Michael Harding: Vegetables and exercise versus sadness and jealousy

Whatever about vegetables, I’m certain that exercise is an enormous help to people who suffer from melancholy, so I bought a treadmill

It’s hard to know what the best cure for depression is. I was in a vegetable shop in Sligo after Christmas when an old woman asked me did I believe in vegetables. She was buying potatoes.

“I saw you on Tubridy, blathering on about nothing,” she said.

“Do you not like Tubridy?” I wondered, hoping to deftly change the subject ever so slightly.

“It’s you I didn’t like,” she said. “You never said anything about vegetables.” She was shouting. “People like you need vegetables.”

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“In fact, I eat a lot of vegetables,” I said.

Her fingers were floating over green beans and lumps of ginger.

“Ginger,” she said. “Take that.” And she shoved a lump of the root towards me.

“I don’t want it,” I said. “And besides, this is not a vegetable.”

She was small and her hands were fat. She counted her money on to the counter in 20-cent pieces when she was paying for her potatoes.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

She was astonished and she glared at me like I had asked her something ridiculous.

“Are you mad or what?” she shouted. “The guards wouldn’t ask me that.”

And then she looked me in the eye and poked her finger into my chest. “But of course,” she said, “I know where you’re from.”

And with that she left the shop, muttering to herself as she waddled down the street.

Exercise is vital

Whatever about the vegetables, I’m certain that exercise is an enormous help to people who suffer from melancholy, so, before I left Sligo, I bought a treadmill I had seen on sale for half price earlier in the day.

It came in two large cardboard boxes. That evening I assembled it in my studio. The following morning I was treading away on the machine at a brisk pace and staring through the glass door when the electrician came around the corner and stood outside, laughing.

I jumped off so fast before stopping the machine that I tripped and hit my head off the glass.

“You’re like a hamster,” he said, still laughing when I opened the door, “but you’d need to be careful because you could crack your skull coming off that thing.”

He had come to replace the clock on the central heating so that I could leave it on automatic when I was away in Poland, which I did two weeks later before heading for the airport.

Inferiority complex

I was in the boarding area when I saw someone I didn’t want to. I slumped down on a chair so that he might not see me.

“Please God, don’t let him come near me,” I prayed.

This is someone I was jealous of in secondary school because he was so intelligent, and now he is very successful in his profession. I always feel inferior in his presence.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, as if I shouldn’t be in airports.

“I’m waiting to board a plane,” I replied meekly.

“Why are you lying down? Is there something wrong with your back?”

“I was just looking at the ceiling,” I said.

He looked up but there was nothing remarkable about the ceiling.

“There’s nothing remarkable about that ceiling,” he said.

“No,” I agreed. “There’s not. Isn’t that amazing?”

I was on the back foot, and he was becoming more and more like a schoolmaster.

“Where are you off to?” I asked.

“Spain,” he said. “Sunshine is absolutely essential at this time of year. What about yourself?”

“Poland,” I confessed. He looked at me as if I was mad.

“What are you going there for?” he asked.

“Snow,” I replied defiantly.

“Get some sun,” he said. “It’s the only effective remedy for depression.” And he walked off.

So there I was in seat 1C on the plane, thinking of vegetables and sunshine and exercise, on my way to a world of snow, where I might be stuck in a small apartment eating out of tins.

And before the door closed a young woman plonked herself down in seat 1A, wearing a silk scarf and a loose grey jacket with the remarkable ease that students have when they wear vintage clothing. And I could see yellow socks inside her boots, which suggested a sense of humour.

She closed her eyes and kept her earphones in for the entire flight until we were hovering over Warsaw. And I, too, closed my eyes for most of the journey, dreaming of what lay ahead: long walks in the snow under blue skies, and large bowls of soup with beetroot, sour cream and cabbage.