Bonne Nuit Ma Petit Grande Poisson

“Fish are people too!” I cried with an air of urgent desperation, in an effort to dissuade some expat friends from purchasing goldfish to ‘decorate’ their flat for the few months that they would be in Dubai.

Then the floodgates of ridicule opened.

I took it all on the chin, as I’ve done many times before, but I passed no apologies for my feelings about keeping fish. I have been called crazy, sad, naive, even ‘wanting, because of my fervent belief that a fish can not only be a quality pet, but that they can possess an incredible amount of character and are not the disposable decorative item that most people seem to think they are.

Quite a few years ago I moved out of home and into a garret bedsit in Limerick City. My first job was working as counter staff in the new Bewleys Restaurant on Cruises street.  I was an awkward, introverted little thing back then, with the social graces of a pea. I got lonely, so I went to the pet shop.  To add to my already blatant nerdishness, I was also highly allergic to anything with hair & four legs, so I found myself by the tanks. Hanging out in the back of one, away from the rest of the flock (shoal, whatever!) was a roguish looking fella with a look of madness in his eye. He was about the length of my middle finger (which isn’t very long at all), and shone like freshly rubbed brass.

“Bag him!” I said, and off we toddled to start what would be a long and beautiful friendship.

He lived in a still water bowl in those first years. Not particularly active, he preferred to give me Bela Lugosi eyes from the top of the T.V., occasionally spitting out a stone at the glass. I called him Cider, after my favourite drink.

It was in those first couple of years that I began to believe the whole ‘5 second’ memory thing was tosh. I was a regular viewer of a particular soap opera that had a very distinctive theme tune. Coincidentally, I began feeding him around the same time as that show would come on. Occasionally, I would forget, but as soon as that theme tune started belting out, my usually lethargic friend would get stir crazy, dancing around the tank trying to get my attention.

Sometimes I would deliberately forgo feeding, just to see what would happen. I’d walk around the room, watching him from the corner of my eye. In his confined space, he would follow me with a movement of his head. Just for the craic, I’d walk towards the tank shaking the container of fish food. He’d start going crazy jerking his whole body side to side like a dog wagging its tail, but then I’d stop and walk away again.  He would eventually give up on me, just loll there staring wildly, spitting stones at the glass again.  On some occasions he would simply turn his back and refused to play.

Time passed and I moved to Cork to go to University. I decided to get a tank-mate for my little friend, a Black Moor that I called Othello.

Othello died.

He lost his buoyancy one day and spent the following two weeks doing the back stroke in ever decreasing circles. I became quite distressed by the whole thing. Needless to say my flatmates at the time thought I was a total loop, specially when the matchbox was produced and a little hole dug for him in the garden.

Thankfully, my boyfriend was a tad more sympathetic. He arrived at my house one evening with a gift, for me & Cider. It was a brand new tank, a ‘real’ one, with filter system, plants, new gravel, and a tub of catfish pellets. He had come to the conclusion that the space the fish were in was too small, the water stagnated too quickly, and that feeding from the bottom of the tank rather than the top was healthier for them.

The change in little Cider when he was installed in his new home was incredible. He was like a kid in a sweet shop.  He swam around that tank like a Ferrari on a Formula One track. His favourite occupation was swimming against the current, and round and round the back of the filter. The combined effects of larger space, better food and plenty of exercise, was ‘more’ Cider. He grew and grew, and kept on growing.

I moved house for my third year of Uni, and simultaneously, Cider had to get a larger tank.  We were onto a 1 metre long container by then, and he was now the size of my whole hand. Even though he occasionally tried, he wasn’t able to fit behind the filter anymore.  My housemate and I would take him for walks. We would run up and down the length of the room while he followed. Sometimes we’d stop in the middle, faking moves right or left to try to put him off.  He’d jerk with the fake but was never completely fooled, only ever moving when we committed to our direction.

I had a convert in my flatmate, and through her our Cider Appreciation Society grew.

I nearly killed him that year.

He got a touch of fishy cancer, otherwise unattractively known as ‘Fin Rot’. I managed to get him into remission with a treatment that had to be added to the water once a week. One particular week, when my flatmate was out of the house, I decided to give Cider his medicine while I was completely stoned.


Now, the solution had to be diluted in hot water first.

I don’t think I need to paint a picture. Suffice to say Cider very quickly got a glazed look in his eyes and keeled over. Of course I freaked out little, but thankfully didn’t panic too much. I scooped him out of the big tank with the little one he used to live in, filling it with fresh tap water.  He lay there lopsided. Obviously mouth to mouth was out of the question so I tried resetting him in the water, holding him upright, gently talking to him, “C’mon buddy, come on … I know, I’m sorry. Don’t die on me now ya little bollix, come one!” Finally, out of desperation I tugged hard on his tail which must have acted like the equivalent of one of those electric shock paddles you see on ER, because he shot across the tank like a bolt of lightening, and banged his head off the far side of it. He spent the 15 or 20 minutes after that darting back and forth along the container, white eyed and jittery.

Once back in his big tank, he found the darkest corner and stayed there, arse to the sitting room, refusing to acknowledge anyone , regardless of what theme tune was played, for about a week. He eventually forgave me though.

Time passed, stuff happened, I graduated, and the Cider Appreciation Society grew as more and more people got to know the ‘Wonderfish’ .  I had to foster him out on a couple of occasions when my job, or travel in general took me away. He kept growing, his tanks got bigger and the process of looking after him became almost equivalent to that of looking after a cat or dog.

















His tank sat on a big coffee table by the picture window of my home.  Anyone coming to the house would pass by the window before coming to the door. Whether it was me, a friend or the postman, they got a wiggly welcome from our fishy friend as they passed. He also seemed to take great pleasure in tormenting the neighbours dog.

One day, our little family got bigger.

I had gone back to college for a while to study photography. Arriving into school one wet Cork morning, I found a stray.  Sitting on top of the print dryer in the Photography department lobby was a tiny tank with half a fingers depth of water. A  little shell-shocked Black Moor was blubbing away nervously in the pool. Crazy lady immediately made an appearance and  started cooing and clucking over the petrified creature.

He had been brought in by my tutor, Harry Moore, in order to find a home for him.  His nervous state was the result of having been cycled down Barrack Street Hill strapped to the front of a bicycle.

I rang my other half  to ask if we could keep him. Once he got over his confusion as to how exactly one could randomly ‘find a fish’, he agreed that we could adopt the little mite.

I called him Harry, after his original carer.

Knowing that Cider may not take to having his space invaded after so many years, I decided to quarantine Harry for a while. I submerged his tiny little tank into Cider’s enormous one, and he was allowed out for supervised walks once a day. I always made sure that the little hatch on the top of his tank was closed down before going to bed.

One Sunday morning however, tragedy struck.

I came downstairs and went to make coffee. It took me a minute to notice my other half standing, one hand on hip the other scratching his head, in front of the fishy mansion.

“What’s up?”
“Harry’s gone!”
“What do you mean Harry’s gone?”
“Missing! Not there! Vanished gone!”

I stood in front of the tank and saw what he meant. Our poissons pool was sans Harry. His little tank was empty, hatch open and flapping in the current. Cider was hanging out at the front of the tank, nonchalantly eyeing us in a disturbingly Dirty Harry-esque kind of way, occasionally spitting a stone at the glass. I was perplexed, but soon my head was filled with crazy thoughts. Cider was easily 10 times bigger than Harry, but he couldn’t have could he?

