Sometimes it's the things you don't bring home from holidays which turn out to be the souvenirs that lodge deepest in the memory. The mad, cracked things that either make you feel frantically uneasy or hoot with laughter at the time, but which afterwards seem like surreally telling symbols of the country you were visiting.
At the bitter end of Thatcher's Britain, I went trotting down Oxford Street one Saturday, not shopping for anything in particular, but checking out the windows just the same. Some clothes shop had come a cropper in the recession, and was closing down. Businesses had a lot in common with butterflies in those days, in terms of life expectancy.
This was closure, Thatcher style. The big guys had moved in and were clearing out the stock. Huge signs in the windows crowed: "Their Bankruptcy is your Lucky Day! Owners in Liquidation - Everything Going Cheap!" - a social summary of the times that someone should have gone in and pinched for future display in some museum.
Then there was the intriguing little insight into the Turkish transport system. I travelled on an overnight bus from Olu Deniz, way down south, to Istanbul. The bus company was called Pamukule, a name that has stayed with me for quite interesting reasons.
Breakfast on bus
We were served a little in-flight type breakfast the following morning, with coffee from some machine that appeared magically from the baggage compartment. I fished around in the sealed packet for the sugar sachet. It said "Sugar" on one side, and on the other: Pamukule Buses Take You To Your Lovers."
And there I was, thinking I was going to Istanbul, while actually I was travelling to my lovers, plural. What an inspired way to enliven a bus journey! I spent the rest of the journey wondering how many more passengers Bus Eireann could lure aboard, if it promised similar delights at journey's end.
Then there was the vanishing cream I discovered in a bazaar in Skardu, not far from K2 on the Pakistani border near Kashmir. Skardu is the main village in Baltistan, a remote Shia Muslim area which few Westerners visit outside the mountaineering season, and where the women live unseen in purdah. Club Med it is not.
Folly of travel
I got there after a 12-hour journey on a bus with fascinatingly poor brakes along the edge of an extremely scenic, deep, and completely unprotected ravine of the Indus River. Eleven-and-a-half of those hours were spent meditating on death in particular, and the folly of travel beyond one's garden gate in general. This was before being made acquainted in Skardu with the bus's recent impressive record for bonding with the Big Bus Maker at the bottom of the Indus River.
Tottering around the bazaar the next day, I decided it would be prudent to leave the area by the small plane that came in now and then from Islamabad, instead of returning on the bus with the fascinatingly poor brakes. Among the astrakan hats and slabs of raw goat for sale in the bazaar, I spied a tin of something called Vanishing Cream.
Where was I, Oz? Was this the Asian equivalent of Dorothy's sparkly red shoes, and would it take me home to Kansas/Clare, pronto? Upon further inspection, I discovered that Vanishing Cream wouldn't transport me anywhere, but that it did promise to make dark skin colours completely white. Since I was still white - or more correctly, green - from the excitement of the day before, this seemed a little extraneous to my present needs.
But definitely the weirdest thing I have seen on my travels was in Florence, home of the Duomo, the Uffizi Gallery, and hand-made paper. I saw it in a shop opposite the Duomo, where I had put my rucksack down for a rest before going in search of the nearest youth hostel. It was a posh shop, selling leather-bound notebooks and silver bowls; you had to ring a bell to get in, and I had zero interest in exploring it.
Glass shelf
I only saw the thing when I had my rucksack on again, and it made such an impression that I had to take the rucksack off again for a proper gape. Displayed all by itself on a glass shelf, its polished oak base shining, was a silver rat-trap. You could see the hallmarks. They were very clear. And it was a rat-trap. Not even a mouse trap. Top-quality vermin protection for the person who had everything, even rats.
Ever since then, I've wondered who bought it. If anyone's come across it since, I'd love to know.
In An Irishman's Diary of February 16th, Tom O'Dea referred to the first Irish radio ham to contact the orbiting Russian cosmonaut, Sergei Kirkalov, and to an alleged Donegal claim-jumper. The Donegal radio operator has always acknowledged that Martin O'Dea was the first to make contact with the cosmonaut and Tom O'Dea is happy to accept this acknowledgement.