Timothy ‘Bud’ Badyna ran the fastest backwards marathon—3 hours 53 minutes and 17 seconds at Toledo, Ohio, on 24 April 1994. 5 page

‘It’s The Gerry Ryan Show for you, Tone, now don’t forget to tell him I that we’re tryin’ to get an ‘elicopter. He could be a big help.’ I Oh God yes, the helicopter. I’d forgotten about that. I The Gerry Ryan Show put me on hold and said they’d come to me directly after the nine o’clock news. I stood there, phone against my ear, worried that I had killed so many brain cells the previous night that a piece of cheese would give a better interview than I was about to. Andy approached me again. What did he want this time?

‘Tone, can you take it in the bar, cos then I can turn the radio on here in the dining room so that Cait and Rolf can listen. It’s just that the speakers will cause feedback if you talk to him in here.’

‘Are you sure? They’re coming to me any second.’

‘It’ll be all right, I’ve set it all up, it’s a new system we’ve ‘ad put in, just hang up in here and then pick up the phone in the bar and press four.’

So, I hung up, picked up the phone in the bar, and pressed four. The line went dead. So far the new system had been a disappointment. In the other room though, clearly and with absolutely no feedback, Cait and Rolf could hear Gerry Ryan floundering on the radio:

‘Tony? Are you there Tony Hawks?…Well that’s funny, we had him a moment ago and now we’ve totally lost him…’

I looked at Andy, who looked at his shoes, and then back at me sheepishly. ‘They’ll ring again, don’t worry.’

‘Perhaps I won’t take it in the bar and press four this time.’

‘Fair enough Tone, fair enough. My mistake last time round, I think it might be six you have to press.’

‘If it’s all the same, I’d rather not risk it.’

‘Are you sure, Tone? It’s just that if it isn’t four, then it’s definitely six. If you take it in here Cait and Rolf will have to listen on headphones.’

As far as I could work out Cait and Rolf could listen with their ears, after all they were in the same room as me. But Andy’s warped priority was feat they should hear this radio interview exactly as the rest of the courtry would, even at the expense of the interview actually taking place.

The phone rang and I picked it up quickly, before Andy could pack me off into another room to press four, six or any other random number which might activate the ‘new system’. In the receiver I heard an anxious voice.

‘Tony?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m putting you through to Gerry now.’

And so my third interview on national radio was conducted against a backdrop of complete mayhem, as Andy, Cait and Rolf attempted to share one set of headphones. As I endeavoured to chat naturally to Gerry, I could see six hands desperately unravelling one very tangled wire, and ears being thrust and manoeuvred into positions within range of the tiny headphone speakers. The scene resembled that of three spoilt children fighting over a present which they all badly wanted and, do you know, I found it a tad disconcerting. However I got the necessary information across, remembering to mention all the helicopter business, and Gerry made the relevant appeal over the airwaves: ‘So the challenge has been laid down before us, we have to get Tony and his fridge out to Tory Island. So come on, if you have access to a helicopter, a submarine, a hot air balloon, a hovercraft, a flying boat, a yacht or indeed even a humble fishing vessel—phone us now, 1850852222, the Ryan Line is open.’

From a delighted table in the dining room, at the end of three intertwined arms, three thumbs went up from my devoted listeners, the general consensus being that the interview should have done enough to secure the helicopter. The phone would ring any minute with the Ministry of Defence offering a ‘return ticket to Tory Island’ with the Air Corps. And why not? It was only five minutes by helicopter and they just sit on their arses all day waiting to rescue people.

Cait and Rolf delayed their departure by fifteen minutes so they could hear the good news when it came through, but when it wasn’t forthcoming they wished me luck and headed off canoeing for the day. Three pots of tea later, the phone still hadn’t rung and Andy and I were beginning to pace anxiously in the dining room. Andy, for whom this mission had taken precedent over caring for a pregnant wife, was convinced that we needed to call in to Gerry Ryan’s office to see if any offers of help had been received. I was less sure, not wishing to appear pushy, but I was swayed by Andy’s convincing argument.

