Making It Up As I Go Along (12 page)

Je suis
back from France and I had
un
temps
lovely. Yes, lovely, despite everyone ROARING laughing when they heard I was going
on a walking holiday. ‘You in flat shoes,’ they said. ‘I’ve seen it all
now!’

I don’t know why or when the idea of a
walking holiday started appealing to me, but it just goes to show how human beings can change.
There was a time when I would have thought it was utter hell, but now …

Entre nous, mes amies
, the thing I was
dreading most was the ferry journey from Rosslare to Cherbourg. I once went on a school tour on
said same ferry when I was fifteen and I remember it as being full of drunken louts (mostly me
and my classmates) and I was convinced it would be a nightmare, but this time it was actually
remarkably pleasant.

Himself and myself had a nice tea in a sitty-down
restaurant where we were served by a very nice Polish man. After he took our order I said to
Himself, ‘Russians are taking over the world,’ and Himself said, ‘He’s
not Russian, he’s Polish.’ And then I was a bit mortified as I had thanked the girl
at the Information Desk in Russian (because she sounded Russian and her name badge said Svetlana
Russiancitizenski or some such), but in retrospect I realized she could just as easily have been
Polish and mortally offended by being addressed in Russian when I was only trying to be nice.

This sort of faux pas
normally keeps me awake for hours and could culminate in me going back to the Information Desk
to apologize for thinking she was Russian (not that there’s anything wrong with being
Russian) and, if she had knocked off for the evening, insisting on finding her cabin and getting
her out of bed in her nightie and face cream in order to be apologized at, but mercifully it
didn’t happen.

In fact, I had a lovely night’s sleep. We
had a dinky little cabin with bunk beds (I was on the bottom as I have to get up a lot at night
to make wees – too much information? I apologize. It’s just that I find a lot of
women have this problem and we are all mortified to talk about it) and the motion of the boat
was like being rocked, and all in all it was lovely and when we woke up we were in France!

We were headed for Dijon and it took us about
seven hours and even that bit was a pleasure because the French roads are very good and when we
stopped a couple of times for refreshments and yes, wees, because I am nearly as bad in the
daytime, the people in the shops were LOVELY, all
bonjour
and
merci
and
au
revoir
.

I know everyone says the French are as rude as
anything, but maybe that’s only in Paris, and in fairness no one has ever been rude to me
in Paris either.

Actually, now that I remember, that’s not
true. I had one of the worst nights
of my life
in the Georges restaurant on the top of
the Pompidou Centre. I’ll tell you the story. Himself and myself were booked for dinner
and we were 0.4 of a microsecond late and when I attempted to apologize in my admittedly shite
French to the exquisitely beautiful greeting girl she stared and stared at me with such complete
and utter contempt that eventually my speech of apology meandered to a halt. She
picked up two menus, strode across the room, flung them on a table and
stalked away without a backward glance.

This was around the time I turned forty and was
picking fights with people left, right and centre, and I was so voraciously angry but also
burning with shame at the way I’d let her make me feel that I decided I wasn’t
leaving without doing something. (Every time she passed our crappy table, showing new people to
their place, I called out, ‘You’re a bitch!’ But, sadly, the music was too
loud and she couldn’t hear me. Himself agreed with me that she’d been horrible, and
offered to ‘say something’, but I insisted that I wanted to do it.)

So at the door, as we were leaving (we’d
only had one course and I hadn’t been able to eat mine because my stomach was all full up
with rage and shame), I established that your woman could speak English – she could,
perfectly – and I told her that she’d been unpleasant and rude when we’d
arrived, that it was unnecessary, that we’d had a horrible evening and that we’d
never be back.

In fairness, she was quite surprised, but sadly
she didn’t break down in floods of tears like what would happen in a crappy American film
and apologize for being a bully but say that she’d been bullied as a child and this was
the only way she knew how to cope and that even though everyone kept telling her she was
beautiful, she felt ugly, ugly, yes, UGLY on the inside … Anyway, yes, she was a little
taken aback and even though I didn’t stop shaking for about three days from summoning up
my nerve, I was glad I said something.