I neurotically searched out the tank back to front looking for some evidence laying among the stones, all the while returning to Cider’s crazy eyes and unapologetic glooping, desperately trying to allow logic to convince me I was wrong.

Finally, out of the corner of my eye, something from behind the filtration system caught my attention. It was Harry! Closer inspection made me realize that the poor little bastard had been sucked, arse first, into the back of the filter. I switched off the air intake and, slowly, he fell out.

I had two theories about how he got there. One, that I hadn’t closed down his lid properly, he got out, and Mr. This Is My Town Cider had run him out of it straight into the danger zone. Two, and this is the theory I prefer, he got out and, in an effort to relive his youth, Cider persuaded him to have a go at swimming around the filter cos you know, tis great craic!

So there we were, with one unremorseful psycho fish, and one completely tailless wreck.  I gently guided the now practically crippled Harry back into his little tank and tightly shut down the lid. I sat there for ages just looking at him, wondering if he would make it, crying and calling myself a ‘bad mother’.  Everyday I would put a couple of small catfish pellets into his tank, but he’d just loll there and watch them drop.  Every so often he would attempt to follow them, but the lack of a tail fin made swimming almost impossible.

I wondered how long he would last.

Strangely, as the weeks passed, he began to find some strength, and started grabbing the pellets as they passed him. Unbelievably, as the months went by, his tail grew back. I couldn’t quite find it in me to let him out of his little cell though, for fear of another ‘accident’.

About a year down the line, however, that decision was taken out of my hands.

Clearly, I had done it again. I’d fed him and not securely refastened the lid. Once again, I walked into the room to find the other half standing in front of the tank with his hands on his hips. Terrified, I ran over to it . My multiple visions of carnage all disappeared when I got there though. Harry had gotten out alright, but there, at the far end of the tank, were the two,  the small nestled between the fins of the big, cuddling.


I couldn’t believe it. They became quite dependant on each other over the years.  Harry would groom Cider, and Cider would wrap his fins around Harry in their downtime, and mind him like an egg he was hatching.

Once free to roam around the big tank, Harry started to become fatter. As Cider got older, he began to lose his colour. Once the colour of brass, he started developing white patches all over his body.  His tail just kept on growing, spreading out behind like a white-haired banshee.

Eventually, a dramatic change came over all our lives. My relationship with the other half ended, and I needed to fix myself. I decided to leave the country. The fate of Cider and Harry caused me great distress. Unable for the tears anymore, and even though they didn’t really have the space or the energy, my parents came to the rescue and offered to look after him until I got home.

As I left the two boys in the family homestead, my dad tormented me with jibes about how he would look after him until he was big enough to take pike fishing. He would fake lack of understanding, and harass me with plans to batter and fry them for Mum’s Saturday tea, but behind my back he was buying bridges and bubble machines like the one that drove the fish mad in Finding Nemo. Mum regularly popped into the sitting room to chat to them when she’d get up in the morning.

Dad devised an ingenious pipe and pump system to empty the water out of the tank when it need to be cleaned.  He’d make little videos of the two boys and send them to me over the internet. Last time I was home, Cider was almost completely white. He seemed to have stopped growing. He was clearly a little less active than the last time I’d seen him, but still his same old cantankerous self.  Harry has almost quadrupled in size and his colour is changing too. His whole belly has gone from black to gold.

Sitting there watching them grooming and regarding each other in the mirrored end of the tank, I started building their new home in my head. When I finally return to Ireland, I will buy a little cottage in the countryside.  In it I want to build a tank as wide as it is long and inset it in the wall, space for them both to retire.

I said to my dad before I left the house to return to my job in Dubai, “I’m going to have to provide for them little feckers in my will I reckon!”

It’s been almost five years since I first left Cider and Harry with my parents.

This morning I received a text from home. It reads,


“Deepest regrets, Harry is an orphan. Cider left us last night. Love Dad.”
________________________________________________

Daddy kindly buried Cider under the apple tree in our back garden, anointing the re-packed earth with a can of Scrumpy Jack in honour of an incredible life.

He even wrote a poem for him;

Beneath the rain and windswept sky,
We bid dear Cider fish Goodbye.
While in the Derg the Pike did cry,
'Tis with us the fish should lie.

With patience and with fortitude,
We tolerate his solitude.
A tasty dish, he should be ours,
But for a promise made.

Beneath the Apple tree he rests,
Cider soaked with Pappa's Best.
Now Harry swims a Lonesome trail.
Missing still that Angel's tail

Poor Harry! What will he do?
___________________________________________________

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the many people who have helped me look after Cider over the years; Sean, Carmel, Martin, Nano & Steve, Julie, Ciaran, Pet & Manus, but most of all Mum & Dad. He wouldn’t have made it this far without you.
xxx
M.

Off the Wall

Distance in Mongolia is measured by time rather than kilometres, a direct symptom of the lack of actual tarmacadamed roads. Instead, the plains are crisscrossed with swirling tracks that intertwine and then span out in every direction like endless fingers.  Much like the deserts of the Middle East, you can’t help but wonder how people manage to find their way home?  Clearly the process is partly facilitated by an genetic radar that hones in on the 4th clump of bushes over the 5th hill, behind the eagle-shaped outcrop 210 paces east of the ovoo by Horse Skull Valley, then turns to the second star on the right and straight till morning.

We would drive for hours on end, hill melding with hill, ovoo with ovoo, callous building upon callous on my already harassed backside which had a tough time getting used to the  UAZ experience. The level of bump and shake often had me thinking that if I were a bottle of champagne, somebody was gonna lose an eye soon.

The Russian van had definitely seen better days. However, it was the best we could afford, and came complete with engine crank, a high wheel base and the capacity for 4-wheel drive which had to be switched to manually by virtue of unscrewing the wheel axle cover thingy, inserting some kind of metal-toothed gear yoke, and then closing everything off again. A wonderfully clear and mechanically correct description I realize, one completely commensurate with my expertise level.

Happily, our driver, who smoked a lot, smiled little and talked less, knew exactly what he was doing.  Just as well considering the fact that we would break down at least once a day and find ourselves atop some hill in the middle of the middle of nowhere, passenger seat plonked on the grass, watching his little behind wiggling side to side while he did another MacGyver on that ancient engine.

The trip west was long and tortuous, broken only by occasional stops in frontier towns for lunch meat. Meat, meat, meat, or should I say fat, grizzle, “bleargh”. By the time we reached Kharkhorin my innards were not happy with me.

‘Dysentery’ is a manageable thing when you are in the outback, where the privacy of the wilds and the calming whispering of the wind shaken leaves hypnotized slightly, taking your mind off the insatiable cramping, and a cool breeze would wipe your sweating brow and quivering backside.  In the outhouse of a central Mongolian town, it’s a whole other scenario.

My first experience of an outhouse was somewhat misleading and came about 9 hours outside UB near the monastery of Amar Bayasgalant. We stayed the night beside the monastery, within the half-heartedly picket-fenced garden of a ger lodge. The garden was filled with curiosities from a simple outdoor sink freestanding in the middle of the garden, to a bread bin that stood atop a fence post at the end of the garden.  At first I thought it was an inventive kind of letterbox, but when I opened it, discovered it was a tad more industrious than that, housing a bar of soap, a toothbrush and a tube of paste.