‘If they’ve drawn a blank, we can start following up the contacts we made last night—but if we start doing that now, and Gerry’s people are already talking to them, we’re treading on their toes—so we need to know, Tone.’

Sometimes the outbreak of war can release a heroic side to a person’s nature. It was Andy’s personal tragedy that his had been released by the arrival of a man and a fridge. For when the bad news was received that The Gerry Ryan Show had taken no calls with regard to the Tory Island appeal, Andy defied his deathly white complexion and sprang to life, making phonecall after phonecall and declaring, ‘Don’t worry, Tone, well get you out there.’

The name we had been given last night meant nothing to anyone in the Ministry of Defence, so he called the Air Corps direct, rang local press, contacted the local TD (MP) for the area, and after forty-five minutes of almost continuous bullshit he eventually acquired the telephone number of the top nob in the Ministry of Defence in Dublin. We just needed him to give clearance for the Air Corps to fly me out. Andy’s ‘moment’ had arrived. He had already demonstrated that he could talk persuasive nonsense but it had all been a rehearsal for this call. He was fantastic. I listened in wonder as he managed to convince a Dublin bureaucrat that it was vitally important to get a man and a fridge airlifted out to a tiny, sparsely populated Atlantic island.

‘…you see he’s from England, and they’re following the story over there and I’ve been inundated with phonecalls this morning with press wanting to know how he’s getting on. Ifs a big disaster for us up here because this is one of the biggest chances we’ve got to promote Donegal and Tory Island—and we’re all in complete shock because the last thing we expected was this ferry to be broke down and everyone is gutted because everyone put so much work into this…this is a big bombshell, everyone was running round last night trying to ‘elp…yeah…yeah…I understand that…right. Ifs just I don’t want to be the one going back to the committee saying that we failed on this one. If we let Tone down, we let Ireland down and we lose out on millions of pounds of tourist revenue.’

I blushed a little. Andy hung up and turned to me.

‘This is it—the end of the road. They’ve promised that they’re going to ring me back in twenty minutes and let me know one way or the other.’

‘What do you think the chances are?’

‘Good. Pretty good. He really did seem like he wanted to ‘elp.’

I was getting quite excited. I’d never been in a helicopter before.

Hang on though, hadn’t I read somewhere that the helicopter is the single most dangerous form of air transport? I became jittery and tried to calm myself down with self assurances that it was only the take off and landing which were hazardous. Then I realised that given the short nature of this flight, taking off and landing was virtually all we were going to do. Jitters became full-blown fear.

I needn’t have worried because twenty minutes later the Ministry of Defence rang to say they were sorry but they couldn’t help.

We felt what a tennis player must feel after losing a match having held matchpoints. Okay, the matchpoints had been on our opponent’s serve, and he was a big server, but all we’d needed was a bit of luck—a net cord or a streaky mishit return which went for a winner, and we would have been there. The adrenaline had been pumping, and victory—the moment of triumph had been within reach. It was close to midday but our day felt like it was over.

We consoled ourselves with meaningless platitudes like ‘maybe it’s for the best this way’, Veil, at least we tried’, and unsurprisingly it did little to ease the pain. Andy looked most dejected. After all, he had spent hours on what many would have described as a pointless mission, and all his efforts had been futile. It appeared that the thought of spending the rest of the day involved in things which were altogether less futile didn’t inspire him. He left, presumably to renew his acquaintance with his wife and family, and to run some errands which should have already been run. I wandered down to the quayside to check out the possibilities of finding a fishing boat which might be making the journey the next day. If that failed, I might have to throw in the towel as far as Tory Island was concerned.

Outside the sudden subjection to bright light provided each flank of my forehead with a new and freshly throbbing temple, reminding me that in future I should make more resolute efforts to treat my body like one. A few yards from Bunbeg House I could see a rugged looking fisherman on his hands and knees messing about with tackle, and as I approached him I was relieved to see that he wasn’t the one who had been privy to mine. I coughed self-consciously to get his attention.

