Temporarily Thairish

Readers, before I get properly flowing here, I’d just like you to know that this is probably going to be one of the toughest articles I’ve ever had to write. There are four reasons. The first three of them are Swedish, female, near-naked, and currently rubbing suntan lotion all over their lithe, nubile, young bodies, not ten yards from where I’m pretending to work.
The fourth is also Swedish, and just out of sight, but she’ll hopefully be back any moment. So if this column goes a little off track at any point, you’ll know why.

That’s right – I’ll just have been set upon by a bunch of irate Swedish girls, all screaming the Swedish for “perv!”
But enough of that. Close the shutters and down to business...
Alright, just one more minute ...

A few weeks ago I turned 34 years of age. I must say, it came as quite a shock. Throughout my 20s I had been convinced that I’d never make it to 30 (just one of the many things I got wrong in my 20s). Now I was 34 and still breathing! Ever since my thirtieth birthday, I’d been privately nursing a suspicion that I might well be the Second Coming of Christ but, the moment I turned 34, I realised that was out. Just as well I hadn’t bothered with the beard.
I think I have red wine to thank for my longevity. I read recently that drinking one glass of red wine per day is very good for your health. I’ve been drinking at least four bottles a day for years, so I reckon I’m well ahead of the game.
Anyway realising that (a) I wasn’t the son of God and (b) I might actually have a future in front of me after all, I made a couple of serious, and seriously ill-considered, changes in my life. Firstly, I packed up and stored all of my possessions, left the four-bedroomed suburban semi-d I had been renting in Galway, and moved into a hut.
I also started wearing a skirt. Not just in the privacy of my new hut, but out and about in public as well. It’s very comfortable. The skirt that is, not the hut.
Having said that, my new hut’s not so bad. It has a double bed, a primitive bathroom, an erratic electricity supply and a splendid Swedish view. It also has a balcony with a hammock and a washing line on which to hang my skirt after I’ve washed it (alright, alright, it’s actually a sarong. Beckham wears one so it’s unlikely to get me into any trouble with lager louts).
As huts go, it’s perfectly adequate. I mean, what more could you ask for from a hut? If it had any more features than those I’ve already described, it wouldn’t be a hut. It’d be “an exclusively designed, luxurious timber-framed dwelling with en-suite bucket and a panoramic ocean view” – minimum two hundred grand on the Irish housing market.
Needless to say, if the near-naked Swedes and the sarong weren’t clues enough, my hut, much like myself, isn’t located in Ireland. No, my new home is 7,000 miles away, situated just 10 metres from the water on a remote beach on an island in the Gulf of Thailand. I’d be a bit more specific about my current address, but I didn’t pay my Eircom bill before I left and I’m worried they’ll catch up with me.
Of course, I don’t actually own my hut. It belongs to Mr. and Mrs. Pong, who run the adjoining beachfront bar and restaurant with their young son (who, rather disappointingly, isn’t called Ping). I like the Pongs, and not just for their surname. They’re typically Thai: hard-working, friendly, good-humoured, and believers in the maxim that life should be enjoyed to its fullest. The night I arrived, we had the following conversation:
MRS PONG: “Olaf, you velly handsome man. We find you nice Thai girl – velly pretty. Make velly good wife for you.”
ME: “But I don’t want a wife!”
MR PONG: “Well... make velly good time for you den. Ha ha!!”
ME: “Thanks, but I already have a girlfriend back in Ireland.”
MR & MRS. PONG: (Dumbfounded looks and in unison) “Yeah ... but she over dere!” (gesturing towards the sea).

