Blind Date in Belfast

So there was I, feeling older than my grandfather’s old hat, tightly holding on to the limpest bunch of yellow chrysanthemums in one hand and a plastic carrier bag emblazoned with a large red day-glow love heart that included the words,

Love R us. 

‘Now don't you worry yourself for a minute Dickie, says Cassandra from the Love R us dating agency. ‘It’s natural to feel a little trepidation and butterflies so it is, especially the very first time, besides our carrier bag ‘For Life’ helps.

You see,’ she continued, ‘as well as being a beacon of love it carries a subliminal message of desire, and of course our telephone and email number in case of emergencies. So don’t you worry yourself for minute Dickie your mystery lady will be just as nervous and shy as you are, aww bless.’  

My mood was blackening as I had been standing in the pouring rain for well over half an hour. My temperament not helped by the fact that I had missed the bus down from.my place near the park, off the Antrim Road on the North Side. Impatience and frustration was getting the better of me, I repeatedly checked my wrist, my watch having been left hanging on a coat hook on the back of my bathroom door earlier that afternoon. By the time half past five came around I was getting wetter by the minute, damper than a taxi driver's armpit so I was. I stood and watched an endless stream of humanity rushing for trains, and buses, the lucky ones spreading their fat arses across bar stools in the city lounges, and not one of them without an umbrella by the way.

The day was getting on and by the time I had been pacing up and down Dizzy Corner for over an hour I was as sick as the proverbial parrot. The whole world and his wife were leaving work, except that is Bubbly from Ballymena, her with the shock of wild auburn hair and in desperate need of special tender loving care. Suddenly, catching a glimpse of myself in Boot's the Chemist shop window I let out a strangulated cry of panic.

‘Oh for Feck’s sake!

Oh no I don’t believe it!

Oh My God…what an idiot’.

 To my horror, I immediately noticed the telltale signs of my recently applied hair dye. It was running out through my spiky gelled locks, streaking my face and shirt to the colour of ripe aubergine.

‘By all that’s holy… that's it, says I, I'm offski’.

Hadn't I no sooner moved off the spot, when a double decker bus ploughing through a puddle in the road, easily the size of the Sea of Galilee, sent up a great plume of dirty water, and didn't the deluge come down covering me from head to foot in cigarette ends and empty crisp packets, leaving me soaked to the skin and stinking like an old diesel engine.

As my carrier bag was by now almost full of water and fag ends, I thought it was by far the best place to keep the chrysanthemums, many of which had lost their heads and a great deal of their petals due to the force of the inundation.

The foul-smelling water together with the liquid street detritus was now running freely from every orifice, through every layer of my clothing and out of every nook and cranny. One clear advantage of being struck by this tidal wave was that the stain of the hair dye had blended with the effluent, leaving me glowing in rainbow iridescence, liken to that of an oil slick and smelling like O’Malley’s garage workshop.

Then just as I thought things couldn't possibly get worse, I became aware of something or someone tugging at my arm. I turned around to see the most gigantic woman I have ever clapped eyes upon in my life, and by the look of her she had forgotten to put her teeth in.

‘It’s myself, she hollered, holding aloft a carrier bag, and pointing excitedly to the Love R us and the shimmering day-glow red love heart logo upon the front of it.

Pushing aside with uncanny ease three ‘Hoodies’ who were otherwise engaged in their endeavors to beat the liver and lights out of a passing Japanese tourist, who they alleged had looked at them 'funny’, she tightened hold of her grip on my arm and pulled my face close to hers.

'Are you’s Debonair Dickie from Duncairn?' she whispered hoarsely. 

I nodded meekly, as water much warmer than before, began trickling down the insides of my trouser legs.

Now, I've seen big women in my day, sure wasn't my Aunt Flanna a big fit party, and for that matter so was old Grannie Driscoll down at the Post Office at Tippy Baldenny, but nothing on God's earth could have prepared me for the likes of this.

Puddles pooled at my feet as we stood beside one another at the bus stop that was to take us further into town to the Classic cinema which was our destination. A venue enthusiastically chosen by my date, she was, as her dossier had disclosed a bit of a filmgoer aficionado. She said that she had travelled through town on the 5a City bus and had clocked me standing in the street or to be more exact it had been my carrier bag she'd first spotted, the signal of recognition devised by the dating agency.

'But only for a second', she reaffirmed.

‘The very next moment, said she, we splashed through a feckin’ great puddle in the road and when I looked again, you’s were away’!

She continued to chatter between mouthfuls of broken cinder toffee and a packet of Victory V lozenges. She told me, although her words were almost undecipherable due to the vast amounts of toffee in her mouth, that her name was Orla, Orla Knox.

 ‘Orla means 'pure gold' in the Gaelic’, says she.

 Mind you, I'm sure if her Mammy and Daddy knew that their little nugget was going to grow into quite that much pure gold they would have been as well naming her Fort Knox.

Staggering under the weight of chilli hot dogs, Pepsi cooler, and a bucket of buttered popcorn that Bob Geldof would have been more than happy to drop as a food parcel for the starving masses of the third world, we made our way down the aisle of the darkened cinema. For myself I was thankful to be out from under the bright lights of the foyer, so I was. My hair had dried to a crisp, matted, muddy grey, whilst the rest of me had begun to gently steam so that every time I moved or coughed I was giving off wee clouds of odious condensation. Despite the amplitude of Orla's derrière she slipped into the cinema seat remarkably easily and had immediately set about eating her way through the huge assortment of consumables that she had arranged on the spare seat next to her.

I was thankful just to sit myself down, and taking full advantage of the darkness, I quietly took off my shoes and socks and began wringing water from the latter until they were able to be hung over the back of the seat in front.