ANYWAY, apart from the bitch at the Pompidou
Centre, every French person I’ve ever met has been charm itself.

We arrived in Dijon around six in the evening and
went looking for a chemist and walked around the beautiful town (city?
Christ, people can be so touchy about the place they live that it’s important to get
it right), and then we saw the green cross of health, the international sign for a chemist, and
we went inside and transacted our business.

As I’ve mentioned before, I adore chemists.
They are such useful places, with so many wondrous, diverse wares. Often Mam and I lie on her
bed and list the many, many things you can get. We always start with her shouting,
‘Hairbands!’ This is a declaration that the game is ON. So I say, ‘Cotton
buds!’ Then she says, ‘Strepsils.’ Then I say, ‘Solpadeine!’ Then
she says, ‘Bonjela!’ And so on for many, many happy hours.

The first time we did it, poor Susan
(Tadhg’s then girlfriend), who was living with Mam and Dad for a while (also with Tadhg,
I’d better add) until they got their own flat, had to come in and ask us to keep the noise
down as she was trying to sleep, she had work in the morning, and although we tried to get her
to join in, she couldn’t be persuaded.

Sometimes, out of the blue, in the middle of a
conversation about something completely different, even when loads of other people are there,
Mam will look at me and shout, ‘Hairbands!’ And then we’re off.

Sadly, the chemist in Dijon was quite small and
didn’t have the full list of things that Mam and I cover in a session, but Himself and
myself had an amazing dinner in Dijon – the first of many – and the following day,
the walking began! The weather was magnificent – a bit
too
magnificent, ontra
noo,
mes amies
, the kind of weather where you’re better off lying beside a
cooling swimming pool with a man handy to bring you cooling cocktails. Instead we were marching
through vineyards and along trails and I’m not good in the heat at the best of times
– being Irish, I’m just not equipped for it – but it’s a small complaint
and we walked
through picture-perfect villages (or should that be
villages
?) with family-business wineries and beautiful chateaux and little
boulangeries where we bought Gruyère buns for our lunch and everything was so charmingly
French and our hotel was nice and our dinner was fabulous and I was so afraid that I
wouldn’t be able to get out of bed the next morning (we’d walked about nine miles)
but it was no bother to me and all was well with the world.

We did five days of walking and sometimes stayed
in sort of bed-and-breakfast places and other times it was more fancy, but the dinners were
always magnificent – except that they’re not exactly vegetarian-friendly. Not that
I’m vegetarian, but I’m a bit squeamish, even about stuff like liver, and Himself is
the total opposite: if he sees some piece of innard on the menu, it’s almost like a
challenge to him, which can sometimes be difficult to stomach, even when it’s not me
that’s eating it.

The worst was when we were in Beaune – the
most incredible place (see how I craftily avoided the town/city conundrum there?). I wished
I’d had much, much longer there. I bought mirabelle plums at the market and my winter coat
in a boutique and they had architecture and oh, all
kinds
of stuff. On the menu was
– those of a delicate disposition might like to look away now – a stew made of
coxcombs, you know, the frilly things on the top of cockerels’ heads.

The minute I saw it I
knew
he was going
to order it and gleefully he did, but the waitress looked aghast. She hurried away anxiously and
returned with her boss, an enormously fat woman (which gives the lie to the theory that French
women don’t get fat) with bright purple eyeshadow and black kohl-lines flicking up to her
hairline, à la Siouxie Sioux (or however she’s spelt) circa 1977.

Boss woman interrogated Himself about his choice
– did he
know what he was getting himself into? Had he ever had it
before? Did he like tripe? Because it was like tripe, only worse. Then a man in a dinner suit
joined in (he might have been the maître d’) and a worried-sounding conversation in
French ensued. Then they shrugged (for they are French) and decided that if le Rosbif
(apparently that’s what they call Englishmen, isn’t it fantastic?) wanted the joke
dinner, they might as well let him have it.

