Afterwards, I fell among poets. There was a load of them in the
front row, several looking like James Joyce, right down to the flattened hair, roundy glasses and sober suits. They grabbed me as I stepped off the stage and all gave me signed copies of their slender volumes. Although I couldn't understand a word they were saying, they were a right laugh.
Armed with home-printed books of Russian poetry, I returned to Valya and Himself and we watched a little drama in mime. (It ended tragically.) Then someone sang a song. (A sad one.) Then there was a stand-up comedian. (A special unfunny Russian one.)
But then there was some sort of disturbance. A kerfuffle. The poets seemed to be staging some kind of anarchic takeover. There were an awful lot of them, crowding onto the small stage, looking like Kool and the Gang. Then a guitar appeared and they wouldn't stop singing.
It was a great, great afternoon—everyone had been so nice. But Artim, the wonderful man who had organized it all, wouldn't take the praise. "It 's those damn poets," he said. "They stage a takeover every year and this year they promised."
Day four
Up horribly, horribly early to catch the plane to Samara—too early even for the techno, smoke-filled breakfast.
The week before I'd been in the U.S. and got mightily humbled for having a tweezers in my hand luggage, so Himself made me promise that I had nothing dangerous on my person for this flight. Not that it mattered a damn. I could have carried a ground-to-air rocket launcher onto the plane and no one would have minded. They'd probably have helped me lift it on.
It was a novel flying experience. Nothing was screened through any metal detector yokes, and the plane looked like a toy plane with steps that went up from under into its belly. There were no conveyor belts or chance to check in luggage: you had to carry on all your own stuff—suitcases, rocket launchers, etc. Then when I first emerged up into the body of the plane, I thought it was one of those military planes with no seats, where you sit on the metal floor waiting to parachute out over enemy territory. But, mercifully, behind a little curtain there were seats. Sort of. There were chintz curtains on the windows and no working seat belts. Everyone was frozen; you could see the cold air when you breathed out and they all kept their furry hats on. It was like being on a rattly old bus going between Knock and Claremorris on a wet January day. Think about that the next time you're tempted to complain about RyanAir.
And the thing was, I knew that this was the safest airline in Russia.
Nothing to eat, mind you. Nothing to eat. And now it was getting to me.
Between the hunger and the tiredness and the strangeness of everything and being in the grip of mad, bad PMS, I behaved very badly in Samara. I was in a right fouler and I just couldn't bury it. (I'm still so ashamed of myself. It 's one of those memories that whenever it surfaces, I wish I was dead. You know those ones? Even writing about it is killing me, but it must be done.)
When we landed, our lovely driver took us on a tour of Samara. Until very recently it was a closed city. (They used to make bomber planes and other secret stuff.) It was a big banana to be allowed to visit, and in all fairness, it was beautiful and the Volga was frozen over and men were sitting fishing into little holes in the ice and it was all very atmospheric and charming, but I couldn't care less. I wanted something to eat. Instead I had to do a press conference.
After which we were finally let eat something. Our host led us along a slushy, pot-holed street to a pancake place, where he ushered us to the cloakroom and said, "Here. Please to take your clothes off." And I was too narky to even raise a smile.
Food usually does the trick with me but even after I'd eaten about fifty-six pancakes with a variety of fillings, my mood remained sour. And remained so when we arrived at the local university, where I was to adjudicate a debate. In honor of me being a recovering alcoholic, the title of the debate was: Should Drugs be Legalized. It was the most one-sided debate I'd ever come across; it was clear that all the students were horrified by drugs and it kind of annoyed me, what with Russia being rife with alcoholism; why worry about keeping pot criminalized when alcohol was perfectly legal and in the process of killing and destroying more Russian lives than every other drug put together?
Anyway, I should have kept my mouth shut and smiled politely, but to my great shame I couldn't. Brutally and rudely I laid down my views, and although they gave me a box of chocolates when I left, I could tell that they were thinking of keeping them for themselves. Not that I blame them. Oh the shame! The rudeness of me!
And so finally to our hotel, a flimsy, unreassuring place which seemed to have been bought in its entirety from IKEA. (This is not a good thing, some of the unhappiest moments of my life have been spent in IKEA.)
I was feeling too ashamed to go out for dinner that night, but Valya made me. In the restaurant she was in a strangely restless mood, drinking vodka shots and on the prowl. She still loved her husband but she wouldn't mind making the sex with someone else. Your man over there, in fact, she said, pointing to a bull-necked but otherwise quite attractive man, who had surprisingly nice shoes for a Russian. I was thrilled. I'd taken violently agin the deserting husband and I wanted her to hook up with someone new.
Myself and Himself wished her well, left her to it and went back to our flat-pack assembled hotel. Some unknown time that night we were woken by an almighty crash. It sounded like a ceiling had fallen in. We 'd just drifted back to sleep when we heard another. Then one more, this time so bad that Himself 's washbag fell off the bathroom shelf. It was Valya-related, I just knew it.
Great excitement next morning at breakfast, when through the haze of cigarette smoke, we saw, bobbing his head along to the techno, Valya's fella from the night before. She shoots, she scores!
