Making It Up As I Go Along (35 page)

I am back from the Australian tour, where I met
loads and loads of lovely readers and the weather was lovely and I went UTTERLY BERSERK in the
Alannah Hill shops.

Himself and I flew out of Dublin on 27 Feb and
landed in Melbourne approx a week later – this time-difference thing is ridiculous! Surely
something can be done about it?

No direct flight from Dublin to Melbourne sadly,
but via London, then Singapore. I behaved myself in the London airport but by the time I got to
Singapore it was after a fourteen-hour flight and I was badly gone in the head and seeking
something –
obviously some sort of spiritual balm, something to mend the hole in
the soul – so I went to a chemist.

I love chemists at the best of times, but this
one promised Chinese remedies and somehow, along with Korean ginseng and Tiger Balm rub for sore
muscles – ‘Not made with real tigers?’ I asked the woman sternly, but she
elected not to speak English at that particular moment – I bought a jar of powdered
Siberian deer antler. (Cripes! Horrible thought! The balm couldn’t
actually
have
been made with tigers, could it? I mean, surely that’s illegal? But after the deer antler
situation …?)

Anyway, I don’t know how it happened, but I
ended up being persuaded by the lady to purchase the jar of Siberian deer antler
powder. According to its highly dodgy-looking packaging, it serves ‘as
a remedy for weakness, memory loss and general aches and pains’. But guilt? The guilt
about the deer? No. No remedy for that.

Back on the plane, landed in Melbourne, all sunny
and warm. I had a few days to recover from jet lag before starting work and it was GLORIOUS.
I’ve been to Melbourne before but never for long and only in the middle of frantic work,
so I never had time to appreciate it.

It is
fabulous
and they were getting
ready for the Commonwealth Games and they had all these beautiful fish sculptures along the
Yarra (the river, handy thing to know if you are ever on
Eggheads
). Also really
fabulous grub. Also shops. Bought things. Oh God, yes. Alannah Hill. Lovely.

Right! Injuries. Himself suffered a scratch to
his eyeball in a bizarre contact-lens-applying incident and needed antibiotic drops. Me? My
trusty black sandals, the sandals I’ve had for a long time and wear for walking about,
buying clothes and general enjoyment, suddenly turned on me and gave me a footful of blisters!
Fecking agony! And confusion! Why now? I’ve had them for a long, reliable time, and God
knows they were bought for comfort, not beauty (black solid-looking wedge slides, really quite
unattractive), and frankly if they don’t pull their socks up, they won’t be coming
to Canada and the States for the book tour there.

Plenty more sandals in the sea!

I visited a chemist (the same one where I bought
Himself’s drops – by the end of the four days in Melbourne, myself and the
pharmacist were on first-name terms) and bought special expensive blister plasters, but they
didn’t work! They peeled off, causing extra agony.

Back to the chemist, where I purchased antiseptic
powder,
then I had to change into my ‘good’ turquoise Chie
Mihara sandals in order to walk about Melbourne. Ridiculous. Those sandals were specially bought
for being on the telly!

Right then! Work began in Hobart, Tasmania.
I’ve always wanted to go, and although the visit was short I’d love to go back.
People at the reading were great. Also, the food was very delicious.

Back to Melbourne, where hundreds of enthusiastic
readers – the most wonderful people – turned up to the events, and walking home with
Himself after a great night in the Victorian Arts Centre we crossed the bridge and they were
doing a rehearsal for the opening night of the Commonwealth Games, with fireworks and some funny
business with the fish sculptures, and I felt extremely blessed to be there for it and
incredibly lucky and happy.

Next stop Brisbane, a great night in Riverbend
Books, then up the coast to Noosa, more nice people, then the weekend in Sydney.

This is where it gets really, really good. I mean
it was fabulous before, but wait till you hear! We were staying in the Four Seasons, which is my
most favourite hotel in the world anyway. But not only were we staying in the Sydney Four
Seasons, but a very beautiful, kindly employee of the Four Seasons – Kaarin Lindsay
– upgraded us to a suite! On the thirty-fourth floor! With a view of the opera house! I
mean! How lucky am I?

