Maybe it happened in Eden. Possibly after. Whenever it was, the difference between the sexes is nowhere more strongly marked than in the business of packing, writes Kevin Myers
Being a perfectly typical male, when I pack a suitcase, I normally manage to include several bottlers of wine, a beer or two, some Sellotape and a packet of crisps. This is fine for the first week or two, after which the absence of any clean socks, underwear or toothbrush and paste tend to oppress strangers. When horses shy and hotel receptionists swoon at your approach, it's time either you went on a suitcase-packing course, or surrendered the entire business to your wife, if she's willing, or divorced her, if she's not.
Thus it was I arrived at Dublin airport with a perfectly packed suitcase, en route to a lecture in England. I presented myself at the Ryanair desk and proffered my passport to the girl in blue. The photograph is a little bit old and very flattering, so I'm used to airport eyes flicking back and forth to compare the pictorial Adonis with the car-crash that is reality.
This time, it was different. The Ryanair eyes slowly went backwards and forwards several times before their owner said: "And you really mean to tell me that you're Rachel Nolan?" Rachel had asked me to make just one contribution to my departure: to pick up my passport. I had gone to the filing cabinet, picked up both our passports, looked at them both very carefully, and then with equal care, had placed my passport back in the filing cabinet, and then put hers in my pocket. A psychiatrist can perhaps explain such conduct. I cannot.
Listen. Merely because you're a journalist doesn't mean you can bypass the Berlin Wall of Ryanair Blue. I could not identify myself with any photographic evidence, and therefore was not allowed on the flight to Bournemouth, the last of the day.
There are a number of words to describe my predicament, but the most apt is that ancient Greek term, "phukt". Yes, I was well and truly phukt.
I was now a snarling madman. For I had arrived by hackney from Kildare. She-who-packs was now she-who-shops, as in Christmas, as in, with her mother. There are some things - requiem Masses, marital consummations, and mothers and daughters hitting the credit card at Yuletide - which one does not in all decency interrupt. Moreover, I could hardly ask to her to claw her way down the dark and unspeakable horror of the M50 in the late afternoon, as static as a British car-assembly line circa 1981.
The madman did something he hadn't done in many years: he caught a bus into Dublin city centre. Not a coach, but an ordinary bus, one that stopped at stops. It was incredible. It cost only €5, left from just outside the terminal doors, and was not merely air-conditioned but heated. Why, it felt more like a Stockholm bus than a Dublin bus. I asked the driver which was the best stop for Jervis Street, and he told he would let me know. And sure enough, over the public address system, he kept assuring the passenger for Jervis Street that now was not the stop to alight at. Finally, the instruction came to abandon ship, which I duly did.
I had a bit of time to spare, so I chose to walk to Connolly Station and get a seat ahead of the mob. The balance so far? I'd lost the cost of the flight. I'd had to buy another ticket for a flight to England the next day. I was missing a small party being held for me at the other side. On the other hand, I'd been in a Dublin bus that was amazingly clean and efficient, and the driver was attentively courteous in an old-fashioned way. And here I was on Luas, which I criticised recently for the time it takes to cover the journey to Tallaght; but I should rethink that criticism, because this tram left on time - to the second - and it really was exceedingly pleasant. A group of postal workers began to sing carols - though needless to say, not well. Still, their shambling forays into the lower registers of Silent Night added a festive note to the journey.
Then we stopped. More passengers came aboard, and in their midst was a wheelchair. The occupant was a young woman, and she propelled that wheelchair by hand. Not merely did she have no legs, but she appeared to have no lower abdomen either. As far as I could judge, her torso ended somewhere in the region of her navel. She was about twenty-two, and she was alone.
Minutes before, I had been cursing my luck over my missed flight.
She clutched a packet of cigarettes to her chest. With a priggish sanctimony, we as a society have decreed that if this young woman wants to have a smoke while in a pub, she must go outside. But that's as far as our Pharisaic morality goes, for we have also decreed that she must propel herself around by hand. In any other country in Europe, the State would have supplied her with an electric wheelchair.
We came to her stop and, alone, she wheeled herself off, leaving a score of sobered minds behind her. I flew to England the next day, and then - naturally - missed my flight home. I didn't care.
Who are you? What catastrophe befell you that the grace of God spared the rest of us? And what more should we be doing for you?