1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge by Tony Hawks, Prefers to remain anonymous Page A

alongside parked cars but I felt it was worth a try. Just as I had finished arranging myself as attractively as I could, it started to rain. Hard.
    I had two alternatives. I could either commence an undignified struggle with my rucksack in an attempt to extricate my waterproofs, or I could go and seek shelter. The problem with the second option was that the only shelter available was the building in which the cattle auction was taking place and I was frightened that a combination of despondency and delirium would see me making a successful bid for a cow. Hitching round Ireland with a fridge and a cow really would be pushing it.
    With considerable trepidation I took on the rucksack. I had just opened it up and was subjecting the clothes’at its apex to the full consequences of the weather conditions when, thank God, a car stopped for me. A blue Datsun estate car, a Sunny, or a Cherry, or one of those—no, I know what it was—the Datsun Saviour. I scurried to the passenger door and opened it.
    ‘How far are you going?’ I said.
    The driver looked at me with consternation. ‘I’m just parking here,’ he replied.
    Oh. I moved away enabling him to complete his manoeuvre without further interference. Ahead of him another car had stopped and was parking. I really was in a most unsuitable spot. I headed back to my roadside encumbrances. The car ahead tooted its horn. It was obviously having some difficulty parking. Forlornly I went back to rummaging for waterproofs. Then the car ahead did something very strange. Quite suddenly it went into reverse and stopped alongside me. The driver leant over, wound down the passenger window and said, ‘I heard you on the radio this morning. I thought you’d be gone by now.’
    After a false start, the journey had truly begun.

5
    Who Came Fifth?
    B rendan, the saviour, was immaculately turned out in suit and tie and had absolutely no mud on him whatsoever. He’d been listening to the radio that morning and knew exactly what I was up to, and why I was doing what I was doing, which given my recent experiences, was more than I did.
    He was a toiletries salesman from Northern Ireland who had recently gained clients down in the republic. He scored well on three fronts—he was charming, he was good company and he was heading for Cavan. As his windscreen wipers worked overtime clearing the now torrential rain, we talked about life, love, politics, religion, and the rising price of deodorants. All in the lovely dry interior of his car. Bloody hell, I’d been lucky.
    Before he got to Cavan, Brendan said he needed to make a couple of business calls and he asked me if I minded. Of course not, he was my saviour. He could have asked for anything and I would have obliged. Almost. And so we sped through the rain as far as Cootehill where he sold some toiletries and I took coffee in the quaint tea-rooms. Taking coffee in a tea-room always brings me a certain amount of extra pleasure in that I feel I’m beating the system. It’s like having spaghetti in a pizza house, chicken in a steak house, or having a neck massage in a Bangkok massage parlour. We headed north to Clones, in County Monaghan, which Brendan explained was republican ‘bandit country’. I wasn’t sure how to tailor my behaviour for this area but I decided that if we were stopped by a man in a balaclava wielding a shotgun, I’d cut the light-hearted banter right down and try not to get chatting about my days in the Combined Cadet Force at school. When we got to Clones, I waited in the car whilst Brendan did his stuff in a moderately-sized convenience store. He was quite a while, which surprised me, because I figured that the one place where toiletries would be easy to sell would be a convenience store. He must have started to feel guilty because after a quarter of an hour he brought me out an ice cream, apologised and said he wouldn’t be much longer. I liked this. It was like being eight years old again. Forty minutes later we