women’s eyes are not so much mad as soulful. I tried soulful but it’s much more difficult than mad. Soulful made me look like a soppy kids’ TV presenter, or sort of David Cassidyish. I decided to stick with mad. I carried this mad thing a bit far on my first meeting with some real Irish parents. They’re Irish, I thought, they’ll appreciate that I’m a madcap lad. At Sunday lunch I asked for the bone from a shoulder of lamb4 and started to gnaw away at it like a frenzied puppy, grunting quietly to myself and now and then looking up to check the admiring glances. This didn’t seem too outrageous an act of madness. I’d done it for years in my parents’ house, where the ability to eat like a dog, drink like a fish, piss like a horse and shit like a bull elephant was positively encouraged and seen as a sign of manliness in me and two brothers.
Father, in a put-on voice, said ‘You have the manners of a Viking.’ I acted mock hurt, but took it as a compliment. The Viking thing gave me a little niche, especially as the Parents lived near Waterford, an area of continuous Norse invasion in the ninth and tenth centuries. I saw myself as a one-man rape-and-pillage unit, though without the rape. A sort of sensitive Viking, who would only pillage after asking nicely first. And, being a nice English lad, I’d queue for it, of course.
11.30 am
The Dublin Viking Experience and Feast. Ah, well, I just couldn’t resist. Plus I was curious to see what the Flying-Jacketed Soothsayer thought of it – alas, he is nowhere to be seen. The entrance is via a gift shop. I go into a very dark lecture theatre. A film is showing about the Vikings, narrated by that deep-voiced bloke who did the public information films in the seventies. There are only two others there. Then a real-life Viking appears on the bow of a ship, and starts shouting at us, telling us to row. It starts to get windy and spray is flying about. Someone offstage has just thrown a bucket of water over me. The little Viking (because he is
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