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Planes, Trains, Buses and Rapidos
I was in Toronto for a week, flying out and returning through Dublin. I love airports but I wish they didn't have to rely on planes for their business. I love the motley faces and the imagined lives I give to cosmopolitan passers-by.
Inside this machine which defies the laws of gravity, nature and reason, we agree to get strapped beside total strangers: sweaty people, fat and skinny people, the exotic and the imbecilic: compressed, and shot off at four hundred miles an hour down a track and into outer space. When I vibrate I have a tendency to fall asleep and my greatest fear on a flight is to wake up drooling on the shoulder of my neighbour. On this flight my seat was next to the aisle. Beside me was a plumpish woman whom I would put in a gym. She needed part of my arm room as well as, on her other side, her strapping husband's.
I was reading a book I had been given as a present, 'The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner' by James Hogg, an improbable tale, a dark gothic novel, about a psychopath who sells his soul to the Devil, written in 1824. In the introduction I wrote some notes in the margin about G.K. Chesterton's observation that people are more inclined to believe the probable impossible rather than the impossible probable. Chesterton said that if someone told him Mr Gladstone (the Prime Minister of the day) was in league with the Devil, he might believe it or he might not. But if someone told him that Mr Gladstone, on being introduced to Queen Victoria, slapped her on the back and offered her a cigar, he would flatly disbelieve it.
"I see you taking notes," said the man with the wife. "Are you a teacher?"
I hate being interrogated so I bluffed my way about teaching a few courses in creative writing and literacy.
"I'm Tom," he said, "and this is my wife, Carrie. Sorry, I didn't catch your name?"
"Danny."
"Pleased to meet you, Denny. "I'm a bit of a writer myself. I've written three novels in my head and have some chapters on computer but I'm too busy at the moment to publish. I like a mixture of fiction and fact - which I call friction." Tom said he also composed his own songs and was a very successful businessman, who skied and yachted a lot, had a big house in Ottawa and a big garden.
"I read a book a day, between consultations," he said.
"Tom has a photographic memory," said Carrie, whilst she played footsie with me underneath the seat. I looked at her and she raised her eyebrows. We looked down and realised that we were each being assaulted by an orphan from the seat behind who had crawled below ours, his parents having taken the day off. They both complained about the lack of space and said that they usually travelled executive class.
"So, what were you doing in Canada and where are you from?" they asked.
I told them that I was over for a surprise fiftieth birthday but had also spent my time in libraries researching the life of a soldier from Toronto who was killed in the First World War. This could be an unfair judgement but I suspect that they then assumed I was a loyal Crown subject. Tom told me he had been in the Canadian armed forces for twenty years, during which time he was told not to visit 'Northern Ireland', and that part of his business involved defence contracts. His wife, Carrie, said that she had relatives in Bangor, Lisburn and Portadown.
Tom then asked me did I hear the one about the two Irish men who meet in a New York bar. The first one says, "What part of Dublin are you from?" "Wexford," says the other. The first one says, "Me too!" They have another beer. The first one asks, "What school did you go to?" "St Patrick's." "I went to that school!" They have another beer. The first one says, "What class were you in?" "Master Kelly's." "So was I!" They have another beer and are making lots of noise. Another customer says to the barman, "What's the ruckus about? Is that a fight over there?"
"No," says the barman. "It's just the Murphy twins drunk again." Tom laughed aloud at this joke, as was Carrie trained to. I smiled, it was at one of my concession rates. Carrie wore white kid gloves - she said she had damaged her nails and fingers whilst gardening and cut herself on a rosebush. We had another two thousand miles to kill so I told her my experience of camping in Algonquin Park and being stung by poison ivy three years earlier. She said that that was very serious and that I should see a doctor because the poison and blisters come back every seven years.
"Did you know they spray these planes for cockroaches?" she said.
"Pardon," I said.
"Cockroaches. They get onto the plane and nest about the place. That's why I don't put anything on the floor."
When drinks came around Carrie complained that the ginger ale was too fizzy and had the attendant pour it from glass to glass, back and forth, until it was inert. She saw me crick my neck and inquired after my health. I told her I had arthritis.
"You ought to see your doctor and get that checked. My father died of brain-stem" something-or-other, which I couldn't quite make out.
Tom was reading 'Theodore Rex' by Edmund Morris, about the life of former US President Roosevelt, and I mentioned that my wife was interested in the Kennedys, to which Carrie responded, "Oh, those Irish rogues!"
"We're just in time for the celebrations," said Tom, jovially. "Fifty years! Incredible. I hear you have Monday off. What are your plans?"
"Round our way? Oh, we'll have a big street party and barbecue maybe, depending on the weather."
"We once met Liz and Phillip," he said. "Nice people."
Carrie tutted. She liked me and wouldn't tell Denny a lie. She corrected Tom. "There were five thousand other people present, Tom," she said.
"There were three thousand," he admitted, "but we got very close."
I asked them how they were getting from Dublin to Belfast. "Oh, we'll catch the Rapido," said the man who skis across Ontario, yachts around Nova Scotia and knows Dublin like the back of his Wexford.
Renowned internationally for our hospitality, I put the poor rich couple right about the Enterprise train to Belfast but myself took the precaution of getting the bus.
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison