The hotel staff are Spanish.
The waitresses are from the Eastern Bloc.
The Russian car-hire man has never heard of County Monaghan and asks me to spell it.
My Thai drink waitress doesn’t know what Angostura Bitters are.
Welcome to Ireland.
The only verbal exchange I’ve had which matched my expectations was when I hopped on a Dublin tour bus, asked the fare and a thick Irish brogue sang back at me “That’ll be one hundred euros”.
I was so deloighted (sic) I almost handed over the money.

It’s all so disappointing.
The sameness.
Everywhere.
I’ve already whinged about the ubiquitous bubble-writing: this is a whinge about first impressions.
Anyone who has stayed in a high class Sydney hotel will have noticed that they are pretty much staffed by Asian-Australians. My hotel at Heathrow was fully staffed by Indians and Pakistanis. Now, here in Ireland, it’s Spanish people.
This is NOT a racist complaint.
Nor is it a complaint about standards.
Communication difficulties notwithstanding, the standards have all been impeccable.
It’s about the expectations of international travel.
About wanting things to be as different as you were hoping they would be.
All the insane people visiting China this year for a smog-choked extravaganza of sporting advertisements, will probably be anticipating a Chinese kind of experience, yeah ?
If they arrive to find their Chinese hotels fully staffed by Italians or Swedish people won’t they feel a bit gypped ? If the hotel restaurant is a Greek Taverna won’t they feel weird ?
Ditto the forthcoming Empire Games in India.
You’d be looking forward to the traditional Indian hospitality I enjoyed at Heathrow wouldn’t you?
Would you buy a ticket to India if you thought all the hotels and services were staffed by Inuit or – goddammit - Queenslanders !

Can you tell that I’ve been on the road too long ?
I’m starting to whine like an American.

My journey’s end sees me finally here in paradise.
At the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig.
Yes, it’s not a name which springs immediately to mind. And it’s not easy to get to.
Hire car or bus, hire car or bus ?
By now I had accumulated the baggage of the Shah of Persia minus the services of the requisite number of baggage handlers.
The idea of a car-boot was tempting.
The idea of wrangling two suitcases, a large carton of merchandise (books and CDs for my Prisoner personal appearance – more on that at another time), handbags, camera, tickets, passport etc., repulsive.
If I could just get the stuff on to the bus, however, I would be all right and it would be a much more relaxing trip.
I deliberated for two days in my Dublin hotel while I tried to squeeze information regarding either service out of internet and phone.
Frustrated beyond words and knowing I had leave the next day, I took a 10 euro taxi ride directly to the Dublin bus station.
Okay, it was 8 pm on a Sunday night, but the bus station was still full of people queuing and catching buses, but no visible staff.
The information booth and all the ticket counters were closed.
There were stands with photocopied (yes, photocopied) schedules for all the different routes. Full to bursting they were, with every possible way out of Dublin.
Except Route 177 to Monaghan.
Mine.
I finally got hold of a schedule via an e-mail the next morning from a friend ‘on the mainland’ and bit the bullet.
Dragged the baggage single-handedly (note to self: must dye hair grey and walk with a cane) and successfully on to the bus.
I’d spent the morning pounding the streets of Dublin trying to buy re-charge for my latest in a line of 5 simcards for my mobile.
The ever-so-well-known Lebara company simcard works in Ireland but you can’t buy top-up for it in Ireland. And you can’t top it up on the net unless you have a UK-issued credit card.
If anything was to go wrong on this bus-trip I was mobile-less.
Always an uneasy feeling when you’re travelling to parts unknown.
The two-hour bus-ride introduced me to a new phenomenon: Irish talk-back radio.
As repugnant as all talk-back radio, encompassing the nauseatingly familiar line-up of tired-old-chestnut topics, the same brain-numbing repetition of the station’s telephone, SMS and e-mail details, the same strident/outraged/congratulatory/condemning/whingeing tones – but in Irish accents !
More of the same.
