She stared and said: 'you're really off the wall, man'

After an early sighting of a sleek and gorgeous wild mink, the day just kept getting stranger

I SAW A mink last week, on my way to the train; black and shiny, its gorgeous coat far superior to even the most beautiful black cat I ever had. It was running across the road that leads down to Lough Ennell, where the swans live. There was something about its wild nature that I envied.

And later in the day I met Natalie, a Russian friend, on Grafton Street, and she was wearing a big black fur coat, so I began thinking of her, too, as wild. I rubbed the fur on her shoulders and asked her if it was real.

She said: “Of course it is real!” I said: “Have you ever been to the fur shop down the street?” “Yes,” she said, “I love that shop; but I not go there any more, because of recession.”

“What kind of animal are you wearing today?” I wondered. “Rabbit,” she said, apologetically, as if perhaps she might be more comfortable in the skin of a white tiger, or a Siberian wolf.

“Well, that’s not too offensive,” I said. “In fact, Irish people actually eat rabbits.” “Oh,” she said, “you must come to my house tonight, and I will cook you rabbit.” I declined the offer, explaining that I had a prior engagement.

That night I was scheduled to partake in a panel discussion, on the radio, with two other people, a young man and a woman, both of whom are known as entertainment journalists. We were going to talk about movies.

When the programme began I tried to sound as if I knew something about Hollywood.

“Apparently Sandra Bullock is having personal problems,” I declared, but everybody already knew that.

The young man beside me explained how the movie under review was not very good, and was the same as half a dozen other movies, and how the storyline was silly, but that Sandra looked good.

“If you like Sandra,” he said, “you will like this.” He sounded like he knew her intimately.

The presenter was just off a plane from New York, and he was sporting an impressive tan, and the young woman on the panel was all giggles, like Marilyn Monroe on the verge of ecstasy, as if this was the happiest day of her life.

I just didn’t know enough about movies, and I couldn’t keep up with the eloquence of the other two. I was amazed at how much they knew about celebrities, and at all the hot gossip they had about Hollywood.

At one stage I asked them if there was a danger that we might be losing the run of ourselves, and that perhaps our over-familiarity with American culture was a sign that we were, as a nation, still colonised. They looked at me as if I had two heads.

I left the studio a bit dazed, and wandered into a nearby pub. A young woman in gothic evening wear was leaning against the bar and holding her head, like she had a migraine. I asked her if anything was wrong. She said she had been in the back of a taxi and she had heard an old geezer on the radio trying to say something intelligent about movies.

“The old fart probably wasn’t at a movie for decades,” she said. “He was going on about being colonised or something. He said he was from Mullingar, wherever that is! Probably on Planet Zog!”

“No,” I said, “Mullingar is in Westmeath. It’s an hour away on the train.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

I said: “The fart on the radio was me.”

“Jesus,” she exclaimed, “that’s cool.” We didn’t have much of a vocabulary in common, so I tried to use words judiciously.

When she asked me if I would like to join her for a drink, I said: “That would be cool.” And she said I was cool.

And then the drinks arrived – my wine and her vodka – which is when she realised that she had left her money in the taxi, and she was all distressed about that, so I paid, and she thanked me, and I said: “Don’t worry, it’s cool.”

Then, for the sake of conversation, I said that I had seen a sleek black mink that morning, on the road to Lough Ennell, where the swans live, and that it was utterly wild and beautiful.

She stared at me with some unease, and said: “You’re really off the wall, man.”