Of course the biggest curiosity was the wooden outhouse at the end of the garden. In my pre-malfunctioning bowels state, it wasn’t such a bad experience. It  had a wooden floor with a simple hole cut in the middle over which one had to balance, and try to aim with consideration.  It even had a door! It was a cold night, it had been raining, so the aroma was certainly not craw grasping. To be fair, I had been on worse squatters in my time.

As the days passed and my intestines turned into a gurgling mass of slime, the outhouses became less and less savoury, each visit leaving me counting the ever increasing costs of the therapy I was going to need when I got home.

In its more common appearance, a Mongolian outhouse is a barely 3 walled box, occasionally with a roof, and two four by four planks laid over a minimum two metre deep square hole. Now I say two metre deep, but that depth is approximately measured, and only to the top of the layers of human waste that you try to pretend is not there.

They often come in twos.

Leaving the black market area of Kharkorum, and overcome by urgency, I found myself running through the shanty and backstreets, following the stench to my nearest and only hope of privacy. I thanked God that he blessed me with balance as I dropped my pants at speed while precariously teetering on the two planks that stretched over the generations of excrement.   I spread out my arms to the spaced slat walls on either side, steadying myself before the impending explosion. I held my breath and closed my eyes trying to separate myself from the aroma of rotting lunch meat permeating up from the abyss, and the excruciating, cascading wave that was rapidly making its way through my belly towards my rear end.

“There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home!”

My whispered repetitious attempt at self-hypnosis was temporarily broken by the sounds of exertion followed by relief . Still clinging on to the walls for dear life, nails embedded into the wood, I turned to see a squatting local through the gaps in the slats on the adjoining outhouse. A little vein pulsated on his purple temple as he pushed and parped. My desire to plug my ears against his inner workings with my splinter imbued fingers was swiftly overtaken by my own personal Vesuvius.

The rest is a blur.

I came round to the sound of my neighbour loosing a final sigh of contentment, zipping up his pants, and passing me by with a whistle, and not so much as a ‘How do you do?’

I wiped the sweat from my brow with the sleeve of my jacket, crossed my arms over my knees, resting in my squat while I caught my breath and thanked the sweet baby Jesus that I was still alive. I felt a cool breeze about my quivering backside, but the associated  buzzing soon made me realize it wasn’t the wind.  I nearly lost myself in the pit as I pulled my pants up while simultaneously throwing myself out of the horror chamber.

Picking myself up out of my stumble, squinting in the sunlight, the sound of buzzing fading, I brushed myself down, pulled on my sunglasses, and did a walk back to the UAZ of which John Wayne himself would have been proud.

While standing by our van waiting for our guide, Soyola, to make his way back, a passing drunk stopped dead in his tracks. With a somewhat shocked look on his face, he bent his knees slightly and pointed at me. “Michael”, he said hoarsely, looking around him as if for clarification and then back to me. I knew I looked a tad dishevelled after my ‘personal moment’, but couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was up with him. He continued to point and in my paranoid state I attempted to refix my black hair back into its ponytail.

“Michael, Michael”, he shouted again and then walked at me, his drunken body bent at an almost a 45 degree angle and his arm outstretched for a handshake.  “Sainbano”, I said as I held out mine and he grabbed it. Shaking it vigorously with his other hand clasped over our two, he began to babble at me in Mongolian. My arm was almost loosed from its socket by the time Soyola finally made his way to us. The drunk let go of my hand and excitedly turned to our guide, babbling and pointing at me with little drunken giggles, occasionally separated by more Michaels.

Before shooing the drunk away, Soyola managed to translate his ramblings for me. Between the sunglasses, black hair, and diarrhoea exacerbated paleness, the poor man had thought me Michael Jackson, alive and roaming the dirt tracks of Mongolia.

I began to laugh, wondering when exactly Michael had invested in a boob job, but then my belly started to growl at me again. Unwilling to put myself through another outhouse experience that day, I managed to persuade everyone it was time to leave.

“Pedal to the metal MacGyver, fast as you can to the second star on the right and straight on until that 4th clump of bushes over the  hill there, if you please!”

Jagga the Scut

Mr . Byambatogoh’s home sits atop a small hill, separated from the higher green peaks to the south and west,  and grassless outcrop range to the east, by shallow stub grass valleys. We arrived there via a local bus from Ulaanbatar to the small town of Sanser, where we were eventually picked up by a family friend who drove us cross-country in a 15 year old Toyota, to the two-ger homestead.

Sanser is an odd little frontier town comprised of a scatter of ramshackle wooden buildings, each seeming to represent a bar, or shop, or restaurant, or combination of all three. You can’t help but feel like you are in Tombstone as you drive through it.  Horseback is the preferred mode of transport, though occasionally a motorbike with a family of passengers would pass by kicking up the dust and tumbleweeds.

Horse hitches adorn the front of most establishments,  and the look that the occasional 2 gallon-capioed drunk would give you, as he stumbled out of a distillery with a half-burned cigarette hanging from his mouth, only amplified the sound of the theme tune to the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that was running through my head.

After navigating our way across the almost invisible track way running beneath the tall grass that coated the undulating expanse which lay between Sansar and the homestead, we were welcomed by Mama offering a bowl of salty milk tea and a basket of ‘treats’. We sat on one side of the ger, while the family sat on the other curiously watching our every move. Nibbling away at the goat-hair infused, hard, homemade cheese, we precariously balanced the bowls of hot milk tea in our right hands, occasionally bringing them to our lips, over-emphasizing slurps for effect.

After perhaps a half hour of awkward nods, repeated incomprehensible phrases combined with huge sweeping hand gestures, occasional moments when we were clearly being pointed at and gossiped about, failed attempts at quoting from our phrase books, and at least two refills of the salt milk tea, our hosts eventually up and left us to our own devices.

Our accommodation over the next three days was the ‘guest ger’ of the family homestead. It was an 8 wall example, furnished with three beds, and a mirrored dresser decorated with family photos and a pair of ceramic camels. The family alter, complete with a photograph of the Dali Lama, rested against the northern curve of the round structure.

Our hosts, Mama & Papa Byambatogoh had their outdoor lives written all over their faces in uncountable wrinkles that doubled each time they lit up in a smile, which they did a lot. They were blessed with three sons, and one ‘sort of’ daughter-in-law.

 We didn’t see too much of  Papa over the three days, but Mama was a constant. She always seemed to be on the go, making cheese, cooking meals, monitoring the milk cauldron, regularly stirring it by scooping up some of the mixture in a small plastic pot, raising it high above the rest, and then emptying it back into the mix from aloft. The scooping and dropping was done numerous times in quick succession, kicking up the smell of the salty brew and mixing it with the not unpleasant smoky aroma of burning dried sheep dung that the daughter-in-law had dutifully collected from their back yard pile.

How hard these ladies work is unquantifiable, but watching  Mama herd, coral and then continue to milk some thirty or so goats in the middle of a rain, thunder and lightening storm was certainly a good indicator.

