Subscriber OnlyPeople

‘Do you have your wee pennies, love?’ The question filled me with childish ecstasy

Michael Harding: Random encounters are the perfect medicine for melancholy

I stopped at a filling station outside Belfast recently when I was touring with my book. I put £15 worth of diesel in the tank and then went to pay. In fact, I had overshot the £15 mark on the pump by 5p and I was hoping the girl at the till might let me off and hand me back a £5 note when I offered her £20. Sterling coins always get mixed up in my pocket with euro, and I end up having arguments with parking meters in the South.

The girl at the till was chewing gum, and she had rings on two fingers and one thumb.

Melancholy has clung to me like damp clothes since I was a child

“Do you have your wee pennies love?” she inquired when I offered her the £20 note, like she was my mother.

“I don’t,” I confessed. And so she returned to me £4.95 in a collection of coins that filled the palm of my hand. Still, there was something so tender about the way the girl at the till phrased the question that I crumbled into an unfocused blur of childish ecstasy.

READ MORE

I left the shop on legs of jelly thinking how wonderful it was to be alive.

Usual companion

That kind of irrational exuberance comes occasionally after being on stage. Although it doesn’t last long.

Melancholy is my usual companion when a show is over and the dressing room or the hotel bedroom is the solitary refuge that beckons. Melancholy has clung to me like damp clothes since I was a child, and no amount of psychotherapy or religiosity can adequately explain it. But it happens like this:

A stranger comes to my door and I fear his footfall and his hand on the latch. Like Nosferatu, he looks in the window. And then suddenly he knocks and bangs and rattles the latch and I can hear a desperation in him to be admitted.

The latch rattles until I surrender and allow him in; the door opens and there he stands in dark clothes and ragged hair and he looks at me like Heathcliff about to devour his Catherine.

As I gaze at him, I realise he is an angel and, at the very moment when I am ready to surrender to him, he slips away. I know too that some night in the future he will come but will not leave. He will insist I go with him out the door, into the night, and far away from the fire forever.

It's always a joy to hear the squeals of delight that young people release when they fall into the collective frenzy of a mating session

And he probably slipped into the back seat of the car when I stopped to get diesel at the Border because he was breathing down my neck all the way to Dundalk, where I was doing another reading that evening.

Giddy boys

After the Dundalk show, I checked into a hotel in the town centre and I could hear Saturday night disco music vibrating up through the floor of my bedroom. I looked out the window and saw girls in mini-skirts smoking as they leaned against the wall, and giddy boys in T-shirts, jeans, and runners chasing each other around the parked cars.

It got a bit out of hand at one stage; guards arrived and took a young man away in a squad car. But mostly the crowd was good-humoured and it’s always a joy to hear the squeals of delight that young people release when they fall into the collective frenzy of a mating session.

“It’s wild outside,” I said to the receptionist. “But nonetheless, I’m going to chance it across the street to get a Chinese takeaway.”

I drank the soup and devoured the chilli chicken, and waited then for the knock upon the door.

“Be careful,” she said, joking. “One of them young ones might make a grab at you.” And I laughed as if I was 19 years of age again.

In the restaurant across the street, I waited for my order. When the meal was ready, I poked my nose into the bag to make sure everything was there, and I realised I was missing a spoon for the Won Ton soup. The lady behind the counter laughed. “We don’t have spoons for takeaways,” she said. “You’ll just have to drink it.”

She too was in such good humour, it crossed my mind that Dundalk might be a really good place to live. I returned to my hotel as light as feathers.

I sat at a small table in the bedroom watching Ray D’Arcy on the television and I opened the window to hear the sound of young, happy mating humans in miniskirts and T-shirts on the street below, as I drank the soup and devoured the chilli chicken, and waited then for the knock upon the door.