Making It Up As I Go Along (29 page)

And then I got a commission – oh yaze! One
of the tables I’d purloined from Mam’s ‘nest’ I’d painted a spring
green with coloured butterflies stencilled on them. I brought it over to Mam one Friday night
(where the Keyesez gather for our weekly dinner) and Redzer the Elder lay immediate and
passionate claim to it. Right away Redzer the Younger started bellyaching that he wanted a table
too and Rita-Anne said, ‘Auntie Marian will paint another table exactly the same for
you.’ And I said, ‘Auntie Marian will
not
!’

Rita-Anne looked a little
shocked and I explained, ‘Redzer the Younger is his own person with his own tastes,’
and I invited the young man to sit down beside me for a ‘clee-yong consultation’. I
asked him what colour he wanted his table painted and he shouted, ‘Black!’ And I had
to say ‘I’m very sorry, my clee-yong, but chalk paint doesn’t come in a true
black, it would be more of a charcoal, and I’m not sure that’s what you’re
“feeling”.’

At this stage, RTY had hopped off the couch, run
into the kitchen, kicked the freezer door, thumped back into the sitting room and stood on
Redzer the Elder’s head, and I suggested, in only slightly strained tones, ‘What
about blue?’

‘Yeh!’ he yelled. ‘Blue!’

‘What kind of blue?’ I asked.
‘Light blue? Mid blue? I can put together a mood board? Or would you trust me to choose on
your behalf?’

‘I want a Mint Magnet!’ he
declared.

‘You’ve to eat your dinner
first,’ Rita-Anne said.

‘Blue,’ I said, putting a tick on a
receipt I’d found in my bag. ‘To be chosen by me. And what about a pattern?’ I
was considering the stencils I had. ‘Might I suggest an animal print?’ ‘Seeing
as you’re a bit of an animal yourself,’ I was thinking, but didn’t say. This
is how it is with commissions from clee-yongs – diplomacy must be your watchword.
‘How about leopard print?’ I suggested. ‘Or zebra?’

‘Which one kills the most
people?’

‘Probably leopards,’ I said.

‘Yeh, LEOPARD.’

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I think I
have a good grasp of your sensibilities. A blue table with blue metallic leopard
print.’

‘No! A black leopard.’

‘I don’t have black paint.
You’re getting blue.’

‘It can’t be for
girls.’ He cast a scornful eye on the butterfly table that his elder brother had laid
claim to. ‘Not like that one that Miss Dylan has.’

‘It won’t be for girls. It will be
specially for you.’

So I went away and painted his table, and I
really put my heart and soul into it because even though he’s only four he’s a
contrary live-wire with strong opinions. He can take agin something for the most capricious of
reasons and I really wanted him to love it. And he did!

Because he has such a short attention span
(probably age-related) he’d completely forgotten I was doing a table for him, so when, the
following Friday, he arrived at Mam’s and saw it and realized it was for him he went all
red and shy and seemed like he might be on the verge of crying, and I swear to God, it made me
feel fantastic.

Since then I’ve been ‘swamped’
with commissions. Well, I’ve had three. And everyone keeps saying, ‘You could set up
in business doing this.’

However, the thing is I couldn’t. I spend a
fortune on supplies, particularly the knobs, which I ‘source’ from around the world,
at outlandish prices (made more outlandish by the inevitable import duty).

And if I set up in business, not only would I be
bankrupt in a matter of days, but my hobby wouldn’t be my hobby any longer. And I really
love my hobby …

From an article first published in the
Sunday Times
Style
, April 2015.

We all have our guilty pleasures, but as I’m
focusing on mine to write this piece I realize that a disproportionate number of them involve
food. I have zero restraint around anything containing sugar so I can’t keep any in the
house, but if I’m having people over, well,
of course
I have to get them
something nice for dessert – to offer them a satsuma would be the height of bad manners!

So I go out and buy something fabulous, like a
triple-chocolate cheesecake, and from the moment it enters my house I never stop thinking about
it. When my guests arrive and I open the fridge to get drinks, the cheesecake winks at me and
says, ‘Come on, you know you want to.’ As I dish up whatever dinnerly food I’m
providing (and really I’ve no interest at all in that side of things), I’m thinking,
‘Cheesecake, cheesecake, cheesecake.’