The main feature, 'The Adventures of an Amorous Anthropologist’ hadn’t started as yet, it sounded right up my street, I love nature films.  Do you remember that ‘David… now… what’s his name’?

Orla answered by noisily licking her buttery fingers one at a time,

‘You know him off the tele….

…Oh go on… you know who I mean, it’s himself who was sat with that family of feckin’ great gorillas, you must remember, that was a film and a half, so it was.’

At long last I was beginning to relax and look forward to the film. The cinema seats were slowly becoming occupied, strangely there were few couples in the place mainly men in trench coats and long brown mackintoshes, well it was a wet night and still hammering it down outside.

I turned to Orla, whispering as loudly as I could over the constant crunch and grinding of yellow teeth and popcorn.

 ‘I love these sorts of movies, I can’t get enough of them, it's truly amazing how they can get those really detailed close ups without disturbing them on the nest or mating, do you know what I mean?

Orla’s reaction was to choke, coughing out enough popcorn to roughcast a side gable wall.

‘You’re a saucebox so you are and no mistake' she said, wiping the butter off two or three of her chins and pinching my cheek with her greasy fingers.

Taken aback a little I nodded shyly, and then continued.

 'Oh, I love any films like this one, I never get sick of watching nature in the raw.’

I was momentarily distracted as I watched a glistening bead of perspiration forming on Orla’s nose whilst her face wide and flaccid stared up at me like a great drum of cheese.

‘What happened next?’ she said, hoarsely.

Orla turned to me, her eyes were glazed over and white as organ stops, her laboured hot breath rancid with butter and chilli. Drawing herself up closer to me, I continued to explain the intricacies and intimacies of nature, detailing once again the need for close ups.

Orla’s lips and chins were beginning to tremble, a frankfurter sausage in the chilli hotdog which she had been grasping tightly in her left hand shot out of the bread roll like a rocket.

Unfortunately the full force of the sausage hit a very elderly usherette on the other side of the cinema who was busy selling inhalers and boxes of Kleenex to a crowd of old gentlemen who were huddled around her in dirty raincoats.

'God you’s a terrible man, what are you like, whispered Orla, noisily unwrapping a chocolate bar.

As the house lights began to fade, I noticed that Orla was dribbling and that her great moon of a face was glistening like a fish just out of the water, as she placed her plump hand heavily on my thigh.

'Holy Mother’, she exclaimed, and her hand jumped just as it might have if she’d just picked up a dog turd. 

‘For the sake of God, you’re soaking wet…

 I said nothing,

…tell me you haven’t.’

‘No! I have not, it was that feckin’ great puddle that the bus went through, I’m soaked so I am,’ I hissed emphatically.

After a few minutes the lights went down and the film started to roll and in no time at all the cinema was filled with the sounds of grunts and moans and the occasional fit of coughing.

‘Holy Mary, Mother of…

For the love of all that’s holy’…

I had never seen the likes of anything like this since my cousin Flanna’s holiday snaps were sent to the local police station by Boots the chemist. I’ll tell you something else, if it wasn't for the fact that I wasn’t wearing any shoes or socks I would have been out of that cinema right there and then and been happy to abandon the great fat strumpet that I'd come in with who was sat masticating and mesmerized glued to her seat. I was furious and utterly disgusted with the arrangements made by Love R us for placing me in this embarrassing predicament.

For didn’t it turn out to be one of they Swedish pornographic films, all bums and bits, with not so much as a gorilla or a twitcher in sight not a trace of that David Atte…thingy.

Meanwhile Orla was finding the porno film of great interest and at one point became very breathless and animated but after a loud gurgle and extremely unpleasant but silent flatulent episode took up her bucket, increasing her rate of popcorn consumption to a blur. At some point throughout the proceedings my steaming socks had fallen into Orla’s bucket, alas never to be seen again, so I decided to put my feet into my cold wet shoes to ensure that they didn’t meet the same buttery end and make my way to the gentleman’s ‘excuse me’..

A few minutes later, didn’t I meet Father Dermott Catt in the gent’s ‘bogs’ queuing for a cubicle. His attendance at the Classic cinema was purely ecumenical, he explained. He was researching a new slant on local entertainment on behalf of the Roman Catholic Monthly. After blessing me and borrowing a tenner he advised me to change out of my trousers as soon as I was able due to the stench of steaming diesel radiating from them. After kissing his crucifix which hung down from his neck he crossed himself, and with a wag of his finger told me to make sure I didn’t miss his confessional at St Paulinus this coming Wednesday night.

I returned to my seat, surreptitiously placing the dead chrysanthemums in Orla’s popcorn bucket. Well, not before time, the film at an end, I decided it was best to leave Orla who was fast asleep and snoring like a pig, her head buried among the green stalks, blowing the last remaining yellow petals out into the cinema auditorium 

Once outside the cinema, the rain was still bouncing off the street when I spotted a bright red city bus emblazoned by the familiar red love heart day- glow advertising Love  R us. 

‘Satisfaction Guaranteed, The Lover of your Dreams Awaits You’

‘That’ll be right’, says I, raging my fist at the bus.

‘Just you wait till you’s open tomorrow,’ I hissed.

‘That big brassy bitch on reception is going to be the first to get a piece of my…

The very next moment didn’t a gigantic wall of water rise up from the now passing bus engulfing me once again in a tsunami of street detritus.

For a moment I just stood there shivering, my clothes clinging to me like a bad debt.

There was I, wetter than a fish taking a bath and for a moment seriously contemplating whether to throw myself under the next bus that came along.

‘Now just minute, catch yourself on,’ says I, ‘am I not being a bit hasty, I’m not going on an empty stomach.’

I stood watching the bus until it was lost in the rain and the traffic, I pulled my coat collar up around me and headed for the nearest chippie, tomorrow was another day, and it couldn’t come soon enough.