Making It Up As I Go Along (9 page)

I have to tell you about my Bono boots and this is
a
complete
stream-of-consciousness, so please bear with me.

Well! I needed new boots. I had a grand pair of
boots from Ecco and they had served me well all winter long and worked their humble little socks
off, but suddenly they went quare on me and please know I am not blaming them at all, they
really gave everything they had, but out of nowhere they went badly stretchy and wrinkled, and
started looking like mini-elephants on my feet and that wouldn’t do.

So I went out to look for a new pair of boots and
every shoe shop I walked into I was assaulted by flimsy yellow flowery sandals and I said,
‘No, I need boots!’ And the shop people said, ‘There ARE no boots, not any
more, it’s spring now, buy these lovely yellow sandals,’ and I said, ‘But
FTLOG (for the love of God) it’s ruddy well SNOWING out there!’ And they said,
‘Buy sandals, buy sandals, buy sandals!’ And I said, ‘No, I am going home and
I will buy boots on the interwebs! And you are wondering why nobody buys anything from real
shops any more!’

So I went home and I tried to buy boots on the
interwebs and the thing is, I have very specific things I require from a boot. They need to be
quick-in-and-out, therefore no lacers. They need to have ‘spring’, a certain amount
of bounce-back action from the sole. BUT!!! Mark me carefully here! They need to have a heel.
Yes, a bit
of a heel, for I am ’straordinarily short, a mere five
foot, which I’m not sure of the exact amounts in metrics, but only thirty-seven
centimetres or maybe thirty-eight. Or possibly forty-one, but not many at all.

So I need a heel. But the heel cannot be too
high. I do a lot of ‘short-walking’. That is to say, quick jaunts to the optician
and chemist and the sobriety emporia and what-not, therefore I need city boots. However, I
realize that saying ‘city boots’ sounds sophisticated and shiny and high and that is
not what I need. I suppose I need suburbia boots. A little part of me has just died saying that,
but let’s move on.

So I went on the interwebs and looked up the Ecco
boot but there wasn’t a single one left on the planet. Also, as you know, the boots must
be size 35, which is a right pain in the hole, if you’ll pardon the vulgarity. Because
(and you must be sick of me telling you) the size 35 is a rare and elusive beast and I have
spent my life having to buy size 36s and eight pairs of insoles and grimly superglueing the
insoles into the new shoes and then superglueing my actual feet into the shoes so they will not
lift out.

So there I was looking for a size 35 boot, in
March, in a heel that is a little bit high but not too high. Oh yes, also it needs to be an
ankle boot because my calves are so stout that a zip won’t close higher than my Achilles
tendon.

For old times’ sake I went on the Camper
site, because Camper used to be my friend. Every winter I purchased the perfect pair of suburban
boots from Camper, which had the perfect amount of spring in their step and looked well and had
the right heel height. And then someone improved their website and now an engagement with it
leaves me weeping with frustration and sorrow and without boots.

I tried Clarks, who are SUPER-boasty about their
comfort,
but they don’t do smaller than a size 36. Then I tried
countless US sites who offered ‘passable’ boots, but then the price quadrupled when
they realized they would be posting to Ireland.

And then … I went on Net-a-Porter …
Lovely, lovely Net-a-Porter. Yes, there I was, acting like it was 2007. And I searched for black
(another requirement, I forgot to mention) ankle boots, in size 35, and sat back and waited for
the site to issue the sound of laughter. But to my great astonishment they produced a pair of
black ankle boots with a reasonable heel in size 35. I thought I was hallucinating.

And then I saw they were by Acne – and what
do we know about Acne? Yes! They are Swedish. And what do we know about Swedishness? Yes! That
it is fabulous. Yes! Acne = Swedish =
Wallander
= Saga from
The Bridge
=
Fabulous!

And then I saw the name of the boots – they
were the ‘Pistol’ boots. And I already knew about them, without even knowing that I
did. I had heard of them via the
Grazia
s and the
Sunday Times
Style supplement
and whispered on the air via the breaths of supermodels. The Acne Pistol Boot IN MY
SIZE!!!!!

I saw the price – I was swept along in a
tsunami so enormous that I totally disregarded it. I would be cool! I would have
Sunday-Times
-Style-approved boots! That fitted me! I would be practically Swedish. I
was so so so so so so excited.

I ordered them! I tracked their little journey to
me via Net-a-Porter’s DHL magicness. And they arrived this morning! I abandoned work and
ordered Himself to accompanize me to the trying-on place (the bedroom). I was nearly sick with
anxiety as I wondered if they’d fit. I slid my feet into them. They fitted. ‘They
fit! They fit! They fit! They fit! They fit! They fit! They fit!’ I raced down the stairs
and opened my front door and shouted at the passing cars and buses, ‘They fit!’ The
entire top deck of the 46A
applauded. People began texting and tweeting
wildly, ‘They fit! They fit! They fit!’