So the night proceeds and we’re all
chatting away and I’m becoming tighter and tauter as I watch the others savour their lamb
tagine and a voice in my head is shouting, ‘Eat faster!’
Then they ask for
more lamb tagine and I suspect they’re only doing it to be polite but as their hostess
I’m obliged to fulfil their request and as my access to the cheesecake is deferred even
further I become somewhat enraged and shrill, then I fall into despair and become surly and
eventually monosyllabic.

Until I hit on a magical solution: whenever
people are coming over to be fed (did you notice how I refuse to say the dread words
‘dinner party’?), I have my dessert
before they arrive.
Yes! I have
a fine big slice of the cheesecake about fifteen minutes before kick-off,
then I am calm and happy and at peace. I can go about my hostessing duties with charm and zeal
–
nothing
is too much trouble. Seconds of the lamb tagine? Of course! Why not
make it thirds? Would they like a lengthy break between their main course and dessert? They
should take as long as they like – what’s the hurry?

And when the time for the cheesecake eventually
arrives, in the privacy of the kitchen I cut several slices and rearrange them on the plate to
disguise the gap. Then I feign a will-I-won’t-I attitude of indecision about having any
and eventually say, like I’m making a big concession, ‘Okay, just a tiny
slice.’ (Which always impresses people, especially other women.)

As I said, because of the powerful hold sugar has
on me, I can’t keep any in the house. But as luck would have it, I live five
minutes’ drive from my parents, which is Trans-Fat Central – if you open a cupboard
in their kitchen, you’re in very real danger of being brained by an avalanche of biscuits,
and their freezer is so jam-packed with Magnums I sometimes worry that when I open the door the
ice creams will explode at me, like chocolate-coated bullets.

Oftentimes, while I’m out and about in my
car, I think, ‘I’ll just pop in and say hi to Mam and Dad. They’d like that, a
visit from their eldest daughter. And I’d like it too, because at some stage they’ll
be dead and I’ll be grateful for the memories.’ So I arrive at their door and my
poor mammy eyes me warily and says, ‘Are you here to steal more of my furniture?’

‘Not at all,’ I say heartily.
‘I’m here to see you. I’m creating memories for –’

‘– when I’m dead. Yes, I
know.’

So we go into the sitting room and I lie on the
couch and put
my feet in her lap and we chat for – oh, thirty seconds
or so – then I say, ‘… any Magnums?’

Because I’ve somehow convinced myself that
if I haven’t personally bought the Magnums, they don’t count.

Mam gets to her feet. ‘What flavour do you
want?’

‘What flavours have you got?’

‘All of them.’

And to be fair, she does. Which brings me to
another guilty pleasure: Redzer the Younger has a charming approach to certain words, he
unilaterally changes them, and he’s adamant that ‘Magnums’ are called
‘Magnets’. So every Friday, when the Keyes clan descend on my parents for dinner,
I’m just DYING for it to be time for Redzer the Younger’s Magnum. And because
Rita-Anne (mother of the Redzers) knows I get a kick out of it, she tells him to ask me.

‘I want a Mint Magnet,’ he says.

‘A what?’ I ask.

‘A Mint Magnet.’

‘A Mint what?’

‘A Mint MAGNET.’

‘A mint biscuit?’

‘No. A MINT MAGNET!’

‘I can’t hear you. Say it
louder.’

‘I WANT A MINT MAGNET!’

… and then I kill myself laughing. Wrong of
me to take pleasure from the foibles of a small child? Well, I do feel guilty. A little bit.

Fresh air – funny stuff. Smells … of
stuff
. And brings sensation to your face and hands and other exposed body parts.
Between ourselves, I’ve never been a fan.

It was the way I was brought up – the only
childhood memory I have of a window being opened was after the bedrooms had been repainted and
the painter managed to convince Mam that we’d all be poisoned if we didn’t let some
air in. To this day I don’t like opening windows. Even when the sun is splitting the
stones I’m happy to keep the windows closed, and once they’re open I always feel
anxious and on edge till they’re shut again.