Anyway, when it arrived it was FAR WORSE that I
had imagined. When they’d said stew, I thought the coxcombs would be all cut up into
little bits and unrecognizable, but it was just a plate with three ENORMOUS coxcombs on it,
looking all rubbery and revolting, and when Himself started into it, the entire staff, right
down to kitchen porters, deserted their posts and stood staring, marvelling at the sight of le
Rosbif eating it. Meanwhile, I was nibbling little pieces of bread, trying to keep from gagging.
Christ above.

Other than that, our French adventure was
FANTASTIC.

mariankeyes.com
,
September 2005.

KYLIE!!!! Coming to Ireland! The only fly in the
ointment was that she was playing in Belfast, not Dublin, but this is how it all worked out:
there were twelve of us, and some were coming from London, but for us Dublin people we hired a
minibus and a great day was had by all, except when Ulster said NO!

We’d arranged in advance with the Odyssey
Arena people that we could park our minibus, but when we went into the car park we were told by
a youth in an orange fluorescent jacket and a walkie-talkie, ‘NO! YOU CAN’T PARK
HERE! You’re too big.’ He said there was a separate car park for minibuses, but when
we tried to leave for it we were told, ‘NO! YOU CAN’T LEAVE TILL YOU PAY FOR YOUR
TICKET!’ We explained we’d only been in for six seconds, but we were told that rules
were rules, then eventually we were allowed to leave and we made our way to the coach car park,
only to be told – yes! – ‘NO! YOU CAN’T PARK HERE! Normally you could
but the council has just said, “NO! NO PARKING HERE TONIGHT.”’

We were directed to an official – this time
in a YELLOW fluorescent jacket – who sent us back to the first car park, saying there was
NO size, weight or height restriction on the vehicles that could park there, where – oh,
mes amies
, it was HILARIOUS – where the original orange-jacketed jobsworth youth
came running the entire length of the car park in order to yell, ‘NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!’ at us.

You should have seen him, he
was so THRILLED to have the opportunity to be unhelpful! We made his day, possibly his year.

‘NO NONONONONONO! Get out, you’re too
big.’

‘But the man in the yellow jacket said
–’

‘NONONONONONO!!!!!! I have an ORANGE
jacket. ORANGE trumps YELLOW.’

Before he kicked us out again and sent us back to
the coach car-park bloke (who unsurprisingly hadn’t changed his mind), he kindly directed
us to ‘a patch of waste ground around the corner about three minutes’ walk from
here’.

I wasn’t sure which part of that sentence
alarmed me most. The ‘waste ground’? The ‘around the corner’ directions
in a strange city? The promise of a three-minute walk? Irish people are notorious liars about
time and distance, everything is ‘just coming now’ and ‘three minutes’
walk away’.

Meanwhile, Himself was ringing the woman who had
promised parking in the first place but – guess what? – that’s right –
NO REPLY.

Then when we tried to go into the Odyssey Arena,
the man took one look at our tickets and said, ‘NO.’ He had already turned away to
shout NO at someone else, but when we asked him why we couldn’t go in he said, ‘You
need a letter.’ We produced the letter and he was bitterly disappointed, but in the end he
had no choice but to let us in. At this stage we were in convulsions.

Then Eileen tried to go outside for a cigarette
before the start of the show but she was told, ‘NO. NO. NO. NO. Go out if you must but NO
WAY will you be coming back in.’

But the best bit, the very best bit of all, was
when Suzanne and I went to the loo during the concert. When we came back into the arena, we
stood for a second on the top of the steps just to get our bearings and the next thing some
official girl yelled in
our face, ‘NO! NO STANDING! YOU CAN’T
STAND THERE!’

We were crying with laughter.

But after all that it was an amazing show:
breathtaking sets and costumes and dancers and SHOES. Kylie is a little angel and charm itself.

mariankeyes.com
,
July 2008.

Cyprus! We were going because Ireland was playing
Cyprus in the football, and mercifully we were flying from London and not Dublin as I’d
gone to the Israel match in March direct from Dublin and Christ, what a NIGHTMARE! For starters
the flight had left at 4.30 a.m. and everyone on the plane apart from me, Himself, Tadhg and
Susan were out of their minds drunk and wearing green curly wigs and singing ‘The Fields
of Athenry’ (why?
Why?
Of
all
the songs?). It was like being on a night
bus but for six hours, one that they sold drink on and that you couldn’t get off.

