I SAW three movies on the plane back to London while all around me people slept. The lot, who would be heading back to the heat shortly, told us gleefully how cold it was going to be at dawn's early light and he was not wrong. He wisely did not tell us how windy it was going to be, and with a series of thuds and judders we were back in a world where everyone was talking about the next General Election being likely on May 1st, and how criminal it was that Hammersmith Bridge had closed just like that for two years and nobody had said a thing - they had Just gone meekly and found another way of crossing the river.
We have a false tree in London a silk one that is - and in order to make more room I put it out in the garden, intending to leave it there for a couple of hours. But I forgot about it and it stayed out of doors in howling gales and torrential rain for two days, until we rescued it.
Was it damaged? Not a bit of it - it looked healthy and vibrant and, if I am not being fanciful, as if it had needed a good shower of rain to liven it up. I almost thought I saw new growth in its silky leaves and flowers. I'll keep you posted in case it eventually rots in its little pot but at the moment it seems like a breakthrough in the world of false trees. They never said this in the manufacturer's instructions but maybe, like the rest of us, they can do with a bit of exposure to the fresh air.
AND then back to Dublin where nobody was interested in Hammersmith Bridge or Tony Blair or Eurosceptics. A sociologist could do worse for a thesis than compare the news bulletins every morning in two capitals, only 55 minutes from each other by plane, speaking the same language, involved in each other's history for centuries: they might as well be different civilisations in space for all the shared interests they would appear to have.
Possibly the big mistake people have been making for years is to assume we are all interested in the same things. The way forward could well be treating each other like foreigners.
Certainly the change of conversation was electric.
Everyone was talking about Michelle Rocca and Cathal Ryan and a hairdresser and how ludicrous it was that they had got so much publicity and it was a disgrace giving so many column inches to all that kind of sleaze. But surprisingly, if you asked any questions they could all be answered with precise detail - the age of the child, the end of the relationship, the rekindling of the relationship, the need for an apology, for self-esteem and for people to get their act together.
Their heads shook sadly as they spoke of the lawyers being the only winners in the whole sorry business.
But mainly the theme was the sheer insanity of giving it all so much publicity. After all, who was really interested in these people and their goings-on, people asked in wonder as they detailed every heartbeat of the story?
EVERYONE in Dublin had an M50 story. I thought I was back in London again, where no gathering is complete until every guest has told of the Herculean efforts they made in getting there in the first place. I find it all very tedious but it's a ritual that has to be gone through, and you can't ask everyone to shout their own story at the same time as a sort of therapy and then settle down to real conversation.
It is like fishermen's tales or golfers' stories. You pay the price of telling your own anecdote by listening to everyone else's.
I used to feel really smug about Ireland, mainly because there was usually only one way to get anywhere, or if there were more, it would be achingly boring to describe them. Gatherings in Dalkey wouldn't be riveted by accounts of whether you had come by the Stillorgan Road or cut up by Merrion Gates and then down again by Seapoint Dart station. A civilised place, I thought.
But that was before the M50.
Now you can't meet a person who hasn't missed a plane because of a 20-minute tailback. There are cries about the lack of traffic lights and how streams of cars and vans just go by while you sit with your blood pressure rising, unable to join anything except the ranks of the Seriously Anxious.
I have listened to how terrible it is when you come off the M50 at Templeogue; soup and sandwiches is what you'd need to get you through the narrow roads and the delays there. What is the point of being able to belt along if it ends up like cars in Toytown driving a few yards and then stopping again?
These are not good stories to tell, apart entirely from their being desperate to listen to. The tellers of traffic tales get white-knuckled and their faces become lopsided with remembered rage. They're living it all over again. It's no use telling them that they are not on the M50 now, that they're safe, they're off it and need never use it again. No use whatsoever trying to tell them to leave earlier for their journey.
A lifetime of urging people to get to places sooner than they need to has borne no fruit. If you do get them to places early enough to avoid palpitations they look at you indignantly and tell you of all the things they could have done had you not railroaded them into this ridiculous rush.
They don't want to be placated, advised, and improved. But what do they want?
If any angry traffic person could tell me the correct response, I would be sincerely grateful, and however cliche-ridden and hopeless it may seem to me I will trot it out rather than my own helpful soothing brand of response which is obviously driving people madder than they are already.