THE couple at the next table in New York heard us talking about going to the airport. They were interested because their visit to New York was over too. They were driving back to a town I hadn't heard of but out of craven politeness pretended I had. Every year they come to New York for a week. They drove, it took 18 hours, and they shared the driving - three hours on three hours off. She played her Country And Western tapes when she drove, he played Latin American during his spell. Recipe for a happy marriage, they said. You don't have to like someone else's taste, just put up with it, and if possible sleep through it.
"Do you just hate going home?" she asked me.
No, I didn't at all. I was looking forward to flying in over Dublin in the early dawn, rejoicing that we didn't have to get out at Shannon any more. All kinds of things sound good when you've been away for three weeks, even AA Road Watch is at least about places you'd know.
She understood. "One great thing about getting back home is the ketchup," she said eagerly.
Now I'm as fond as the next person of a bit of tomato sauce with my chips but I never noticed it to be lacking in New York.
It seemed an odd thing to hunger after. Maybe it was different in her part of the world, this town 18 hours from Manhattan. I was afraid to ask in case this town was famous for its ketchup, and it would reveal me as being dishonest.
But surely I couldn't start nodding sagely over bottles of tomato sauce as a reason to go back to where you came from. This way madness lies. Am I going to end up agreeing with everyone over anything at all just for a quiet life?
"The ketchup?" I said, showing that my inquiring mind wasn't entirely dormant.
"Oh sure, there are so many things to ketch up on when you've been away. Family, friends, neighbours, scandals, fallings out. You know, I love the ketching up, I'm on the phone for hours.
I DON'T know what it was like in her hometown, but it was fairly serious ketchup back in Dublin. You can't turn your back on the place for a minute. At least the Government hadn't fallen, but the stories of what had been happening were even more dramatic when they had to be telescoped than if you had been here watching them unfold.
And because I wasn't here watching it all and making up my own mind, I had to hear other peoples' interpretations, and people were white as the driven snow mad as a box of birds lying through their teeth; deserving all they got and more; or unfortunate poor divils who would be misunderstood from now to eternity.
And in the jet lagged days when I kept thinking was wide awake and able to cope with everything, my mind was filled with stories of Albert's Libel Action, the Neil Jordan/Eoghan Harris gunfight, Nuala's memoirs, the little misunderstanding between Proinsias de Rossa and Eamon Dunphy, Raquel and Curley's marriage on the rocks in Coronation Street, Nora Owen's difficulties and Mary Cummins's marvellous book launch.
I reeled to think all that could have happened in 21 days.
In fact, the old time difference caught up with me a couple of times unexpectedly and I fell asleep suddenly in the middle of one of my own sentences at lunch in the Sorrento Lounge in Dalkey and dreamed that I was still in New York and had to get out fast to Kennedy airport, if only I could get out from under the duvet. And again later in a taxi, I was asleep before I had told the driver where we were going. And it only seems the other day that I used to be able to get off a plane, in the morning, do a full day's work and go out to the Trocadero until the small hours. But then I used to hate the way older people shook their heads and wagged their fingers about lost energy, so forget it.
AS part of what has been unkindly described as of my over documented life, I keep a scrapbook every trip abroad. But you need to work fast before the memories fade. Among the scraps of paper to be sorted there's a note about Mr Tantric Sex. This was definitely an author who had written a book on the subject.
He was a handsome young man from the group photograph of happy booksellers and writers at a festival dinner. But what could I have meant by "Tell story of Mr Tantric Sex and Darlene"?
I don't know either of them well enough to write in search of recall. All I do remember is a lot of argument at their end of the table about putting things off and delaying them as long a possible which I believe was the thesis of his bestseller.
I can't imagine what kind of story about all this that I was going to report in my very blameless scrapbook, but it does prove yet again that these things should all be written down at the time. You can't have retrospective ketchup about your holiday because all the characters have disappeared into different parts of the forest.
But that's not the case here. Everyone knows everything, and remembers everything and has a view. Which is why it's so dull to live anywhere else.
I was only back hours before I heard of a romantic alliance so dramatically unsuitable that crowds of vigilantes should all be out in the area with placards of protest. And a friend who went to one of the big refuse dumps to throw out a whole lot of builder's rubbish had two near heart attacks as she stood flinging in the contents of her boot.
First she met the builder, who said that this was all his property that she was throwing away and he was going to bill her for every screed of it. And his face became purple and he started holding his throat and hyperventilating as if he was going to expire. Then when she was trying to look away and not catch his eye, didn't she see on the other side of her a man throwing the bodies of what she thought were three women in to the pit, so she became limp and leaned against her car, and it turned out to be only old broken plastic model things you put in windows to dress with skirts and twin sets. He had been paid £50, he said, to clear out an old shop and no money would pay him for all the aggravation he had endured over the whole thing.
And they told me that this record, Faith Of Our Fathers, was top of the hit parade - and I didn't believe it, so at a dinner out they offered to play one track, and of course we had to have the whole 20. And everyone roared out the words, drowning the proper singers on the CD and we nearly had the whole thing all over again.
One of our number said we should all rush round to the nearest church and beat on the door shouting "We're back, we're back!"
Oh, it's great to be back for the ketchup.