Unfortunately not, it transpired that he was just another guest in the hotel. Feck!
Then Valya appeared, telling the entire room, first in English, then in Russian, that she had been so drunk the night before that she had fallen into her wardrobe. (The first crash we 'd heard.) Then she told everyone that she had missed her husband so much that she had rolled around with a pillow so much that she had fallen out of bed. (The second crash.) Twice. (The third washbag-dislocating one.)
Day five
Flight to St. Petersburg. The plane was disappointingly normal. Seat belts and the like. I much preferred the other one.
Now, St. Petersburg, with its wide "European-style" boulevards and impressively bombastic buildings, is the Russian city that everyone gets their knickers in a twist about. And yes, it 's undeniably impressive and beautiful, but actually I think I'd preferred the smaller, more "Russian" towns, the ones that you mightn't normally see.
My work consisted of holding two workshops where I met students of English so staggeringly talented, they put me to shame.
Then it was my last afternoon, where I stumbled across—and I'm not joking here—one of the most beautiful shoe shops I've EVER been in. And let 's face it, I've seen the inside of a few.
God, I love Russia.
P.S. Soon afterwards Valya met another bloke. He is excellent at making the sex.
P.P.S. A few months after my return I was in County Mayo when I realized the next town I was about to drive through was called Tulsk. Tulsk. See my point? It ends in "sk." So there 's no need for me to go to Murmansk, Tomsk, Omsk, Bryansk, Gdansk, or Novosibirsk. But I might anyway.
Climb Every Mountain
Recently I went on holiday to Bhutan, a small, unspoiled Buddhist kingdom in the foothills of the Himalayas. It 's lived in self-imposed isolation for decades and has only recently opened for business. It 's all forests, mountains, single-lane roads, sheer threethousand-foot drops to the valley below and people in funny— compulsory—national dress. (The men have to wear argyle-patterned knee socks and oversized dressing gowns, hitched up over a waist belt to create a charming blouson effect. Look it up on the Net if you don't believe me.)
I thought Bhutan would be fascinating—which indeed it was—
but it was only after I'd arrived that I discovered the main reason people go there is to "trek."
Trekking. Even the word annoys me. And "rambling"—there 's another one. It 's walking, and giving it a fancy title changes nothing. The thing is, me and exercise have never really seen eye-to-eye. (I do yoga. About once a year.) Nor have me and the "outdoors." Walking the thirty yards from the car park to the shops, I sometimes get an earache. So when I go on holiday, my normally sedentary lifestyle goes down several gears, until I'm practically flatlining.
But after a week of nonstop Buddhist temples, I was ready for a change, and when our guide suggested "a nice, easy walk," my husband looked at me with desperate, pleading eyes and I was persuaded.
"But you'll need flat shoes," the guide said, looking at my boots.
"These are flat," I replied. They had only two-and-a-half-inch heels, what was he talking about? He handed me a brushed steel and latex "walking pole" and the three of us set off. It was a lot more uphill than I'd been led to expect, but between the fir trees, the clean blue sky, the stunning views, the blood flowing in my veins, my heart pounding in my chest (but not too much), the way the air smelled exactly like Fanta—suddenly I got it. I felt great.
We stopped at a seventh-century Buddhist monastery, where we met a monk who looked unnervingly like the Irish comedian Graham Norton in orange panstick and a red robe. Appropriately enough he "blessed" me with an eighteen-inch phallus, which could have come straight from Anne Summers, but apparently was some ancient artifact. It was only then that I discovered that people come from around the globe to this monastery to get pregnant. I didn't get the deluxe fertility treatment, which involves several monks, chanting and burning things, but all the same, if I get up the duff, I'll let you know.
Then we carried on through the deserted forest, passing a threehundred-year-old stupa (holy sort-of-shrine yoke) and I nearly died of fright when I saw a small girl, nestled in one of its hollows, eating what appeared to be a panpipe.
Finally we reached the top, and the sense of achievement was indescribable. Exhilarated, I leaned on my pole, surveying the valley, feeling like Sir Edmund Hillary.
It was a moment of personal epiphany: I can be different. I can change. I will become a trekker. Or a rambler. Whichever is better. I will buy a pole. And proper flat walking boots. I would have a "hobby," an "interest." Up to that point if anyone had asked me what my "interests" were, I'd have replied, "Handbags, Kit Kats, George Clooney."
A new, exciting future unrolled itself in front of me, for inspection. I'd be strong, sinewy, as thin as a whippet. All my holidays would be spent heading off with a rucksack full of high-protein bars to climb the Andes and the like. I might even lose the tops of a couple of fingers to frostbite, and everyone would think I was fabulous. People would ask me why I climbed the highest peaks in the world (I had mutated from being an ordinary trekker to a mountaineer) and I would reply, "Why do dogs lick their balls? Because they can, Oprah, because they can." And nobody would think I was vulgar.
