We could have been contenders!

Every Boxing Day when we called up around Armagh direction with relatives in Keady, Markethill, Caledon, Tynan, Killylea we entered a strange border territory that was almost foreign to us.  Down long endless lanes to farms we found doors flung open and hoards of relatives would fill rooms eager to learn your news and share theirs.  The yearly pilgrimage coincided with the Killylea hunt on Boxing Day and I was fascinated with the huge steaming horses prancing around Main Street.  My eldest brother felt differently and referred to them as big smelly animals that could fart from both ends.  Years passed and my attitude hardened.  I disliked these fancy folk on their steeds who took perverse pleasure from hunting wildlife to death.  Deep inside, I have to confess it was their ‘Hurrah Henry’ accents, crisp riding outfits and tilt of their heads that got up my nose even more than their hunting proclivities. To me they represented the landed gentry, rich folk that were the polar opposite to my ‘poor pig farming’ background.  In contrast to the hunting fraternity, my relatives like Uncle Archie were genuinely impressive; he intrigued us children, by having a conversation with us each year consisting solely of farts.  Auntie Sally fed her grandchildren with huge lambing coke bottles with a teat on the end and the babies were all huge beaming Buddas on her lap.  Auntie Eve winded her babies by holding their bare bottoms to the fiery range and we were intrigued by the engine ‘put, put’ sound they made.  Their earthy good humour had us in stitches of laughter.

The welcome at each farm remained as warm as ever each year and it always shocked me how the bloodline of family breaks down all social barriers.  Every Boxing Day when we travelled down from Dungiven, high in the northern Sperrins, I felt embraced by a clan I hardly knew but one that claimed me as their own.  Chunky chickens (a name for particularly fat birds) were smuggled into our boot along with boxes of biscuits and sweets.  It was akin to a family hunting party on a raid.  There were strict rules that needed to be abided by.  If we called into a warm kitchen bathed in heat from a massive Aga and failed to consume a good tea – ham, salad, beetroot with lashings of hot tea, followed by freshly baked cakes my father would be scolded solemnly at the door as we left.

“Sure, this doesn't count as a visit, son!  You hardly had a crumb.  Now, mind you, it wasn't a proper call at all.  You'll have to call again and have a real tea.”

The scolding was intense and serious with deep disappointment that the social niceties had not been adhered to.  My father would bow his head and admit he’d failed his hosts and duly promise to return for an extra call before next Boxing Day.  Given that we called at half a dozen farmhouses on Boxing Day our appetites were phenomenal.  You couldn't get out off a meal by saying that Auntie Annie had already fed you to the gills.  That wouldn't do at all.  So, we learned to develop appetites that consumed all that was presented on plates.  My brothers and I became skilled at clearing table after table.  Only when our bellies ached, bloated beyond bearing did we call a halt.  Dreading the terrible scolding our father would endure, if we were rude enough to leave with only a cup of tea in us.  It was part of our cultural identity to eat meal after meal with gusto.  If only eating had been an Olympic sport we three would have been contenders.  I was, years later, at a Christmas ‘work do’ and had consumed a huge plateful of food.  My colleague next to me was feeling indisposed and could not touch their equally enormous pile of turkey and stuffing etc.  It was second nature to immediately consume their dinner and desert straight after my own.  Their appalled expression said it all.  Training and endurance, I called it.  Sure, hadn’t we as a family eaten our way across Co Armagh for decades?  A powerful appetite is the only proper response to a generous host.  Sure, any kith or kin of mine knows that!

As pernicious as nose picking

Tomorrow, I must hustle for a job.  There was a scene in a series, Auf Wiedersehen, about English builders in Germany where one of the main characters says aggressively to everyone he meets, “Gi us a job!”, followed by, “I can do that, and then “Gi us a job!” repeated.  Well, thought I’d try that approach tomorrow.  I’m far too shy, it will do me good.  Face to face, it’ll be harder for them to say no.  Mind you, face to face, it will be harder to hear them say, “Sod off!”  The thing about most small islands, in my experience, is that jobs are rare and when available  naturally go to the locals.  On Rhodes in Greece, I tried for a job in a hotel.  My appointment with the personal manager went something like this.

 

Me, a bit nervous, knock on the door of a swanky office.  He grunts from inside and I take that as an invitation to enter.  I walk in to find a middle-aged man picking his nose and talking on his phone while seated behind a desk that should have belonged to the president of some Middle Eastern oil state.  At least he can multitask.  There was a running gag about a certain American president who was reputedly unable to walk and chew gum at the same time.  Anyway, he gestures with his phone for me to come in, while continuing to mine for gold. 

 

I approach his desk and decide I’m not going to shake his hand.  Then, I compromise, if he offers me the nose picking hand I’ll demur, but if it is the phone hand I’ll go for it.  Then, it occurs to me, what if he is an ambidextrous nose picker and I’ve arrived at the tail end of an orgy of nose picking all morning with both hands?   I decide it will be safer not to go for a handshake at all.  

Approaching his desk, I make sure I am not close enough for a handshake.  That feels much safer.  I needn’t have worried Mr Manager of Personnel is still talking on the phone and drilling a second shaft with his little pinkie.  I have a young nephew, who, when speaking on his mobile begins pacing up and down the room as if in a walking race.  One of my sons, who will remain nameless, will talk on the phone while scratching his ass.  Perhaps, we all have these little oddities when we are using the phone and only notice other peoples and not our own perversities.  Poor guy, perhaps nose picking is his phone thing, suddenly he hangs up and says in Greek,

“Well, what?”

Understanding him but not able to speak Greek in response I explain in English that I’ve come about a job they’ve advertised.  He leans back into his mammoth chair and gives the Greek no, which consists of a clicking noise made with the tongue against the top of the mouth followed by a quick nod back of the head.  Well, that’s a pretty clear no.  I thank him; Anglo-Saxon civility is as pernicious as nose picking.  It’s programmed in.

Leaving the office, I feel like I am in a different skit from the two Ronnie’s where one of them goes in to ask for a pay increase only to be rejected and humiliated.  As he leaves the same office, he is transformed into a schoolboy and his suit has changed into a school uniform complete with shorts and a cap.  He is so small he cannot even reach the handle to get out.  A wonderful image capturing all the vulnerability and feeling of smallness of the occasion.  

Later on, I’m talking to a friend who knows everyone on the island.  I describe my encounter and he explains that the personnel manager is the hotel owner’s cousin.  That is why he got the job.  And then in dark tones, as if this explains everything, “from one of the villages” waving his hand as if to some dark tribal outback. 

I am taken back to another conversation about the island being like a dog’s dish and no one likes to see another dog at the dish.  Especially, a foreign looking dog’s head.  It just means there’s less to go around.  So, I enter the fray with little illusion and a great deal of misgiving.  There are times when one really has to ask just how much rejection can a person take?  Can one overdose on it?  Does it do irreparable damage to one’s self-esteem?  To do what one loves and get paid for it is light upon light.  If writing could earn me money, I’d be in clover but the reality is these stories that are pouring out of me at present are a displacement activity.  You and I know I need to be out earning a living.  How does one reach mid fifties and be so useless at the basics of life?  Practice and perseverance, that’s how.  I have long perfected the art of putting off what needs to be done.  No more, tomorrow I’ll bite the bullet, but tonight I’ll have a big bun and some chocolate.  Challenging day ahead after all!