Now, wedding dresses! Caitríona is getting married in August and a lot of my time in New York has been spent in specialist wedding-dress shops, looking at Caitríona in the most beautiful dresses.
I don’t know if any of you have done the accompanying-a-loved-one-as-she-tries-on-wedding-dresses thing, but I think I’ve found my niche, my hobby, my passion, call it what you will. I LOVE it. I find it endlessly absorbing, soothing, exciting and enjoyable; it completely takes me out of myself. I have a terrifyingly short attention span, but I could look at loved ones trying on wedding dresses for ever.
Sadly (or maybe not, it couldn’t have gone on indefinitely) she has actually found a dress, stunning, fabulous and really special. Maeve Binchy once wrote an article called ‘The Woman Who Walked into Weddings’ about a woman who gatecrashed weddings because they made her feel so good. Maybe I should start hanging around bridal shops and infiltrating dress-viewing parties of women – there are usually so many people present that I should be able to mingle unnoticed.
Finally, I had my legs waxed – by the only blind leg waxer in New York. Even in a city full of gimmicks, this is going too far. I don’t think the poor woman knew she was blind but I kept having to point out patches that she’d missed, and now that I’ve got my legs back to the apartment and am examining them in the light shed by our expensive (but worth it) window, my legs look like a field of crop circles! Nevertheless, if that’s all I have to worry about, I’m doing okay. As my mammy would say, at least I have legs.
Altogether now, DO YOU BEEEELIEVE IN LIFE AFTER LOVVVVVVE.
mariankeyes.com, February 2008.
Portugal
Portugal! Myself and Himself suddenly found four days when we could go away, and decisions had to be made fast because we had no notice and it’s the only chance we’ll have this summer, so we needed a direct flight from Dublin (because if you go via Heathrow you lose five hours, also the will to live), and Lisbon was only two hours away, and half an hour’s drive from there was Sintra, and it was unexpectedly atmospheric and wonderful!
I was enchanted: all those mountains and huge, prehistoric trees and the switchback roads and the green light and – best of all – those mad Gothic castles and houses, with their underground tunnels and the Initiation Well. It reminded me of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, and I swear I could imagine Byron and his ilk (who spent a lot of time there) dancing around in their pelt, smeared with the blood of a sacrificed rabbit, beneath a full moon. Magnificent!
The whole thing was an absolute delight, and not a screed of jet lag because Portugal sticks out so far into the Atlantic that it’s on the same time zone as Ireland. This has never happened to me before.
While we were there the European football yoke was on and Portugal were playing, and in honour of the delightful time we were having we decided to support them, but on account of being the kiss of death for any team I support, I should have supported the other team. Because any team I (or Himself) support, they take a sudden and inexplicable nosedive. On the rare occasions I put money on a horse, it breaks its leg and has to be shot at the end of the race.
Portugal lost, of course they lost. All the same, it was a laugh: we were in the bar with lots of other people (an alarming number of Irish people – I always get a fright when I’m on holiday and I hear Irish accents – and apparently Irish people love Portugal. As indeed so do I now. It wasn’t just the landscape and the weather: the people were sweet and kind and sort of innocent).
If I had any complaint at all, it would be that the food was beyond bland. One night we went out to a seaside place for our dinner and the waiter tried to tempt me with fish made with ‘a traditional Portuguese sauce’. And when I enquired about what went into this traditional Portuguese sauce, he replied, with great pride, ‘Boiling water.’
‘Just boiling water?’ I asked.
‘Well, a little bit of bread,’ he sez, ‘but mostly just boiling water.’
So of course I had to have it to see if it was as bad as it sounded. And I’m happy to report that it was – it tasted of absolutely nothing!
And now I know why Irish people love Portugal! Ireland is famed for its crap cuisine; we are known the world over for boiling our vegetables until all flavour has been bet right out of them. It’s almost a national slogan – ‘Guaranteed! No pesky flavours present in our food.’
But in Portugal, we Irish are able to swank around, behaving as if our native cuisine is as flavoursome and tasty as Korean, or French, or Peruvian.
mariankeyes.com, June 2008.
Chile
Yes, well, lookit, I went to Chile with Himself.
It all began because I have a ‘thing’ about Easter Island – well, a combination of ‘things’: the hundreds of massive carved stone heads dotted about the place; it being the most remote inhabited island on the planet; etc., etc.
And because it belongs to Chile you have to fly via Santiago, and Himself said that if we were going to Santiago could we please go to the Atacama Desert. Please. You see, Himself subscribes to a magazine called Wanderlust and it’s always urging people to go to remote, rough places, and now and then he comes to see me, with his Wanderlust in his hand, trying to get me enthused about some faraway undeveloped place, and in the old days I used to say, ‘Does it have shops? Does it have a Prada outlet? Well, does it? No? That’s right, no. So be off with you and take your ridiculous magazine with you.’ And he’d slink away, head bowed, good and chastised.
But I’m different now and I haven’t a clue when the change happened, except that it has and I’m now open to ‘activity’ holidays. Well, in a way. I still don’t like getting my hair wet, but I’ll walk. Oh yes. Even in hideously unattractive ‘technical’ clothing. Up hills and things, so long as they’re not steep. So I graciously granted him a go in the Atacama Desert and off we went.
First to Easter Island. Which was everything I’d expected and more. The stone heads were EVERYWHERE, there are nearly 900 of them and they’re thrun all over the place, and the island is made out of volcanoes and is entirely free from modern-day ugliness. There is only one town and hardly any other buildings, and there are no power lines or rubbish, and even though it’s in the middle of the Pacific it reminded me of County Clare. Except it was warm.
The population is 4,500, and they all know each other and each do about thirteen different jobs – we met a fisherman who is also an air host on Lan Chile – and there are 6,000 semi-wild horses, and the people are a mix of God knows how many races because colonizers kept coming along and interfering with them, but there’s a very strong Polynesian strain and as a result they are INCREDIBLY good-looking.
The first person we met at the airport was a girl called Tammy and you should have seen her, the almond-shaped eyes and the radiant skin and shiny long hair. But the gas thing is that even better-looking than the girls are the men. Mother of God!
It’s hard to describe them without sounding like a lecherous old woman, but I’ll give it a go. Right! They’re big. Like, tall and very muscular and broad-chested and with beautiful Polynesian-style tattoos, and they’ll take their shirt off at the drop of a hat. Tanned and brown-eyed (mostly), but the best bit, the very best bit of all, is their hair. Long and lustrous and thick and flowy. I would KILL to have hair like theirs. And they’re great men for ‘items of flair’, like feathery yokes in their hair or shell necklaces or shark’s tooth bracelets, you know yourself. But mostly stuff in their hair.
I get the impression that these young men (every one of them looked like they were twenty-two, but surely they can’t ALL be) have the time of their lives wi
th the visiting girl tourists. We had one ‘guide’ who went haring up the side of a volcano, on the trail of two blondey girls, leaving me and Himself for dust. When we finally caught up with him, he waved us vaguely in the direction of the petroglyphs and the other archaeological wonders we were after hiking up the side of a volcano to see and he glommed on to the blonde girlies, and after Himself and myself did our best to figure things out, we went back to your man, who had the nerve, yes the BLOODY NERVE, to ask us for a pen! (To get the blonde girlies’ phone numbers, of course.)
Even Himself got annoyed. I’m always getting annoyed, but Himself hardly ever does. So when your man asked us if we had a pen, I stared at him stonily but Himself said, with unconvincing bluster ‘… Er, no. Ah, no! I haven’t.’ And as we made our way back down the mountain, Himself whispered to me, ‘I actually do have a pen.’ I whispered back, ‘I know you do.’ Himself always has a pen. Himself is an organized person. Which is why I married him. One of the reasons, anyway.
But all the other guides were delightful: charming and informative and caring. With lovely hair.
We stayed in a place called Explora and everything about it was perfect. It’s hidden in the landscape and made of wood and natural stuff and there’s no excess, but it’s very comfortable and the views are stunning and the food is fantastic – but again no excess: you get two choices for your dinner and that’s plenty.
The staff are charming – very warm, but also efficient. They know everything about your activities, but not in a spooky authoritarian way.
Like when Himself and myself booked to go to a show, the kitchen staff knew about it and fed us earlier than the normal dinner hour so we wouldn’t be late for the show. Which actually I didn’t want to go to because it was described as ‘local dancing’ and I thought it would be the usual oul’ tourist shite.
And as we sat in a taxi, bumping down an unpaved boreen, and drew up outside a corrugated iron barn, my expectations were in the gutter.
Cripes, was I wrong! It was extraordinarily powerful: the dancers took what they were doing very seriously and not once did I feel that it was a tongue-in-cheek money-making exercise. The dancing felt mystical and ancient and deeply authentic, almost spiritual.
The gas thing was that the first dancer out looked really like Tammy, the stunner who’d met us on our first night at the airport. We spent most of the first half going, Is-she-or-isn’t-she? Until Himself positively identified her, based on her tattoos. Normally I would hit Himself a clatter for having paid another woman so much attention, but honestly, she was so beautiful that I didn’t blame him.
The thing about Explora is that it’s an ‘all-included’ place, so you can have as much Sprite Zero as you like (it doesn’t have to be Sprite Zero though, it can be wine or pisco sour or whatever), and I spent some of the most peaceful times of my life just sitting in their open-to-the-elements bar area, looking out at the sea and the grass and the wild horses and the absence of ugliness. I was very, very happy … nearly as happy as the time I overdosed on the Emla cream.
Then we went off to Santiago for a couple of days. We’d been strongly advised that a couple of days in Santiago is a couple of days too long, but bullishly we insisted that we wanted to see the real Chile.
Well, how can I put it? It’s no Rio de Janeiro, is probably the best thing to say. You see, what I hadn’t appreciated is that Chile is the most successful economy in the region, so they’re a right crowd of diligent hard workers. And even though they have the biggest Palestinian population in the world outside of Palestine, and a big Serbian community, there was no evidence of a vibrant, melting-pot culture. And the shops were crap. Whatever it is they’re making with their successful economy, it isn’t shoes.
Next we headed to the Atacama Desert, for trekking and suchlike. This was Himself’s side of the trip, so I hadn’t paid it much attention. I just thought it would be miles and miles of nothingness, it being the driest place on earth and all that. God, how wrong I was.
So yes, the Atacama. Very high up. Very cold at night. Near the Andes. Every day we went a bit higher (we were there for five days, so we had to do it slowly in case we got altitude sickness).
On our second-to-last day we were up to 14,000 feet (4,300m) and we were about to start our walk and the guide says, ‘We’ll start our trek here.’ And I thought, ‘TREK? Good God, am I … trekking?’ Then I looked around and couldn’t see some of the smaller Andes, and when I asked Himself about where they’d gone, he said we were actually on them.
‘The Andes?’ I said. ‘I’m on the Andes? And I’m trekking. So does that mean, I’m … trekking in the Andes?’
And yes, it turned out that I was. The oddest bloody thing, if you ask me. I don’t know when I turned into a trekking-in-the-Andes person, but it appears that I have. Just goes to show.
mariankeyes.com, January 2009.
Bulgaria and Amsterdam
As I’ve said before, I know my life seems like one long holiday, but I HAD to go to Bulgaria, to do my patriotic duty, because Ireland were playing Bulgaria in the World Cup qualifiers (football, football, not rugby).
So off we went, with our green jerseys and our tricolour wigs, to Sofia, with Tadhg and Susie. And I had no idea AT ALL what to expect from Bulgaria.
