Mind The Gap

The train was filling up. Praiseach de phótairí strewn about the carriage, spreading legs and luggage across the seats in an effort to secure some space for their hangovers. Morning-after-the-night-before gaeilgeoirí. The worst kind.

She blustered onto the train at Mala, and the other passengers averted their eyes. Mine, however, were fucking glued to her. Mad, brassy burgundy coloured hair, denim jeans and a fringed denim jacket, she was all rhinestones and righteousness, looking about her like she wanted to batter the face off the next one who looked crooked at her. So I swept my handbag into a cuddle on my lap and nodded at the seat beside me. She looked grateful, and a little like she might bite me. Once she'd settled, the natter kicked off; each episode illustrated with photos from her camera phone. I'm pretty intimately acquainted with her domestic situation at this stage, everything from her ma's fibroids to her dog's gluecoma. He has a good heart though, she tells me, so he'll live for ages with it. He just keeps walking into things. I know people just like that, I tell her. She makes me smile all the way to Thurles, this pavee lackeen, and leaves me with a hug and a thank you. For what? I asked her. Nothing, she laughed, and she barrelled back out through the carriage with the same fonn troda on her that she had when she stomped in.

I think I fell a little in love with her.

As the train pulls away from Thurles we pass acres of flooded farmland. There are sheep standing in grumpy little clusters atop the hillocks that punctuate the dreary landscape. A pair of swans glide majestically across the submerged pastures, looking for all the world like they own the place. I stretch out and slip my headphones on, pleased that for the next two hours I can idle in daydreams. There are no more stops until Heuston, so I cast my thoughts adrift again to paddle across the sodden plains. More swan than sheep.

Beo (Ach Ar Éigin) Ón Oireachtas

A quiet dinner, a sociable drink, an early night. Blue steak and white wine (I know, I know) with a generous serving of sparky budgies on the side. The drink was a very fucking sociable one; she batted her lashes and made me loquacious, so I batted my own and I made them laugh.

I did this knowing that I had no happy painkillers to see me through whatever repercussions this morning might bring. What odds, I thought, it's not like a hangover's ever killed anybody. It'll be better before you're twice married. Hoor it out. Offer up your suffering.

The hangover kicked in at 6.30am, and my grave error was upgraded to a possibly fatal mistake. Probably fatal. I wished it were, at least. Four glasses of water and a sorry whimper later, I fell back asleep, only to wake again at 9.30 in pretty much exactly the same fucking state. And what a state.

So I dress, in the loosest sense of the word, to go in search of a cure. I tiptoe into the hotel lift with a grimace so pained and a headache so disabling that the lady in it suspects I might actually be disabled, and presses my button for me. There's a Spar just across from the hotel entrance and never has their slogan seemed more apt; All you need (is paracetamol) when you need it (about 8 hours ago, but you can make it up to me). I trip in and wander aimlessly up and down the aisles, for no good reason. I know that they keep it behind the counter, but my pride won't allow me to totter up, vulnerable and bleary-eyed, and tell the nice lady what I want. It's like buying lube with potatoes and milk in Tesco; I'm trying to hide the fact that I am braless and hungover by buying other "respectable" things too, like, eh, Sunny Delight and the Irish Times.

Mission accomplished, I hurry back to my room (Pride, inconvenient bitch that she is, not allowing me to neck the paracetamol as I stroll across the lobby, and Dexterity colluding with her and not allowing me to open the Sunny D, because Dexterity is just a bit of cunt anyway). Those ten minutes between swallowing the tablets and their tentative massaging of my temples seem like the longest of my life.

Thus fortified, I head for breakfast and sit singing along to Elton John's Rocketman, looking out at the sun shining on the river Lee. Cork looks lovely in the winter sunshine. The rashers glint under their heatlamp, the eggs wobble like runny little diddies in their greasy bath. I burst two in my effort to claim one, only afterwards noticing the slice which surely would have made for a better tool to lift them with than the sausage tongs. Shrug. Laugh. Fuck it. My rubber arms have gotten me tangled up in blue again, but I'm happy. My hangover and I, we're cool. Je ne regrette rien, and she knows it.