Being mistaken for Pavarotti is one thing, looking like a fat-headed nerd is quite another, writes MICHAEL HARDING
SPECTACLES can improve some faces, but they make me look like a nerd.
I spent a fortune on a new pair recently. The optician, a woman with a posh accent, a white coat and blonde hair, just pushed them up my nose and said, “they will do fine.”
She wore rubber gloves and handled my face with the clinical detachment of a CSI lady on the television.
If she had lied and said, “You look wonderful,” I would have been happier; but she just said, “You’ve a big head, these will fit you.” The glasses cost €200.
My nose was running and everyone in the shop was young and beautiful, so I paid the money, brought them home, and left them in a drawer.
The following day was Valentine’s Day. I was almost swept off my feet in the supermarket by the enthusiasm of a girl at the check-out.
“Do you want cash back?” she inquired, as she gazed into my eyes.
“Yes,” I said, “That would be lovely.”
“How much?”
“Could you give me €50?” “Oh,” she said, “I can give you anything you want.” And she smiled.
The check-out in a supermarket is an unlikely place to find romance, but for a moment I was tempted to pluck one of the red roses out of the bucket beside the till and offer it to her, but I was afraid she might think poorly of an old man flirting. So I moved on, as the next person in the queue flung their cornflakes, cat food and wine onto the conveyer belt.
That night I was at a music session. I sang two songs, and I wore the new glasses.
Old men with caps and dark suits played fiddles, and married women played concertinas and sang with sweet willowy voices, and a big uilleann piper with the cut of a man that could handle himself in any brawl this side of Kabul, broke everyone's heart with the savage and sorrowful lament that he tore from the silence, when he tackled Róisín Dubh.
There was a young Traveller woman at the bar and, when the musicians were taking a break, she wanted me to listen to a song on her phone by Tommy Doran.
She asked could I sing anything by Garth Brooks.
I said no.
She said, “That’s not good.” I said “I was once mistaken for Pavarotti.” It happened in 1990, when I lived in Donegal on the cliff above Carrickfinn airport. I had no money at the time, and could only afford an occasional trip into town on the bicycle, to get fish and potatoes and tins of beans.
I had a CD of the tenor, and sometimes at night by the fire, looking out at the Atlantic, I would drink whiskey and listen to him.
One day I was coming home on the bike and a man working in a drain about 500 metres from the house stopped me.
He said, “You’re a powerful singer.” It dawned on me that only Pavarotti’s voice travelled out into the wind every night when I opened the whiskey bottle. The quiet orchestral backing did not. So the neighbours had concluded that I was probably a sean-nós singer, inclined to sing opera songs, whenever I got drunk.
“Who’s Pavarotti?” the Traveller woman asked.
“He’s an Italian singer,” I said.
“And where are you from?” she wondered.
“Mullingar.”
“Ah,” she said, “then you must have heard about the riot last week.”
“No.”
Apparently there was a boxing match in the Park Hotel. About 1,000 punters turned up to watch ordinary people beat the lard off each other in a ring, in the function room of the hotel.
But it ended in a brawl outside the ring. Four men tore strips off each other and someone got stuck with a bottle, and the guards were called. The car park was lit by the blue lights of the squad cars and the women were all in tears.
“Wasn’t that shocking,” the Traveller woman said.
I agreed.
She said, “I hope the hotel doesn’t bar all the settled people, just on account of the actions of a few thugs.”
We both smiled.
“Them is lovely glasses,” she said. And she took them off my head and put them on her own. And I had to admit that they looked lovely – on her.