‘Hello, I don’t know whether you’ll be able to help, I’m trying to get out to Tory Island, the ferry won’t be running till Friday, and I’m trying to find out if you know of any boats which might be going out there at all.’

He regarded me with some surprise.

‘Rory McClafferty was away an hour ago.’

‘What?’

‘Rory McClafferty is just after leaving. Around an hour ago, I’d say. He left with a load of blocks he’s taking out there.’

‘You mean, he left in a boat, from this quayside, to go to Tory Island?’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

‘Ah yes, he was away about an hour ago. You say you wanted to get out to Tory?’

‘You could say that.’ I pointed to the dining room of Bunbeg House. ‘We’ve been in there all morning organising appeals over the air on national radio and trying to get the Ministry of Defence to clear a helicopter to get me out to Tory Island.’

‘Oh, you’ll get nothing in there,’ he said, pointing into the dining room. I had to admire the terse accuracy of this remark.

‘Will anyone else be going out there today do you think?’

‘Not now, not with the tide the way it is.’ He looked up from his nets and eyed me quizzically. Were you not down at the pier this morning?’

‘Er…no.’

‘Well, if you’d been down at the pier this morning, someone would have told you about Roiy and you’d be on the island now.’

Of course I would. I had made a terrible mistake. I had trusted in the local knowledge of Andy, a man who came from Bermondsey. His awareness of what was going on amongst the boats outside his very door was on a par with his understanding of his new telephone system. Whilst he had valiantly embarked on the fruitless endeavour of securing a helicopter, a friendly fishing boat had left for the desired destination literally a matter of yards away. Telephoning fishermen the night before had proved to be no substitute for wandering down to the quayside and asking. As I walked the five or six yards back to Bunbeg House I was struck by tiie lesson there was to be learned here. Be ambitious, strive for great heights and don’t give up without a fight—but don’t do so without first exploring the simple option. I decided to spare Andy the news until later, thinking it might spoil his day still further. Besides, our failure had produced the bonus of a free afternoon which I intended to spend reading and relaxing.

I was being naively optimistic. People knew where I was, and I was in demand. All afternoon the phone didn’t stop ringing for me, and Andy’s dining room turned into my office. RTE television were the first callers. An afternoon show called Live At Three had heard about me on the radio and were keen to send a presenter and a mobile unit to film me hitching by the roadside. They wanted to know where I would be on Friday. So did 1.1 tried to explain this, but it was a difficult concept to grasp for someone in the Filofax ‘lefs do lunch’ world of television.

‘But you must know where you’re going to be. Do you not have a gameplan?’

‘My gameplan is not to have a gameplan,’ I said, being deliberately nebulous.

Antoinette, to whom I was talking, was torn between being genuinely amused by the whole notion of ‘fridge hitch-hiking’, and being frustrated by the guaranteed uncertainties which appeared to be a part of it. She seemed to be the producer, researcher and presenter on Live At Three, and I half expected our conversation to be cut short at any minute because she had to go and do some make-up or operate Camera 4. She called three more times in the space of an hour with more questions to which I could offer no satisfactory answers. I wasn’t making her life easy with my ‘I don’t knows’, ‘maybes’ and ‘probablys’, and I could have been more helpful, but there was a certain power afforded to me as a result of my not really caring whether I did this programme or not, and I wasn’t going to squander it.

‘Look Tony, you mad eejit, I’ll ring you later—but this is how well leave it for now. My intention is to get someone to drive you to wherever the mobile unit are going to be on Friday and then drive you back to wherever you would have got to if you’d spent that day doing an ordinary day’s hitch-hiking.’

Apparently it made sense to her.

