1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge (17 page)

The conditions were by no means ideal for surfing, the sea being altogether too calm, but this probably favoured the fridge which was new to all this and hadn’t been designed with this kind of activity in mind.

‘What’s the plan then?’ I said to Bingo as we began wading out to sea.

‘I think what we’ll do is balance the fridge on the board, and then I’ll try and jump on with it and ride in on a wave.’

To think the previous evening I had taken him to be responsible.

‘Good idea,’ I lied, and held the board steady as he lifted the fridge on to it.

It looked surprisingly stable on the board, a fridge’s centre of gravity being one of its strong points. However its ability to adjust it in the face of a wave is not, and unfortunately the first wave to come its way was quite large in stature. Despite his prowess in the realm of surfboarding, Bingo had no experience in the art of keeping a fridge balanced on one, and as the wave suddenly forced the board upwards, he lost his grip on the fridge and it slid sideways into the sea. Fortunately, it just remained afloat long enough for Bingo and I to dive towards it and reinstate its position above the salt water. That had been a close one. If it fell in again and we failed to get to it quickly enough, it might fill with water and sink, and the weight of the water within it would make it difficult or even impossible to raise without professional underwater lifting equipment Foolishly, I hadn’t packed any professional underwater lifting equipment.

If I was to lose the fridge in such a way as this, it would make for a difficult explanation as a reason for failure to win my bet: ‘Well, it all went very smoothly indeed until I reached Strandhill and I had a touch of bad fortune when the fridge sank just off the coast, and we were unable to raise it.’

If the fridge did sink, it would also be a considerable inconvenience to bathers who would have to learn the exact position of the wrecked fridge or risk the agony of their toes ramming into its rusting metal shell. In the future, it might even appear on naval charts of these waters, novitiate navigators baffled by the small white cuboid marked as a hazard just off the shore.

We lifted the fridge back on to the board and Bingo pushed the two of them further out to sea, this time paying more attention to oncoming waves. I watched him as he waded out a good distance, my camera poised ready to capture this lunacy on film. He turned and waited, watching each wave in anticipation of his moment. Suddenly a bigger wave appeared and Bingo leapt on his board to join the fridge. The most extraordinary sight followed. A man and a fridge riding the waves in perfect harmony. For a few glorious yards the two of them coasted in with such ease that Bingo looked to have time to open the fridge door and take out a refreshing drink. The onlookers on the promenade broke into a spontaneous round of applause, and from the water’s edge Antoinette cheered gamely. It had been done, the fridge had surfed, and what is more I had photographic evidence, provided I didn’t screw up with the film again. Okay, the surfers hadn’t exactly covered a huge distance, and it hadn’t been long before Bingo had needed to leap off the board quickly and save the fridge from another drenching, but nonetheless for a matter of seconds it had been a magnificent victory for Man and Domestic Appliance over the turbulent and untamed sea.

‘Congratulations, Bingo, I think that’s a first,’ I said.

‘Thanks. The trick now is to get the thing coming in on its own.’

‘Eh?’

‘We’ve got to get the fridge to surf on its own.’

Have we? Why? Honestly, with these people if it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Here was me, innocently trying to hitch round Ireland with a fridge, and I kept running into people who wanted to find all kinds of new and exciting things for the fridge to do.

‘Oh, all right,’ I said cravenly. ‘What’s the best way to do that then?’

‘Well, what I propose is that you wait about here and I’ll wade a bit further out, and when I see a wave that looks suitable, I’ll give the board a shove and with any luck the fridge will ride in on the board until you catch it.’

What could be simpler?

§

The whoops, hollers and applause we received from the shore were entirely deserved.

‘We’d better not do it again,’ I said. ‘It would never go as well as that again. Ever.’

It had gone like a dream, exactly as Bingo had planned, the solitary fridge riding in on the wave and the surfboard arriving on cue before my outstretched arms as if guided there by remote control. And what a sight it had been. Surreal, funny and somehow inspiring. For the benefit of a crowd of about fifteen people who wouldn’t be believed when they got home, the kind of stunt you might expect to see in a big-budget movie, had been carried out for nothing by a couple of jokers. The euphoria even served to clear my head. Compared to a single Drambuie before leaving the pub, it was an immensely complicated hangover cure, but most efficacious.

