being the fall guy. The Englishman was never anything but maddeningly sensible – you didn’t care what he said or did – the Scotsman sort of sat on the fence, unsure whether to be daft or boring, and the Irishman, the kind of fellow you’d probably get on with if you met him in a pub, would happily humiliate himself, shoot himself, jump out of an aeroplane without a parachute, or refuse to get off with Raquel Welch, in the interests of the narrative. For a while I had a theory that the Irishman in the Irish jokes was actually taking the piss out of the Englishman’s caution (the subvert-from-within philosophy). But I suppose that wasn’t what got the laughs on Saturday evening TV shows like The Comedians where blubber-necked walruses in dinner suits with big lollipop microphones and accents like gravy would entertain a nation (or rather pander to our prejudices), a nation moreover still stuck somewhere in the late 1950s (apart from those few lucky fuckers who actually had a shag and an acid tab in 1967).8
And then, of course, there were the bombs that I’d hear about on the news and not quite understand, bombs that were to do with Ireland. Why England was at war with Ireland (and ‘Ulster’) I could never work out (I knew it was war because the British army were always there in the TV pictures – I read all the war comics so knew the score). In many people’s consciousness bombs and Ireland thus became synonymous. Years later, at the end of the eighties, a paranoid mad distant relation tried to stop me going on a weekend jaunt to Dublin with my mates saying, pleadingly, ‘Them Paddies’ll bomb yer if yer don’t watch out!’
At Holyhead, in the cold flinty early morning light, we were one of the first cars in the queue. We both stared out at a shard of fading orange in the clouds. Go and see your family, I said, seemingly on some kind of repatriation mission. We got out of the car and went to check the ferry times. It would cost him a tenner to come back over. He waddled over to the phone to call his sister, who lived down in the southwest, to see if she would wire him twenty pounds to a bank somewhere in Dublin. It all sounded a bit elaborate to me. But the sister wasn’t there, only the husband, and he didn’t want to do anything until the sister came back. I didn’t understand. Someone in your family asks you for twenty quid – is it that big a decision? (Mad Relation: ‘Yeah but Tim, what if the IRA got their hands on the money, they’d be using it to buy missiles from Libya and that.’) I walked around Duty Free while he sat in the car trying to think what he should do. I got back in and handed over twenty quid, obviously expecting never to see it again. He must have read my mind.
‘You think you’ll never see this money again don’t you, but I promise you as soon as I get in touch with my sister I’ll get her to wire me some money and I’ll send you it straight back – Yeah, I’ll send you it in a couple of weeks, if you give me your address.’ I scribbled it on the back of an envelope and gave it to him.
On the ferry we went down to the front. It was like a big shopping centre with huge cathedral-like windows and an American-style cocktail bar with a Budweiser neon sign. Whatever happened to boats that actually looked like boats, I thought. In the gift shop were some of the Singing Leprechaun’s captive brothers and sisters. I pressed the belly of one of them and a sweet tune rang out. It seemed somehow familiar – where had I heard it before? Then it came to me – it was the famous old ballad, ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’. The Hitcher wandered off and I tried to get some kip, thinking of garages, Irishwomen and Terry (I hoped he was regretful but guessed not – not his style, he’d be tucked up in bed sound asleep with a bellyful of good beer and a head full of crosswords).
About an hour later the Hitcher came back, I bought him a coffee and we discussed his plans. He hoped he’d never go back to England now. He was feeling positive. We stopped in Dún Laoghaire and he phoned his cousins in Tallaght to tell them he was coming. I then drove to Dundrum in south Dublin and stopped outside the big 60s-style shopping centre where busy consumers were going about their business. What are you going to do now? he asked. I’m going to have breakfast with my friends. He asked me about them. Oh they’re just a family of crazy and beautiful single women who live near the foot of the mountains and talk a lot, I laughed, sadistically. He looked at me pleadingly but I said he’d better go. Get a bus or something, I said. No, I’ll save my money he said, it can’t be more than five miles or so. I pointed him in the direction of Tallaght and waved goodbye. I knew I’d never see him again. Normally in these circumstances you feel some sort of sorrow after the bond that’s been forged. OK, there was a bit of that but I was also rather glad to see the back of the miserable bugger. Not much like Kerouac in On the Road, is it? I’d like to know how he got on, though. I hope he did stay in Ireland, maybe working in a pub in Mayo or even earning a bit of dosh on the back of the Dublin boom. Chances are, though, that he was lured back to England by the promise of a chilly bedsit and semi-regular employment, and the possibility of forgetting his dreams and just surviving on his own.
1 o2/a (m) = a x f/m – m = me, f = fuckup quotient, a = amount of things to be fucked up, o = other people.
2 Does this make me sound like some romantic delta blues guitarist or Gram Parsons figure who rejected his family’s wishes for him to become respectable?
3 And there goes the lucrative Brummie market.
4 Product placement cash might offset the costs of reproducing song lyrics.
5 Actually it was as a fly that Goldblum became one with not Geena Davis. Thinking about it, Nigel Mansell would have made an interesting dictator and Noriega a great racing driver – Emerson Fittipaldi and Mario Andretti had similar skin conditions. They also might have made a great double act – Morecambe and Wise, Abbott and Costello, Mansell and Noriega. The ‘I Love Nigel’ show: Noriega: Let’s have some cocaine! Mansell: Mmm – that’s interesting. (Cue laughter and curtain call)
6 !
7 Imagine if all these Irish-born people who’ve left Ireland could vote, like British expats can. The political landscape would be turned on its head.
8 Like Mick Jagger and the people who thought up The Magic Roundabout TV show.
Notes on a Cultural Tour of Dublin Dundrum to Temple Bar
After arriving in Dublin the plan was to have a quick wash and a bite to eat with my friends, the Macs, then start going through the Yellow Pages looking for Opel (the Irish brand of Vauxhall) dealers. I already had a few leads to check up on, people I’d spoken to in London before I left. Then Sarah Mac looked me in the eye and said, ‘Do you really want to spend all afternoon driving around Dublin trying to sell that car?’
(Of course I did. That was why I was here.)
‘Nah,