The local press were next—The Deny People, The Donegal Democrat and the national gaelic newspaper Foinse, which I assumed meant ‘easily excitable’, because they were planning on putting me and my fridge on its front page. Donohoe, who was freelancing for them, was my third and final photographer on this, my afternoon of relaxation. He was an affable and erudite man who had initially assumed that the job to go and photograph a man who was travelling around Ireland with a fridge, had been colleagues winding him up. He approached the photoshoot with considerably more artistic integrity than the previous two photographers, who were happy enough with a handful of snaps and the correct spelling of Hawks. Donohoe was interested in me, what I was doing, and where he could get the most imaginative photos of me and my fridge.

‘We’ve just got to get one of you and your fridge walking past the wreck.’

‘What’s the wreck?’

§

The wreck was the well preserved shell of a wooden boat which was seeing out its days on the expansive sandy shores of the bay I had so convincingly failed to photograph the day before. We headed up there and spent an engaging hour in this most beautiful of spots, creating arty fridge shots and discussing the history of the gaelic language. I learned the interesting piece of trivia that England and Portugal are the only two countries in the European Union which don’t have minority languages. (Unless you count Cornish as a language instead of a type of ice cream.) With some satisfaction I logged this information away in the recesses of my brain, knowing that if I divulged it at the right moment to the right person, I could make an enormous impression. I continued to ply Donohoe with highbrow questions.

‘What’s the gaelic for ‘my fridge’?’ I asked, smiling for his camera, with one foot on the fridge and an arm resting on the wreck.

‘Mo Chuisneoir,’ came the reply.

‘Mo Kushnar?’

‘That’s right, Mo Chuisneoir.’

‘I think I should put ‘Mo Kushnar’ on the front of the fridge in veneration of the gaelic language.’

‘Good idea. If we go up my office we can print it out on the computer and you can stick it on.’

And so it was that when I arrived back at Bunbeg House, the fridge was admirably adorned with the words:

MO CHUISNEOIR

‘What’s that mean?’ said Andy.

‘It means ‘Always explore the simple option’.’

‘Eh?’

I explained whilst waiting for a cup of tea which never materialised.

The Poorest King On Earth

The next morning I woke and made exactly the same mistake with the curtains as I’d made the previous morning, revealing myself once again as ‘nude at window’ to the painting fisherman. It appeared that a day’s experience had hardened him and he took it all in his stride, or rather his brushstroke, even managing the semblance of a good morning nod.

The previous night had been a quiet one by my standards so far. I had met Elizabeth and Lois for a meal, avoiding the overwhelming hospitality of Hudi-Beags in the interests of self preservation. (I’d come up with my own nickname for Hudi-Beags which was ‘Houdini’s’, because you had to be an escapologist to get out of it) So this morning I felt pretty good.

Before breakfast I did what I should have done the previous morning and strolled down to the pier to find out if anyone was going out to Tory Island later. I called out to a fisherman who was squatting knee deep in nets with his back to me.

‘Excuse me—’

He turned and looked startled. It was the fisherman who had twice seen my genitalia. Neither of us had the social skills to deal with this situation.

‘Oh hi,’ I continued, feeling it somehow necessary to acknowledge that we knew each other. ‘You don’t happen to know if there are any fishermen going out to Tory Island today?’

He just looked at me and froze. I don’t think his life’s experiences had required him to converse with anyone he’d seen naked before, and I elected to move on before he needed to call on the attentions of the Bunbeg cardio-vascular unit. (Presumably a postman who had the apparatus in his front room.)

The other fishermen on the quay, who hadn’t seen me with my clothes off, were more forthcoming. I was told that Rory McClafferty had said he was leaving to deliver another load of bricks out to Tory Island at eleven o’clock this morning, and that he would be happy to take me out there. This was good news indeed and there was a spring in my step as I returned to base.