The radio was blaring full-blast on the coach so I reached for my trusty i-pod.
Neneh Cherry, James Brown and Jimmy Vaughan saved my life for a while.
I was grooving along to ‘Gravity’ and ‘Goliath’ and starting to feel really relaxed when, just like my mobile, the i-pod ran out of pop.
Irish talk-back it was. All - the - way - to - Monaghan.
Hauled the bags off the bus at my destination and looked around for a cab rank.
My hosts here at the TGC had told me grab a Hackney (what ? horse-drawn ? I can’t wait !) cab and that all the cab drivers knew their way out here.
No cab-rank, the nice Irish girl at the tea stand informed me, but only after she had got me to repeat the question five times in my queer little accent.
The baize notice-board near the toilets, however, was studded with plenty of cab drivers’ cards.
No mobile….
Public phone !!!!!????
I can safely say it’s been some years since I’ve used a pay phone.
Apparently they prefer UK-issued credit cards….
I had a few euros.
All the cab drivers with cards had answer phones and there was no way for them to call me back.
5 euros later ‘Mr T’ answered. I told him, in a cutionary tone, where I wanted to go, in case he had to be home for dinner or to pick up the kids or wanted to watch Neighbours. Considerate, me.
He said he’d be there straight away.
‘Mr T’ sounded Italian…
He wasn’t.
Or if he was, he was of the big, black, African, mo-fo variety of Italian. The ones with the big, wide, winning smiles.
We cruised out of the station and I told him once more where I wanted to go.
Ann-agh-ma-ke-rrig.
We pulled over and he pulled out his GPS tracker.
Ohhh… no, I said. If you don’t know where it is, I’m not driving around the countryside helping you to look for it while the meter runs into the red.
No, no, he said, spell it out for me.
Ten trying minutes of ‘a- as in apple’, ‘n - no, not m, n…’ later I snapped, ‘Just give me the thing. I’ll tap it in !’
The ‘thing’ kept stopping after the first five letters and ‘predicting’ street names in Monaghan.
No mobile.
Laptop in one of the suitcases.
No known wi-fi zone anyway.
Hungry.
Thirsty.
Starting to panic for the first time on this trip.
He’s decided to drive me to his base to get directions.
He’s only lived here six years.
Holy Mary, Mother of God ! Why me ?
I feel sick.
I feel hot.
My feet are all swollen.
This is Ireland !
It’s supposed to be cold and rainy !
I wanna go to MacDonalds !!!!
Not to eat, you fool !
To use the wi-fi !! To top-up my phone !!! To get help !
I am sunk as low as it gets.
That salvation should lie beneath the golden arches.
He’s back with the information.
He’s looking confident.
We’re off.
At speed.
Doing 90 through the hedgerows and byways as I scrabble for the seatbelt socket.
‘Don’t want you to get fined,’ I lie, shoving my fist through the back of my seat, scraping my forearm, ricocheting around in the back seat as we swerve past tractors.
Twenty k’s or so later, at the little town of Newbliss, we stop for further directions.
‘Oh, yes,’ lilts the voice through the window. ‘It’s just op the road a moile or two, you cahn’t miss’t. You go op over there, past a lovely little lake, it is. Oh, it is lovvlee, you cahn’t miss it. And you take a turn up a little lane and away on up to the big house on the hill.’
Ah, now, you see if it had been he who had taken my order for a soda, lime and bitters last night, I would have been so content.
On we plunged, past the ‘lovvlee lake’ (it was) and away on up to the house.
‘Tis a miracle !’ I cried as the beautiful buildings and exquisite gardens of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre swung into view.
‘It is !’ hallelujah’d my driver.
Both of us SO relieved to have made it.
He kept apologising for the ’inconvenience, madame’ and I kept congratulating him for getting us there.
It was as if we had discovered America together.
I shook my new friend Thomas’s hand warmly after he unloaded the baggage and charged me 40 euros (about 80 bucks !) for our wild ride.