The day proceeded and at lunchtime I had to go
out and sometime while I was out and about I caught sight of Bono. Just from the waist down. But
it was definitely Bono. Those tight black jeans, those subtly heeled boots … And to my
great horror, I realized that the person was not Bono. The person was, in fact, me, reflected in
a window.

And the thing is, I have form in looking like
Bono (e.g. when I was driving Himself’s Maserati – you’ll read about it later
in this book). Badly shaken, I proceeded with my plans. My next port of call was to my
convalescent mammy, who was recovering from pneumonia. She greeted me with warmth and I said,
‘Mam, do I look like Bono?’

‘You do not,’ she said stoutly.

‘No, Mam, I think I do,’ I said.
‘Look at my legs. Look, in particular, at my boots.’

She looked. She looked and she looked. Finally
she spoke. ‘Have you any sunglasses?’

I replied in the affirmative.

‘Put them on,’ she says.

I obliged.

‘Stamp around a bit there,’ she said.
‘Would you sing a little bit for me?’

So I stomped around the sitting room and sang a
few lines, ‘In the name of love. One boot in the name of love. In the NAAAAAME of love
… lalala in the name of love, how’m I doing?’

‘You know,’ she said, sort of
squinting at me, ‘you have the look of him all right.’

A blow, my amigos, a bad blow. Bono is great and
Bono’s
look
is great. On
Bono
. I am not Bono. I am a lady. I want to look like
Alexa Chung.

‘What am I to do?’ I asked.
‘It’s these bloody boots, isn’t it?’

‘I’m no expert,’ she replied,
‘but it might be. Were they dear?’

‘Very dear.’

‘How dear?’

‘I’m too ashamed to tell
you.’

‘Dearer than Jimmy Choos?’

‘
As
dear,’ I admitted.

She whispered something that might have been
‘Sweet Mother of the Redeemer’. Then she said, ‘And for them to make you look
like Bono. That’s desperate.’

At this stage, she remembered that she owed me
money from when she was sick and I paid her window-cleaner and bought, as she put it,
‘sundries’, and she began pressing cash upon me.

‘No, Mam,’ I shouted,
‘no!’

‘Yes, Marian,’ she shouted,
‘yes!’

‘No, Mam,’ I shouted,
‘no!’

‘Yes, Marian,’ she shouted,
‘yes!’

I don’t know why, it’s just the way
we carry on. None of us can ever accept money from any of the rest of us. So myself and Mam, we
wrestled our way around the room for some minutes, both of us shouting. Then she played her
trump card.

‘Yes, Marian, yes!!’ she shouted.
‘I had pneumonia and I had to go to hospital and I nearly DIED. TAKE THE
MONEY!!!!’

At that point, I had lost the moral high ground,
so I took the money.

‘Buy yourself something nice with
it,’ she said. And, with a flash of her old spirit, she elbowed me and said with a little
wink, ‘Buy yourself new boots …’

mariankeyes.com
,
March 2013.

19 December 1986. London to Dublin.

Oh, it was all very different back then –
flights costing £1.27 weren’t even a twinkle in Michael O’Leary’s eye.
Aer Lingus and British Airways straddled the Irish Sea like massive costly colossi, rendering
air travel far too expensive for the likes of me (twenty-three, a waitress, albeit one who had a
law degree, and spending every penny I earnt on drink and clothes). If I wanted to get from
London to Dublin, I had to step back into the 1950s and go by train and boat.

On the appointed hour (10 p.m.) I was seen off
from Euston station by a small rowdy group of gay friends, one of them my flatmate Conor, who
was too skint to even afford the boat-and-train combo so was staying in London for the festive
season. The lads fluttered around me, making little adjustments here and there to my clothing,
until it was decreed that I was fabulous enough to board the train. And yes, in a floor-length
black sealskin coat, an indecently short black Lycra dress, shiny black tights, red suede
gladiator stilettos and a strange little red tricorn hat (made by Conor), I was indeed fabulous.
Yes, my dears, in the olden days we dressed
up
to travel. We made an
effort
.

I even had matching luggage: a brown canvas zippy
yoke that my parents had got free with petrol vouchers, and an identical brown canvas zippy yoke
that Conor’s parents had got free with
petrol vouchers. The handles
were coming loose on one of the bags and the seams were slowly disintegrating on the other. It
never even occurred to me to be ashamed.

All around me beaten-looking elderly men carrying
cardboard suitcases were boarding the train. I climbed on and bumped my way down the carriage,
hoping – like I always did – that when I found my seat the man of my dreams would be
sitting opposite me. We’d fall into chat, we’d click instantly, we’d fashion
plans to meet up when we returned to London …

Alas, no such luck. Across from me was a
granite-faced man chomping on home-made corned-beef sandwiches the thickness of a phonebook.
Seated next to him was a mild-faced woman with the nail-scissors haircut of the off-duty nun. Mr
Corned Beef appeared too ground down by thirty years of manual labour to even look at me, but
Off-Duty Nun gave a meek, God-bless-you-my-child-even-if-you-do-have-a-most-peculiar-hat smile
which I returned with a cold stare. I had a strict No Conversation policy with any religious
types. Or corned-beef men.