The family’s youngest son, Pathgrl, whose name was so unpronounceable at first that we nicknamed him Patrick, was a little diamond, burning with an almost unquenchable energy, and a total shark at the game of Anklebone. Patrick was easily the best at communicating, and had even managed to pick up a small smattering of English from other travellers that had passed by through the years. His playground was the dung-splattered wilds of the west, and his playmates a scraggly cat and its kitten (both called Mishka), and anything else that could be prodded, poked or ridden, be it goat, dog, horse, camel or beetle.

Their eldest son, a handsome boy, was studying the traditional arts in Ulaanbatar, but dropped by long enough to lull us with a Long Song or two.

Then, there was Jagga, the one in the middle, who, forgive me for saying, I frequently suspected had been dropped on his head as a bairn. He was our main guide during the three day stay. He was twenty-four years old, had just about made it through high school, and had spent a little time in the Mongolian army. I called him ‘the idiot son’. My co-travelers were both amused and a little appalled when they heard me call him that, replying in his defence, ‘… but he’s a good farmer.'  Indeed he was, and in this neck of the steppes, I guess that’s all that matters.

Talent for farming aside, our host’s middle son was what my mother would call, 'a scut of a young fella.' He was the main reference point for my initial comparing of Mongolian goat herders with the Irish itinerant. Jagga has the squashed-nose look of any Ward or Hackett that you might see dragging his heels around an Irish horse fair, and forgive me for saying so, the manner of one to boot, God bless him!

He likes his drop, and the tobacco, and is totally lacking in social graces with neither Western niceties (not that you’d expect them), nor Mongolian laws of hospitality representing any part of his repertoire.  Maybe I’m being too harsh on the boy, perhaps it was our fault because we interrupted his Nadaam plans. Clearly, the older brother had originally been lined up for the duty of ‘minding us’ during the festival, but got called away last minute, and Jagga got lumped with the job instead.

My initial move to dislike him came out of what seemed, at first, to be a playful game at dressing up. He pulled a beautiful silk deel from out of the guest ger dresser and insisted that I try it on. Not thinking it more than a bit of fun, I obliged and we photographed our little Mongolian family. We danced around a little while his girlfriend looked on, and then he carelessly announced that I should wear the robe to the festival on the next day.  His poor maligned girlfriend’s face dropped on the other side of the ger when she realized that any thoughts that she may have had of wearing her Sunday best to the opening ceremony next day had just been blown out of the water by Jagga’s thoughtlessness. I promptly took it off and declined the offer.

On our first morning, as we prepared to leave the homestead for the Nadaam horse race, he scammed 30,000 togs out of us for a magic taxi.  It had the ability to shape shift between a Prado, a tractor and numerous other vehicles in between. The original plan was to go on horseback, but Jagga decided that the ‘maasheen’ would be better.

At the village Nadaam, we enjoyed the festivities, accompanied here and there by the pregnant girlfriend and random machine drivers. We would run between the wrestling competition and horse race, occasionally popping into a fast food ger to indulge in Kosher (deep fried meat patties) and airag (fermented mares milk).  Jagga snaked off at every opportunity. Most evenings were spent going from distillery to distillery looking for our vagabond guide. He would eventually be found rosy cheeked and dishevelled, helped into the car by whoever happened to be our taxi driver on the day.

We were under no illusions that the extra bills we’d handed over, outside of the eyeshot of his parents, were funding his vodka habit, and our multi-formed taxi was really the good will of locals that his long suffering girlfriend had managed to persuade.

One of the blessed joys of the extreme language barrier that we found ourselves up against, was the licence it gave me to call him a ‘dirty, thieving little bollix!’ to his face. All I had to do was fake a smile mid abuse, and he’d nod his head and give the thumbs up.  One of the few moments we were in agreement I think.

Our last evening at the homestead was spent playing frisbee.  The whole family and a visiting neighbour joined in the fun, and we enjoyed a good hour around dusk playing and laughing.   At one point, I rugby tackled one of my travel companions over a playful insult he had sent my way.  Our hosts were very impressed thinking I had picked up a trick or two watching the wrestling matches at Nadaam.  Instead of trying to explain the whole ‘rugby playing’ thing, I simply mimicked the Eagle dance of a victorious wrestler while they pointed and laughed.

Our departure from the Byambatogohs next morning was filled with hugs, kisses and badly pronounced Mongolian Thank You’s. Both Mama and Papa were there to wave us off, while Patrick chased after the machine. As we drove away from the two gers in the middle of nowhere, I was amused by the sight of our friend Jagga pulling himself out from under some blankets beside the fuel pile at the back of the family ger . The Mongolian version of ‘being in the dog house’ clearly translated to ‘sleeping by the dung heap.’ My last and abiding image of Jagga, is of his pregnant girlfriend chucking a wicker basket at him. When it fell to the ground, he dutifully picked up and began to fill it with the contents of what had been his bed.

A Short History of Smoking

Waking up this morning with that metal and mucky ashtray taste in my mouth, and death rattle in my chest, I find myself feeling the need to quit.  It’s that same ‘never again’ feeling that I get after a night on the beer, which, as it happens, is also keeping the no more tabac feeling company today. Thank you Mr. Arthur Guinness for inviting me to your birthday party last night, but really, it was cruel of you to force that last pint down my throat … and as for the bullfrogs? I’m sure there is a convention somewhere in the world that’s supposed to protect people from such unmitigated abuse.

I picked the box of lights up off the beside table as a reflex action on my way to my laptop. I’m sitting here now, flicking the lid open and closed on the damn thing. I find myself tuning in to these little habitual tendencies every so often, and wondering where they came from.  I have a whole lifetime of them wrapped around cigarettes, from how I open a new pack, the pre-mouth fiddling, the hand action when I do decide to light up, to just simply playing with the box, twisting it round and round between my thumb and forefinger.

I grew up in a smoking household, my father having partaken in some form or another most of my life. Usually Benson & Hedges, though sometimes he would take up the pipe, just for a change.  I remember he collected pipes for a while and used to display them fondly in a stand on the mantelpiece. For a short time, they took the place of socks as his regular present type on birthdays and at Christmas. I think it may have been somewhat of a fashion statement in the early 70’s, judging from the super cool, faded colour photographs of his pitch black moustachioed self with sideburns, blue-sleeveless jumper and pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth, that seem to litter the early pages of our family albums.

Of course, he had grown up with it also. Both of his parents were diligent smokers. My grandfather eventually died from them, and my grandmother may well have, though they called it an aneurism.  She died young, so my memories of her are quite vague.  However, I have a picture of her in my head, a somewhat romantic one built from a combination of family images and stories that my father tells of her. She was a classy lady by all accounts, stylistically a bit of an Audrey Hepburn type who never stepped outside the door without being perfectly manicured, attitude-wise more like Katherine, she’d give you hell if you crossed her.  She loved her fur coats.  In my head I see her standing with one arm folded to provide a rest for her gloved smoking arm, wrist slightly bent, palm face up, two fingers gently holding the cigarette that was almost an extension of her hand, smoke curling in a pure, white, single pillar beside her pale face, occasionally getting itself wrapped in one of her short set curls.