Oh God, it was glorious! Huge and beautiful and a
bathroom full of wonderful things, including excellently roomy shower caps.

Regular users of hotels may have noticed how
small shower caps tend to be – I have an abnormally small head and sometimes even I find
them a squeeze – but you could wear a bucket on your head and the Four Seasons shower caps
would still fit you!

Funnily enough, we were staying in the Royal
Suite – and indeed being treated like royalty – and didn’t the Queen arrive!
Yes, the Queen of England! Not actually to the Four Seasons,
looking to be
let into the Royal Suite and being told to feck off, that it was already occupied, but to
Sydney, to open the new bit of the opera house, before going on to Melbourne to open the Games.

It was gas! I was looking out of the window on
the Monday morning and saw throngs of people sitting in rows by the opera house.
‘What’s going on?’ I wondered. Next thing, some woman in a ginormous hat,
accompanied by some lanky bloke, got up to make a speech. It was Queenie!

Anyway, she got her revenge on me for stealing
her hotel room. See, all the roads had to be closed off for her, so the people of Sydney who
were coming to my literary lunch at the Four Seasons were badly delayed. Nevertheless, when they
finally got there, we had a great time.

However, being delayed by the Queen was just one
of the many examples of the havoc Mercury being in retrograde in Virgo caused this month. And it
went on for the whole shagging month, until the 25th. Examples include: me ringing my mother on
12 March and singing ‘Happy Birthday’ down the phone, when her birthday wasn’t
until the next day. Himself’s electronic organizer dying and losing all info, so we
couldn’t phone people. Also, we couldn’t send or get emails. Also, the alarm clock
on it began waking us at random times – one morning I was out of the bed and showered and
dressed before Himself managed to tell me it was only 4.35 a.m. and we weren’t due to get
up for another hour and a half! Feck! Oh,
mes amies
, feck! Sleep is a precious enough
commodity on a book tour, without this sort of a caper!

Next and final stop, Perth. Two gorgeous reader
events, with time for a visit to David Jones in between them.

And then home, where the garden is finally being
‘done’. After living with what basically amounts to a bog for the past nine years,
we have finally taken the plunge and are getting the whole fecking thing
concreted over and turned into a car park. (Well, it’ll involve gravel and a decking and
that sort of thing, but it will be grass-free.)

With all the rain, it’s like the First
World War out there. Like the Battle of the effing Somme. Mud, mud and more shagging mud. A
muddy walkway connects the front door with the kitchen, random men abound, and in an attempt to
ward off any stress-generated illnesses, I’ve taken the powdered deer antler. (My
reasoning is, what can the poor deer do about it now?)

Right, football! As you know, Himself’s
football team are called Watford and they never seem to do very well. But it’s all
different this season. They have a new manager (yes, yet another new one) – Adrian
‘Betty’ Boothroyd – who is young and keen as mustard and has brought together
a team of young renegades and turned them into a winning machine. (He is like Spencer Tracy in
Boys Town
, only not ginger.)

Watford keep winning and it is
so lovely
not to be the fecking underdog, for once. It is delightful to be able to ‘lord’ it
over other teams, it is
great
when dodgy ref decisions are in Watford’s favour,
it is glorious when the other team play their hearts out and still lose.

The bad news, however, is that Watford are in
very real danger of being promoted to the Premeer Division, where they will have to knock heads
with the likes of Chelsea and Man U, who have buckets of cash behind them, and they will be the
underdog again and will have the shit kicked out of them all season, and we will be terribly
despondent again and they will be demoted at the end of the season. Oh dear.

Finally, my mother. Remember about her and the
Missoni coats last month? Well, I was barely home from Australia when
she
rang me, all agog, to tell me that ‘that Missoni crowd’ have brought out a perfume.
Gas.

