I BOUGHT a big exercise machine on Saturday, which was advertised on Done Deal. I had to go to Naas to pick it up. It's called a cross trainer, and it has vertical handlebars like the horns of a wild beast, and a rear end that looks like a motorbike. It's the size of a small forklift, and I had to use the horsebox to get it back to Mullingar, writes MICHAEL HARDING
It took two strong men to lift it up the stairs to the bedroom.
“Is it a bicycle?” one of them asked.
“No,” the other fellow said, “it’s a rocking horse.” They both laughed.
The fellow who sold it to me said, “When you get up on it, you’ll feel you’re on a ski slope. You’ll feel like you’re James Bond skiing down a mountain.” When I finally mounted it and viewed myself in the wardrobe mirror – pot-bellied and curved at the rear – I felt more like Donald Duck than James Bond.
It was after midnight before I got it plugged in, and I couldn’t wait till morning to have a go, so I pedalled away, until I got pains in my arms.
Later I woke, in the middle of the night, as is my wont, to visit the bathroom, and walked straight into it, in the dark.
But I did feel energetic the following morning; and I sang Rocket Man, in the jeep, as I passed all the empty bungalows and half-built houses beyond Finea, on my way to visit my mother in Cavan.
Her grocery list doesn’t change from week to week: a loaf of bread, a litre of milk, a half pound of butter, a bit of broccoli, a fish, a slice of meat, Easi Singles and two slices of ham.
“What happened your eye?” she wondered.
I told her that I got an exercise machine to ward off heart attacks, but that I clattered into it during the night.
“You need to be careful at night,” she said, but she wasn’t quite with me.
Gone are the lovely nights for which she used to make her own dresses, and cardigans from soft mohair, when she was Lady Captain in the golf club, presenting glittering prizes to all the winners, and doing the foxtrot around the dance floor, as Mr Jenkins blew his saxophone.
Nowadays her world hardly extends beyond the dining room, the bedroom and the kitchen, though she has not lost her appetite. First we had soup. And there was some mashed potato on a plate in the fridge from the previous day. I microwaved it and placed it on the table with a knob of butter.
“I enjoyed that,” she said, as she polished it off, with a mug of tea. I made a note to get her a beaker next week, so that she can enjoy her drinks securely.
“Thank you,” she said. “God bless you, you’re very good to come. The soup was lovely. It warmed the cockles of me heart! It went down to me toes!”
Before I left, she said she might get ready for bed. So with some assistance, she got rid of her trousers, and put on pink pyjama bottoms. Then she took them off and put on a different pair, because the first ones had no elastic and would not stay up.
She wanted to be comfortable getting into bed on her own.
And so I left her there, at the television, and ready for bed, the electric blanket on and the bedside lamp all aglow.
In Dublin I had a drink in The Clock on Thomas Street, before heading across the road to the Irish TimesTheatre Awards in Vicar Street.
All evening my lips brushed against the cheeks of beautiful women in white frocks and black dresses, with bare shoulders and satin shawls. I kissed actresses in high heels, leather boots, and swanky slippers. I hugged directors in overcoats, and silk scarves, and I had a drink with an actor from Cork, who wore a velvet jacket his father had loaned him for the evening.
And when all the prizes were awarded I drove back to Mullingar, and climbed the stairs to bed. The moon was full, and the exercise machine stood idle in the shadows like a frightened gazelle, just waiting for someone to touch its horns and bring it back to life.