People

The terrifying drive back from the dance in the days before the NCT

Family Fortunes: ‘In the morning Nan asked me why I hadn’t touched my milk and digestives’

Every Saturday night, after returning from the dance hall, there’d be a glass of milk and a plate of digestive biscuits on my bedside locker. Photograph: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Martin Malone
Thu Oct 20 2016 - 10:45

It was a time before motorways, a time before your car needed to pass an NCT, a time when I was young and carefree. At weekends, I stayed in my grandmother’s house in Newbridge. I was riding a Honda 50 that liked to stall on hills and also it struggled against the Curragh’s cross-winds.

Every Saturday night, after returning from the dance hall, there’d be a glass of milk and a plate of digestive biscuits on my bedside locker. It was always late when I got home, sometimes 2 or even 3am. Nan’d be lying awake, her bedroom door ajar – she’d make enough of a stir to let me know that she wasn’t asleep.

After saying I wouldn’t be taking the bike, she asked how would I get home and wasn’t at all charmed by my reply. When I added that there wouldn’t be a shortage of cars to take me home, she frowned, not totally convinced.

So, the dance. Red Hurley. And my girl left me at a table close to the mineral bar – she wanted to jive with her sisters. Did I mind? No, I said, knowing whether I cared or not was of no importance.

READ MORE

At the end of the night, the ballroom emptying, I went in search of that lift home, and found not so much a friend but someone I knew who said he’d squeeze me in. He was travelling back to Kildare town and he would drop me off in Newbridge on the way. No problem.

I was in the back seat with two others, crushed against the window. The driver eased out of town but once he hit the carriageway he hit the pedal and pushed the needle close to 100 miles an hour. His front-seat passenger was nervous, chewed on his fingernails, a lad beside me let loose a couple of whimpers. The driver, fag in mouth, head leaning forward, paid no heed. He zipped past one, two, three cars...increasing speed.

Newbridge – forgive the irony here – couldn’t come soon enough. About 50 yards up from the Garda station the driver pulled over to let me out. The moment he stopped, that very instant, the back left wheel promptly fell off. And in the morning Nan asked me why I hadn’t touched my milk and digestives.