Nobody can go through life without experiencing a few embarrassing moments. How often have you wakened in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, horrified about something stupid that happened in the past?
The great Royal Showband provided me with one of my most horrendous experiences. I had travelled to Drogheda to hear them and see Brendan Bowyer do the Hucklebuck. I had arranged to stay in a friend's house that night. His generous parents told me that when I got back from the dance the key would be over the front door, a glass of milk would be on the kitchen table and I could sleep in the back room.
I got back from the dance at about 3 a.m. I found the key above the door, but when I got in there was no milk on the table. Strange, I thought. Just as I was trying to work it out, a woman in a white nightdress appeared at the top of the stairs and started screaming. She frightened the life out of me.
Trusting days
I had gone into the wrong house. It was a big estate with about 300 houses, all identical, all with keys over the doors. They were innocent, trusting days, the 1950s.
I bolted like a sheet of lightning. Three doors down I found the right house, let myself in, drank my glass of milk in one gulp and slumped into the bed in the back room, a nervous wreck. Next morning I sheepishly told my hosts what had happened, just in case there was a Garda investigation. You never know, that terrified lady might have given them my description. I was a worried man. However, the incident blew over and I maintained my clean record. The neighbours laughed themselves silly for weeks afterwards. It was years since they had had such fun. They thought I was a "gas young man".
Another deeply embarrassing incident took place when six of us went on a golfing weekend to the west of Ireland. It seemed a good idea at the time, a kind of "get-away-from-it-all" weekend out in the fresh country air.
We were in the hotel only a short time when one of the lads discovered his £400 had been stolen. He turned the bedroom upside down but there was no sign of the money. Panic was creeping in. He searched again. Still no sign of the money. Nothing for it, of course, but to tell the manager. The far from pleased manager arrived and asked us to search the room again. We did. No luck. The woman in charge of the cleaning girls was contacted and brought in on her day off to see if she could help out. She earnestly explained, almost in tears, that all the girls were honest and wouldn't steal money. Some of them had been there 10 years. "This is a very respectable hotel and never in its history has there been a robbery here," said the manager, his voice shaking. A history lesson wasn't of much consolation to my friend, who demanded that the long arm of the law be called. There would have to be a full investigation.
Squad car
Shortly afterwards I looked out the window and saw a squad car pulling into the car park. This was serious stuff, indeed. The manager was getting very angry. He asked my friend to search again. "We have searched a hundred times," said my equally tense friend. "Just do it, anyway," the manager insisted. "Search where you last saw the money." My friend went through his sports bag again for about the 20th time, rooting up and down and all around every inch of it. Then his body froze, his eyes glazed over, and a in slow, mumbling voice he said, "I've found it." The manager shouted a few choice remarks, made a quick turn and dashed down the stairs to turn the gardai back. It wouldn't look good for the guests to see cops crawling all over the joint.
You won't believe this, but that evening we ran into more trouble. Another of our intrepid group discovered his credit cards were missing. "Oh, no," I moaned. "You can't report that to the manager. We'll be thrown out." I told him he probably left them at home and everything would be all right. He was naturally worried, but agreed not to panic. Over dinner, we chatted about the highly eventful day and wondered what we would do about the missing credit cards.
Bad relations
We were just finishing our meal when the man who was minus his credit cards shouted: "I've found them. I've found the cards. . ." Apparently they had slipped from his pocket into the lining of his jacket. He was elated. So was I. The whole weekend had been taking on a kind of Fawlty Towers atmosphere. Nothing more could happen. We had got over the worst unscathed, except for the bad relations between us and management.
How naive I was. An hour after finishing the meal, myself and another friend got violent stomach cramp. The pain was dreadful. My fellow sufferer wanted to go down to reception and complain of food poisoning. I could only moan: "How can we complain after all the trouble we have caused? We'll just have to put up with it."
Apparently, it was the salmon that did it. I spent the next two days drinking milk, trying to get better. There was no point in reporting it, even though we now had a genuine complaint. It wasn't going to make us feel any better. If we had asked for a reduction on the bill, I know what would have happened. No, we had caused enough trouble. We just had to grin and bear it.