Nine miles of water known as Tory Sound separates Tory Island from the shore, the last few miles of which are notoriously treacherous, being exposed to strong winds and dangerous currents. In the winter months the island can be isolated from the mainland for up to a month at a time, and it’s quite common for no boats to be able to get in or out of it for three consecutive days. There was a fair breeze today but thankfully it was blowing off the land and the infamous swells would be considerably smaller than if we had been cursed with a Northwesterly. According to Donohoe, the island had been inhabited since prehistoric times and was desolate, rocky and barren, with now a population of around a hundred and thirty living off the fishing, and a few had sidelines as artists, painting landscapes with a naivety which had won them acclaim. I hadn’t seen any of their work but doubted very much whether it fitted into larger debates about the privileging of abstraction and its viability for a world in conflict. I decided I wasn’t going to bother raising this though, unless conversations were floundering very badly.

‘Phonecall for you, Tone,’ said a patient Andy, who at times was in danger of turning into my secretary.

It was Antoinette from Live At Three, and on this occasion she was far less tolerant of my abiding indecisiveness, making it clear that they had a programme to make the following day and they could do without ditherers like me.

‘Look, don’t you commit to anything in your life?’ she said, her words a chilling echo of accusations fired at me by at least two past girlfriends.

Thrown off balance by the resonance of this last remark I thoughtlessly agreed to do the show, not realising that by so doing I had put in jeopardy the romantic ideal of spending at least one night on an isolated island. The plans to which I had agreed involved a bloke called Gary picking me up at 10.30 the following morning and driving me to wherever the mobile unit was going to be. And so the new and very important question was—how and when was I going to get back from Tory Island? And would I be able to get back in time?

There was nothing for it but to call a King.

‘Hello, is that Patsy Dan?’

‘It is.’

‘Good morning, my name is Tony, I spoke to you the day before yesterday, I don’t know whether you remember—’

‘I do.’

‘Well, I’ve found a boat to bring me out to your island this morning, but I need to get back by ten or so tomorrow morning—do you know of any boats that might be leaving first thing from your end?’

‘That I do. We have had some Americans staying on the island and Patrick Robinson will be taking them back at around eight o’clock.’

‘Will there be room for me?’

‘They will make room.’

Perfect. After a day or two of things not going exactly to plan, I was back in falling on my feet’ mode!

‘I hope I get the chance to meet you—I’ve never met a King before, a Prince yes, but we didn’t really hit it off.’

‘I’m sure well meet, the island isn’t too large, and I shall be happy to tell you all about Tory.’

‘Will accommodation be a problem? I read there are no hotels on the island.’

‘No, we have one now. And it will not be full at this time of the year. Will you be bringing your fridge?’

‘Of course.’

‘In that case we will make you both most welcome.’

As Kings go, he seemed to be a good one. I wondered if there was an opportunity of marrying into royalty.

‘You don’t happen to have ah unmarried daughter do you?’

‘As a matter of fact I do. Her name is Brida.’

‘How old is she?’

‘She is twenty years old.’

‘Hmmmm. I shall look forward to meeting you both.’

§

The round trip to the local shop had taken forty minutes and had been quite tiring. Still, at least it had been productive. At breakfast, Rolf couldn’t resist asking, ‘Towny, vot iss the borkay off flars for?’

‘I beg your pardon.’

Cait stepped in. ‘What’s the bouquet of flowers for?’

‘Oh right, sorry Rolf—well it’s for the King of Tory’s daughter, Fm planning on marrying into royalty.’

This caused much more amusement than I thought it merited, Andy suggesting that I wasn’t good enough for her, Cait proclaiming that romance wasn’t dead, and Rolf rounding things off with, ‘Iff she likes yer fridge then she iss yourss.’

I hoped he was right—I’d already committed forty minutes of free time into this courtship project and I was banking on that being enough to translate into results.

Soon the discussion had moved on to the maritime traditions of the local fisherfolk, aspects of which I found alarming. Many hundreds of years ago the fishing communities in these areas had settled on the quaint custom of not saving anyonewho fell into the water. This wasn’t based on an ungenerous ‘You fell in, you get yourself out’ policy, but on the superstitious belief that any encounter with the sea was preordained, and any act of rescue was an obstruction of fate’s natural course which would only bring tragedy upon yourself and your family. So, if some unlucky fisherman slipped overboard, instead of rushing to his aid, colleagues would run to the side of the boat shouting ‘Chuck us your watch’ or ‘Can I have your dining table?’

