Culture

In a Word . . . Dangerous

A lockdown knock-down: I have paid the price of living dangerously

Patsy McGarry's face
Patsy McGarry
Sat Mar 13 2021 - 00:30

I've had moments of living dangerously this past year that have had just a little to do with Covid. But it means I have, probably, the only red wine-flavoured easy chair in Ireland.

As lockdown followed lockdown, I grew more and more comfortable in that chair. Such relaxation, as the plague raged outside, helping me keep my head while so many were losing theirs in frustration at restrictions.

We, me and the chair became quite attached as the world grew smaller – from nationwide, to county, to 5km, to 2km. So that, after the long daily walk – weather and light allowing – an incentive was that soft chair waiting in front of the TV.

Such was our comfort in one another’s company that soon every mug of tea or coffee joined me from a nearby table and rested on the chair’s expansive arm. “The mug won’t topple,” I assured myself, though it could. A bit of a risk maybe, but there’s also that intensity of living dangerously.

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I grew ambitious, more comfortable – okay, lazy. That particular evening I decided to have wine – to establish whether that old adage about absence making the heart grow fonder applied to the taste buds as well. (It does.)

I sought a bottle of red, poured a decent glass and wondered about resting it on the chair’s arm. “Yes,” I told myself, “it’s worth the risk. If it works for mugs why not a wine glass?”

Admittedly, the glass might have all the stability of an overweight ballerina teetering on her toes, but hey, “Go on!” I rested the ample glass on the chair’s arm, a little giddy, sat down, told myself “it’s going to topple over and what then?”, ignored that ever-cautious inner voice (a lifelong habit) with its deeper wisdom, changed the TV channel, checked my phone and hit the wine glass with my elbow.

In the ensuing baptism my shirt and jeans reddened rapidly to a spontaneous chorus – no, an eruption – of deepest blue disgorging from my deepest depths. The easy chair escaped most of the deluge and the wine glass survived too, but I was the casualty – a victim of living dangerously. The dry-cleaning bill equalled several glasses of wine – the cost of living dangerously.

Dangerous , hazardous, unsafe, risky, from Anglo-French dangerous

inaword@irishtimes.com