I remember my first cigarette. It was on the back of the school bus when I was about 16.  I physically recall that I had craved it for weeks.  Finally, I asked for a ‘drag’ of Martina Keane’s Major and inhaled it like I’d been smoking for years. I used to reckon that I was already addicted before I’d ever properly inhaled, a combination of regular exposure, and genetic predisposition.

That said, my career began pretty much the same for me as it had done for my father, as a fashion statement. Quite simply, it was cool!  When I was 17, I had a leather bikers jacket and loved having my box of Marlboro reds slightly sticking up out of the top pocket. Of course, it had to be a secret. Not simply because that’s what 17 year olds feel they have to do but, because I was also a chronic asthmatic.  It was a late onset illness, diagnosed when I was 15 or 16. My father, life long and committed smoker though he was, would have ‘killed’ me if he knew.

My brother, who is three years younger than me, became aware of the stash. He’d been robbing me blind for months, but it took me a while to twig. I’ve always suffered from a certain lack of awareness of what’s going on around me. I used to question my memory even then. When I finally did wake up to his shenanigans, it riled me massively, but it also put me in a bit of a quandry. What was I to do about it? I couldn’t exactly go to my parents without getting myself in trouble as well. I decided to try and outwit him using the fear factor. I left the box of Marlies in my jacket with a note wrapped around the 8 or 9 fags that were left. “I know what you’re at. Buy your own, or there’ll be hell!”  A day later when I was putting on my jacket, I pulled out the box to find it empty of cigarettes, and the scrap of paper I’d inserted had a scrawled reply on the back, “For who exactly?”  Scut!

I was in the car a few years later with dad collecting my brother from a day out with the lads in town. We pulled up before he saw us, or had time to quench the hard-ass fag that was hanging from his mouth in true James Dean fashion.  My dad lost his temper and started spewing about how, “that boy is in the shit.” I got defensive and argued that he was old enough to make his own decisions. At that point dad turned on me. I was ‘out’ by then. “100% of people who smoke die young”, I think his words were. “Dad, we all die, and anyway, you smoke!” The argument continued, “You’re asthmatic! 100% of asthmatics who smoke die younger and more painfully.” At that point I lost it, and in a very uncharacteristic manner when conversing with my lovely Daddy, got accusatory! “Dad, you’ve been smoking around us all our lives.  It’s probably your fucking fault I have asthma in the first place!”  At that, the conversation ended, he rolled down the window and chucked the nub of a cigarette he’d been puffing on out of it, honked the horn at my brother, and wouldn’t say a word to either of us the rest of the way home.  He didn’t pick up another cigarette for some 7 years after that.

I remember asking him a few years down the line if he missed them. His response, “Daughter, to this day I would still sell you into slavery for one drag of a Benson!"


One Christmas however, Dad’s fasting all came crashing down about his ears when his elder children descended on the house for the festivities. I still smoked, and both my brother, and his lovely Swiss wife were unapologetic puffers. Mum, in her ever hospitable way, allocated an inside space for us to enjoy our wicked habits, for we“couldn’t be trapesing outside into the depth of winter everytime we wanted to indulge, and sure anyway, wasn’t it Christmas.”

That room happened to be the living room.  It had a beautiful open fireplace that would take the smoke up and out of the house without too much trouble. Poor Daddy! Christmas day is his day for the kitchen, and he loves it.  The day begins the same every year. Up with the lark to see what Santa had delivered, (a little less early obviously in that interim after we had all grown, and before the grandkids came along), a nice cooked breakfast, then we’d decamp to the living room while he donned his chef’s hat and opened his first bottle of red.  Like most smokers, myself included, the habit is inextricably linked to alcohol consumption, and for any smoker trying to quit, that is the hardest time.

By the time he’d moved on to bottle number two the poor man was tormenting himself over our open boxes of tobacco, holding them up to his nose and snorting in the mere scent of them like it was cocaine.

I began looking around for the slaver at that point.

Then, like a fool, I opened the door for him. “For goodness sake Daddy, it’s Christmas. Stop tormenting yourself and have one.  You’ve given them up before, it’s not like you can’t ‘just stop’ again if you want.”  Easily knowing then that his struggle was one I’d never imposed upon myself. In the following months and years, he went through numerous failed attempts at quitting.

Unlike us, my youngest brother, a late baby, grew up in a smoke free household. The very sight of a cigarette disgusted him. His vocal hatred of the habit led to Daddy becoming a ‘secret smoker’. For some reason he felt safe smoking around me, but anytime I sat in the car with him when he’d pick me up from the airport, or when I'd meet him in the garden shed, the cigarette entering his mouth was always prefaced with a, “Don’t tell your brother.”

Another one of those, 'don’t tell your brother scenarios’  happened after I left university and used to pop home for a visit in between excavations. I have always enjoyed smoking the occasional joint, something Daddy was quite liberal about. Apart from the ‘joy of the stone’, it had the capacity to ease the discomforts of my skin disorder, which would flare up under stress. I was given free reign to smoke in my parents house, as long as I kept it to my bedroom and my youngest brother, still only 14 at the time, didn’t find out.

One evening I was in my room, having a smoke and reading a book, when Daddy popped up for a visit. I can’t remember what it was that we chatted about, but can remember that he watched intently as I packed a three skinner.  It took me such a long time to learn how to roll that when I finally mastered it, I used to take great pride in the end product. Sitting there admiring my piece of artwork, Daddy asked if I’d make one for him.  I have to admit, it stopped me in my tracks, and my shock was both vocal and visual. Unsurprisingly, his response was something along the lines of, “You forget that there was a time before I was a husband and father! I’d just like to remember what it was like.”  “Fair point,” I said as I watched him leave the room.  I duly obliged his request, leaving my labour of love on the windowsill beside his bedroom door, as I left to take up my next job posting. I rang home a few days later to check in.

Me:     “So, how was it?”
Dad:    “Never again!”
Me:     “How d'you mean?”
Dad:    “Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have had half a bottle of whiskey 
             beforehand, but it didn’t take me long to remember why I
             never kept up the habit."
Me:     “Eh???”
Dad:   “Massive crisis! Just two pulls into that yoke, 
             and I was in the toilet desperately trying make the correct 
             choice. Squat or kneel" 

My mouth tastes like pants.  I’ve brushed twice already, and I can still taste the tar.  I don’t know what it is about me that makes me smoke like a chimney when I go out for a few drinks.  I guess, living in one of the few countries where one can still smoke in a bar doesn’t help.  Or maybe it’s just a weak personality.


Dad in his wisdom occasionally tries to give me a pep talk, sometimes in a cruel but kind way, using a bit of emotional blackmail. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve attempted to quit. I’ve fallen off that blasted wagon so many times I’m black and blue. My latest move has been to take up a new brand of extra light, extra slim, menthol cigarettes.  After only a few days, its clear that I’m smoking these cigarettes with the same mentality that a career dieter approaches fat-free cheese.  

“Oooo, no bad stuff, that means I can have double.”

My dad on the other hand is now three years clean. It took a heart attack to get him there, but then sometimes it takes an extreme kick in the backside to find the willpower. Keep it up Daddy!

Personally, I hate having my bottom kicked, so here’s hoping I can find some willpower before boot and flesh meet.

