Michael Harding: It’s important not to be seen doing T’ai-chi in Leitrim rain

I had lunch in Mullingar recently with two old friends. Tommy is a shy gentleman who eats his dinner alone in the hotel restaurant every day. On his way out he touched my wrist as he passed the table.

“Good to see you back in Mullingar.”

And he was almost gone. But I stopped him.

“Tommy,” I said, “it’s great to see you,” exaggerating a little, because that’s what lonely people do.

And he, being encouraged by such enthusiasm, said, “Do you mind if I sit down?”

“Please do,” I replied.

He sat and we began to talk almost immediately about human tragedies and global disasters and near death experiences which is Tommy’s favourite subject. He even brought up the famous case of the woman who was declared dead, even though she was only in a coma. She was coffined and left in the church overnight, dressed in her finest costume. But one man who had noted that she was buried with expensive rings on her fingers went to the church and opened the coffin though he couldn’t get the rings off her finger. That is, until he used his penknife, which went through the bone and the old lady woke instantly and, without quite gathering her senses, she fled the building.

They say the man fled too, across the Irish sea and was never heard of again, but the woman lived to a great old age after the event. It’s probably an urban myth but it got us going.

Then we went on to discuss the new crematorium which has opened in Cavan.

“Did you know,” he told me, “that the flame is just underneath the heart because that’s one of the most difficult bits to burn. And afterwards they crunch the bones in a machine so that the ashes don’t contain lumpy bits.”

Wounded creatures

Then we went through a few road accidents that happened over the summer and that was even before we began watching Sky News on a screen at the far side of the bar.

We were in such animated conversation about the dead that we hardly noticed Arthur of the long white hair passing. He was carrying a plate of lasagne in one hand and two glasses of water gripped in the fingers of his other hand.

“D’ye mind if I join ye?” he wondered.

When I first went to Mullingar 10 years ago the three of us often dined together in the same hotel. But that’s a long time ago. The recession came and went and all of us are 10 years older.

Back then we talked as if we were boys, and were obsessed with preserving and presenting a youthful image to each other. But now the discussion has become more substantial. We have become wounded creatures whose attention has turned to cholesterol, back pain and the importance of avoiding fat foods.

I told them I spent the summer at the window of my studio staring at blackbirds bewildered by rain, and magpies plucking breakfast from the rushes. I mowed the grass a few times between the showers, and, on one occasion, I ventured into the long grass, the nettles and hogweed with a strimmer. I

was determined to keep fit so every morning I positioned myself in the middle of the little wood under the trees to do Tai Chi without being seen by neighbours.

It’s important not to be seen doing Tai Chi in the Leitrim rain. The last time a neighbour noticed me, he almost crashed his tractor and he ran into the garden to see if I was alright.

I said, “I’m doing my exercises.”

He said, “I thought you might have been bitten by a horse fly and were having a fit.”

“Have you never heard of Tai Chi?” I asked.

“Is that a Chinese restaurant in Carrick?” he wondered.

“No,” I said, “it’s something you do. It’s a cross between yoga and waving at an airplane.”

“High tea,” he said.

“No,” I replied. “Tai Chi.”

Mother’s love

And then the waitress came with the desert menu. When she mentioned bread pudding Tommy and Arthur’s faces lit up. Because they are men that were reared on bread pudding. They are men that associated bread pudding with the tenderness of a mother’s love and the innocence of their long lost childhoods.

“So, will that be three deserts?” the waitress inquired.

“No,” Tommy said, his face as sad as a Leitrim meadow. “Just coffee for me.”

And we all agreed, with a kind of elderly shame, that it would be better to avoid the bread pudding.