Round Ireland with a fridge by Tony Hawks

Author:Tony Hawks [Hawks, T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: [2010.01.06]
Publisher: [Côte d’Azur]
Published: 1997-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

The club we were now in, which was in the basement of Murphys, had all the unpleasant features that I had come to associate with these places—overcrowded dancefloor, booming bass, strobe lighting and mindless remarks from the DJ. Perfect for making me feel uncomfortable. I felt I had gone back in time and was reliving one of countless unsatisfactory teenage evenings. It was a nightmare, but most of all because I had completely lost Roisin.

She was here, at least she had said she was coming, but I couldn’t see her anywhere in this crowded sweaty hellhole. Naturally, were I to bump into Roisin and find myself marching off hand in hand with her to the dancefloor, I would have found the whole ambience entirely more agreeable. As it was, I was reduced to drinking beer and watching girls dancing. Man at his most atavistic.

I engaged in a brief social shouting match with an English girl from Finchley. Thinking how awful it would be if Roisin was somewhere in the club and just saw me standing around like somebody’s Dad, I asked the Finchley girl to dance.

She replied that she had been to France, having made two visits to a penfriend in Lyons. I took this as a cue to return to my solitary position by the dancefloor and resume my role as a steady drinker.

It must have been quite close to the end of the evening when I put my pint down, marched on to the dancefloor, and did my little jig with as much dignity as I could muster. Nobody had asked me to dance and no one was dancing with me. I suppose this is the one advantage of the modern discotheque. Had I been doing this on my own at the 1930s dancehall I would have been thrown out A girl suddenly grabbed me and started swinging me about by my arms. It wasn’t clear whether she was dancing with me or trying to soften me up for interrogation. Had an interrogation followed, I surely would have spilled the beans. She continued to swing me around until I was close to exhaustion. I wouldn’t have minded but I hadn’t even asked her if she’d been to France. When the record finished, the lights came up, and that was it, the night was over.

Except of course that no one was in a hurry to leave. Why should they be? With the music no longer blaring, here was the first opportunity for people to talk to each other.

On my way out, I bumped into Roisin who was in the queue for the cloakroom.

‘Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you,’ I said.

‘I’ve been talking to Paul.’

‘Who’s Paul?’

‘Paul is who asked me out this evening. This is our second date.’

‘Oh.’ I felt two hours of drink swell inside me. ‘I think you’re lovely, you know.’

‘Do you? That’s nice.’ She seemed genuinely chuffed, although presumably she could spot ‘3 am drunken boy at disco’ talk, when she heard it The thing is, I really meant it.

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