I stood outside the big stone house, in the full sunshine, listened to the birds singing, gazed out across the loch, past all that green, and breathed in the scent of freshly mown grass.
I’d made it.
I walked away from my pile of baggage, without a care.
I knew I could just leave it there and nothing would happen to it.
The release from the necessity of keeping one hand at all times on each piece of your luggage, of maintaining a vice-like grip on your handbag, was overwhelming.
Muscles in my neck and shoulders started to ‘ping !’ loose.
I walked, unshackled, weightless, towards the house.

Tags: THE ADDRESS BOOK by jane
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Everyone else I know is flying Ryanair to Ireland.
I know I’m not but I can’t remember the name of my airline.
It’s the local one that begins with a ‘c’, I keep saying.
When I do finally land in Dublin and see all the big green planes of Aer Lingus I realise my mistake….
Landing in Dublin was a distant concept when the alarm went off in my hermetically sealed, over-air-conditioned cell of a hotel room at 4.30 am.
The noise from the gambling machines and children’s play area just outside my inward facing window had kept me awake until after 1 am. I felt raw and puffy and cranky.
Re-packed the cases for the twentieth time this month and prayed the big one weighed a little less after my expensive trip to the post office yesterday.
The sun was forcing its way back up again as I spent another 4 quid on the Hotel Hopper to Terminal (never a more apt description) One.
I swear I gave the bus-driver a tenner but he gives me change of 5.
I’m flying BMI. That’s the one.
They calculate your air-fare on your weight divided by the weight of your suitcases multiplied by the distance you’re about to travel.
The smiling hostess icon on the Express Check-in screen informs me that my departure is from Gate 80 which is
A HALF HOUR WALK away….
Thiry minutes of brisk walking is ten minutes more than the recommended amount required for fitness and weight maintenance and usually doesn’t involve dragging two suitcases, plus a 2k handbag slung across your chest and your puffer jacket draggin on the floor.
And even if it meant that I would burn off all the overpriced apalling red wine I’ve been guzzling lately, at 5.45 a.m. I am not in the mood.
What about a bus ?
The Air France flight from Paris to Germany involved a fifteen minute BUS-RIDE from the terminal to the plane…
A HALF HOUR WALK !!!!!?
I set off with a heavy heart and a heavy load.
And that’s before I get to the Baggage Check-in.
A surly young man who refuses eye contact snaps the elastic tape barrier back, beckons me in, and mutters something about having to check the weight of my bag.
So, I wait.
What he means is, I have to put the bag up on to the scales.
Rolling I can do, lifting needs help. It’s not forthcoming.
5.9k over the limit.
Back out through the aisles of elastic tape I lumber. Back to the licence-to-print-money Cashier’s Desk.
Nobody home.
It’s 5.58. Maybe they don’t come on ’til 6.
Oi ! I’ve got a HALF HOUR WALK to do. I’ll need to set out soon !
And there’d better be a caff at the other end ‘cos I ain’t ‘ad’ny breakfast yet, init.
I’m even thinking in English now !
A yoo-hoo yields nothing.
Five minutes later a woman drifts in, doesn’t look at me, charges me 7 pounds a kilo excess, tries to print the receipt for me to take to her surly colleague back at Baggage but the maching breaks down and she has to take the lid off and stick a biro in it, init.
35 pounds stirling.
I should be grateful.
Germany to Paris cost me 85 euros.
I am a woman travelling for 3 months with the barest possible minimum of clothing.
I, the Imelda of Melbourne, am travelling with one pair of trainers (on my feet) and one pair of boots !
I deserve some kind of medal !!!
Not maltreatment by BMI excess-weight nazis.
Back to surly, non-weighing, weight-checker.
On to surly Baggage Check-in proper.
Incomprehensible accent even to a good ear like mine.
I have to ask her to repeat several key questions a couple of times without sounding too much like Marjorie Dawes from Little Britain.
Will I remove the old labels, she asks me through lips of tightly-drawn string.
