It was cold in Leitrim the day I was due to appear on The Saturday Night Show on RTÉ.
“That wind is coming straight from the North Pole,” a neighbour said, as he lowered the window of his Vectra to chat outside my gate. Behind the house the fields were white with frost, and snow still lay in patches between the rushes. I went to my studio to prepare something to say on the television. I turned a heater on to keep warm until the stove lit, and I sat at the desk wearing two coats and a hat.
Outside I could see the slab that marks the cat’s grave, and, across the lake, Cuilce mountain was covered in snow. And the bare branches of the trees were bending towards the south. But I suppose none of that would make for an interesting chat on television. It’s all too private.
I tossed a few peanuts on to the garden bench but there was no sign of a bird, and I gathered logs from beneath the canvas at the gable wall.
I have no wood shed, so last autumn I made a square frame from old scaffolding and leaned it up against the wall of the studio and then pegged a sheet of canvas over the scaffolding. It’s like half a wigwam and it kept the wood dry for most of the winter, but the snow lodged on the sloping canvas and the weight of it tore open a hole and the ice and snow spilled down on to the logs.
But I wasn’t going to mention that on television either. My rustic world seemed too small to be interesting.
So I could only hope that something would inspire me when I got to the city, to the hotel and closer to RTÉ.
A talisman to give me courage
Before I left, I looked around the room to find a talisman to take with me and give me courage.
I selected a sacred Tibetan text, a handwritten prayer wrapped in red silk and bound with a golden thread. I put it in my breast pocket.
Three hours later I checked into the hotel, ran the bath and tried to work the heating, without success. But I had a small fan heater, which I always take with me when staying in hotels, and I plugged it in and let it whirr until the room was cosy.
In the meantime I undressed and soaked in the bath, hoping that some wonderful idea would come to me that I might share with Brendan O’Connor and the nation later in the evening.
A booking for 7.30pm
The phone ran and I had to hop out and throw a towel around me in order to answer it.
“Good afternoon,” a man said. “You have a booking for 7.30 in the restaurant under the name Joe Reilly.”
“Do I?” I replied, supposing that RTÉ had been kind enough to provide me with a meal.
“Yes,” the man said. “I’m Joe Reilly.
"Okay, Joe," I said, presuming him to be a researcher with The Saturday Night Show, though I didn't recognise the name.
“So,” he continued, “would it be okay if we did it as a take-out instead of sitting in. We’re having trouble getting a babysitter.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about.
I said: “Who are you?”
He said: “I’m Joe Reilly. But who are you?”
And I told him.
He said: “But are you not the receptionist?”
I said: “No, I thought you were.”
I apologised and explained that the call must have come through to my bedroom by accident, and then I got back into the bath and turned my mind again to the television, and what I might say that would sound interesting. But I had no success.
I got a taxi to RTÉ at about 9.10pm and I was brought upstairs to make-up, where someone powdered over my red, blotchy face.
I was escorted back down to the studio, where I waited behind a curtain just behind where O’Connor usually sits. I heard him telling jokes to the audience as I waited to go on.
“What are you going to talk about?” someone asked as they passed me in the dark.
“I don’t know,” I replied in panic. There was a moment when I almost slipped out the exit door. To hold some talisman against the dark may be a primitive gesture, the act of an unenlightened, superstitious mind, but I find it simply comforting, so I touched the red silk envelope in my breast pocket and felt reassured as I walked out into the light.