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

in shock. Where had this come from? This, from a man who had been folded up on top of his bar stool for the past quarter of an hour. Three questions troubled all of us. How had he followed what was going on, how had he managed his first intelligible sentence of the evening, and why did he care who came fifth?
    ‘Who came fifth?’ He repeated his extraordinary question but this time he felt it would be better bellowed. For the first time that night, (and I suspect for a number of years) the bar’s customers were completely silent. No one knew what crossing of wires in the drunk’s brain had caused this enquiry, when ‘Who came second?’ had been the more relevant and ‘Help’ the most suitable. More importantly there was silence because no one actually knew who came fifth. When discussions finally got under way to solve this mystery Brendan and I decided it was a signal to turn in for the night. Our ‘one for the road’ had turned into ‘three for the road’ and there was a danger of granting the road too much respect.
    In the morning, I successfully completed a shower in a much quicker time than that taken for the previous day’s explanation of how to use it, and got dressed with extreme difficulty standing on the narrow stretch of carpet between bed and door. This was quite literally a bedroom. Just room for a bed. Any additional space was there simply to accommodate the opening of the door. As I headed on to the landing, the sudden introduction to wide open spaces frightened me as it would an agoraphobic.
    At the foot of the stairs I was a little taken aback to see that the fridge had gone, but it hadn’t been stolen, as the lady of the house painstakingly explained at breakfast.
    ‘I……put it……in…the…………shop……for…………safety.’
    I wasn’t sure what this meant but decided that I would find out sooner by not asking. I was joined at my table by the only other guest, a travelling salesman who had one eye which looked at you and one which didn’t. The trick was deciding which one to focus on. Whilst eating my cereal I plumped for the left eye but by the time I was on to my toast I had switched allegiance to the right, although I was starting to have doubts about that In the end I gave up and focused on his nose, which was quite an unnatural thing to do and had an adverse effect on my appetite. The man was a souvenir salesman and he spent most of breakfast moaning about how souvenirs were hard to sell when it was rainy and cold, as it was at the moment. I felt that it was more likely to be an ocular thing which was frustrating sales.
    The previous night Brendan had offered to take me the forty miles or so to Letterkenny after he’d done his morning’s business in Donegal Town, but after that he would be heading back to Northern Ireland, and once again I would have to subject myself to the uncertainties of the roadside. Whilst he made his morning calls I had enough time to visit the tourist office and establish the best method of getting out to Tory Island. I was told that a mail boat left every morning at 9.00 am from a place called Bunbeg, and so reaching there became my goal for the day.
    As it turned out, my fridge had been placed ‘for safety’ in the butcher’s shop next door. Why, I don’t know, because when I went round to collect it I found that ‘safety’ had involved it being set down on the customer’s side of the counter in a totally unmanned shop. I coughed to gain attention in the hope that the butcher might appear in anticipation of a major pork chop sale, but to no avail. So I lifted the fridge on to its trolley and headed out of the shop, at which point the butcher emerged, ‘Is that your fridge?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Oh. Very good.’
    My God, security was sophisticated here. If the fridge hadn’t been mine and I hadn’t been able to come up with that clever answer, my life of crime would have been over.
    ‘How much did you pay for that?’ the butcher