I give it a go but they’re stuck fast and only get more stucker as I pull.
Do you have any scissors ? I ask.
No, do you have any scissors ? she snaps back. Or any other sharp objects.
No ! Because if I did I would use them to CUT OFF THESE LABELS you dopey twat. I think. To myself.
She stares at me, all open-mouthed disbelief, waiting for me to morph into Edwina Scissorhands.
I glare back at her like a petulant child and say firmly,
‘Can’t’.
We part, mortal enemies For Life.
And then.
My HALF HOUR WALK begins.
Will I eat here, where there is a caff ?
Or will I do the walk and hope for the best ?
With the words of my favourite Eddie Izzard routine - ‘Well, there must have been a canteen on the Death Star, musn’t there ?’ -ringing in my ears, I charge ahead to Security.
By now I have learned not to wear an underwired bra, so, I make it through the gate without a good and proper frisking before breakfast.
An electronic sign looms immediately ahead.
‘Gate 80 - 10 minutes’
It’s like the South-Eastern Freeway.
‘Warrigal Road - 40 minutes’
‘Toorak Road - delays’
Ten minutes ?
So.
Not a HALF HOUR WALK ?
Or did my exchange with Mrs Bitchface Baggage Hag count as 20 ?
Ten minutes ?!
I can do that.
In fact, I can stop for breakfast right here and now.
I start to feel really good, until I realise I have NO MONEY LEFT because the thieving, crooked bus driver fleeced me of my last fiver.
Chip-and-pin it is then, because, Lord knows, cash or no cash, you need a credit card to buy breakfast at Heathrow.
After my Bacon and Egg Toastie and mug of beige swill I’m ready to take on the world and its wife.
The ten minute walk goes by like 5, and I’m standing at a T-intersection in front of another sign.
There’s an arrow pointing left below the words:
‘GATES 70-78′
and an arrow pointing right below the words:
‘GATES 82-90′.
Can youpick what’s wrong with the sign ?
‘Excuse me,’ I say to the top of a desk, ‘there are two gates missing and I need one of them’.
‘No, no,’ says the desk. ‘Through that door. Gate 80 through that door.’
But.
‘I know. I know.’
Through the door to Gate 80, Brigadoon, into a lounge full of green chairs.
We are going to Ireland.
It’s 6.15 by now and an Irish voice is shouting over the P.A. that my 7 am flight to Dublin is boarding NOW and that everyone should just be getting a very big move on, if you don’t mind.
No-one moves from the green chairs.
A woman doing a customer survey for BMI Airlines with a woman opposite me, looks towards the ceiling and makes disapproving noises and reassures us all that this is indeed Gate 80 and that that announcement is just so wrong it’s embarassing.
Oh, Miss ! Pick me ! Pick me to answer your survey !
Please !
I know ALL the answers !
They’re not the answers you want to hear but it’ll fill up your sheet.
Sensing my eagerness, perhaps, she tries to slip away but the security door has snapped shut and we are all TRAPPED FOR EVER in the ghostly gate-lounge on the green chairs listening to piped misinformation.
Irish jokes aside, it’s almost funny.
Almost.
Half an hour later, safely on the plane, the captain announces that there will be a slight delay of HALF AN HOUR due to traffic out of Heathrow.
The rest of the crew, perhaps, doing the HALF HOUR WALK ?

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I’ve been motoring through Nether Wallop, Middle Wallop and A Clip Across The Ear – known to its more groovy residents as Sock It To Me.
A town called Abbot’s Ann…?
So…there was an abbot with someone called Ann at his disposal and the locals built a town for her ?
What then to make of the hamlet of Little Ann ?
Was she Ann’d Over ?
Oh, yes, droll, me.
On the long trail from Cardiff to my last port of call in Andover, by way of the not-so-scarey-after-all Severn Bridge.
(Hard to know how high above the water one is with all that low-lying smog…er…fog).
Motoring, like Toad, along the highways and byways of Somerset and Wiltshire and Hampshire.
