One For The Road: Well snoozer

“Y ou know people take every word you write in that column literally,” said my ma the other morning, seeming no more than a few minutes away from misrepresenting her annoyance as disappointment.

It was about 11 o’clock and she was wiping down the worktops, her cloth gliding across the counter like a shin-shattering puck across the ice.

Ten feet away, having only entered the room about 30 seconds earlier, l now leaned awkwardly against a kitchen cupboard.

“Did ye?” she asked again. There was nothing rhetorical in her voice. Her question demanded an answer. But, given my complete incomprehension of the situation, coupled with the psychologically-suffocating sense that some sort of terrible domestic storm was brewing, I could not give her what she wanted.

“Wadda ye mean?” I asked, using one per-cent of my brain to string the short sentence together, while the other 99 per-cent summoned all my 27 years of experience in the field of family conflict, in an all-out effort to calculate just how high-risk the unfolding predicament might be.

“Well, (a woman whose name has been withheld on good relations grounds) rang me yesterday and goes, ‘Awk Ann, I’m sure you got a quare shock when you lifted last week’s paper’.”

Immediately, I knew what she was on about.

“Jesus Christ,” I scowled, serving it up with a teaspoon of shock, a pinch of bemusement and just a dash of indignation. “Sure didn’t I make it as ridiculous as I could so that everybody would know I was joking.”

She wiped some crumbs into her hand – which, much to the detriment of any defence I might be about to launch into, belonged to my toast – and looked at me unsettlingly.

“Obviously not ridiculous enough, Emmet, because half the town now thinks that you only gave your own mother a week’s notice to get her head around the fact you are heading away to the other side of the world (South East Asia) for who knows how long,” she said, with the fluency of somebody whose inner monologue had been playing this same sentence on loop, long before her mouth was ever asked to transmit it into the world.

I attempted to butt in but she butted in better.

“Oh, and if that’s not bad enough, strangers, people you don’t even know, think they found out at the same time and in the same way as your own family – through that bloody column,” she laughed, in a manner that I can only describe as being the opposite to contagiously.

“Where’s last week’s paper?” I asked, before heading to the place where I knew last week’s paper to be.

I opened it up, flicked to page 12 and began to quote from the relevant paragraph.

“Right… ‘Anyway, this long play of duplicitous prevarication ends today. Here goes… I’m heading to South East Asia and I don’t know when I’ll be back. (I’m sorry you had to find out this way Mum and Da, but I couldn’t bear to tell you in person and watch your shattered expressions. But don’t worry, all the pain of this impersonal goodbye will be washed away in an instant, when you see the awesome key rings that I bring you BOTH back’.”

She looked at me with the ghost of a smile.

“But, for the sake of those who missed the sarcasm, I’ll make sure to clarify that it was a joke in my next column,” I said – rather generously, I thought.

“Sure there’s no point in that,” she said coolly. “Anybody who read that last one and didn’t know you were joking will think you’re the right wee royal tube. In fact, not only will they not be reading your column any time soon, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they never buy the ‘Herald again.”

And with that, she turned and started re-wiping an already-wiped worktop.

I’m gonna miss her.

Anyway, I must get going, I’ve a big empty bag sitting upstairs that, at the time of writing, about 24 hours away from the first flight, has nothing in it.

Hopefully next time you hear from me I’ll have some first impressions for you.

Good luck.