Apparently it drives them mad, their lack of coherent identity in the world. All I knew was that they had nice yoghurt. However, from the small bit of dealing with them on the phone while I was trying to find out about hotels and that, they seemed warm and pleasant. And so they were!
The Sofia people were astonishingly welcoming. With very good English. Which I didn’t expect at all. Also, very cheap shops. VERY cheap.
The result (a draw) was a good one and we were there for three days and it was the best fun. There were five Irish pubs in Sofia, but they obviously weren’t real Irish pubs because on the first night one of them (McCarthy’s, I think) RAN OUT OF DRINK!!!!! For the love of God!
Also, one of the others – the one we went to the most, JJ Murphy’s – had bar staff that were in no way equipped for a stampede of Irish fans. It took up to an hour to get a drink, and the staff were so overwhelmed that the fans were telling them how to pull pints, and when one punter ordered ten pints the barman just walked away and was last seen sobbing in a corner.
Then we said goodbye to Tadhg and Susie, and Himself and I went to Amsterdam for the promotion of the Dutch publication of This Charming Man.
And such beauty! I’d never been to the Netherlands before and I’m not sure why. Maybe it was that most of the people singing Amsterdam’s praises in my past were stoner gobshites who kept going on about blem being legal, and the funny thing is that, even though I’m a TOTAL addict and could get addicted to just about anything, the few times I got stoned in my youth, I hated it.
I hated the way time slowed down and I’d think, ‘I have to stand up now. I have to stand up and I’ll have to do it soon. Maybe in twelve seconds, maybe in thirty-seven,’ and I’d be lying there incapacitated and paralysed and then a sentence would speak in my head and several hours would pass and I’d think, ‘Did I say that with my mouth or just in my head?’ HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE!!!!! So, yes, I think that must be why I never went, because I was afraid I’d have to smoke a load of the quare stuff.
But Amsterdam is NOTHING like that. We arrived on the Sunday evening, and it was raining, which I found astonishing because I’ve always had this belief that it never rains ‘on the continent’.
The light was very North European (sort of thin and clear, which I love), and I knew in theory that there wer
e canals in Amsterdam, but when you see them for real! There are loads!
It’s all so pretty and clean and intact. Hundreds and hundreds of narrow merchants’ houses from the eighteenth century, and cobbles and bridges and trams, and people on bicycles.
I was working, so I didn’t have much time to sightsee, but when I finished work on the Monday evening I a) bought a chocolate bun, and b) went on a boat on the canal, and because I was wrecked from the interviews it was indescribably pleasurable to just lie back and watch the beautiful city drift past me.
Apparently there’s a handbag museum! Yes! Can you credit it! But sadly I didn’t have time to see it. And there many other museums in Amsterdam, including the Van Gogh one. I love his paintings, I find them very heart-wrenching. Before we went, Himself and I went on Pronunciation Guy to learn how to pronounce ‘Vincent Van Gogh’, and God, it’s hard. You say it like this: ‘Finchent Fen’ – and this is the really hard bit: you have to cough. ‘Finchent Fen COUGH!’
We didn’t have time to go to the Finchent Fen COUGH gallery, so that’ll have to wait till another time. Also, I have a confession to make. On our first night, when we were staggering around, trying to get a feel for the place, I passed a shoe shop! Yes! What are the chances! And they had the most amazing shoes in the window, sort of like pieces of architecture. But the shop (Jan Jensen) was closed. So I took a note of the name and mentioned it to some of the journalists who were interviewing me, and they all said, ‘He is the Netherlands’ most famous shoe designer.’
So on the Wednesday, just before I left for the airport, I ran over there and thought, ‘They’ll never have anything in my size,’ and sure enough they didn’t, but they had one size up (36) and the girl put new holes in the strap and gave me – free! – gel insole yokes and, amigos, they fit! They are astonishingly beautiful and architectural. According to Himself the heel is ‘cantilevered’.