A flash of setting sun on the Great White Horse, and yet, nowhere to stop for the photo opportunity.
So un-American.
Hedgerows.
Miles of hedgerows.
So many bustles (see Stairway to Heaven).
Speed signs read 50 and 40 and 30.
50 ? I don’t know whether to slow down or speed up.
(Miles, Jane, it’s miles, and you’re doing 80k !)
No stopping and no overtaking on English hedgerows.
You’re stuck behind someone like me, you’re stuck there ‘til bathtime.
Ah, Bath…..
The untold joy of Bath !
I knew I wanted to go to there but wasn’t sure why.
Something about taking the waters….
I tried to book a stopover but the prices were too steep.
I could not, however, resist a little peek.
As soon as I drove in off the interminable M’s I fell for the city’s Georgian charms.
I came over all Pride and Prejudice.
Oh, Mr D’Arcy ! I simply must buy a fridge magnet with your – or is that Colin Firth’s ? – face on it !
Parked the vehicle with ease at the top of the magnificent Great Pulteney Street and hopped on an open-topped, double-dekker bus for a guided tour around the magnificent burgh.
Whiled away a whole hour in the blazing sun listening to ambient, crystal-shop music, interspersed with wry commentary on the headphones.
Did you know they built a castle on a hill overlooking the town just to give it a bit of gravitas ? Not a real castle, just an edifice. It’s known as Sham Castle.
My kind of town.
I wish one of my addresses had been in Bath. I would have justified at least a week there.
But, no, it was back to the schedule and on to Andover.
I spent the night in Salisbury – a stone’s throw from the Henge.
So close I had to drop by the next day and pay my respects to the Druids.
(You just never know who the real Gods/Special-Invisible-Friends might be….)
Is it before Amesbury or after ? I wondered aloud….
Oh, look ! There it is !
No.
A pedestrian walkway over the A303.
Look at all those big white stones… must be getting close !
Sheep.
Finally, there it was.
And it was so…Spinal Tap small…
I knew you couldn’t actually wander around the stones, that there was a fence and a walkway.
Should have known it would cost.
About $15.
Shopped for trashy souvenirs instead – Stonehenge socks, a miniature Stonehenge just like Spinal Tap, a pencil with a henge on the end – and took photos through the fence.
Decided to visit the lesser-known Woodhenge, a couple of miles down the road.
There it is ! I cried.
No.
Wooden sound baffles on the A303.
No, there !
No…. Those are clearly someone’s stumps for a new house. Like you’ve seen on ‘Grand Design’.
But there’s a carpark….
And a sign….
‘Welcome to the Woodhenge…. Bronze Age c.2000BC.
The concrete posts…”
Ah-hah…
“….mark the position of the original timbers, evidence for which was obtained by excavation.”
So….
Concrete-henge.
Concentric circles of concrete posts with different coloured tops, plus a small clump of what looked like left-over concrete – or is it an old rock ? - just near the middle.
No-one about. (No, really ?).
I take many self-timed shots of me among the buttercups and the …wood…concrete…henge.
A sudden urgency reminds me that the closest toilet is away across the paddocks and the tour buses and the retail outlets of the fancy-pants henge that boasts its own road-sign.
I walk towards my car but then curiosity about the clump of left-over concrete gets the better of me.
What’s that got to do with the henge ?
I move in for a closer look.
It looks like a gravestone.
No mention of what, or who, lies beneath, but there’s a tiny bunch of buttercups fastened with intent amongst the clotted stones.
Lying askew on the grass next to the slab is a small wooden cross with a union jack pin and a remembrance ribbon attached.
The wood at the base of the cross is frayed, like it was planted before and has come loose.
The wind began to pick up through the concrete.
Back to the open road.
Poop-poop !
view photos on my Facebook site at:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=573908245

Tags: THE ADDRESS BOOK by jane
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May Day ! May Day !
I pulled out of Paris on the Eurostar and glanced at the station clock.
