‘Ok, Jim.’
Meeting Rupert, Who Is Not Olly
What to do? There’s Brexit, yakking away to itself with its thumbs in its waistcoat like some out-of-work barrister practising in front of the mirror in its bedroom, and I’m lying here thinking, do these people not realise that my whole existence as a semi-retired geopolitical boundary is now in question?
It turns out some of them do, though. They’re not all as thick as the neck on Barney’s best bull.
This lad turns up one day not long after the referendum looking a bit shifty – but too well-dressed for diesel-laundering.
‘Howareye?’ says me, non-committal but friendly, like.
‘Ah, hello, are you the Irish Border?’ he says. He sounded posh. ‘Only, it’s rather odd, talking to something invisible.’
‘Better than talking to a wall’, says me.
‘Yes’, he says, ‘quite so, but we wouldn’t want to …’
‘Aye, I’m only messing,’ I says. ‘What’s that in your hand there, fella?’
‘My passport. I thought that maybe you’d need to see it, you know, being a border.’
‘You’ve a lot to learn about this border, mate. You don’t need it. Nice suit, by the way.’
‘Thanks. Actually, I wanted a word. I’ve been sent on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government to … I suppose … to negotiate with you.’
‘Ok. That’s nice. I thought yous had all forgotten about me.’
‘We had. Then you tweeted that photo of the elephant and said, “There’s me at the Brexit negotiations,” and …’
‘They sent you here. I see. Well, if we’re going to be negotiating we better get to know each other. What’s your name?’
‘I’d prefer not to say.’
‘Can I call you, oh, I don’t know – Olly?’
‘What?! NO!! How did you know?’
‘What about Mr Robbins?’
‘No.’
‘If I can’t call you Olly then I need a name for you. You look like a Rupert. You look like you went to a school full of Ruperts. You carry yourself like a Jasper, or a Quentin, or a Whimpleberry, or a Rupert. Can I call you Rupert?’
‘If you must. Chatham House Rules apply.’
‘So no tweeting our discussions then, Rupert?’
‘No tweeting.’
‘Not even a wee allusion to the fact that such discussions are being mooted?’
‘No tweeting.’
‘How about if I do it as a fictional dialogue between the two of us that will be published in a book at a later date, after the time when Brexit is meant to have happened, but when it’ll probably still be dragging on tediously?’
‘No.’
‘There would be interesting digressions from our endless and pointless discussions.’
‘I’m not sure we have time for that. Brexit is quite urgent.’
‘You’re a funny man. We’ll all be here for years talking about this. 800 years of Ireland trying to leave Britain is about to be repaid by 800 years of Britain trying to leave Ireland. There’s no rush. Alright, Rupert, you go first.’
‘We’d like to propose a range of measures which would mean that there is no return to the border, I mean to the you, of the past … Are you ok?’
‘Sorry, I fell asleep. You’re being boring. Did you bring ice cream?’
‘Ice cream?’
‘I can’t negotiate without ice cream.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I am not. Would you head in to Newry there and get two 99s and then we can negotiate when you get back.’
Rupert got lost in Newry. Maybe he’d have fared better as Olly, or maybe he just didn’t know his way around. The 99s were a bit drippy by the time he came back.
‘So as I was saying …’
‘Yeah, Olly, sorry to interrupt but you dropped some ice cream on your suit there.’
‘It’s Rupert. And bugger.’
‘Dry cleaning is the only solution, Olly/Rupert.’
‘Can we please get back to the negotiations? Now we’ve been looking at other borders around the world as possible models for how a post-Brexit you could function seamlessly and frictionlessly …’
I drifted off a bit while he talked.
Jean is a friend of mine from way back. During the darkest of days she’d stop by and we’d put the world to rights and we’d despair and laugh together about the general state of things. After the Good Friday Agreement we ended up talking about normal stuff – vets’ bills, the number of Maltesers in a packet, how to avoid PowerPoint presentations, that kind of thing. We’ve seen good times and bad times. She’d be a philosophical kind of person, in a direct sort of a way. Rupert was still talking when Jean came along, walking her wee dog, and I thought, Jean will help me out here. Rupert’s a nice lad but he talks like a dishwasher manual sometimes.
‘Hello, Border.’
‘How’s it going, Jean?’
‘Woof.’
‘How’s it going, wee dog?’
‘Who’s your man there, talking to himself?’
‘He’s talking to me, Jean.’
‘But you’re not listening.’
‘I wouldn’t say that. Jean, this is Olly.’
‘Rupert. We said my name is Rupert.’
‘Do you not know your own name?’
‘It’s a codename, Jean. Olly wants Rupert to be his codename.’
‘Olly’s a fine name.’
‘Can we stick to Rupert?’
‘Nice suit,
