THAT'S MEN:SOMETIMES IT'S just a gesture that makes you wonder. On a sunny day in Llandudno, north Wales, we climbed the Great Orme, which overlooks the promenade. At the top I spotted a man and woman looking out over the town and the sea, holding hands.
Something about the man conveyed an air of ownership of all he saw. He gazed out on the Irish Sea, the master of the waves. Suddenly he let the woman’s hand fall – that is the only way to describe it – strode five or six yards away from her, shielded his eyes and resumed his inspection of the sea. For a moment the woman’s hand hovered uncertainly and then she let it drop to her side.
It wasn’t as though he was making a statement – it was as though her presence simply didn’t matter at all. Therefore letting go of her hand, like letting go of the cellophane off a cigarette packet, could be done casually, suddenly and without any need for thought or explanation.
That night I saw them again in a restaurant. She was talking to him in a language I did not recognise. She talked on and on, softly, persistently, while he tackled his dinner, gazed out the window or drank his beer with little precise sips. Was he cruelly ignoring her? I don’t think so. Instead I had the impression of waves breaking endlessly and gently against a cliff face with no malice involved.
Perhaps, I thought, she talks like this all the time, and he protects his sanity by ignoring her. When they had been looking out to sea that morning their backs were to me, so I could not tell if she was speaking. If she had been talking on and on, and if he had simply wanted to absorb the majesty of the sea, one could understand why he moved away.
But still, the dropping of her hand like that, without a thought, is the picture that stays with me.
Later, when they left the restaurant I saw them through the window, walking among the holidaymakers. She reached out and firmly took his hand in hers. He let her.
Addendum: I also discovered on holiday that I have become a curmudgeon. It began when a couple at the next table in a pub began to discuss my dinner as they made up their minds about what to pick from the menu. They spoke quietly, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I found it all intensely annoying, a sort of invasion, and I wondered if restaurateurs feel this way when the gourmets are in the house.
Anyway, these two were about 15 years older than I, and I realised I had never known younger people to pick over my dinner in that way. They ordered something entirely different and that was the end of the matter – except that I then began to see very old white-haired people like them mooching around everywhere. And if you have ever been to Llandudno – a lovely place when the sun shines – you will know that it can feel as though you have found yourself, somewhat prematurely, in an outdoor retirement home. And, no, it doesn’t help at all that I have had white hair for years.
The folded wheelchairs in the lobby of one of the hotels really convinced me I had arrived in that long-forecast future in which the very old over-run (perhaps over-potter would be more accurate) the world.
I began to send out politically incorrect tweets under the hashtag #getthegun. What finally persuades me I have crossed a threshold are two tweets in particular. The first reports that in the gents’ in one of the pubs you can buy an inflatable sheep from the condom machine. The second tweet adds: Serve them better to put soap in the bloody soap dispenser.
And so I have become a curmudgeon who cares about soap more than he cares about inflatable sheep – #getthegun indeed.
Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is accredited as a counsellor by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living,is published by Veritas. His mindfulness newsletter is free by e-mail.