‘You guys are something else,’ said Antoinette as we came ashore, delivering a line which could have been lifted directly from the movie in which our stunt belonged.

She had hit the nail on the head. We were, undoubtedly, something else. But more likely than not, in the pejorative sense.

Eat Your Heart Out, Michael Flafley

W
ell, it’s ringing for me all right,’ said Antoinette, coffee in one hand, mobile phone proudly held aloft in the other. Obviously I hadn’t consulted the instructions, and consequently had been unable to make any kind of progress with my new toy, but Antoinette experienced no problems and was straight through to whoever she had phoned.

‘Hello, Peter?…Oh I’m fine, you’ll never guess what we’ve just done…shit, how did you know that?…Oh…listen are you still on for this reflexology?…yes…right…well I’ll tell him.’

‘Was that ‘Wise Peter?’’ I said, studying the phone as Antoinette handed it back to me.

‘Yes, he says hell see you directly after me, probably around 2.30.’

‘Right,&dsquo; I waited for a moment, not knowing what I had said ‘right’ to, hoping for an explanation which was not forthcoming. ‘Er…what exactly is he going to see me for?’

‘Well, reflexology, obviously. He said that last night you were really keen that he fitted you in.’

‘Oh I was, I was.’ Frightening. I honestly had absolutely no recollection of that. ‘It’s just that…well…’

‘What?’

‘Well, it’s just that the cup final starts at three.’

Antoinette pulled a face that only girls can pull when they are fed up with boys and football.

‘Tony, at worst you’ll miss the first quarter of an hour. You need to relax down after all that you’re going through. Are you really going to turn your back on a potentially profitable new experience
forfootball?
’

How is that done? How is so much venom incorporated in the articulation of one word?
Football
.

Of course she was absolutely right cup finals come and go and are habitually disappointing, and here was an opportunity to discover something new. I’d never had the soles of my feet massaged before. Certainly not by a bloke who I’d met in the pub the night before.

‘Before you do all that, you’ve got to see the Glen,’ said Bingo. ‘You can’t leave here without seeing the Glen.’

‘What’s the Glen?’

‘You’ll see. You’ve got a car, haven’t you? It’ll only take us half an hour.’

And so the relentless programme of events continued with a visit to the Glen. Neither Antoinette or I had any idea what it was, but we had been assured that we shouldn’t leave this place without seeing it, and for two followers of the ‘faith’, we knew it would be wrong to let the opportunity pass.

Bingo must have had second thoughts when he saw Antoinette’s car. He said nothing but his expression suggested that his thought was, ‘And you want me to get
in
it?’

In the past, Bingo had given detailed directions to holidaymakers but none of them had managed to find the Glen. It was like a secret place, not in any guidebooks and accessible only to a select few who were in the know. After ten minutes of driving, the road started to carve its way round a hill, giving us views across the beautiful bays and inlets of the coast on our right hand side, and steep grassy banks on the other.

‘Right, just pull over on the left here,’ said Bingo.

He led us across the road where there was a tiny gate almost completely hidden by overgrown bushes and long grass.

‘This is it.’

A short walk down a narrow path and we were in a place which was truly special. Just like three children on an adventure, we found ourselves descending into a narrow passage at the foot of two huge walls of stone. There were two theories as to what had caused this vast fault in the limestone rock around the time of the Ice Age, either an earthquake, or the top collapsing in on an underground river. We were now the fortunate witnesses to the spectacular result. Vegetation growing over the rock face and water trickling over limestone stalactites had created in microcosm, Sligo’s very own tropical rain forest The narrow shafts of light battling through the overhanging branches and leaves above us, the sound of running water, and the echoes of our voices, gave the place a mystical quality which required us to stop talking and just listen. Listen to the voice of Nature.