It said 9.11
Hurtling towards the Channel Tunnel, white knuckles gripping the armrest of my window seat.
Window seat ? Point ?
The rational and the irrational going at it hammer and tongs in my frontal lobe, stomach doing cartwheels.
Why did I get on this train ?
Which is worse, I ask myself, 36 thousand feet up or a couple of thousand feet down?
Nothing but empty sky between you and the ground or a huge body of water and hundreds of tons of ocean floor bearing down on you ?
Blocked ears from being in a pressurised metal tube hurtling through the sky or blocked ears from being in a metal tube far too deep underground ?
No escape from either….
Unless you stop thinking about it and read the paper.
Ah, here comes breakfast.
I was in first class and assured that breakfast was ‘compris’, so, I hadn’t bothered to buy my last genuine croissant or brioche at the Gare du Nord. Not even a café crème.
Which, in hindsight, was a mistake.
Breakfast was just like on a plane – only worse.
Cold, stale croissant, which - like all souvenirs of Paris – was probably made in China. Aeroplane coffee with France’s favourite milk – UHT.
(In case I haven’t mentioned this before, the French all drink long-life milk. Not sure why. No-one seems to have an explanation).
I ate like a woman who is about to die in a train accident.
Had seconds.
‘How long do we actually spend in the tunnel ?’ I asked the beautiful Christine, ‘cabin supervisor’.
About twenty minutes.
Oh. Well, that’s manageable, I thought.
‘And do your ears hurt ?’ I asked.
‘Not when you’re in the tunnel,’ she said. ‘But later, quite a lot.’
Aaaaagggghhhhh !!!!!!
I want to get off this train !
I have very sensitive ears ! I’m an artiste ! I need my ears for my important work of listening to myself talk and sing ! I don’t want to have any pain !
I decided not to ask if anyone had ever had a heart attack brought on by the pressure of being underground in the tunnel.
Twenty minutes, I kept saying. I can time that.
Maybe if I go to the toilet now – which by the way I would really like to do – I won’t even notice us going in to the tunnel because there won’t be any lights on in there.
Excellent idea. Even though I was fully loaded up with the breakfast tray I manoeuvred my way out of the seat, squeezed past the trolley and into the loo.
Was I just imagining that everyone was staring at me ?
Or were all their eyes popping out of their heads with fear.
Once in the loo I suddenly thought, well, yes I might not notice the fact that we’re in the tunnel because there’s no windows in here, but what about the excruciating pain in my ears !!!
Back past the trolley, back under my breakfast tray.
We seemed to still be in the country.
Oceans of non-drought-stricken green, punctuated with those annoying psychedelic yellow fields of canola were swishing past the window.
An occasional tunnel and you thought, here we go ! This is it ! And your ears popped and everything…But then you were out the other end and surrounded by more greens.
My ticket said – depart Paris 9.15, arrive Ashford 10.05.
Forty-five minutes minus the twenty in the tunnel - we should be in it by now.
I take another look at the ticket. Maybe it’s ‘arrive 1.05’ – as in p.m. ? 4 hours of suspense. It was gonna kill me !
Then suddenly the train began to slow, ever so slightly.
My lovely hosts in Hildesheim, Ben and Sabina, had related to me a horror story of being stuck in the chunnel on the Eurostar. The train had ground to a halt, all the lights went out, people were screaming and crying. Another train had to be summoned to pull it back out again…and….
The train was definitely slowing.
Oh. My. God.
What was worse than hurtling towards the chunnel ?
Hurtling towards it only to stop just inside it or….half….way…
We were definitely in the chunnel now.
Moving along at a steady pace.
It was kind of quiet.
Gee, The Guardian was running some good stories that day.
You could ask me anything about the local council elections and the battle for the job as Mayor of London and I could tell you everything.
And, just as suddenly, we were out the other end.
And my ears weren’t hurting.
They didn’t even pop.
It was a totally painless experience.
Apart from the breakfast.

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