<<< Nov 27, 2002 >>>

Driving back from Sligo to Galway, turning right at a pain-in-the-ass junction in Tubbercurry, a dumpy woman with a scarf on her head flags us. It's drizzling hard; she's wet. I roll down the window. "I'm in an awful bind, a grath." I look at Gavin. I don't like his expression. She's trying to hawk something or steal something or -- I chide myself for jumping to inconsiderate conclusions. Is my instant suspicion symptomatic of our cynical times? "You're going to Galway, a grath?" I nod. What else can I do? "I'm only going as far as just outside Claremorris," she says. "I just got out of the hospital, a grath, and the doctor said I shouldn't even be on my feet. And I wouldn't ask only I'm desperate. 'Tis an awful dilemma, a grath." I'm in a remake of The Quiet Man. Only without the Technicolor happy-go-luckiness. "Thank-you very much," she says. "I have a small bag there on the side of the road." Gavin gets out to help her with the luggage. When they come back, she's carrying the (admittedly small) bag, Gavin's carrying a roll of carpet and a chair -- parish hall calibre, with flaky, crooked golden legs and shabby red fabric. "Shure, the boy can sit in the back." Gavin is four years younger than me and I don't know how he feels about being called "the boy" but I know, without having to look at his grimace in the rear-view mirror, he doesn't like sitting cramped between a smelly carpet and a poky chair, doesn't like having to change the music from LemonJelly's debut album to Joe Duffy's LiveLine on RTE 1, doesn't like hitchhikers who don't obey the rules -- especially not those who can't keep their nosepicking to themselves! I'm still trying to give the middle-aged doll the benefit of the doubt, but I can't help prying. "What hospital?" I ask. "Sligo General Hospital, a grath. 'Twas an awful dilemma to be in." "Yes, it was. Sligo General? How did you get as far as Tubbercurry?" "The woman brought me." The woman. I don't ask. "Didn't you have someone to collect you?" "I'm separated." I nod. After a minute or two I turn Joe Duffy up loud, and make my most serious interested face as he cross-examines a back-bench politician on the demerits of proposed new fish-farming legislation. ***** 'Just outside Claremorris' turns out to be fifteen miles up an unmarked back road in the mountains near Knock airport. Thankfully, the lady doesn't talk much on the journey. "Nice here in the summer?" I ask. "Yeah. Yeah it is," she says, and sighs. "Bleak in the winter though." Her home is halfway along a gravel path in the wilderness. A monochrome pooch comes wagging to greet us. I feel bad to see the run-down, ramshackle house. Gavin helps with the carpet and the chair. The woman makes her goodbyes quick, embarrassed maybe. Maybe not. After three-point-turning, I take one last look in the rear-view and see her throwing some scraps of food to the overjoyed dog. There's no-one else home. We decide to keep going along the back roads and pass through Kiltimagh, the origin of the moniker 'culchie'. We get back to Galway forty minutes later than planned, but one half-story richer. All the same, Gavin is pissed off.

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