When we 'd exhausted all the Irish songs, we had a Beatles medley; then the "Rock Around the Clock" type ones; then something about a red rooster, where everyone had to flap their arms and make "bokabokabok" roostery-type noises; for reasons that escaped me, "Take Me Home, Country Road" reappeared on a loop, every ten songs; then finally we had a Rolling Stones tribute where one of the "most hilarious" of all the (extremely hilarious) passengers took it upon himself to strut up and down the aisle, with his arse stuck out in an approximation of Mick Jagger's, while everyone else yelled, "Go on, you good thing!"
Every song that was ever written was sung on that bus that long, long night. It was a living hell and it made me wish I was Finnish. (They're fairly taciturn, aren't they?)
Other people 's noise just wears away at my nerves. I used to live in a flat where the upstairs neighbors used to decide at four in the morning that they didn't like the way their furniture was placed, and with fabulous let 's-do-the-show-right-here spontaneity, decide to move it around there and then. And another flat where it sounded like twenty or thirty people had strapped woks to their feet in the flat above and were doing a tap-dancing marathon—the weirdest combination of clanging and thumping you've ever heard. I used to bring people home to my flat just to hear it—I could almost have sold tickets—and they always agreed that it sounded exactly like twenty or thirty people had strapped woks to their feet and were tapdancing around the (wooden—oh, but of course) floor.
Because I travel so much and stay in hotels (which I know sounds fabulously glam and as a result, my whining will elicit no sympathy) I'm constantly at the mercy of other people 's rackets: next-door's telly, next-door's alarm clock (going off at five-thirty with no one to turn it off because it was set by the previous occupant who is long gone), loud conversations about vending machines held right outside my door, people upstairs having grunty, athletic sex or holding what sounds like gymnastic classes. There are times when I actually cry from the frustration of not being able to sleep. See, I don't just stay in the hotels to enjoy myself, I'm there to work. And yes, I know I get lovely room service breakfasts and nice, free shower gel and I don't have to make my bed—which is all wonderful—but if I don't get enough sleep my eyes swell up and go all slitty and sometimes I have to have my photo taken when I'm like that, and I'm unphotogenic at the best of times. Also, without sleep, my brain gets removed and replaced with a lump of suet which is a bit tricky when a journalist asks me, "What exists in the thin line between pleasure and pain?" And, just in case you were thinking, I'm not allowed to answer, "How in the name of Jayzus would I know?" Oh no! I have to come up with a coherent, witty, charming, original answer or else the journalist will mock me mightily and tell her fellow countrywomen not to bother buying my book.
As a result, I never leave home without earplugs. But my earplugs were no match for the busload of Irish people. The "great craic" and late-night sing-songs continued throughout the weeklong trip and myself and Himself returned home in flitters, physical and emotional wrecks. My back teeth were worn to stumps from the tense grinding I'd been doing and I had so much suppressed anger I was afraid I might run amok with a tennis racket in a public place (possibly McDonald 's).
Soon after we got back, we thought we 'd go down to Clare, in the hope that a few days by the sea, listening to the soothing suck and rush of the waves, would glue our frayed nerves back together. But we 'd have been better off staying at home and lending a hand on the Booterstown roadworks for all the good it did us.
The house we were staying in was in the middle of a terrace of
other houses and no sooner had we parked the car and dragged in our bags than we realized that the soundproofing was so bad, we could almost hear the breathing of the people three doors down. But never mind breathing! They could do much better than that! For reasons best known to themselves the house on one side of us had people on permanent duty clattering at high speed up and down wooden stairs in stiletto heels. While the house on the other side had gone to the trouble of providing a rota of people on a twentyfour-hour door-slamming vigil.
Worse still, there wasn't even a regular pattern to it, so that at least after a few nonstop hours, we 'd simply get used to it—like when you live next to the railway, after a while you don't even hear the trains. But oh no. They'd go on a good fifteen-minute banging session—then abruptly stop. Gorgeous, throbbing silence would reign just long enough for me to think that maybe they'd gone out, and no sooner would I begin to exhale with relief than one supersonic crash would herald the start of the racket again.
Even late at night I was just drifting off to sleep when a mysterious door banged so violently the windows rattled, then from the other side, a burst of hammering heels as loud as machine gun fire had me bolt upright in the bed, my heart pounding.
"What kind of mad bastards are they?" I fumed, sleep having deserted me. "Can't they get a proper hobby?"
After my sleep had been fractured for the third time I began to fantasize about killing them; the stairs clatterers with their own stilettos and the door bangers by closing their heads in their own door and giving it a good slam.
Our second night 's sleep was no better than the first so we de cided to call it a day and go back to Dublin early. A vein beneath my eye was starting to twitch.
"When we get home we 'll clear the mice droppings out of the shed," Himself suggested. I tried to smile and that set the jumping vein off again.
As we were dragging our bags back to the car, the stairs clatterers were emerging from their front door, and the oddest thing was how normal they looked—a tubby man, a woman carrying a baby, and a granny-type person. They didn't look like nutters who got their kicks by nonstop pounding up and down stairs. In fact, none of them looked capable of the sustained physical activity that had been going on.