Also, I didn’t tell you about her and the
satellite navigation in the new car. The day we went into town to look at wedding dresses for
Rita-Anne, Mam sat in front and was bedazzled – yes, quite bedazzled – by
Himself’s sat-nav. She simply couldn’t get over it, she marvelled and marvelled at
it, especially when it knew the name of her road and when it spoke to Himself, telling him that
when he’d dropped Mam off, to turn right, up Ashton Park. ‘It’s like
magic,’ she kept saying. And then it was only one quick logical step for her to decide
that it was proof of the existence of God.

Since I’ve got back, most of her
conversations with me have been about what she calls ‘the talking map’. She said she
had met Anne O’Byrne at bridge and told her about it and actually Anne O’Byrne had
‘heard tell of it’. Clearly a sophisticated woman, a woman of the world. She’d
never
seen
one, mind, but she knew about it.

Then Mam wanted to know if Dad could get one for
his car. And when we were talking about going to Aughrim for dinner, trying out the place where
R-A and Jimmy are getting married, and I expressed anxiety about driving there as I was
unfamiliar with the route, she screeched, eyes a-bulge at my stupidity, ‘But what are you
worried about? Haven’t you got the talking map?’

Previously unpublished.

Busy month. Book (
Anybody Out There
) out
in Ireland, then out in the UK. Doing much publicity and readings. All very nice, esp. as the
book went to No 1 in both countries, thank you very much.

I had a ‘fabulous’ launch party in
London in the Sanderson Hotel, which I was v. anxious about, as I hate having parties. I spend
two hours before kick-off a nervous wreck, convinced that no one will come and that I have no
friends, but lots and lots of wonderful people came – and the best bit! Bobbi Brown did
goodie bags! Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff!

I got a BEAUTIFUL lip gloss in Rose (which Ema
subsequently tried to steal from me in Prague, but we tussled for ages and eventually I won
– not seemly to win a wrestling match with a six-year-old, I know, but I’m very fond
of that lip gloss), also a magnificent blusher.

Then, the following night, at a reading in
Waterstones, Bobbi Brown did makeovers and there was a raffle where the prize was one of their
glorious train cases crammed – yes, CRAMMED,
mes amies
– with Bobbi Brown
goodies.

It was my job to graciously hand it over to the
lucky winner, and I almost didn’t. In fact, I nearly gave her a shove, then broke into a
run, heading for the hills. However, at the last moment, I managed to behave like an adult.

Then we all went to Prague,
even Caitríona and Seán Ferguson came from New York, and Mags and Eileen came as well
as the rest of the Keyes family and stayed at the (non-fancy but nice) Savoy Hotel: helpful
staff, comfortable rooms and delicious breakfasts – at least the reports from those who
were able to get up for them say so. (I didn’t get up. I find hotel breakfast rooms a bit
much, what with it being early in the morning. Just too many men roaming about with plates of
scrambled eggs – or worse still, fried. I can’t say why, but they turn my stomach.
The smell, the yellowness. I’d rather curl up in bed and gnaw on a dry crust which
I’d stolen from dinner the previous night and secreted under my pillow.)

Niall had his birthday party on the Saturday
night in Lávka. (Famed nightclub, which was much patronized during Niall and
Ljiljana’s wedding some years ago, the legendary time that Suzanne ‘broke’
Tadhg. Basically she drank him under the table and at 7 a.m. he had to admit defeat and stagger
back to the hotel, while she stayed dancing with the cleaning staff as they put the chairs
upside down on the tables and mopped the floors. Even now, many years on, no matter what time of
day it is, if we are passing Lávka, we say, ‘Oh, there’s Suzanne. Who’s
she dancing with?’ Then we squint hard and say, ‘Looks like the man who restocks the
barrels.’ And that sort of thing.)

Although we had much fun this time, we were
shadows of our former, younger selves. No one broke their nose, no one needed assistance from
the Irish Embassy, no one visited the Gastronomical Clock and saw the twenty-four Apostles, not
like at Niall’s wedding. (When all those things actually happened.)

