Monday, November 07, 2005

Eire we go again?

Once again the quest gets underway to finish (start?) the epic write-up of the epic voyage. I'll get there with it, really I will.

One thing I had to share in the meantime though...

A large part of our trip was spent enjoying the many and varied delights of the magnificent RTE Radio 1. Our particular favourite was the wonderful (Ryan) Tubridy show, but there's plenty of time to write about that, and him, elsewhere. What came to mind tonight as I watched the Holiday prgoramme (when really I should have been writing up this blog) was an incident from the John Creedon Show (Oldest Transit in Ireland Competition, how good is that?). For the three weeks of our trip, John had kept us entertained from about 11.30am until 1 with an eclectic mix of music and stories. Whether it was a track from the back catalogue of Goats Don't Shave or a tale about someone in Buncrana shaving a goat with a cat on a log, the Creedon show always had something to raise a smile.

One day in particular - I think we may have been zooming around West Cork or perhaps the Dingle peninsula, in actual fact it's just come to me - we were pootling along towards Dingle itself, this time on our second visit (I told you, there'll be explanations elsewhere), John had asked listeners to call or e-mail in with their "Honda 50 Stories" in tribute to the great moped/scooter/bike type thing (I'm not a biker, what do I know?) so beloved of many a rural gent or city student in all parts of Ireland. Of the very many - and Mr. Creedon assured us he'd no time to read out all of them - which came in, our favourite (and I suspect the host's too) was one involving a Honda 50 spotted by the e-mailer in central Dublin over a period of many months some years back. He recounted the story of how, every night after work he and his biker friends - proper motor bikes and leather jackets this lot - would meet in what we might call and "Old Man's pub" for a pint or several of the black stuff. Every night, regular as clockwork a middle aged man, resplendent in long grey hair, Doc-Marten style boots and a ladies pink dress (!) would park his Honda 50 outside, saunter into the bar with a "Howye' lads?" down a pint or two and then be on his way, swinging his dress-clad leg over the saddle of the Honda 50. The regularity of this gradually eroded the strangeness and in time the "biker chick" was accepted by the group as, for want of a better phrase, one of them. It was, said the correspondent, with much sadness that he and his friends later learned of the old gent's passing and they were not slow to raise a glass to him in the pub that night. Now, many years later and a fully paid up memebr of the car-driving fraternity, the e-mailer still smiles whenever he sees a Honda 50.

As if to prove the magic of Ireland (or to confirm that we were tired, had driven too many miles and indulged in one too many pints of stout) as the tale came to an end, what should pass us but a red and white Honda 50 with a fertilizer bag faring? Sadly there were no skirt wearers aboard and I'll leave the "Oldest Trannie in Ireland" joke to someone else.

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