I don’t think I’m alone. It’s
definitely an Irish thing – maybe it’s down to our epic rainfall. Over the
centuries, our DNA has been re-hardwired into recognizing the value of a closed window: it lets
in the light – no problems with that – but keeps at bay the air and the wet and the
damp and the mist and the rain and the general misery of ‘out there’.

I think it’s our biggest difference with
the English. The English are divils for opening windows, they’re at it non-stop. And
they’re mad for their gardens – any chance at all and they’re out there,
‘taking’ their breakfasts in the morning sunshine and admiring their lupins.

I admit I have a garden, it’s mostly gravel
and bamboo and low-maintenance stuff, but it’s nice. I like to look at it. From inside the
house. On the odd occasion when there’s no good ads
on telly. The
only time I’ve ever been in it is when there are visitors over and they insist on going
out there – it usually involves young lads wanting to kick balls. But I have never –
and I genuinely mean
never
– sat out there by myself.

Now and again, when the weather is roasting
(almost never, I need hardly add), Himself and I entertain wild plans of having our dinner in
the garden. There’s a little table out there, ideally situated to catch the evening sun.
‘It’ll be like being on our holidays,’ I say. But at the last minute, as I
have the plates of food in my hand, I waver. ‘Are we really going to do this?’ I
ask. ‘I don’t know,’ he replies.

Then he considers the fact that we’d have
to sit opposite each other. And talk to each other. And not be able to watch telly. That makes
his mind up. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Let’s do it the usual way.’ So we sit
on the couch and eat our dinners on our laps in front of Bryan Dobson and we are happy.

Of course, Ireland is a beautiful country with
much fresh air to partake of, and that’s nice for the tourists. For us locals, it was
enough to visit Glendalough once a year, usually on a bank holiday Monday, admire the lake for
seven to ten minutes, then proceed to the Mr Whippy van.

So I’m at a loss,
a total loss
, as
to how to explain how I’ve taken up hill-walking in Wicklow.

There
are
some mitigating factors. Fact
one: Wicklow is on my doorstep. Fact two: Wicklow, like lots of Ireland, is very beautiful. Fact
three: Wicklow, unlike lots of Ireland, has actually marked out some walks. (I have visions of
debates in county-council meetings around Ireland where councillors are genuinely baffled by the
benefit of laying out way-marked walks through their beautiful countryside. ‘Enough of
that nonsense, lads, let’s get back to granting planning applications for eyesore
buildings in places of stunning natural beauty.’)

And it’s not like
I’ve never gone for the odd walk in the past. The first time Himself and myself met
Rita-Anne’s future husband Jimmy, we went for a walk where the weather was so shocking
that the wind actually blew away one of my contact lenses, but because I barely knew Jimmy, I
had to pretend it didn’t matter, the way if you accidentally break your ankle in front of
someone you don’t know well, you can’t let on you’re in paralysing agony.
‘Ah no, I’m grand, I’m grand. No, I’m grand!’

But anyway, a while back some of us started going
on regular walks, every two or three weeks. This is the cast of characters: myself, Himself,
Posh Kate, Posh Malcolm, Hilly and Mark the Communist. And we all have roles: Himself plans the
walks (oh, he loves it, consulting his maps and his special book and whatnot); Posh Malcolm
takes the photos; Hilly and Mark give reviews of all the latest films (they see everything);
Posh Kate provides condensed versions of
The
Late Late Show
(also she talks about her cat, which is nice for the cat-lovers in the
group); as for me, I’m not sure what I bring to the party, except maybe to make up
numbers.

Then there are the sangwidges …
Sangwidge-making ‘rotates’ from person to person and there is definitely sangwidge
one upmanship. Posh Kate is grand because her egg and bacon on granary bread is legendary. But
the rest of us try very hard to delight. Posh Malcolm is gifted at showcasing sandwiches
featuring horseradish or basil picked from his very own garden. Mark the Communist (or is he
Mark the Socialist? I must check, these things are important) recently wowed us with a batch of
‘Iberian ham and Manchego cheese’. (He even told us where he’d bought the ham
– some lovely shop on Camden Street.) And Hilly always makes us go ‘OOOoooh!’
because she’s so inventive with the bread – recent examples are bridge rolls, pitta
pockets and focaccia.

