Under the Duvet Page 16

  As for myself, the thing that I was most worried about on my return from exile was the goldfish-bowlness of Ireland. The way if you sneeze in Tara Street, by the time you get off the Dart in Dun Laoghaire, someone will ask you how your cold is. And it didn’t matter how much people boasted that Ireland was highly sophisticated and cosmopolitan now, that very often you could be living next door to someone for – ooh – could be up to two weeks without being invited in for a cup of tea, I wasn’t convinced.

  Sure enough, within days of moving into our new house, I was on my way down to the post office when I was accosted by a woman I didn’t know from a bar of soap. ‘I was passing your house and that was a perfectly good breadbin you threw out there,’ she greeted me with. ‘Perfectly good. Any charity would have been delighted with it. Criminal waste, that’s what it is. Criminal.’ Against all expectation, instead of wanting to tell her to shag off and mind her own business, I was strangely touched. In London it seems people don’t care if it’s dismembered bodies you’re throwing out, just so long as they don’t have to make eye contact with you. I found myself explaining how the breadbin had managed to contract some superhuman strain of mould that no amount of scrubbing would shift. ‘I’d have appreciated the chance to find out,’ she said wistfully, flexing her hands. I assured her that the next time she would. Now I bump into her regularly and her opening gambit is always something like, ‘I see you were away for a couple of days there. Cork, I believe?’ Or ‘What was in the parcel you got from Germany? It looked like books but I couldn’t be certain.’ I haven’t a clue how she manages to monitor me so thoroughly – despite my beady-eyed surveillance, I’ve never once been able to spot her lying in the hedge with her long-range lens. I love meeting her, she knows so much about me that there’s always a chance I’ll find out some surprise information about myself. When I couldn’t find my last-year’s swimming togs, I nearly asked her if she knew where I’d left them.

  But what I appreciate most about living in Ireland is the Random Visitor Factor. For people who’ve never lived in London, it’s hard to understand what a big banana is made of house calls there. Visits are arranged months in advance and because of the vast distances to be covered they’re treated like a great race migration. Nobody just ‘drops in’. Nobody but weirdos, that is. With the result that if the doorbell ever rang unexpectedly, my flatmates and I used to look at each other in horror. ‘Hide!’ was the customary reaction. Although more often than not it just turned out to be a pizza delivery at the wrong address.

  But here, if the bell rings unexpectedly, it’s exciting. There’s always the chance that it’s not the itinerants. (Although there’s a very good chance that it is the itinerants. News of Himself has obviously spread far and wide through the travelling community. He’s forever coming in from the door, shaking his head and saying things like, ‘It’s very sad. The man who was just at the door, his mother has died and he didn’t even have the fare to her funeral. And what a coincidence! That’s the fifth person today with the same problem. And who would have thought that train fares to Galway would be so expensive? C’mere, have you any money? They’ve cleaned me out.’)

  And not only do we get visitors, but we’re also invited to people’s homes, and I’m afraid this is the one area of our reintegration that Himself and myself fall down on. See, the way it is in England, if someone says to be at their flat for dinner at seven-thirty, what they mean is you’re to come at twenty to eight. But in Ireland, if someone says to be at their flat for dinner at seven-thirty, what they mean is you’re to come at a quarter past nine. At the earliest. I knew this, at least I thought I did. So the first time we were invited to an Irish person’s home for our evening meal, I insisted that we be a full half-hour late – while Himself frenziedly pawed the ground and champed at the bit and begged to be allowed to get going. And when we arrived neither the host nor hostess was home from work yet.

  The fifteen anxious minutes spent waiting in the car taught us a hard lesson, so the next time we were invited out we were an entire hour late. And arrived just in time to get the woman out of the shower. Dripping, she came down the stairs in her dressing-gown and told us which cupboard in the kitchen we could find the Hula Hoops in. I was mortified, I’d never felt so anal in all my life.

  But I’m getting better. I’ve worked my way up to being an hour and a half late, and God willing, I’m hoping it won’t be too long before I can manage an entire two hours. And then all traces of my time in England will have disappeared. You’d nearly think I’d never left Ireland at all.