Anyway, shifting gears quite dramatically, myself
and Himself had a great idea for a chat show. It would be hosted by me (I know that sounds
incredibly arrogant, but it’s only a bit of a laugh)
and would sort
of be like other chat shows in that we’d have famous people on, flogging their new book or
song or line of underwear.

But instead of just letting them sit on the bed
and drone on (yes, it would be hosted from a bed, maybe not my actual bed, but a reasonable
facsimile), I would endeavour to help them in all kinds of ways.

For example, I’d like to bring on Vilma, my
lovely, lovely Lithuanian naturopath, to examine their tongue and diagnose stagnant liver chi
(to name one condition). She could give them all sorts of advice on diet, supplements,
lifestyle, etc. (She says I have a very nice tongue, not too thick.)

Or we could have one of those Colour Me Beautiful
people, where they would hold purple squares of fabric up to George Clooney’s face (yes, I
wish) and tell him he is a ‘winter’ person.

Or with baldies like Ross Kemp (Grant in
EastEnders
) we could bring on a wig expert and try him with Louis XVI long, mad,
waist-length, Elton John curly yokes or suchlike. The list of helpful experts could be endless.
We could get the guests acupunctured, test them for food allergies or do a little reflexology.

Then we could have the Ordinary Plain-Spoken
Woman – a non-expert but one with strong opinions – who would tell them about all
their mistakes, because most celebrities only get told that they’re fantastic; it would be
a great wake-up call. It would be a great way to get to
really
know celebrities. I
mean, you can’t hide a poor lifestyle from Vilma. If it’s there, she’ll see it
on their tongue. Or we could bring on a Freudian psycho-person to analyse the celebrities’
dreams, or someone to read their palms, and we’d find out ALL KINDS OF THINGS that
they’d prefer we didn’t know.

I would also love to have a slot called Ailment
of the Day,
where I would have a massive medical encyclopaedia and I would
simply open a page at random and read out the symptoms of, say, jargon aphasia, or
trimethylaminuria, or Paris syndrome (a psychiatric breakdown that tends to happen in Japanese
tourists when the city of Paris doesn’t live up to its romanticized image). (These are all
real!) And then we could all suspect we have contracted it.

I think I would also ask my guests to bring along
their favourite purchase from a chemist and discuss it. Himself would be an important part of
the show; he would bring the guest in, offer them a drink (nettle tea, perhaps, or maybe a glass
of milk, whatever we have in the house basically), then he would sit on a nearby sofa, doing
hard sudokus and interrupting if he feels the guest is talking nonsense.

Another item, in an homage to
Top
Gear
’s Star in the Reasonably Priced Car, could be Star in the Reasonably Priced
Boots, where our celebrity would wear nice boots (or shoes) from a reasonably priced shop
(Topshop or Clarks, for example) and give their verdict on walkability, nice leather smell, zip
smoothness, etc.

Then we would have an agony aunt (Anne Marie
Scanlon in a mammy wig and cat’s-arse mouth), where a viewer would write in with a
(hopefully) interesting problem (if they’re not interesting and salacious enough,
we’ll make them up) and A-M would dispense brutal, unsympathetic advice, in the manner of
Mammy Walsh.

Then we would end every show with me, Himself and
the guests playing air guitars to a heavy-metal rendition of a song that the audience could ring
in and request. Preferably they wouldn’t be heavy-metaller songs at all, but something
like ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’ or ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport’ or
‘Pie Jesu’.
The more unlikely, the better. In fact, we could
offer a prize for the most ridiculous suggestion, and the prize could be the chance to lick that
day’s celebrity.

