I was headed to the Borris Festival of Writing & Ideas in Carlow to play a very public game of Would You Rather? recently with my friend Paul Howard. I’ve known Paul, who writes Ross O’Carroll Kelly in this newspaper, for 30 years. In all that time we’d never been on a road trip together.
It turns out we’re not really road trip people. It took us about four hours to get from Dublin to Borris on account of the fact that we stopped en route for a coffee and a pecan plait at a motorway services. It was only after leaving the services that we realised we were in fact heading back in the direction of Dublin. We turned around eventually, and got stuck in the same bad traffic for a second time. It’s no hardship being stuck in the same traffic twice with someone as uplifting as Paul; in fact, lots of people would pay for the pleasure.
Our event was called Would You Rather? only because neither of us had been able to come up with a better title before the Borris programme was printed. Making good use of the road trip, we rang one of my teenage daughters from Paul’s car to find out what Would You Rather? meant exactly. “You know,” she said. “Like, would you rather have no fingers or no toes? Would you rather be attacked by a shark or mauled by a lion?” We decided to do a cultural version of Would You Rather? Like, would you rather be stuck in a lift with Sally Rooney or Fintan O’Toole? Would you rather do a meditation retreat with Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame or collaborate with Dan Brown on a Da Vinci Code-style thriller set in Ikea?
[ Róisín Ingle: My profound, challenging, surprisingly joyful, life-changing yearOpens in new window ]
The event went well. The tent was packed. We began by explaining that the Borris festival was one giant game of Would You Rather? with so many excellent events going on at the same time. For example, to be sitting in front of us the audience would previously have had to ask themselves would you rather see legendary actor Fiona Shaw do her thing or watch Paul and I “grapple with the big questions”. (That was a programme misprint. We only had small questions.)
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“Would you rather spend a day with Paul McCartney or John Lennon?” was one of those questions. This enabled me to tell the story of how I’d met McCartney once years ago and how, after I badgered him, he’d kindly signed a column I’d written about him. Which, to my never-ending sorrow, I subsequently lost.
And it allowed me to tell them how, after I was diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer 1½ years ago and was down in the dumps, a taxi had arrived outside my house with the beautifully wrapped gift of a book of photography by McCartney, with a card signed “Love Paul”. And about how I rang my good friend Paul Howard up to tell him that, “Oh my God, Paul McCartney must have somehow found out about my cancer and he’s only gone and sent me a book of his photography.”
“It’s from me,” Paul said when he had finally stopped laughing.
I didn’t know it then, but there was a woman in the audience at Borris called Mary who was dealing with a breast cancer diagnosis. Mary had styled my hair into plaits for a photo shoot many years ago. She wanted to talk to me, about our shared experience, but worried that Borris wasn’t the time or the place. When she came home from the festival, her sister asked, “Did you talk to Róisín? “No,” Mary replied. “But I will find her.”
Two days later I was in the Mater hospital for the scans I get every three months. My name was called along with another woman. It was Mary. The Mary who knew she would find me had accidentally found me.
After the first of our two scans we went for coffee, because I am a big fan of serendipity and because I remembered how good she had made me feel during that long-ago photo shoot with the plaits. “Would you rather: a pecan plait or a plain croissant?” I asked Mary as we got coffees in the Mater cafe. She went for the plain croissant. Each to their own.
It turned out Mary was now where I was 1½ years ago. Newly diagnosed with breast cancer and being scanned to see if it had spread anywhere else. I told her some things I hoped might help. She’s a wise woman, Mary. A meditator. A mother. I wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. We both had a lot to say. We talked for more than an hour.
The serendipity continued. We discovered we’d be getting our scan results on the same day the following week. Whatever happens, I know she will be able to handle it. So will I.
We swapped numbers. “We can be cancer buddies,” Mary said before she went off for her second scan. “No,” I told her before I went off for mine. “But, if you like, we can be friends.” Because I realised that’s what I’d rather. And luckily, Mary agreed.