  First published in Irish Tatler, May 1999.

  Psycho Magnet

  Since I’ve passed my driving test I don’t go on public transport so often, which is a terrible shame.

  Something strange happened to me on a Thursday night recently. It was about eleven o’clock and I was waiting to get the bus from Blackrock in the suburbs into the middle of the great metropolis of Dublin. I waited the regulation twenty minutes and wondered why it wasn’t raining. Eventually, a bus turned the corner and lumbered towards me. It was a number 45, the bus that plies the route between Bray, Co. Wicklow and the city of Dublin, and I marvelled in wonder. You don’t see these beasts often, they’re almost like 46As in their shyness and elusiveness. (A sure sign that someone is going bananas is when they often talk about getting 46As.)

  I flagged it down and, to my great surprise, it stopped. My experience is that Dublin bus-drivers have a great sense of ‘fun’. And nothing is as much ‘fun’ as speeding right past a bus stop full of people who’ve been waiting half an hour in the freezing cold, leaving them staring after the bus in outrage, the sounds of the bus-driver’s hysterical laughter and ‘Yiz poor eejits, if yiz could only see yer faces!’ floating in its wake.

  On I clambered. Because I wasn’t sure what the exact fare was (I would normally get the 46A), I just waved money in the driver’s general direction and said, ‘Town, please.’ The driver had a slightly hunted air about him, and said, ‘How much do you normally pay?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I don’t often come this route.’

  ‘Usually go on the 46A?’ he asked, giving me a funny look. ‘OK, give me a pound and we’ll call it quits.’

  I didn’t give this exchange a moment’s thought. I’m used to the I-make-it-up-as-I-go-along approach of Dublin bus-drivers to their fare schedule. About a week before, for three days in a row I was charged three different fares for exactly the same route. On day one I was charged £1.10, so the next day I proferred £1.10 only to have 10p returned to me. On day three I handed over £1.00, only to be berated for trying to swizz the driver and didn’t everyone know the fare was £1.20? I find this spontaneous method of pricing charming and quirky. (Except when they shout at me and embarrass me in front of the whole bus.)

  On the Thursday night in question, the bus was almost empty, just one other passenger on the lower deck. I sat down and began to read my book, and moments later the woman who was the other passenger got out of her seat and came to sit beside me. ‘I’m scared,’ she said.

  My heart sank. Not again.

  I am some kind of looper magnet. It doesn’t happen to anyone else I know. But poor, tormented, demented people seem to find me a kindred spirit. I simply cannot make a journey on public transport without being joined by a lunatic. (And I’m not just talking about the times I get the bus with Himself.)

  This is what usually happens. Picture the scene: the top deck of a bus, only one passenger on it (me), sitting quietly, reading her book, bothering no one. Up the stairs lurches another person. They look around, survey all forty-three empty seats, and decide that the nicest one of all is the one that’s right next to me. They plump themselves down not so much next to me as on me, their left thigh entirely obscuring my right one, my shoulder dislocating itself against the glass from the weight of their body pushing against me. Usually they seem to have dispensed with the rudiments of personal hygiene, if the ripe aroma that emanates from them i
s anything to go by.

  And then it starts. ‘They’re all spies, you know,’ they tell me. If I’ve heard that once I’ve heard it a thousand times. Or ‘They’re trying to bleed my brain, they’re sending messages through the plug sockets.’ Or ‘I see spaceships landing in my neighbour’s garden every Monday night.’ Or ‘They’re trying to brainwash me through the lamp-posts.’ Etc, etc.

  ‘I’m scared,’ the woman said again. I turned to look at her – at least as much as I could because she was so close to me there wasn’t much room for manoeuvring – and she didn’t look too bad. She was probably in her forties and had a scrubbed, innocent little face that I took as proof positive that she was round the bend. No normal person would look so shiny. But she was dressed conventionally enough. She wasn’t barefoot or wearing a dinner jacket over her nightdress like the last one I’d had.