Once Upon a Hutong (July 2009)

There was a big hole outside the door of my hostel. It ran the entire length of the hutong. It was quite mesmerizing to watch, and somewhat of an obstacle coarse to navigate. A persons width had been left on either side of the street for that purpose. The trench was a little shy of 2 metres deep, and filled with incredible little men of all ages, excavating by hand. I had no idea what the end goal was, occasional questions to local voyeurs often only met with a polite smile and nod of the head. Some attempted to reply, but I didn’t understand a word they said either, so I just politely smiled and nodded my head back at them.

After a little bit of asking around I discovered that the work in the hutong was not unique to that particular street, but part of an ongoing process, mirrored throughout the city, to ‘modernize and clean up’ the traditional neighbourhoods of Beijing. For those who live in the hutongs, this process is one that has left many of them homeless and without their businesses. With shovels and picks these men battered away layer after layer, removing the spoil, via two men and an empty coal sack, to the other end of the hutong. They carried the bricks five by five with their bare hands, and hoisted scaffolding and rubber piping along the entire length of the street on their shoulders. The only machinery on site was a mini-digger which sat at the entrance to the hutong. Day and night these little doozers beavered away with an impressive amount of good-temperedness, despite the obvious wearying physicality of the work at hand. They made excellent models, often insisting on a picture as soon as they saw the camera hanging at my hip. I nearly lost my head in the process of making one such picture when some random rubble got loose and tumbled from the roof above me. I felt the breeze of it as it whipped past my ear after being abruptly pulled to one side by one of my hard hat wearing friends.

Trying to make my way to and from the hostel was a daily expedition. Any concept one might have of health and safety practices did not exist here. The street was still open for business. There was no clear walkway through most of it, just an apocalypse of broken rubble, varied rubber and plastic pipes, the occasional board or piece of metal sheeting laid down in an ad-hoc manner to provide a shaky bridge crossing over the troughs and pits that peppered the street. Where the excavation was deep you found yourself weaving and ducking the veritable climbing frame of metal and wooden scaffolding that hugged the sides of the route. Navigation was a skill in itself, never mind trying to do it simultaneously with the footwork. Add to that the frequent missiles in the shape of 4 metre long chunks of metal that seemed to appear out of nowhere at speed from around corners, precariously balanced on the a workman's shoulder, and you had a daily adventure along the strip that was worthy of an Indiana Jones sequel in itself.

Beijing is a great city for walking, and when I tired of my building site playground, I walked the little size 4’s off myself. Making my way through the new wide streets towards Tiananmen Square, it became clear very quickly that the real tourist attraction was not the city, but me! The quizzical look of amusement on the faces of local people as I bounced along with my cowboy hat side-cocked on my head and camera swinging by my hip, reminded me of how I used to look at the bevy of Aran sweater and check pants wearing Americans that used to descend upon my island when I was a child. However, one of the wonderful things about this place, is that looking is a national occupation. People do it without embarrassment or malice. After a while, I became comfortable with the attention, posed for the requested photographs, and accepted their unspoken permission to look right back.

Random people liked to come up and just say ‘Hello’. For most it’s the only English word that they know, and they appeared to enjoy using it. When I responded with a ‘…and how are you?’, they nodded their heads furiously and simply rattled back, ‘Hello, hello!’

Looking across Tiananmen Square, I couldn’t begin to imagine how many people it would take to fill it, but it’s vastness was clear. I felt like an ant in it, and people looked like ants at the opposite side of it. Across the road at the northern end, Chairman Mao’s portrait was a strange kind of magnet under which it seems every visiting Chinese needed to stand with peace sign hand, to have their picture made. Crossing the bridge and going through Mao’s gate finds you within walking distance of the Forbidden City. It wasn’t long after I arrived there that the harassment began. I’d read all about the various tourist scams involving English-fluent students trying to ‘invite you for tea’ or to ‘cast your eye over their artwork’, and once lulled into a false sense of security, ultimately unburden you of large amounts of your travelling dollars. Solo tourists are often the main target. Once I realized that I had been marked, I started to play crazy lady, waving my hands wildly and shouting at them in bad Irish. My persistence outlasted theirs, and I walked away unscathed.

The rickshaw drivers were a little more hard sell, and tended to stick to your side like glue, trying to draw you into a haggle. ‘No’ is always no with me, and it was amusing how agitated they got when I stuck to my guns. “Two legs good, three wheels bad!” I think the subtlety of that line was quite lost on them. Eventually, they fell away seeking other quarry, leaving me to work on my blisters.

This city is a voyeurs paradise, abounding in quirky things and quirky people. Of course to the Beijinger, they are just going about their normal lives in an every day way. To a barbarian watcher like myself, they were just pure entertainment. Beijing parks are among the best places to be entertained. Morning and evening, the neighbourhoods flock to them to socialise and exercise.

Dusk in particular is the best time to just wander and watch as mixed generations make their way to the appointed part of the park, many indulging in some post-meal belly rubbing to aid their digestion. They break away into little social groups to play shuttlecock football, or a competitively friendly game of cards. Outdoor gymnasiums, which at first glance look more like a children's playground, fill with with elderly Chinese who pull up, push up, sit up, cross train, wheel spin and twist with great intent and surprising dexterity.

At the open space entrance to the park, a smoking man collected Yuan from wannabe ballroom dancers, who then happily allowed themselves to be orally abused by the strictest of ladies for an hour while she tried to teach them the finer points of the Cha Cha.

In the decoratively pillared corridors that run along the sides of the Temple of Heaven park, small groups gathered for free choral lessons. Middle-aged men and women huddled around their accordion playing master, following his lead while diligently monitoring the wide-openness of their mouths with little hand mirrors. Further on, a much more relaxed and advanced group belted out operatic numbers just for the sheer joy of it, watched by an audience of peers fanning away the humidity of the day and drinking tea from jam jars. As I meandered and watched, an old gentleman wearing an under-vest, striped shorts and swinging a cane, passed me by taking his caged song-bird for a walk, all the while trying to persuade it to sing with his whistles.

It is possible to sit for hours just watching. Oft times your watching doesn’t go unnoticed, and you find yourself being pulled in to joining. It’s hard to drag yourself away, but eventually my grumbling belly did just that. Heading back to the building site, I would stop into a neighbourhood restaurant for a bite.

One particular eatery drew me in, partly with its smells , partly by the fact that it was chock-filled with locals, and partly by the western couple sitting in the middle of said locals with a table full of empty plates. The​ fuwuyuan handed me an English menu while myself and the western couple exchanged nods and smiles. I ordered a 10 Yuan beer and perused the picture list of dishes. For a short moment, I was interrupted by a teenage set of Chinese twins eager to have their picture taken with me. They were sweet as nuts, and I of course obliged.

Decision making on the food front was a chore when faced with delicacies such as sautéed pig lungs, stir fried dogs meat, and plain old flesh lump on the menu. However, I finally found something to suit my taste in the shape of some broccoli, steam fried corn bread, and sautéed pork in sweet bean sauce.

I chopsticked my way through the marinated pork, greatly doubting that it was the fillet I’m used to eating. The texture was sufficiently ‘bouncy’ for me to suspect some kind of innards, but melt in the mouth and tasty enough for me not to care. Slurping in the shredded pieces and facing the open door, I couldn’t help but continue my watching. A middle-aged man and youngish woman stumbled into the restaurant. He was very drunk, and she may well have been, but was holding it together enough to pass. They sat at the table beside me, shouting for the waiter who chose to ignore them. The man soliloquized, smoking a cigarette. She bore it and listened, pretending to smoke a cigarette. She soon tired of the pretence and quenched it right there on the table. Finally, their drink came and I returned to my broccoli.

