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 February 2007 Je return from great adventure! Not even a mild dose of the skitters! It’s not a small world, after all! World, in fact, very large! Ola, amigos and bom dia and other South American greetings! I am back from Brazil and Argentina with much to relate and once again my apologies for the lateness (or ‘tarde’ness) (Argentine pun there) of February’s blog. Well, off we went on Valentine’s Day to Brazil and oh my God, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Rio, but it’s EXACTLY like it looks in the pictures. Cococabana was a MASSIVE expanse of beach, jam-packed with millions of people all almost in their pelt, playing music and drinking out of coconuts with the top lopped off and beautiful children running everywhere and women not at all bothered if they didn’t have perfect bodies (fair play!) and boys playing volleyball and football and the sun beating down and men selling ice cream and all that. Then round the next headland was Ipanema beach and that was exactly the same. Granted, it was carnival (or ‘carnaval’, actually) and it mightn’t be like that the whole time but I’d like to think it is.  Being Irish, repressed, full of loathing for my body and having received the message from the moment I was born that my naked self was a shameless, shameless thing and the best thing I could wear would be an all-over body-coverer knitted in itchy wool, Rio came as a bit of a challenge to me. (Actually, now that I think about it, it’s strange that the burka didn’t originate in Ireland. Not only would it fit in with the message given by priests that all women are shameless hussies who are only gagging for an opportunity to lure good men from the path of righteousness by flashing a square inch of shin or elbow joint, but it would come in very handy with our wet weather. I love a hood. Mes amies, I practically insist upon it when I buy a jacket.)We arrived at the bright, shiny hotel and even in the hotel lobby people were wearing almost nothing. Lounging by the concierge desk was a standard-issue Eurotrash International Playboy with shoulder-length hair, bright orange speedo togs - the really, really small, tight, clingy ones, – a matching, yes matching orange t-shirt and – of course, you could have guessed this – a man-bag (sadly not orange) tucked under his oxter. Himself and myself nudged each other and attempted a snigger, but it was a little half-hearted because even then we intuited we were in over our heads. After we washed away the grime of Lufthansa (I jest, they are a top-notch airline) timidly, tentatively, Himself and myself, in our roomy t-shirts and lightweight but nevertheless ankle-length trousers, left our hotel, stepped outside into the Cococabana mayhem and were instantly flattened against the pavement by the heat. How were we going to cope? But I was reminded of what my friend Nadine had told me about Miami. She said when she first arrived there she was intimidated to pieces by all the tanned gorgeous bodies in day-glo pink batty riders, driving around in convertible and playing Shakira, but a couple of days in, she had successfully infiltrated them and managed to pass herself off as a native. And so it proved with me, mes amigos! (Well, almost!) As the days went on, I wore less and less until the Damascene moment when I bared – totally – my upper arms. In fact, I actually had a bubble of time when I was able to say, God, I’m really happy. It was when I was on my way back from an AA meeting (it was unbelievable, there was an English-speaking meeting on just 4 minutes walk from my hotel) and the sun was setting and everyone was leaving the beach in droves and heading for the metro and here I was walking along with the lumpy shame of my upper arms on view for all the world to see and I was feeling great. Alone but not lonely. A person among people. Lumpy arms or no, just the same as everyone else. Our friends Eileen and her sister Deirdre were with us in Rio and we did all the touristy yokes (Cripes the Redeemer and the sugar loaf and all that) but the best by a million miles was the night at the Sambadrome. I haven’t got the words to do it justice. I found it very emotional. I actually cried (not something I do often, except in the presence of Russian orphans) because I was so moved by all the work each school had put into their parade. The thought of people in the favelas, where I’m sure life is not easy (god, I don’t mean to be patronising, I really mean it), working so hard and doing it with such pride and producing such a jaw-dropping spectacle (6000 people dancing along in amazing costumes and on massive floats as big as a 4-storey house) overwhelmed me. Human beings are incredible, they really are. 