From now on I would only wear track suits made out of those high-tech fabrics which can stop a speeding bullet but weigh less than a feather. I would never wear skirts, except on special occasions, when, although I would be lovely and slim, my calves would be bunched and enormous in my high heels and my legs would be bandy. I would look like a transvestite, exactly like Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot. But I wouldn't care. The broken veins in my cheeks wouldn't matter, either. I would have a solid, cast-iron identity.
Then I got home from Bhutan and unpacked and looked at the mountain of shite arrayed on my bed—stuff I'd bought while I was away. Mesmerized, I was picking things up and wondering, what the fuck . . . ? Handwoven throws which would make my home look like a social worker's. Handwoven bags which had seemed extraordinarily charming at the time but that I wouldn't be seen dead with now. A handwoven passport holder. Handwoven oven gloves— back then it hadn't mattered at all that they weren't insulated. Funny brass things that might be doorhandles. Or ceremonial cups. A cowbell. Seven Buddhas of varying sizes. A prayer wheel. Awful gaudy wall hangings that you'd see in low-rent Chinese restaurants.
Why, why, why? What had I been thinking? I sat in my handwoven hell and waited for sanity to return. Which it did.
It has been several weeks since my return. I have not yet purchased my walking pole.
First published in Marie Claire, May 2005
HEALTH AND BEAUTY
They Say You Always Remember Your First Time . . .
Iwas eleven years of age and messing around with a friend with my mother's makeup. Until that day, I'd been happy enough just trying her lipstick and eyebrow pencil, but suddenly emboldened by some strange impulse, I smeared myself from hairline to jawline with foundation (orange, as was the fashion at the time) and couldn't believe the transformation. An upgraded version of me was looking back from the mirror. I looked like myself, only far, far nicer. My eyes were greener, my hair looked shinier, everything was smoother and better.
My friend too was astounded. "You look . . ." She groped for the most appropriate compliment. "You look . . . Spanish!" No greater praise. At the time (mid-seventies) it was what we all wanted—to obscure our shameful blue-white Irish skin beneath a see-it-fromthe-moon Jaffa-style glow.
For the first time I became aware of the transforming qualities of makeup. It could rebuild me, make me a better version of me. From the word go I was enslaved.
My attitude to life has always been that if a small bit of something was good, then a big bit was even better. So right from the be ginning I was a little heavy-handed in my makeup application. Luckily these were the days when Irish women wore their foundation to be noticed—the foundation, I mean, not the women. Foundation was almost regarded as an accessory in its own right, like a piece of jewelry or a tattoo. And no one had any truck with the idea of matching foundation to your skin tone. Why would you do that? You'd end up looking exactly like yourself !
Instead, orange was the shade du jour. It was a good color, a noble color, a sexy color. And just in case you weren't quite orange enough you could always give yourself an extra going-over with some colored face powder. (Orange, of course. Or maybe pink, just for the variety.)
None for your neck, though. Necks remained as white as God had intended them to be. Back then you were no one if you didn't sport an orange tide-mark and a matching dodgy line on your collar.
It wasn't just foundation, though; I was mad about it all—lipsticks, blushers, eyeliners, mascaras . . .
I once read a magazine article asking which single beauty product you'd bring to a desert island and I tied myself in absolute knots over it. I narrowed it down to the big three: lipstick, mascara or base—but I couldn't decide which. It used to keep me awake at nights. Even now if I've run out of normal worries, and am looking for something good to worry about, it fills the gap admirably.
The great thing about cosmetics (in my opinion, and yes, I know it 's shallow; for a spirited defense, see below) is that they keep inventing new things—and I've bought them all: concealers, brow highlighters, skin primers, blending brushes, double-ended eye liners, slanted sponges, tinted moisturizer . . . (Mind you, in my early days I thought tinted moisturizer existed to be worn beneath your foundation. For extra orangeness, like.)
My bathroom drawers are like a cosmetic museum. Clear mascara, anyone? Eyelash primer? Pillar-box red lipstick? I've stuff dating back to the early eighties: crimson eye shadow, puce blusher, blue mascara. Plus a good few relics from the red-lipsticked, powermade-up, yuppie years, and several other bits and pieces, right up to the high-tech, light-diffusing, natural-looking present. (Imagine, I have lived long enough to see Irish women match their base to their skin tone. Truly I have lived through turbulent times.)
The love affair has never waned: makeup always makes me feel better. With it I am more confident, more articulate, more amusing. Without it I'm like Samson without his hair. But it took far longer for me to start caring about
my skin. I thought: Oh, skin! That old yoke! Sleep in your makeup—who cares! The important thing is that you have makeup to sleep in!
But somewhere along the line I changed, and now I have so much skin care that to get into my bathroom you have to run at the door with your shoulder and push hard.
For me, the pleasure starts with the packaging. Ripping off the cellophane, opening the cardboard box, trying to find the instructions in English, unscrewing the lid, tearing off the tinfoil seal, then finally reaching the magic stuff within. (Yes, shallow and very wasteful of the Earth's resources, I know. As I said, see spirited defense below.)
So what about the extravagant claims the skin care manufacturers make. Do I believe them? Well, yes!
And no.
Basically, it depends.