Now, our wish list of guests. George Clooney
(obviously); Alexander McCall Smith (no looker but vay, vay, vay charming; at least his books
are, as I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him in person; I’m mildly obsessed
with him); Kurt Cobain (such a shame he’s been dead these past twelve years, as I have
developed a sudden passion for Nirvana; I was always a late starter); Davina McCall; Dermot
O’Leary (OBVIOUSLY); Bruce Springsteen (another sudden passion, at a loss to explain it);
and my mammy (vay funny).

I still haven’t decided if the unattractive
black wedges which turned on me so fiendishly in Melbourne and gave me no end of blisters will
be making the cut for the Canada/US leg (pun) of me book tour.

Obviously I don’t want sandals which
nurture black blistery treachery in their heart, but I
do
need a comfortable pair. Fact
– interesting piece of info: these allegedly comfortable sandals, which were specifically
purchased for comfort and not beauty, were not cheap. In fact they were dearer – yes,
DEARER – than the Chie Miharas. They are made by an Italian company, famed for doing high
but comfortable footwear. (I cannot name and shame them: maybe it’s not their fault, maybe
it’s my feet that are to blame.) (Oh, all right then, it’s Ruco Line.)

Perhaps I should have stuck to Clarks, but I was
bedazzled by Ruco Line’s Italian-ness. Hubris. Nasty, humbling, blistery hubris.

Himself went to London for the weekend mid-month
and I stayed in Dublin with Mam and Dad, where I reverted to surly teenagerhood for three days.
We went to visit my poor Auntie Maureen, who’s in a home near Roscrea, and we were three
crocks heading off in the car – my dad nearly blind, my mother
half-deaf, and me with my bargain-basement bladder. (I had to stop every ten minutes to make my
wees. I’m convinced many women suffer from the same problem, and if we talk more about it,
maybe the government will build more jaxes. Hah! As if! You can always tell that men have
designed and built hotels/conference centres/whatever, as there are 417 males’ jaxes,
while there are only two female ones, each with three cubicles, two of them out of order and
9,328 women queuing to use them.)

On the road trip to Roscrea (me in the back seat,
whining that I needed to go to the wees), I kept trying to get them to do the three-monkeys
thing, Dad with his hands over his eyes, Mam with her hands over ears, and me with my hands on
my bladder – See no evil, hear no evil, wee no evil – but although Mam was game, Dad
wasn’t. (Himself only makes his wees once a week. On a Saturday evening, after the
football results are on the telly. There are times when I even have to remind him. I have to
say, ‘Isn’t it time, dear, for your little …?’)

But I’ll tell you something gas. For many
years I’ve had this frequent-wees-making trouble and have to ‘go’ many times
during the night. AND in the daylight hours, and long car journeys are a problem. Also short
ones. Anyway, out of nowhere I was contacted and asked if I would be the ‘face’ of
Irish incontinence. How did they know????? However, I turned down this golden opportunity. (Did
you see that Freudian ‘golden’ there? Isn’t the subconscious gas?) It’s
not that I am ashamed of my faulty bladder, no. Not ashamed. I must love my body in all its
imperfection. But at the same time I don’t want to appear on the telly in an ad break,
wearing a navy suit and smiling strangely and saying, ‘Terrible trouble holding on to your
wees? Me too! But help is available!’ Or ‘Hello, I’m Marian Keyes and my
bladder is banjaxed!’

Now, ‘shifting
gears’, last month I mentioned that Himself’s team, Watford, are doing tremendously
well this season, so well in fact that they have qualified for the play-offs – where they
have to play other contenders to see if they get promoted to the Premeer Division. An occasion
of great joy but my heart is quite heavy.

If they lose, Himself will be devvo, but if they
get promoted, frankly it’ll be worse. Next season will be a fecking bloodbath, with
Himself coming home in a fouler every Saturday and me having to hide all the figurines.

Although it was a very work-filled month, I
haven’t too many entertaining stories for you. It’s no fun to hear that this
journalist came to the house, then that journalist, then I went and signed books, then I went on
the radio. It’s tedious to listen to, I’m sure.

Right then, I must go! I am off to Canada, then
the US for me tour there.

Previously unpublished.