Dancing the samba with someone from Kilbeggan, my evening suddenly came undone, writes MICHAEL HARDING
I ONCE spent three months in a nursing home in Cork, as a chaplain to the elderly residents. On my days off I would drink Beamish stout, and eat big beef sandwiches in The Long Valley, a pub near the Post Office, to cheer myself up, because working in a nursing home used to make me feel sad.
I often sat in the day-room wondering what was behind the old faces; what anxieties made them cling so tenaciously to packets of cigarettes, or tins of pipe tobacco? What made them grip their rosary beads with such ferocity, worrying that someone might steal their handbags? And each afternoon I would cast off the clerical uniform, and cycle around the city on a bicycle, wearing a big white shirt, and faded blue jeans. But all that seems like a thousand years ago now.
Last Friday I was in Cork for a different matter; I was in the Everyman Palace Theatre discussing a lighting design for a show I will be doing there at the end of September. It’s a beautiful old theatre, and it took my breath away to stand in the wings and realise that Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy apparently once walked those same boards when they preformed in Cork.
I had lunch with Patricia Twomey, who worked in the Everyman for years, where she was known as Patsy Props. She also worked in the circus, and travelled across Europe from Madrid to Vienna as an acrobat, magician and sometimes ringmaster.
“I used to saw people in half,” she told me, as we tucked into chicken and chips.
“That’s a great talent,” I suggested, “to saw someone in half, and then put them back together again. How did you do it?” “Beautifully,” she said, and smiled.
I was so elated by the magic of the Everyman that I decided to go shopping in the afternoon. In fact, I decided to buy jeans. I’m in the habit of wearing shapeless cotton trousers, but it occurred to me that since I’m now performing in elegant theatres, and rubbing shoulders with the Electric Picnic set around Westmeath, and up-and- coming bands like the Aftermath, it might be time to get back into jeans; and besides, I had an invitation to a party on Saturday night.
Jeans highlight the muscularity of a young man’s torso beautifully. A youthful male body in jeans is a joy to behold, but to be honest, I don’t think they’re the wisest choice of trouser for a man of my years, unless you’re Michael O’Leary and have the kind of money that makes age irrelevant.
Anyway, I got the jeans. And the party went well on Saturday, for a few hours, with lots of laughter and silly talk at the table, though I was the only guest over 50.
Then everyone started dancing, and flirting, and smoking on the patio. By 2am the vast Celtic Tiger kitchen was aglow with candles burning on the table, amid the debris of dinner plates, salad bowls and chocolate mousse, and most of the guests were either dancing to Salsa music in the kitchen or gone to sleep on couches in far corners of the huge drawing room. Someone from South America was upstairs in a bedroom weeping, and watching a movie called Carandiru.
I had a go at the dancing, moving my hips, in the samba fashion, with someone from Kilbeggan, but the tight jeans constricted my groin, and in one over-enthusiastic gyration I came close to doing myself damage. I fled to the bathroom, to loosen the trousers, but in panic I ripped both the zip and the top buttons of the jeans asunder.
Thus undone by a pot-belly, and holding my trousers up with both hands, I tip-toed down the hall and out to the jeep, where a pair of knee-length khaki shorts still lay beneath the passenger seat, since the day I went to Bundoran in August, to surf.
I would have relished one more samba with the lady from Kilbeggan, but I decided against it. Instead I drove home, watched a recording of Barbara Windsor’s last walk down Albert Square in EastEnders, and eventually got to bed, clutching a mug of drinking chocolate. I slept like a log until noon, which I suppose is about as much as a man of my years can hope for.