The sun only seems to shine in Ireland during recession years, as though God is trying to offer some compensation for the vagaries of the market. In the ten years of the Celtic Tiger, the summers were damp and chilly, which gave people an extra excuse, as though one was needed, to head off for two months to their villa in Spain, bought from selling shares during the dotcom bubble.
This year as the economy has gone south, the mercury has been rising and my peeling arms are testament to the power of the Irish sun. Rather ironically, I have lived in Australia for two years without developing a tan. Three weeks in Ireland and I’m like a ripe plum.
It was also like that back in 1991 in the days before the tiger was even a glint in the Mammy tiger’s eye. The only job opportunities were at the end of a boat or plane ride and college summers were spent washing dishes in Martha’s Vineyard or pulling pints in an ugly Irish theme bar in Munich.
Ray was a college student back then, but his ambitions didn’t even stretch to dishwashing. He was happy to sleep for the summer and let the big world wait for his graduation. He worked occasionally in his Dad’s hardware shop, helping out when old Jim was unwell with his heart and when the cattle fair was in town. On those days, a steady stream of farmers would visit the shop to stock up on bailing twine and pungent pesticides and Ray would earn enough to keep him in beer and curry chips for the week.
Our paths crossed one sunny morning in July 1991. I was on a cycling holiday down the west coast of Ireland, criss-crossing the back roads of Galway. We came to a small incline and I climbed from the saddle of my bike to attack the hill like Lance Armstrong in the Alps. I weighed a lot less then than I do now, but it was still enough to exert unbearable pressure on the pedal and it snapped violently, providing my testicles with an unfortunate introduction to the crossbar of my bike.
I dusted myself down, expressed some choice swearwords and studied my options. The bike was clearly unrideable and I was in the middle of the countryside with only some curious cows for company. Luckily a van passed and took me and the stricken machine into Woodford and pointed out the hardware shop. I walked in full of confidence that my dilemma was about to be solved. But Ray’s Dad was quick to bring me down to earth. Rural hardware shops service the farming industry and don’t tend to stock cycling equipment on the off chance that a passing cyclist might need a spare part.
Amazingly, he actually did have a pedal, but it was the British variety and I was riding a French bike. It seems that in the time of Napoleon, he not only decreed that Europeans should drive on the right hand side of the road, he also said that bicycle pedals had to have a different thread to those pesky Brits.
I was crestfallen, but Ray’s dad suddenly had an idea. Ray apparently had a French bike and we could take a pedal off that, attach it to my bike and bob’s your uncle. It seemed like a great plan to me but I was slightly concerned at how Ray would feel about having one pedal thereafter. Ray’s Dad didn’t think this was a problem as they could pick up a spare pedal in Galway City later that week. He thought a bigger problem would be getting Ray out of bed at 11.30am on a Tuesday morning.
I waited outside until a sleepy Ray appeared, not looking the least upset that his rest had been disturbed by the need to give a complete stranger a piece of his own bike. He led me round the back so that he could examine the problem through sleep filled eyes. He noticed a flaw straight away. The pedal had snapped off just above the thread and it was impossible to get traction on the broken stump to screw it out. He stroked his bum fluff covered chin before nodding sagely. I stood there helpless like the pitiful accountant I am, unable to offer any help apart from holding the bike upright while he examined it.
“I have a lathe in the shed and that might do the trick”, he said. I nodded, pretending that I understood what a lathe was.
Two hours later, he finally extracted the broken pedal, having worked the lathe with all the care and attention of a Waterford crystal maker. He then looked mournfully at his own bike and removed a pedal as though he was extracting one of his own kidneys. Minutes later, I was all set and ready to hit the road again. I reached for my wallet and Ray shuffled uncomfortably.
“I can’t take money off you”, he said. “Sure I only gave you an old pedal off my bike”.
It was my turn to be uncomfortable. “Listen, you got me out of a big hole here and it’s taken you a lot of effort, not to mention the fact that you now have to buy a new pedal and travel into the city to get it”.
“You’re on holiday”, he said. “And you’ve had a bit of an accident. It would be wrong for me to take advantage of that”.
I tried arguing with him for another ten minutes but he was not for turning. In the end, I worked on his old man. He was also mortified that I wanted to offer money and tried to pretend that it was their problem for not having the right product in the first place. Eventually, I left twenty pounds on the counter and implored him to treat his son to a few pints. I raced out before he could object and climbed back on the bike with a renewed faith in the strength of human decency.
That incident became the highlight of my holiday and made me proud to be Irish. Later on, as I lived in Ireland through the Tiger Years, I always thought of Ray when I was being ripped off by shops and tradesmen. That afternoon in Woodford seemed to belong to a different age, when decency and kindness were more important to us than profit.
I’d like to think that Ireland is regaining some of that decency and the Irish tourist board is launching a campaign to try and harness this, so that tourists feel more welcome.
They could start by trying to track Ray and his Dad down and to ask them for advice. I still have the broken pedal and perhaps they could use that as symbol for the country we once had before we sold it to the devil.
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