I walked on ahead, sat down on a tree stump and looked up at the huge limestone walls which encased and sheltered us. As I watched the youthful water of a mini waterfall cascading over a narrow strip of stone, I allowed its gentle sounds to waft me into a faintly meditative state. A rare moment of peace in a journey which had become a hectic and clamorous celebration of the absurd. I felt suddenly grateful for all that had happened to me and I looked up and gently whispered Thank You’. This was directed to no one and no thing in particular, but to anyone or anything who was listening and fancied taking the credit I looked around me and saw that both Bingo and Antoinette had found their own private locations for a moment’s quiet contemplation, and I felt deeply privileged to be here in this unique and spiritual place.

But if I had attained some momentary balance, inner calm and enlightenment here in the ‘Glen’, then my next action served as a reminder that I had undergone no lasting conversion to a spiritual path. I looked at my watch and noted that the cup final started in just under an hour.

With the unwelcoming piercing sharpness of a car alarm, my voice punctured the tranquil atmosphere, ‘We’d better go if I’m going to catch the cup final.’

The others turned, initially startled by this intrusion into their solitary reflections, but then became suddenly aware of who they were, where they were and, above all, who they were with. And unfortunately for them, they were with the bloke who wanted to go and watch the cup final.

‘Oh right, no problem,’ said Bingo accommodatingly. Antoinette said nothing, but didn’t need to.

On the walk back to the car we noticed the evidence of trees having been cut down and used as firewood.

‘This has become a popular spot for the occasional rave party, and unfortunately the kids don’t always treat the place with the respect it deserves,’ explained Bingo.

‘Is there much of a drug problem in this part of Ireland?’ I enquired.

‘The police don’t admit that there is, but it’s there all right.’

He went on to explain that an unpopular Chief Superintendent had proudly boasted the absence of any kind of drug problem in Sligo in a quote which the local newspaper had lifted for a banner headline;

WE DON’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH DRUGS

The wind was somewhat taken out of his sails by the opportunist who cut out the headline and used it as the first line for a poster which was duplicated and then plastered all over the town.

WE DON’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH DRUGS

WE CAN GET THEM ANYWHERE

Whatever your views on drugs, it was clear who had won that particular battle.

Time was running short but ‘Bingo Tours’ included another brief stop at a derelict old landlord’s house which a local businessman was restoring to its former extravagant grandeur, with the intention of soon opening it as a hotel. The countryside of Ireland is littered with roofless derelict houses, each of which mark an isolated moment in its troubled history. A government tax on roofs had meant that landlords in England had arranged for the roofs to be destroyed on their Irish properties which they could no longer afford to run or be bothered to visit. Britain had seen its own idiosyncratic and unsightly physical manifestation of man’s obsession with tax evasion when the introduction of a ‘Window Tax’ resulted in the owners of many large houses in England having their windows bricked up. It seems that the more privileged in society you are, the more convoluted, devious and determined your efforts became in the evasion of putting a penny back into it Certainly the scars on the Irish landscape of these old and roofless landlords’ houses are monuments to the human weakness for accumulating personal wealth at the expense of social justice. Just at a moment in history when the basic human right of a ‘roof over your head’ was being denied to large numbers of the Irish population, roofs were actively being destroyed in order to preserve healthy bank balances on an island across the Irish Sea.

A pivotal moment in my own personal history was marked by the mobile phone ringing for the first time. It was North West Radio giving me the name and address of a woman who ran a bed and breakfast in Ballina, and had offered me free accommodation if I turned up there. A roof over my head.

Antoinette shook her head in disbelief. ‘Honestly, the doors that are opening to you! I’ve got to get myself a toaster and travel round Ireland.’

‘Ballina? Is that where you’re headed next then?’ asked Bingo.

‘It is now.’

§

I’m not proud of having missed my reflexology appointment with Peter. To choose watching a game of football in a noisy Sligo pub ahead of a relaxing massage from one of life’s natural healers was shallow and immature, but an FA Cup final is an FA Cup final, and if you miss one there is a gap in your personal experience which could put you at a serious disadvantage in a pub conversation at some time in the future.