I must admit that when it’s my turn, I fret
terribly – should I go
for a profoundly traditional (and easy) cheese
and tomato, which could perhaps be passed off as a retro treat? Or would everyone see through my
lazy-arse ruse and should I do Kobe beef, where I actually cooked the beef myself? And where
could I get some blaas, seeing as they are a delicacy only available in Waterford, and Waterford
is a three-hour drive away?

But sandwich-anxiety aside, I’ll readily
admit that beforehand I never want to go on the walk, but I feel a duty to the others. So I go
and afterwards, no matter how tough it’s been, I’m always glad. Who knew there were
so many great walks half an hour from Dublin? Mountains and lakes and forests and streams. Did
you know there’s a Seamus Heaney walk (featuring quotes on benches)? And a densely
forested valley called the Devil’s Glen, dotted with spooky magical sculptures and
strange, hilarious sentences carved into the stone? (For example, ‘When we find the ring,
I’ll propose.’ And in front of a moss-covered bundle of rocks that looks a bit like
a staircase is: ‘I must clean these steps.’)

The six of us have kept up the walks while one of
us went through cancer and chemo, another of us (me) had a nervous breakdown, and another of us
had to endure the death of their mother. Maybe it even helped us, who knows? During the worst of
my madness, I was advised to take a ‘mindfulness’ approach to my walking.
Mindfulness? Are you familiar with it? It’s (allegedly) a method of treating depression by
urging a person to stay in the moment. (Many people swear by it.) So I’d be walking along
and saying to myself, ‘There’s my foot on the ground and I’m looking at a leaf
and it’s very green and the stream running beside me is making a right racket and
there’s my other foot on the ground and … God, I’m sick of this mindfulness
shit!’ So I gave up on it and went back to discussing
The Killing
with the others
and it seemed to work just as well.

Obviously, living in Ireland as we do, the
weather doesn’t
always work in our favour so we have to take the
attitude that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes. Over time,
we’ve gradually accumulated technical raingear and proper walking boots and suchlike.

When we first started walking, you’d hardly
ever see anyone else, and if you did it would provoke great consternation. ‘Oh Christ!
People.’ It would take everything in my power not to jump behind a rock and wait till
they’d gone – because the Walkers’ Greetings Etiquette was a tricky one.

Initially the only people who said hello to us
were beardy Germans or Dutch, and you could tell they were longing to stop and exchange a bit of
guff. Or rather, they were longing for
you
, the Irish person, to provide the guff and
they would listen and marvel at your beautiful, colourful, curlicued sentences and perhaps even
write it down in a little notebook to report to their pals when they returned to Dortmund or
Rotterdam.

But when we encountered other Dublin people,
we’d all put our heads down and blush a little and shuffle past in silence. We were a bit
mortified because this new outdoorsy business was uncharted territory for us all and we
didn’t know the rules.

However, things have changed … As the
recession deepened, the numbers of people out walking increased and there was a sense that we
were all in it together. So these days we smile, we speak, we say hello, we comment on the day,
we admire people’s dogs, we warn of boggy bits ahead or congratulate people on how far
they’ve come and tell them the worst is nearly over (even if it isn’t, but that is
the Irish way. We are a nation of liars).

Sometimes – it’s always the men who
do this – we will enquire about a bit of kit, perhaps a fancy-looking walking pole. But
it’s more out of politeness than actual interest – the way a woman would admire
another woman’s nail varnish.

Walking people have lovely
manners: say you’re going at a gentle pace and you’re aware there’s a group
behind you who are gaining on you, you don’t slow down to annoy them the way you might
(only
might
, I’m not saying you would) in a car. Instead you move out of the way
to let the faster people past and everyone smiles and is nice.

And nice is so … well …
nice.
This walking business brings out the best in people. It’s no wonder I love
it.

First published in
Irish Independent
, August
2012.