People (well, men, actually) kept tumbling on top
of me and telling me I looked like Eleanor McEvoy (I don’t, I’ve nothing against
her, she’s lovely, but I just don’t) and asking me to sing a song and telling me to
lighten up and offering me a drink and the whole thing was badly hideous and I hated myself for
not loving it, but then again I AM an alcoholic, one who doesn’t drink, so it was bound to
be hard …

This time, flying from London, there were a few
high-spirited green-jerseyed lads in the queue, and Himself did a headcount and said,
‘That’s good. Just enough to get a sing-song going,’ and I said,
‘I’ll give you sing-song where you’ll feel it.’

When the green-jerseyed lads got on the plane,
they insisted on proving how good-natured and lovable Irish football fans are by stopping to
help the air hostess fit a case into a tight space in the overhead luggage thing. ‘Here,
let me do that,’ one charmer
said. Then, from another lovable rogue,
‘Ah no, Joxer, you’re doing it all wrong, give me a go.’ ‘No,
that’s not that way,’ said a twinkly ne’er-do-well. Despite the poor woman
insisting she was well able, the lads continued to pull and shove at the piece of luggage and
only stopped when they damaged its handle. Then they all piled down the back, roaring for drink.

Other than that, it was a grand flight and when
we arrived in Cyprus it was 82 degrees! All the others were there, including poor Eileen
who’d had to do the night-bus Dublin flight, which was so bad that she couldn’t bear
to talk about it.

We had a beautiful time, all nine of us,
sunbathing on our own little grassy knoll and having lovely dinners, where I had fried halloumi
cheese for starters and Cyprus salad (like Greek salad but with halloumi instead of feta) for my
mainer.

The match, however, was a tragedy. Although we
won, we played atrociously. When we got back to the hotel I repaired to bed, as is my way, but
the rest of them piled across the road to a bar, where they spent many happy hours drowning
their sorrows.

A lone man in a suit was at the next table, but
no one paid him any heed until he stood up to leave and Tadhg suddenly went peculiar. Himself
thought that the man in the suit had pinched Tadhg’s arse, so thunderstruck was
Tadhg’s face, but then Tadhg pointed a trembling finger at the back of the man as he
crossed the road, and said, hoarsely, ‘That’s Ray Houghton.’

Now, Ray Houghton, for those who may not know, is
a hero, oft celebrated in song and story and comedy routine, because in 1988, in Stuttgart, Ray
scored the winning goal in a match against England. It’s not that we hold the 800 years of
colonization against England or anything, and sure ’tis only an oul’ game, but all
the same, to beat England!!!

Anyway, Tadhg yelled, ‘RAY!’ and Ray
turned around, lifted
one hand in a gracious salute – and disappeared
into our hotel. Immediately Tadhg tried to dash out into the traffic after him and had to be
restrained, then he began rounding up whatever the pleasant equivalent of a lynch mob is, in
order to find Ray.

But it was late and no one would join his quest
except poor innocent Seán (Caitríona’s fella). Everyone else sloped off to bed,
but Tadhg and Seán apparently spent half the night banging on hotel doors and shouting,
‘Ray! RAY! Are you IN there, Ray? Ray? Are you ASLEEP? Can I buy you a DRINK? I love you,
Ray!’

Then there was talk that Seán was instructed
to cause some diversion by the reception desk so that Tadhg could go through the computer
system, in order to discover which room Ray was in.

Some of this is actually a lie, sadly, especially
the bit about the diversion and the computer system. All that happened really was that Tadhg and
Seán spent several hours in the hotel bar in the hope that Ray might appear in his pyjamas,
looking for a nightcap, but we enjoyed ourselves so much the following day with the ‘Ray!
RAY! Are you IN there, Ray?’ stories that I thought I’d write them down anyway.

mariankeyes.com
,
October 2005.