 Another thing about Rio, I hadn’t expected the people to be so warm. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because we’d been warned the place was so dangerous. (We were warned many times to be on the lookout for ‘mugglers.’ It’s my new favourite word.) Or maybe it’s because the natives are so good-looking. But they were astonishingly kind and likeable. Even the journalists!After 6 nights in Rio, we said goodbye to Deirdre, then Himself, Eileen and myself headed for Manaus, gateway to the Amazon. (That’s not their slogan, that’s just mine, I take full responsibility for it.) Manaus used to be a thriving rubber port (not actually made of rubber), with its own opera house, but it all went to hell when the arse fell out of the rubber market around 1910. It was an atmospheric place, reeking of decayed grandeur. Himself said he felt like he was in a Gabriel García Márquez novel. After one night there, we went up the Amazon. Entre nous, Eileen and I were dreading the whole Amazon thing. We were staying ‘up-river’ in a lodge with no electricity or hot water, where we expected to be over-run with mosquitoes, anacondas and tarantulas and – worst of all – where meals were communal. God, there’s nothing worse, is there? Having to make small-talk with strangers over breakfast. Having to ask where they’re from and what they do and where they’ve been and where they’re going next (then – aaarrrgggghhh - discovering that you’re going to the exact same spot, that you’re not in fact an intrepid traveller, at all, merely the pawn of a travel agent.) Things got off to a bad start when, just before we got on the boat, I discovered that I’d lost my sunglasses, so I had to very quickly buy a pair in Manaus and on account of having an abnormally small head, my choice was limited. On the boat, watching the banks of the river whizzing past me, despair began to creep over me. I was quite surprised by this as – after a lifetime of depression – I’ve perked up a bit recently. Yes, everything began to appear malign and tinted with desperation, then I took off my sunglasses – and everything cheered up! Put the sunglasses back on – and I spiralled back down into gloom. Took the glasses off again – and once more all became cheery! It dawned on me that the problem wasn’t me at all – it was the fecking sunglasses! There was a yellowish tinge to the glass. Not on the actual outside of the glass – I wouldn’t run the risk of wearing the same kind of sunglasses as Bono, as the chances of me being mistaken for him are already quite high: we are both short, stout, stocky-thighed, have dark hair, an Irish accent and always wear high heels. Also I am quite a good singer. (This is a lie.) Also I have met the Pope and called him ‘dude.’ (This is another lie.) Also I have met George Bush and said to him, ‘Hey man, why can’t we all jus’ get along?’ (This is yet another lie, but I am on a roll now and appear to be unable to stop.) Also we both drive Maseratis. (Would you believe it? This is actually true. There are – apparently – only 6 Maseratis in the ROI (Republic of Ireland) and Bono owns one and I (well, Himself really) owns another and often, yes often when I am out ‘motoring’ you see people nudging each other going, ‘Doesn’t Bono drive one of them yokes? It couldn’t be Bono, could it?’ And then when I get closer and they see me behind the wheel, short, stout, stocky-thighed, dark-haired, Irish-accented and singing, ‘In the NAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMEHHHH of LOVVVVVVVE! WAAAHHHLURGHHHH ijeh name of LOVVVVVVE,’ they go, ‘Christ! It is! It is Bono!!! Hey, Bono, man! You’re a prick!’) Yes, so anyway, the sunglasses. From the inside, looking out, the sunglasses made everything look sort of jaundiced and appalling. How does Bono do it? No wonder he goes around doing good works and badgering the oppressed and the needy if he is looking at the world through jaundice-tinted spectacles. You’d have to try to improve things, or else commit suicide. So once that little problem was sorted out, all was top notch and my time in the Amazon proved to be the greatest surprise of my life. From the moment we arrived, we went all floppy-limbed and soft-shouldered with humid relaxation and spent many hours thrun in a hammock, reading. From time to time we roused ourselves to go alligator spotting or get up close and personal with anacondas, sloths, tarantulas the size of a dinner plate, toucans and piranhas. The best bit of all was going in a canoe into a tributary of the Amazon, then a smaller tributary, then a smaller one, then a tiny one where the boat moved almost silently through a drowned forest where the branches of the trees met overhead and turned the light green and thin lines of blinding sunlight would appear through the cover of branches and I felt like I was in a place where no other human being had ever been before. Eileen said it was like being in Apocalypse Now. Even the shared meals weren’t a problem. (Ola, Richard O’Connor!) It was wonderful, really wonderful and even if you’re afraid of everything, as I am, I would urge you to go if you ever get the chance.  After 4 days we left for Patagonia. The thing is when we’d been planning the trip I hadn’t appreciated that Brazil is the 5th biggest country in the world and Argentina is the 8th. I had just thought ‘Well, they’re next door to each other and if we’re going to Brazil, we might as well pop into Argentina while we’re there.’ Big mistake, mes amigos, mucho grande mistake. It took 2 full days to get from the Amazon to El Calafate in Patagonia (including an overnighter in Buenos Aires. We arrived in at 2am and left again at the break of day.) Also we crossed back and forth so many fecking time zones in those 2 days that we didn’t know our arse from our elbow. By the time we arrived in Eolo (20Ks outside El Calafate) on a Sunday evening, we were in a FOULER. Knackered tired and starving hungry and sorry we had ever left the comfort of our own homes and embarked on so foolhardy an adventure. We made a pact in the car from the airport that as soon as we got to the hotel we were going to demand our dinner. ‘We’re not even going to check in,’ I instructed Himself and Eileen. ‘Do you hear me?’ So now is as good as time as any to apologise to all the lovely staff at Eolo who obliged us when I insisted that NO, we did NOT want to see our rooms and NO we did NOT want a pre-dinner drink and YES, we WERE going to go into the kitchen and COOK our dinner OURSELVES if they refused to feed us IMMEDIATELY. Yes, very sorry indeed. The three of us were very tired and hungry but I have to admit that I was the ringleader. It was my fault. I led the other 2 astray. I ‘egged’ them ‘on.’ (Hunger based pun there.) And in the 15 minutes before the food was put in front of me I stared sightlessly out the window at the frankly astonishing view and bemoaned the fact that we had ever come away and how I wished I was back home in lovely Ireland. I almost sang a sad song about it, as is the way of Irish people when they are 20 minutes outside of Ireland, except that I was too hungry to sing. (Which just shows how difficult it must be to ‘sing’ for your ‘supper.’) In fairness to me, I did get my period the following day, so not all of my bad behaviour can be blamed on me but on that wretched pest progesterone (or is it estrogen?)
