McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland by Pete McCarthy Page B
Authors: Pete McCarthy
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except for mum, who’s gone for Glasgow Celtic, though I think one of her tattoos is United.
Seats on these flights are unreserved, like being in a bus, or the casualty department of a hospital. The family, who are clearly in high spirits, having presumably given Social Services the slip earlier in the day, base themselves a few rows up to my right; the eldest boy though, a nine-year-old sociopath, is banished down the aisle to sit next to me. When he complains, then shrieks, his uncle—carry-on beer in hand ready for take-off—comes down and threatens him, then gives him a can of Coke and a family-size bag of what smell like prawn cocktail and Russian cigarette-flavour cheesy corn snacks. The kid chugs the Coke and guzzles the technicolour chemicals in the few minutes we’re sitting on the tarmac, then as we begin to taxi, he starts wailing, ‘Ma, Ma, Ma’ in a monotone crescendo that goes unnoticed by the increasingly lively, and indeed arm-wrestling, family group up front. He blurts out the words, ‘Ma, I’m gonna do a sick,’ just a split second before blurting out the Coke and cheesy snacks from, I can’t help noticing at such close range, nose and gob simultaneously. Fortunately a woman across the aisle is quick to react with a no-frills sick bag, and I get away with minor traces of splashback.
As we gain altitude and my pebble-dashed chinos begin to crisp up nicely, I consider the reasons for this hiatus in my journey. I’m planning to spend a lot more time travelling round the west of Ireland, but not in a hire car; and I can’t make the Loch Derg pilgrimage before they open for business in June. And anyway work calls.
Well, not work exactly, but one of the management-imposed charades that plague many industries these days, and television more than most. Every few months the senior executives at BBC and Channel 4 and ITV leave to take up similar jobs at a rival channel, where they immediately sack the existing staff and bring in their mates from their last job. They then cancel programmes, and commission focus groups of unemployable daytime TV-watchers with personality disorders to try and find out what viewers want.
Meanwhile, writers are summoned from all over the country to dream up ideas for vibrant, new, original programmes, which are then ditched in favour of the braindead pet, cookery, gardening and home improvement shows that have come to dominate the British airwaves. This time I’m considering pitching an idea about two sick dogs who swap homes. While they’re away they get looked after by sexy vets, and their gardens and kennels have makeovers. Then they die and get barbecued by Ainsley Harriott. I’ll need about a month in England for meetings with various chancers, charlatans and posh boys calling themselves producers, then I can go back to Ireland for as long as I like.
As we come in to land at Stansted there is a vicious fracas involving the three-year-old in the middle of the row in front of me, who has spent the entire flight standing on her seat slamdancing and head-butting the shoulder of the woman in the window seat. The child’s mother, sitting in front of Sick Boy—now working his way through his second Snickers Bar with 7-Up chasers—is an odd one, and no error.
Thirty-something, white and Irish, she’s dressed in a full-length embroidered biblical gown with striped pyjamas showing underneath, desert sandals, and a blue nativity-play headdress. The whole ensemble is nicely complemented by two-inch-thick orange foundation—like one of those scary women at a department store cosmetics counter—pouting pink lip gloss, and Dusty Springfield mascara, which appears to have been applied with a table tennis bat.
In England, we’re used to being able to place people socially at a glance and it’s frustrating when, as with this woman, the totality of the image simply does not compute. The best I can come up with for now is that she’s from one of those obscure fundamentalist
Seats on these flights are unreserved, like being in a bus, or the casualty department of a hospital. The family, who are clearly in high spirits, having presumably given Social Services the slip earlier in the day, base themselves a few rows up to my right; the eldest boy though, a nine-year-old sociopath, is banished down the aisle to sit next to me. When he complains, then shrieks, his uncle—carry-on beer in hand ready for take-off—comes down and threatens him, then gives him a can of Coke and a family-size bag of what smell like prawn cocktail and Russian cigarette-flavour cheesy corn snacks. The kid chugs the Coke and guzzles the technicolour chemicals in the few minutes we’re sitting on the tarmac, then as we begin to taxi, he starts wailing, ‘Ma, Ma, Ma’ in a monotone crescendo that goes unnoticed by the increasingly lively, and indeed arm-wrestling, family group up front. He blurts out the words, ‘Ma, I’m gonna do a sick,’ just a split second before blurting out the Coke and cheesy snacks from, I can’t help noticing at such close range, nose and gob simultaneously. Fortunately a woman across the aisle is quick to react with a no-frills sick bag, and I get away with minor traces of splashback.
As we gain altitude and my pebble-dashed chinos begin to crisp up nicely, I consider the reasons for this hiatus in my journey. I’m planning to spend a lot more time travelling round the west of Ireland, but not in a hire car; and I can’t make the Loch Derg pilgrimage before they open for business in June. And anyway work calls.
Well, not work exactly, but one of the management-imposed charades that plague many industries these days, and television more than most. Every few months the senior executives at BBC and Channel 4 and ITV leave to take up similar jobs at a rival channel, where they immediately sack the existing staff and bring in their mates from their last job. They then cancel programmes, and commission focus groups of unemployable daytime TV-watchers with personality disorders to try and find out what viewers want.
Meanwhile, writers are summoned from all over the country to dream up ideas for vibrant, new, original programmes, which are then ditched in favour of the braindead pet, cookery, gardening and home improvement shows that have come to dominate the British airwaves. This time I’m considering pitching an idea about two sick dogs who swap homes. While they’re away they get looked after by sexy vets, and their gardens and kennels have makeovers. Then they die and get barbecued by Ainsley Harriott. I’ll need about a month in England for meetings with various chancers, charlatans and posh boys calling themselves producers, then I can go back to Ireland for as long as I like.
As we come in to land at Stansted there is a vicious fracas involving the three-year-old in the middle of the row in front of me, who has spent the entire flight standing on her seat slamdancing and head-butting the shoulder of the woman in the window seat. The child’s mother, sitting in front of Sick Boy—now working his way through his second Snickers Bar with 7-Up chasers—is an odd one, and no error.
Thirty-something, white and Irish, she’s dressed in a full-length embroidered biblical gown with striped pyjamas showing underneath, desert sandals, and a blue nativity-play headdress. The whole ensemble is nicely complemented by two-inch-thick orange foundation—like one of those scary women at a department store cosmetics counter—pouting pink lip gloss, and Dusty Springfield mascara, which appears to have been applied with a table tennis bat.
In England, we’re used to being able to place people socially at a glance and it’s frustrating when, as with this woman, the totality of the image simply does not compute. The best I can come up with for now is that she’s from one of those obscure fundamentalist
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