I gave them a curt nod, but I just couldn't find it in me to be any friendlier. As we walked to the car, the man called, "Excuse me!"
For a moment I thought he was going to apologize, that he and his family had been in training for the forthcoming stairs clattering championships and that they needed all the practice they could get. But instead he started complaining!
"We can hear you, constantly talking, laughing—"
Laughing! Crying, more like!
"You woke the baby twice. Can you keep the noise down?"
I looked at Himself. This was too weird. Perhaps it was time for a sing-song.
NO, NAY NEVER, NO, NAY NEVER NO MOAAAAARE.
We Really Must Get Together This Year . . .
It 's not that I hate Christmas—as the season of unlimited chocolate, how could I? And, of course, the presents are nice. Not to mention the trifle on Christmas Day. And it 's always cheery to see overrefreshed businessmen wearing big, mad, red antlers, swaying on the train home, oblivious to their head gear.
But, as my mother (devout churchgoer) often reminds me, Christmas isn't just about selection boxes and shower gel/body lotion sets of Tresor. No indeed, she 's absolutely right; Christmas is about hard bloody work.
I'm not even talking about having to get up before dawn on the big day to stuff turkeys and peel eight thousand potatoes. (Due to an excellent arrangement I have with my mother, we are both in denial about me being an adult. She 's the mother, she does the cooking and she has never actually eaten something I've made. Never. Mind you, most people wouldn't.)
No. What kills me about Christmas is having to send cards. What is it about this particular task that makes me want to end my life? Sadness that there are so many people I don't see anymore? To my shame, it 's more like the sheer life-sapping tedium of it all. Espe cially when people have long addresses. (The worst offenders are those with house names; Travellers Rest; Formentura Revisited, etc. It's just a waste! A waste of ink, a waste of space and a waste of an extra ten precious seconds of my time!)
I consider my list, an accumulation of dozens and dozens of people whom I think of fondly but haven't seen for fifteen years and no longe
r have anything in common with, and a terrible lassitude overtakes me. I wish for a small but harmless domestic explosion, anything to get out of doing it. I could explain next year. "Sorry I sent no card last year but our clothes horse blew up. We were picking knickers off the hedges well into the new year!"
Then there 's the challenge of trying to remember the names of people 's partners. If they're still with them, that is. Because although I might be dying to ask, Are you still with that weird bloke with the rabbit fixation and the beard that looks like pubic hair? I just can't. I'm supposed to know. And what if they'd had children? A vague half memory surfaces of being sent a photo of a squashed-looking newly born with a card saying, The world welcomes baby Agatha? Or was it baby Tariq? Or Christ! . . . was it a dog this lot got? However, in such murky circumstances, I've found that a catchall, "Hope you and the gang are well" usually suffices.
Far trickier is getting the tone right—to convey a message of warmhearted goodwill so that they'll smile when they open the card and say, "Aww look, one from Marian. Isn't she lovely?" BUT— and it 's a very big but—without being so pally that they'll spontaneously lift the phone and arrange a night out after not having seen me for over a decade.
And so I get to thinking guiltily, This year, would it be so bad if I didn't . . . ? Who'd miss a card from me when everyone gets so many . . . ?
And that 's it! The decision is made! With a light heart I tell Himself, "I'm not sending Christmas cards this year. Life is too short."
"Fine," he says, "You've enough on your plate." I study him carefully to see if he 's being sarcastic and I can't be sure, so I go away. Which is when I start thinking, But I really like so-and-so, I want to stay in touch with her, not to actually see her of course, but I wouldn't like us to lose touch. But if I send one to her and don't send one to her sister, then her sister will think I've snubbed her, which of course I will have, but I wouldn't like her to think I had . . .
The house is filled with Himself 's nonreproachfulness. Just because he 's sitting at a table methodically inscribing cards to everyone he 's ever met doesn't mean he 's judging me for not sending any. Nevertheless, my guilt builds and builds.
Some people get around the hell of card writing by sending what they insist on calling "a round robin letter," typed in fake handwriting text—like this. They usually begin, "Hello, valued friend." Or rather, "Hello, valued friend." And then they tell you about all the fabulous things they've done over the past year, with a load of people you've never heard of. "Back in June, Lacey, Cain and I did a Jin Shin Jyutsu workshop! We're still walking funny!" And I'm thinking, "Who's Lacey? Who's Cain? What 's Jin Shin Jyutsu?"
These letters always end with something like, "Love, light and blessings to your loved ones and you," the subtext being, "Whoever the hell you are."
Obviously, it 's an idea . . . I could knock something up on the computer, lash out a hundred copies and send them off. Mind you, I'd still have to write the bloody envelopes, never having mastered the printed label thing. That still wouldn't get around the long address, Travellers Rest type problem.
Anyway they're kind of creepy and too impersonal. Despite my objection to doing Christmas cards, I still prefer to handwrite a personal message. Even if it's the same one on each card. Even if it 's always, "We really"—with the "really" underlined—"must get together this year."
Then the post yields up the first card of the season, saying "We really"—with the "really" underlined—"must get together this year." And I like the person it 's from—although not enough to see them, of course—so I think, I'll just send one back to them. Then the next day five cards arrive, and I'm fond of these people too, so I dash off five "Really"—with the "really" underlined—"must get together this year." And then I'm thinking of all the people I haven't sent cards to and the torment is bad. And anyway, the next day the post brings an avalanche of "We really must get together this year" and I buckle.
I walk into the room where Himself is sitting, innocently watching telly or whatever and yell at him, "OKAY THEN, I'll WRITE THE BLOODY THINGS. HAPPY NOW?"
Man Power
When I first met Himself he had a very good job—company car, pension plan, grudging respect from his staff—the lot. I, on the other hand, was badly paid and devoid of ambition. Then I got a couple of books published and confounded all expectations by starting to earn more than he did. As soon as I could, I gave up my day job in order to write full-time and discovered that my writing had so much associated admin that I needed a full-time PA/dogs body/kind person to hold my hand and tell me I'm not crap.
Himself has a degree from Cambridge, can do hard sums in his head and knows the meaning of ataraxy. But he became that full time PA/dogsbody/kind person to hold my hand and tell me I'm not crap and resigned from his job, waving good-bye to the car, the money, the grudging respect. Soon his days were an undizzying round of phone answering and five o'clock dashes down the road to catch the last post. In short, I ruined his life.
Our situation isn't such an unusual one: since time immemorial, one clever spouse has given up their ambitions to run the home and facilitate the career of their perhaps less clever, but higher-earning partner. But until recently it was nearly always the women who made the sacrifice—not necessarily without justified, cat 's-arsefaced resentment—but it has been done.
Look at Hollywood: how many stories have we heard of women who put their own ambitions on hold in order to support their actor husband through the lean years? (Only to be abandoned as soon as the money begins to roll. "Thanks a million for working three crappy jobs while I went to auditions. I'm off now with that anorexic one with the fake knockers and beestung lips over there, but hey, I'll always speak fondly of you in People interviews.")
And are things any better in the non-Hollywood world? Not very often. Now and then, when they've had a few drinks, their team has won and they're generally in a benign humor, men will let a woman or two into the higher strata of the workplace. Just for the novelty value, of course. Sort of like getting a pet. And in case you're thinking I'm overstating things, just take a look at the business class section on any plane: you'd break your neck on all the gray-suited testosterone swilling around in there.
But the odd time, the very, very odd time, it happens that women are more successful than their male partners; even to the point where men take over the role of stay-at-home wives and become househusbands.
And men don't like it; at least that 's the perceived wisdom. The rule states that men are the hunter-gatherers and if their spouse has some spare time to help out with the berry picking, then well and good, but they must never forget who the real providers are or else they'll up and punish us by becoming sulky and impotent.
I asked my brother Niall how he 'd feel about being a "homemaker" and he said he 'd love it: he 'd get to play golf and party while someone else went to work, shouldered the stress and pro vided the readies. But when I put it to him that he 'd be responsible for child care and making dinners, he disappeared behind his newspaper, muttering,"Feck that."
The funny thing is that when people promise that they'll stick with their spouse "for richer or poorer," it 's the "for poorer" part that causes the worry. No one thinks for a minute that the "for richer" bit could be a problem.
I know a writer who got an advance that was described as "lifealtering." Sadly it proved to be just that because about six months later her husband legged it. But who is to say that the dosh was the reason he went? To be quite honest she has more than a touch of the Madeleine Bassets (super-drippy girl from P. G. Wodehouse novels) and if I was married to her I'd have gone too. (All that talk of when an angel cries it makes a new star, it 's enough to make anyone run.)
I know another writer who got a big enough advance to keep her family in iPods and skiing holidays for several years, but her husband has continued to work all the hours God sends, and she sees less of him now than she ever did.
Anyway, when Himself changed his role to being my PA, I k
new how important it was to preserve his dignity. So shortly into our new arrangement a concerned friend took me aside and suggested that next time I wanted Himself to bring me something to eat, perhaps I shouldn't pound the bedroom floor with a thick stick and yell down the stairs, "Oi! More chocolates up here. On the double!"
But I can't stop other things. Like the fact that Himself gets called Mr. Keyes. (It 's not his name. That 's my Dad.) In fact, some people can't even get his first name right: in the last few months Himself (aka Tony) has been John, Tom and Joe. Even his profession is misrepresented: in one magazine article he was described as a psychiatrist (which he may be, having to deal with me on a daily basis, but not in a professional capacity), and in another he was a dentist. And the thing is, he doesn't stomp around in a big, mad, hairy rage, shrieking at me to write to the editor, demanding a retraction. He doesn't care because he knows who he is. (I'm making him sound like a saint here and definitely running the risk of being hit with The Curse of the Smug Girl. Now it 's almost certain that in two weeks' time he 'll be caught down some dark alley getting a hand job from a transsexual.)