You need to have a number of things in place to pretend that life in rural Ireland is really the same as everywhere else: your car; your health; and services which run on a continuous basis.
If you pull out these lynch-pins, then you experience how different life here is and how, despite the evidence of your geographical location, you live your life inside an urban head. We'd all fallen foul of the respiratory problems which seem to have beset the country and particularly the north-west.
First of all Leo got a sore throat and cold, which passed quickly for him and landed at my door with a vengeance. This saw me in my doctor's surgery in Sligo, ostensibly for Leo, only to be told that I needed a course of antibiotics, which was just as well because my temperature soared to nearly 102 that night. Tony, exhausted from the effort of all the brow mopping, woke to find a flu descending on him, which turned in a matter of days into a banging pain in his back.
We arranged for a trip back to the Sligo GP at lunch-time on New Year's Eve and, suitably wrapped up, made our way to the car for the journey. A couple of turns of the engine was enough to tell us that the car had given up. Not to be daunted, we took our place with several other hopefuls waiting for the bus, due to hit Manorhamilton at 12.26.
Forty minutes later, all around us started hitching. Yes, the bus had definitely gone one way to Enniskillen, but all bets were off about it coming back the other way. Nothing for it but to see if the Manorhamilton GP practice was open, so around the town we trekked, which is difficult when you are in considerable pain. All lights off at the doctor's house, leaving us with no option but to go to the accident and emergency in Our Lady's Hospital in Manorhamilton.
It's at times like this that you really appreciate having such a facility. It's unusual these days to have a hospital in such a small town, but boy were we grateful that this last bastion of regional provision remained intact. Nothing more than some serious muscular pain was diagnosed, possibly from the recent wood-cutting activity, but more likely as a result of the flus and colds which had been circulating in our house. Solpadeine was kindly proffered by the hospital since the chemist was closed, as was practically everything else.
Tony even got permission to go out on New Year's Eve, which we spent as promised with Mary and Willie in their pub, along with two other gentlemen friends of theirs. And incredibly hospitable it was too.
Just before midnight, Mary and Willie ushered their four guests into their sitting room, where we toasted the new century with several bottles of champagne and their two dogs. No problems getting a seat, no monstrous cover charges, no need to think about a taxi, all we had to do was meander home down the ghostly quiet town, thinking how different it all was to previous years.
New Year's Day dawned, and the only similarities to that previous life were the customary hangovers which accompany such celebrations, however quiet. A walk was diagnosed as a suitable cure, so I suggested that we make our way to Glenade Lake, which is about five miles outside the town. The car thankfully and inexplicably cured, we set off in good, if fragile spirits.
We got to the lake okay, but then discovered that there really was no way to walk around it, so we continued driving, and driving, discovering what seemed to be a fabulous road, which meandered up and away from the lake, and turned into a nightmare within minutes. Gravel, and grass and a lot of sheep, and a dramatically desolate landscape did their job. Unable to continue up the sheer mountain road, I spectacularly stopped the car in mid-gravel and explained to Tony that I understood now why rural Ireland drove people mad, and could he please take over the driving because I feared the onslaught of a panic attack given the effect last night's champagne was having on my brain. "No problem," he said as I gingerly made my way to the other side of the car and sat down, hyperventilating slightly.
There was no going forward, and only one way back, commonly referred to as reversing, made all the more immediate by the appearance of another car on the horizon. The grateful woman driver mistook our manic reversal down the hazardous boreen for altruism. She thought we were letting her pass, so our frantic need to escape mustn't have been as obvious as I believed.
We arrived back in Manor chastened from our rural foray, only to realise that our petrol reserves were now severely depleted, the garage was closed, and we were supposed to visit friends that night near Kiltyclogher. It's amazing how you take a simple thing like being able to get petrol for granted. We calculated that we had just about enough to get there and back but, I being a poor risk-taker, the stress levels involved in reaching our destination were a tad high, especially with zero room for error on roads with no lighting.
I'd never have believed that such minor set-backs could become events in themselves. For what seemed like forever, we were living in frontier country. Y2K how are you; it was the lack of petrol pumps which really crashed our systems.
emcnamar@irish-times.ie
