to call the police. I didn’t worry though, knowing that by the time the Garda arrived, I would be surfing with the fridge, and everything would make sense.

Antoinette and Bingo were sat on the beach wall giggling as I advanced towards them, the loud rattling vibrations of the fridge on its trolley compounding the intensity of an already well established headache. It was a Saturday morning and those who had chosen to spend it enjoying a pleasant beachside walk were understandably bemused by the unusual sight before them.

Surfing is a glamorous sport. Mention suffers to most of the girls I know and they will make a funny kind of grunting sound which I have always taken to mean that they expect hunky, healthy and sexy men to be involved. And rightly so. Most of the TV footage of this sport that I have seen, has involved hunky, healthy and sexy men in abundance. But there are two simple ways to take the glamour out of surfing. The first is to wear a wet suit which is a size too small for you, and the second is to bring a fridge along. To be fair to Bingo, he looked the part, but he suffered by association. There was no doubting that he was
with
the bloke who looked very stupid and was carrying a fridge, and it was difficult to be truly sexy if you kept that kind of company. When girls buy ‘sexy’, they buy the whole deal, and unfortunately for Bingo he was part of a double action package in which one half was incontrovertibly sub-standard.

We set off from the beach wall on our journey to the sea’s edge. This involved a short walk along the promenade and then clambering over some rocks before reaching the vast expanses of open sandy beach. The wet suit was getting tighter and tighter around me, and I was finding it increasingly difficult to bend my limbs. The effect of this was to diminish still further my overall sexiness. I was moving like a monster from a 1930
s
horror movie, the only clue for observers that I wasn’t such a creature being the presence of a brilliant white kitchen appliance, which was clearly one of the more recent models on the market.

When I nearly fell over, Bingo, in a big-hearted gesture, gave me his surf-board and took over the burden of the fridge, thus relinquishing any ‘beach cred’ he may have still had. I was now able to see for myself just how ridiculous a man in a wet suit carrying a refrigerator really looked. As we started clambering, I could see a small crowd gathering by the beach wall in wonderment.