 Very, very early the following morning – 6.30 or something ungodly - the other 2 left to go trekking on a glacier. Himself tried to get me out of bed but, still in the fiendish grip of excessive progesterone, I shrieked that I was ‘going fucking nowhere’ and eventually, after I bit him for the second time, he said, ‘Well fuck you then’ and stomped out in his crampons. I slept until 11, then emerged to roam the halls, demanding (yet more) food and as I shovelled complex carbohydrates into me in front of a floor to ceiling window, I was restored to calm. This place was INCREDIBLE. Over our days there we decided it would be a great place to come if you’d had a nervous breakdown. Have you been to Patagonia? If you haven’t I’ll try and describe it. It’s all wild and windy and beautiful in a barren, bleak, empty way, and if you stand in Eolo’s hallway and look one way, you see the milky turquoise of a glacier lake and if you look the other you see the limitless expanse of mustardy-coloured plain and if you look over your shoulder you’ll see mountains, with another row of mountains behind them, and behind them, the snowcapped beginnings of the Andes. The staff in Eolo were incredibly kind and obliging and if you go on a walk they might give you a small bag of almonds and raisins and the place itself is full of cosy gorgeous couches and corners in which to read your book and recover from your nervous breakdown. (Also there were 4 puppies, which I think any ‘sanctuary’ should have.) After a couple of days I emerged from my slump and went glacier-visiting and hill-climbing and Eileen went horse-riding and all in all we had an excellent wind-blown, outdoorsy, thousand-mile-stare time. (Also, apropos to nothing, local men excessively good-looking. But I have to ask, Mario, how did you get that scar? Please email me. Eileen was on a bet to ask you when you drove her to the airport but she chickened at the last minute. We are agog.)Then Eileen left for Buenos Aires and Himself and I went to Bariloche, still in Patagonia but a 2 hour flight away – the size of Argentina! – in the lake district and it was hilarious. It was like being in Switzerland! Log cabins a gogo. Triangular shaped houses! Everything made of wood! Jagged snow-capped peaks! Chocolate! (Yes, sadly another lapse from my sugar-free state.) Pine forests! Deep dark blue lakes! Stunning, so it was, utterly stunning. After 4 days, we went to Buenos Aires and we were meant to meet up with Eilers but our flight was delayed 11 hours (yes, honestly) and by the time we got in it was too late and she left for Ireland early the next morning so that was that. Just the 2 days in BA (as they say). (It would have been 3 if it hadn’t been for the delayed flight.) After extreme forbearance on the shopping front up until this point, I had a mild shoe-and-bag frenzy in someplace called Ricky Sarkovy (something like that.) I got blue metallic stilettos and a silvery metallic bag and a purple metallic belt. My friend Conor McCabe had assured me and I quote, that everything in Buenos Aires was ‘dirt cheap.’ Sadly I did not find this to be so. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about me that just repels bargains. I think it’s because I’ve an eejity face and when shopkeepers see me approaching they think, ‘This one will buy anything’ (which is true). ‘I’ll just raise my prices by 1500%.’ And now here I am, back home, with the shakes and mild nausea. (Jetlag.) (Also terror at having to resume work.) Oh God, I nearly forgot! Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who bought Anybody Out There over the past few weeks! I’m so grateful, it’s been so fantastic. In one week in the UK, 51,000 of you bought it, which is the highest fiction sale Penguin have ever had. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am and how lucky I feel. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!!!!!! I will write again at the month’s end. Hopefully something will have happened in March which I can tell you about. Thank you for reading this, I hope you had a lovely Feb and once again my apologies for the lateness. I hope you had a lovely month and thank you for reading this. Lots of love Marian xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  PS Himself has asked me to point out that in one of the photos his belly looks quite prominent and that in real life it is nothing like as sticky-outy. I agree with him. It is a lie to say that the camera never lies. The camera lies all the time, in my opinion. Indeed – and not that I’m saying I’m good-looking or anything - but I too am not as odd- and shiny-looking as I appear in the featured ‘snaps.’PS If you ever find yourself in Buenos Aires with 20 minutes to kill, go to the cemetery in Recoleta. You’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like a beautiful little town. Full of dead people, of course, but still. |
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Photo © Neil Cooper