My attention to the broccoli was snatched by a hawker. Two tables from the open front door, scratching his bared and sweaty victory pouch, he decided to ‘khawkh’ and ‘pichew’ right there. Good job I was done with the meaty innards.

The youngish woman moved to the same side of the table as her date. Almost immediately after sitting, her head was grabbed in an intoxicated whisper. Judging by the flushed cheek and nervous laugh, I suspected that 'Drunky Boy' had made an indecent proposal. I wasn’t wrong. He followed it by making a not so secret dive with his hand into the shirt of the lady in question. I rounded off my meal with a cigarette and made my way back to my hutong.


Once more in the floodlit semi-organized mayhem, the doozers flitted past me going about their business. I was stopped in my tracks by a man shouting in what appeared to be anger. Thinking there was a row brewing, I halted just in time to realize it was an order to lift. In unison, and with chain gang precision, they duly picked up a long length of thick rubber piping. I quickly jumped out of the way, only narrowly avoiding being lifted and carried along on the pipe myself.

After making their way a few yards down the street, another yell was let loose. They dropped the pipe, squatted, and waited for their next order. I squatted down beside them and watched, finishing the night with a final cigarette while trying to pick out a piece of innard from between my teeth with a toothpick I had taken from the restaurant. Puffing away beside me, the wrinkly faced workman smiled and nodded.

"You must begin by knowing that you have already arrived ..."

When I was a child, my father would raise me on his shoulders as we would walk, and fill my head with stories of adventure and friendship. The stories revolved around two characters, a seagull and a doll I owned called First Love. While the house was empty, the seagull would come to call on First Love, she would climb on his back and off they would go on their great adventures to far flung corners of the world. Of course, when I would return home, I would go to check on First Love to see if I could catch sight of a sign of life or movement in her, but, ultimately, she was unyielding, laying in the same spot where she had been abandoned when we last played. Nonetheless, the magic of these stories would fill my head and the dreaming began.

As I grew older, Dad continued to build on his 'reach further, fly higher lessons' with simple lectures while we drove around the countryside in our old car. "Why be a nurse when you can be a doctor? Why be an air stewardess when you can be the pilot?" During one of these conversations my younger brother, not much more than 9 at the time, piped up with "Yeah! Why be the jockey when you can be the horse?" I remember us laughing till we cried, but you know, regardless of how funny the analogy sounded, the message remained the same. If you can think it, you can do it!

Until my mid-twenties, I believed that my father had created the character of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Imagine my surprise when he said my idea to put the stories to paper might be a copyright infringement. Shortly thereafter, and by pure coincidence (if you believe in coincidence that is), a fleeting acquaintance handed me that understated little book by Richard Bach. It's message was simple yet powerful, and one that had been informing my philosophy on life long before I ever turned the pages in the book itself.

Over the years the paths I've taken and the choices I've made have ultimately led me to becoming a kind of outcast in my own right, the black sheep. I am no-one special, I'm just a dreamer. In the process of following one dream, I discover another and follow it. I think people just don't get that sometimes. Why don't you settle? What about a family? What about your career? Why do you keep taking yourself further and further away from home? How can you build a life like that?

When the mountaineer, George Leigh Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, he answered simply "Because it’s there!" Jonathan gave a similar response to his mother, when in the book, she asks him why he cannot be like the rest of the flock, why he was so obsessive about testing his flight abilities.

"I don't mind being bone and feathers mom. I just want to know
what I can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just
want to know."

I may never be a doctor or a pilot but then, those are not my dreams. My dreams are much simpler than that. I want to see, I just want to experience and see. This summer, after some 10 years of dreaming, I finally found myself in Outer Mongolia. I rode a horse, I fired a bow, I lived in a Ger, I met many wonderful people and, while my pockets may be empty, I feel full. Another level has been reached in my understanding of how things work and of what I can do, and a new dream uncovered in the process.

My brother hit the nail on the head when he was 9. Why be the jockey when you can be the horse, riderless, unfettered and free. It's not the easiest of choices to make. Nothing about climbing mountains is easy. Your legs can let you down, you can stumble and fall along the way, altitude sickness can ruffle the feathers a little, but if you follow Chiang's advice to Jonathan and begin like you have already arrived, it can be conquered. There are no limits. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing more beautiful in this world than silently brushing off your bloody knees and enjoying that view from the top when you finally reach it.

A Very Good Brain ... Or Just Another Lost Soul?

For some time now, the subject of my head, or the apparent ever decreasing contents of it, has been a cause of obsession for me. Over the last few years, I have become increasingly frustrated by the continued disintegration of my memory and command of the English language. It has been the cause of some considerable frustration, worry and embarrassment, which has ultimately led to my seeking medical advice.

While I knew I was too young to be seriously in danger of having some kind of degenerative disease, I simply couldn’t fathom what else could be the cause of my struggling to find basic words in conversation, remembering peoples names, remembering how to do things and explain it, even struggling over basic pattern driven games or a simple general knowledge quiz. It irritated me. I used to be good at this stuff, really good. The competitive side of me, that somewhat over proud and stubborn aspect of myself, was not impressed.

So now, here I lie inside the tight, pulsating tunnel of an MRI machine, eyes tightly shut so that I don’t have to deal with the claustrophobia of it all. With the sound of the giant scanner pulsating in my plugged ears, I can’t help wondering how I got here.

***********************************************

I arrived in Dubai a little under three years ago, a broken heart on the run. I had spent the previous few months between Switzerland and the Czech Republic trying to pick up the pieces of a shattered 6 year relationship. When things fell apart in my home country I ran. At the time I justified it as finally doing what I had always wanted to do, but the reality was that I just couldn’t deal with my broken life face to face. So, I walked out on my home, my family and and some 7 odd years of an archaeological career, got on a plane and refused to look back.

After a few months in Europe licking my wounds, and as a result of a cold call from a teaching institution in the Middle East, I decided to run a little further. I was one of a large number of Irish, British & Americans recruited by an international school to work as English teachers. My shared accommodation was reasonably comfortable and well contained behind a large curtain wall that surrounds the entire school complex, which itself sits in the middle of the industrial area of a city about an hour and a half in the nearest traffic jam from Dubai.

My arrival in the UAE, while not my first experience of an Arabic country, was somewhat of a cultural slap in the face. Far from being a conservative pinion of all things Islamic, sky high steel girders, pyres of glass and spinners on Hum Vs bounced the sun’s rays off each other like ping-pong balls, lighting up a city which had it’s very capitalist eyes set on the west. Long legs and pumped up breasts glided through the malls, their diamond encrusted fingers clutching Gucci & Armani embossed shopping bags, the flickering fabric of their black abayas always leaving a waft of sandlewood behind them. That smell seemed to be the only authentic thing about the place sometimes.

My original plan when coming here was to use the bulk of my modest tax free salary to pay off a not inconsiderable debt that had been carried over from my failed relationship. It was sound at the time. I estimated 12 months would do it. Unfortunately, as I began to become overwhelmed by the place, things changed very quickly and my landscape of plans began to fade.