As the clock inched towards ten o’clock and
the off, the seat next to me remained unoccupied and I began to imagine the unimaginable –
an empty seat beside me; I could lie down and sleep! (Those in the know slept with their head on
their handbag, to avoid their handbag being stolen. And with their feet towards the window, in
case their shoes got stolen. And as shoes went, mine were eminently stealable.)

But seconds before the whistle blew, a young man
jumped aboard. Every other seat in the entire train was occupied: this had to be my companion.
Initially I was hopeful – he was almost late and I liked late men, the more unreliable the
better; in fact, I’d have preferred if he had missed the train entirely. However, he was
pleasant and cheery – I preferred tortured and surly – and
had
the curly-haired, meaty-framed air of a rugby-playing jock. (Strangely, his cheery, friendly
demeanour seemed to waver slightly when he focused on my lovely home-made hat.)

With much jerking and slopping of flasks of tea,
we were off! Jock-boy transpired to be on his way home from Paris, which elicited oohs of
delight from Nun-Woman. They fell into passionate chat about
petty pans
o’shockolahhhh
,
trying to outdo each other with atrocious French accents.

I decided I hated him.

Despite the cold, the windows steamed up within
moments. We rattled through the night, wedged shoulder to shoulder with our fellow passengers,
sleeping with our eyes open. There was a distinct smell, a fug of old damp overcoats, of fried
breakfasts, of decades of grinding poverty.

I was in the lucky position of having a window
seat and occasionally I nodded off and when the train took a corner too sharply I was woken by
my skull being cracked smartly against the glass.

Once or twice a trolley came round, trying to
tempt us to cough up for tea and sandwiches, but everyone had brought their own. (I hadn’t
brought sandwiches because for reasons I don’t fully understand now, I thought sandwiches
were ‘silly’. I had a Bounty, a Lion bar and a Twix – that was food enough for
me.)

At about 2.30 a.m., amid whistles and hisses of
steam, the delights of Holyhead were unleashed upon us. We descended from the train into the
perishing night. I hoicked one hefty petrol bag over my shoulder and dragged the other along
behind me. The bags felt like they were packed with lead because I’d brought every item of
clothing I owned, to dazzle the eyes out of the heads of those back home, but I refused to get a
trolley. I had a ‘thing’ about trollies. In the same way that I had a
‘thing’ about
sandwiches. I thought – I’m afraid
this is the best explanation I can come up with – that they were a sign of weakness.

In those days, Holyhead port was grim, grim,
grim. A bare, wretched place. No expense had been spent on gussying it up – Irish people
weren’t too popular in Britain in the 1980s. Handy enough if you wanted a road dug, but
you don’t want them getting notions. Like cattle at a mart, heads bowed with resignation,
armies of smelly-overcoated, bacon-and-cabbage men trudged up the bleak ramps towards the ship.

I trudged along with them, pausing from time to
time when I caught the heel of my shoes in the hem of my coat and almost toppled over on to my
face. The price, of course, of being fabulous.

Once on the ship, the idea was to find a place as
far away as possible from anyone else in order to get a few hours’ sleep before the ship
docked. There were rows and rows of upright chairs but they were ring-fenced with fruit machines
which emitted a constant racket of pings and crunches. I’d go mad. I found a small bare
patch of floor and laid down my bags, but a Scouser – the ship was always staffed with
Scousers – tried to convey, first with his magical but baffling accent and then by
shouting, that I was blocking an emergency exit. Like a refugee, I got to my feet and, dragging
all my earthly possessions, moved on to another spot. Also, an emergency exit. In the end I took
my rightful place amid the fruit machines.

Rumours reached me of a lounge, an enchanted
realm of couches and free coffee. But it cost a fiver – an astronomical sum – to get
into. I went to see if it could possibly be real – and sure enough it was. I gazed in
through the glass and to my astonishment caught sight of Mr
Petty Pan
O’Shockolahhhh
, who was in there with the nun, the pair of them reclining like
pashas, guzzling enough free coffee to float a boat. My bitterness overflowed.

Around 6 a.m. we docked in
Dublin, the ship stopping itself by – or so it seemed – driving at high speed at the
land. Once we’d picked ourselves up from the floor, we streamed out like ghosts into the
frozen Irish dawn where, conveniently, public transport didn’t start for another two
hours. Through the mist the outline of a man waiting at the exit slowly revealed itself to me.
It was my dad. He’d come to pick me up. We hadn’t seen each other in nine months. He
gazed upon me and demanded, ‘What in the name of God have you got on your head?’ I
was home.

First published in
Travel
, December 2007.