  ‘Why are you scared?’ I asked, and braced myself for talk of spies, brainwashing and plug sockets.

  ‘It’s the driver,’ she whispered. ‘He’s going very fast, and he’s going all the wrong way.’ I made soothing noises, because even though I wished she’d go away and let me read my book, I couldn’t help but sympathize with her. While I hadn’t exactly ever been in the ‘I see spaceships in my neighbour’s garden’ category, there were times when I’d been laid so low with the depression that I was fully convinced I was losing my marbles.

  ‘He drove through Monkstown Village, you know,’ she confided in a little-girl voice. ‘And that’s not on the route, sure it isn’t.’ Indeed it wasn’t, and I marvelled at the colour-fulness and the detail of her delusions.

  ‘I don’t think he’s a real driver,’ she told me quietly. ‘I think he’s an impostor.’

  ‘I suppose you think he’s a spy,’ I said kindly, keen to let her know I was on her side.

  She drew back from me sharply. ‘A spy?’ she hooted. ‘Why would I think that?’ She studied me carefully. ‘Are you all right?’

  She was obviously having a moment of lucidity, I realized. It often happened. For the duration of my journey we sat in uncomfortable silence, wedged shoulder to shoulder, while other passengers got on and off.

  What felt like a long, long time later, my stop finally approached. I murmured ‘Excuse me’ to the scaredy cat and wriggled past her to get out. As I stood in the aisle waiting for the bus to stop, there was a glamorous, short-skirted, blonde-haired wan ahead of me, undeniably en route to a wild night out. In the midst of my usual pang that I’d never again get away with wearing a skirt as short as hers, I overheard her having a conversation with the bus-driver. ‘Do you go down Nassau Street?’ she asked.

  Even though he was rattling at very high speed past Merrion Square, he took his eyes off the road to flick her a haunted, beseiged look. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, in a hoarse, panicky voice. ‘I don’t know the names of any of the roads. I don’t know the fares. I keep losing my way and going off the route. I’m only new.’

  I turned around and looked at the shiny-faced woman. Suddenly she looked very, very normal and I felt very, very ashamed.

  First published in Irish Tatler, March 1998.

  Slacking Off is Hard to Do

  Blah, blah, blah, Celtic Tiger… blah, blah, house prices… blah, traffic gridlock… blah, working very hard.

  At the moment there’s such a great wealth of opportunities available in Ireland that anyone with a job is going round hollow-eyed and exhausted. From cleaners to pensions analysts, we’re wrecked. I’m not complaining. Well, I’m not exactly complaining. I was one of the 50,000 who emigrated in 1986 looking for work and it’s great that we have more than enough work to go round. And yet, and yet… I can’t help thinking of the old days, the old art forms. Like Dossing at Work. Will its likes never be here again?

  Does anyone remember the days when you’d arrive fifteen minutes late, take another fifteen minutes to drink a cup of coffee and read the paper from cover to cover, then you’d ring your flatmate, your boyfriend and your mother. As soon as it looked like any real work was looming, you’d ‘accidentally’ break the photocopier, then do up a countdown-to-payday chart?

  Anyone? Anyone at all remember? Because I do.

  I hear people complaining that there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all they need to do. And I agree that time behaves differently within the confines of a workplace, that it’s not governed by the same laws as time in the rest of the universe. But a couple of years back when I worked in an office, my colleagues and I were fully convinced that time slows down in a workplace. We insisted to each other (and anyone else who’d listen) that if we looked at the office clock at twelve-thirty, we could wait a full half-hour before looking again only to find it was still twelve-thirty. We eagerly anticipated the day when some prominent mathematician would do a seminal paper on the syndrome, and then people would be sorry they’d laughed at us!

  But it never happened. Out of nowhere we’ve been swamped with work and the whole time-mutation thing has been subverted.

  Freelancing and being self-employed have contributed to the decline. There’s nothing to stop anyone spending half the morning surreptitiously reading a novel in a desk-drawer, and jumping guiltily whenever anyone comes into the room, but when you’re self-employed, this kind of carry-on is going to make you look like a bit of a gom.