Adherence to these perilous conventions even involved embracing the tenet that swimming itself was meddling with the divine right of the sea to take your life and (according to Andy, Cait and Rolf anyway) the majority of the present day fishermen in this locality still couldn’t swim. Instead of being fascinated by an intriguing piece of folklore, I took all this to be overwhelming evidence of the unworthiness of these people to be my escorts across a treacherous stretch of water. I wanted sailors who could swim, and hadn’t been inculcated with a fanatical hatred of lifebuoys. Mine was a gentle adventure which was to involve at worst, a loss of dignity, the loss of life thing is for climbers and Antarctic explorers who do what they do because they can’t mix at parties. If I had wanted to take unnecessary risks travelling, I would have got Mark Thatcher to drive me there.

Rather chastened by these revelations I returned to my room and packed, gathering together what few things I would need, opening the fridge door and chucking them in, turning the fridge into an overnight bag. On the way down to the quayside I was stopped by an intrigued fisherman who had been watching my noisy advance with interest.

‘Is that a fridge?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘What are the flowers for?’

‘They’re for the King of Tory’s daughter.’

He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. It was impossible to ascertain which of these two pieces of information had provoked his stunned visage. But I did have my fears.

§

Rory McClafferty and his boat left dead on eleven o’clock, the first time in over four hundred years that anyone in this part of the world had done anything at exactly the time when they said they were going to do it There was a small party seeing me off—Cait, Rolf, and Andy and Jean and their three small children who up to now, in a favourable twist on the adage ‘children should be seen and not heard’, I had heard but not seen. The fridge and flowers were loaded by a puzzled crew member to cheers from my wellwishers. Both precious items were dumped unceremoniously on top of a load of breeze blocks, and left there looking as out of place as I was feeling. We wasted no time in slipping our moorings and heading off, one of the benefits of the fishermen’s belief system being that there was no need for a delay whilst we were told where the life-jackets were stashed. There was tacit understanding of the emergency procedure: ‘In the event of the ship going down—drown.’

The route out of Bunbeg harbour involved negotiating a narrow but exceptionally pretty series of channels before we hit the open sea. The sun beat down in earnest for the first time and London seemed aeons away. As I looked down the boat and saw my fridge and my bouquet of flowers alongside it, I felt good about myself and what I was doing with my life. I knew it bore no close scrutiny, but there was no one around to do any close scrutiny bearing, so in that regard I was lucky, and was able to enjoy the fact that everything was grand, and that I was ‘getting away with if.

The first forty-five minutes of our voyage was spent wending our way past small islands dotted with derelict houses. Rory informed me that no one had inhabited them for twenty years and that ironically the demise of these island communities had been due to their proximity to the shore. Because of the accessibility of the mainland, islanders would row ashore for a night out in their primitive rowing boats or ‘currachs’, and attempt to make the return ‘journey completely inebriated. Now, a drunk has a considerable propensity for falling over even on terra firma, but add choppy waters, an inability to swim and a crew with a distinct lack of lifcsaving medals, and you end up with the ultimate and somewhat terminal hangover cure. The death toll became so high that the Irish government insisted that the islanders resettle on the mainland, but out on Tory, where their drunks tumbled into ditches with relative impunity, island life survived.

With caution I stood by the boat’s siderail and viewed the sea respectfully, a little confused by its jet black, inky colour and its refusal to reflect the blue sky above it. Perhaps it chose to present a hue more in keeping with its funereal past.

Soon enough the tiny dot which was Tory Island became visible on the horizon. As we drew closer, it grew larger and larger until eventually it was near enough to be identified as being really very small indeed. Three miles long and half a mile wide. From the helm Rory steered us in and I stood beside him looking over his shoulder at a map of the island. There was an ‘East Town’ and a West Town’ clearly marked, although there couldn’t have been more than a few hundred yards between them. I imagined the signs outside each of them:

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 813