My life back home was one that was comfortably spent outdoors, sleeping in tents, playing in dirt, loving the fresh summer air or the cold winter rain in equal measure. Day by day, my time behind the school walls in dusty Sharjah started to bring me down. I soon found myself seeking the familiar to try and abate the sadness. That ‘familiar‘ became an involvement in the expat drinking culture of Dubai.

Alcohol is illegal in Sharjah, and, generally, one needs a license to purchase off-sales everywhere else in the country. However, as with all illegal substances, where there is a will, there is a blind eye. Ten minutes from the school, across the border into the next Emirate are a number of ‘Offies‘, where one can purchase as much as the car can carry for next to nothing. It’s interesting how many ‘dish-dashes’ you will see in joints like this. Monthly, the fridges and cupboards were filled with cases of beer, and bottles upon bottles of spirits. This was just for the tight weeks, when the money would run a little low. When the pockets were full, it was a taxi straight to Dubai as soon as the last school bell rang on a Thursday, for liquid obliteration at the nearest ‘All You Can Eat & Drink’ emporium.

I remember my first Friday (Muslim Holy day) well. The Waxy’s brunch, then a mere pittance which translated at that time to approximately 10 Euros, involved 5 drinks of your choice for 50 AED. By 7pm I was onto my second batch of tokens, beaming from ear to ear and loving the fact that the whole night was still ahead of me. Every Friday that followed that one however, seems to be a blurry mash of declining self-awareness and dignity.

It’s funny how you seem to find yourself mixing in like-minded company in situations like this. Not everybody is lost but many are. Everything is lived on the surface, the lives are 2 D, thoughts are finite, hopes are never really discussed with any seriousness, and if they are, they are always somewhere off in the distant future. You know that there is a story there somewhere, festering beneath the surface, an abused emotion of some kind which has caused them to leave their original pack, become an itinerant, and loose themselves in an endless party. I called it The Lost Soul Syndrome. I remember naming it a number of years ago with a friend of mine in Amsterdam where, as spectators, we watched the very same phenomenon from the sidelines. Diasporic, young Irish people on the run, filling their conscious hours with constructed highs in unconscious avoidance of the fact that they were actually running on the spot. No reason, and no destination. I pitied them then, little did I know that I would become them.

At the time I told myself that I was entitled to party, after all I’d been through so much hadn’t I? I would spend more than I should on transitory things and justify it with the thought that I could always make up for it by saving a little more next month. The job was mindnumbing, not at all like working in a real school, a prescribed system that the director of the whole organization philosophically preached could be presented by trained monkeys. Like a good little primate, I did my eight to four job in my sleep and took my paycheck at the end of the month, quickly exchanging it for liquid sustenance and transitory material pleasures. It was all about immediate fixes, and as time progressed I never really got around to saving a little bit extra that next month.

Now here I am, three years later still owing money and a credit card to boot, signing up for my fourth year in the zoo to do something I don’t care about. I’m lying in the middle of a contained magnetic field because I’m obsessing about the fact that my brain doesn’t seem to be working.

IDIOT!!!

***********************************************

There’s a guy in a white coat tapping me on my shoulder. He seems like a sensitive, intelligent man. Time to get dressed. Sitting at his screen he points out the various images and explains how the scans work. “It worked well. Hopefully we will have a report ready by Tuesday,” he says in his Indian infused lilt. I thank him and turn to walk away. “But I can tell you now,” I hear him call after me, "you have a very good brain!" I smile, and almost without thinking say, “Yes, yes I do!”

* * *

I never rang on Tuesday to find out the results, instead I sat down and started writing.

Remembering The Bus Journey

We arrived into Cambodia at lunchtime via Phnom Penh airport, from Vientiane in Laos. Time was tight, but we were anxious to get to Sisowith Quay to see if it were possible to catch a bus straight to Siem Reap. All indications were that we were chasing rainbows, but luck presented us with a wonderful Tuk Tuk driver who pumped his lawnmower engine to the max and tout de suite, took us to our destination.

Of course, as any guide or forum entry will tell you, our planned route was such a popular one that it was necessary to book seats in advance. All the tourist buses were full to the brim. Nonetheless, our tireless driver went from point to point around the Sisowith area to try to find us some seats. Ultimately, a spot was found for us on a local bus. While we knew it would probably take us anything up to 7 hours on one of these things, we were simply relieved to be on our way. We gratefully thanked our driver with an extra few dollars, worth it for the smile alone, and got on board leaving him with our names and regards.

Surprisingly, the bus journey was smooth and much quicker than anticipated. The vehicle itself was half empty, unlike the tourist versions that we had been trying to board. The leather seats were pockmarked and the faux Victorian-like fringed curtains faintly musty, but, ignoring the local persistently staring at us from behind his surgical mask, the passage was still surprisingly comfortable. The Cambodian countryside was a picture of quiet simplicity, peppered with farming fields and stilted houses under which families gathered to eat and socialize. After a while, it began to pass us by in a bit of a haze, as our heavy eyes fell from the exhaustion of our earlier journey.

We paused at a couple of road stops along the way where I was amused by Una and Ruth's horror at the boiled, upturned, kumquat decorated turtles, and locals chowing down on deep fried crickets. The toothless old guy sitting in front of us seemed to be enjoying the bugs as he turned around to gives us grin while sucking in and gumming down on a grasshopper leg.

People got on, people got off, fruit sellers advertised their wares and small children tried to get a dollar out of you for the pleasure of using the squatter, everything on sale was four times what the local beside you was paying for the same thing, but then that's capitalism for you.

Back on the bus I watched the world go by and its colour change as the day moved on. Motorbikes are the main mode of transport here and minute by minute they passed us by carrying saffron wrapped monks or complete families. Every house had a squared sump pond, some full, some dry, and in most cases a cow and some foul. Flowers decorated each garden, and every 400 yards or so was a blue banner advertising the Peoples Communist Party.

After 5 hours of counting the dates above the doors of the stilted houses, we arrived in Siem Reap, just as dusk was settling in across the sky. The bus meandered its way up and down the red dust roads of the town which was much bigger than I expected, eventually pulling into a gated depot of sorts.
The gates were closed behind the bus while we got off and reclaimed our bags. When they were opened however, a sea of Tuk Tuk drivers swelled in on top of us, each trying to take out bags and insisting we go with them. Like a ray of sanity within the madness, miraculously, a kindly looking man appeared out of the cloud holding a sign with my name on it.


What a clever chap our Phnom Penh driver was. As soon as we had pulled off in the bus, he texted his buddy in Siem Reap with the bus number and our names. Believe me, right then and there, surrounded by a herd of over-eager and over-heated Tuk Tukkers, our new friend, Kosal, was welcome. The familiarity may have been fake, but it quickly freed us from a very surreal moment.

Happily, Kosal did not have any interest in trying to sell us a particular guest house. On the night we arrived, the town was particularly busy, but he patiently drove us around to more than a few different places of our choosing to try to find a bed. Eventually, we found a spot about 10 minutes walk from Bar Street, comfortable and clean, where we threw ourselves into a much overdue shower.

Kosal ended up becoming our guide and driver for the next 3 days we were there, and a fantastically patient one he was at that.