  Or when most of your take-home pay is in productivity bonus, there isn’t the same appeal in telling your caller that your systems are down and that you’ll call them back (and then not doing so, of course).

  I also blame the electronic office. We’ve become so comfortable with e-mail that it’s customary to send them even to people in the office right next to you. In the old days you’d get off your seat, walk the four yards and while away twenty pleasant minutes insisting that your colleague had INDEED been out on the sauce the night before, you could tell by the state of him, just look at his eyes… But it’s just not the same with e-mail.

  So, before the old ways are lost for ever, I’m going to go on record and share with you some of the best ways to Doss at Work.

  I work from home now (which has its own misery. I spent days sneakily reading a novel in a drawer, until I copped on), but when I worked in an office, food was central to our distractions. The day usually kicked off with everyone relating what they’d had for dinner the night before. Then, discussions of what we’d have for our lunch began just as soon as we’d finished eating the sandwich we’d brought in for it (never later than eleven). The pros and cons of Marks & Spencer versus Burger King versus the funny Italian place on the corner were furiously debated. And no sooner was lunch out of the way than the exploration of what we’d have at three-thirty began. KitKats or Cornettos? Magnums or Mars Bars? One of the most coveted duties was going to the bank to collect petty cash. We used to fight over it like dogs with a bone, because on most days you’d briskly conclude your business in the bank in ten minutes, which left you free to wander around the shops at your leisure. Then an hour and a half later you’d finally arrive back at work – stashing your purchases with the receptionist to be retrieved later – and burst into the office in a lather of indignation. ‘The queues at that bank. It’s ridiculous. Simply RIDICULOUS.’

  But when it came to really taking our mind off things, there was no greater joy than that of a fire drill. We were usually given warning that it was going to happen, so we’d spend most of the morning sitting at our cleared desks, our jackets and bags poised to go. Then the minute the clanging started, we were propelled from our seats and pushing and sniggering our way out the door. The idea was that we’d gather at a muster station for the fire monitor to check that we weren’t trapped in the ‘burning’ building, but instead most people took advantage of the confusion and disappeared for a quick pint or legged it to Boots to try on nail varnish.

  Nowadays, even if the fire was real, there’d be some poor schmuck on a short-term contract who’d insist on staying at his burning desk, trying to finish a report for the following morning
’s meeting.

  Another great ploy, I hear, is the ‘bomb scare’. This works best in a retail or catering environment. A customer leaves a package behind. Now, it’s clear to you that it’s their gym bag or that evening’s tea, but you don’t tell your boss that. Oh no! Instead you start making noises about ‘suspicious packages’ and not wanting to get too close to it. Next thing you know everyone’s standing on the street for an indefinite time until you get the all clear.

  Extreme weather conditions can be diverting. In the glorious summer of 1995, someone managed to unearth an obscure Health and Safety regulation that said if the temperature in the office rose above a certain level, we were allowed to go home. So one of us (me?) brought in a thermometer, which we held in a boiling kettle, then presented to our boss. ‘See! One hundred degrees. We’re off to Soho Square.’

  Another few suggestions for getting through the day: try barricading yourself into a cubicle in the ladies’ and pretending the bolt is stuck. You could get a good fifteen minutes to yourself before they send in a man with a screwdriver. Get bad period ‘pains’ three times a month. (For best results, ideally you need firstly to be a woman, and secondly to have an easily embarrassed male boss.) Do vulgar anagrams of the managing director’s name – it’s always uplifting. As is the birthday of a colleague, because even when you hate the person, you can kill at least half an hour standing around a cake and saying, ‘So? Any nice presents?’

  But take care – attempts to alleviate the tedium can backfire. Once, when we just couldn’t bear any more of Tuesday, one of us clambered on a chair and fast forwarded the office clock. Delighted, everyone streamed out ten minutes early, which was great. Until the next morning, when we were all bollocked for being late. So remember, when you move the hands of the clock forward, don’t forget to change them back.