I moved to my hut from a rut. The rut was undoubtedly more comfortable, but I just had to get out of Ireland for a while. My head was fried. My Eircom bill was due. My life was going nowhere. Slowly. Or so it felt.
Some people take off to escape from the pressures of fame. I, on the other hand, took off to escape from the pressures of not being famous enough.
I could give you numerous examples of what I mean by that, but one particular incident sticks out in my mind and probably best illustrates what I’m talking about. One especially cold and rainy afternoon last September, I was hurriedly crossing the Salmon Weir Bridge in Galway, minding my own business and lost in my own thoughts (“Crossin’ the bridge, crossin’ the bridge, crossin’ the bridge...WAHAY!!!... Crossin’ the bridge, crossin’ the bridge, crossin’ the bri-idge!”), when a guy on the far side loudly called across to me, “Hey Olaf!”
I looked over and vaguely recognised him from one of the bars I occasionally frequent. He was about my age but, while we’d occasionally nodded familiarly to each other, we’d never actually spoken before. I’d no idea what his name was, but I called back a reasonably cheerful “Howiye!” anyway, unsure as to why he’d decided to instigate a conversation at this particular, somewhat inconvenient, juncture in our respective existences.
“I WAS READING ABOUT YOU EARLIER TODAY,” he shouted (there were two lanes of cars passing between us).
“OH RIGHT!” I shouted back, trying not to look overly pleased with myself. A collection of my hotpress interviews had ben published last year and a lot of people were writing about it. Well, some people were writing about it. Others, quite pointedly, weren’t.
His face scrunched up into a look of near-orgasmic pleasure as he delivered a rather unexpected punchline: “YEAH... AND IT WASN’T GOOD!!! IT SAID YOU WERE SHITE!!!”
He scuttled off (hopefully en-route to the STD clinic), seeming delighted to have got that off his chest.
I just stood there, genuinely taken aback, and getting wetter. What the fuck was wrong with this guy’s life that he felt it necessary to take such pleasure from introducing a little unpleasantness into mine? We didn’t know each other personally and, to the best of my knowledge, I’d never done anything to him (though, shortly afterwards, I seduced his mother. Didn’t shag her though. Just got her hopes up).
I knew the article he was referring to, as well. According to a little-known, little-dicked literary critic, I was a mediocre, uninteresting writer – almost as mediocre and uninteresting as most of my chosen interviewees. The review hadn’t particularly bothered me. At this stage in my writing career, I’m well used to being insulted by arseholes out looking to make a name for themselves (actually, not all of them are out to make names for themselves - my worst reviews have mostly been pseudonymous). It's all part of the game. The most annoying part.
I know this sort of thing happens everywhere, and is just basic human nature, but the Irish seem to have a particular talent for it. Back around the time that U2 were beginning to seriously break America with The Unforgettable Fire, a New York reporter asked Bono what was the difference between Irish and American attitudes to success.
He replied: “In America, people look at the man with the big car and the mansion on the hill and they say to themselves, ‘I’m gonna work my ass off so someday I’ll have a big car like that, and I’ll have my own mansion on the hill’. In Ireland, people look at the man with the big car and the mansion on the hill and they say to themselves, ‘Someday... I’m gonna fucking get that bastard!’”
It’s funny cos it’s true – but not so funny if the “bastard” is you. It’s alright for Bono. What’s a little verbal abuse or home-cooked begrudgery when you’ve got millions in the bank, worldwide acclaim, the Pope’s personal mobile and a woman as gorgeous as Ali for your wife? I can’t even pay my phone bill and I’ve still got to deal with wankers.
Except that now I don’t – at least not for a while. That cold September afternoon, I realised that I really didn’t want to live in a country where people you barely knew were willing to stop on a bridge, in the pouring rain, en-route to a scary appointment at the STD clinic, simply in order to make your day even more unpleasant. I decided that, in the time-honoured tradition of all the great Irish writers (James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Brendan O’Carroll etc), I’d get the fuck out of Dodge for a while, and consider my options from a different perspective.
So anyway, here I am, five months later, living on a beach in Thailand. Yikes! The truth is, I don’t really know what I’m doing here. A Thai beach had seemed like a really great idea back in Galway but I had been here for only about ten minutes – just enough time to get into my skirt - when I suddenly remembered something important. Namely the fact that I really hate beaches. They bore the arse off me. Well actually, that’s not strictly true. Certain beaches I’m quite fond of, especially at night. I like wild, rugged, stormy North Atlantic beaches where the wind howls, the salt spray stings your face, and you can howl like Heathcliff at the moon.
The kind of beaches I don’t like are the ones with golden sands, turquoise waters, palm trees and people with better bodies than me playing frisbee. Which is exactly the kind of beach that I’m on. Still, too late to back out. I’m here now so I’ll give it a go. It’s either that or go home and face the legal wrath of Eircom. For the time being, I’m temporarily Thairish. Wherever I lay my sarong...
Over the coming weeks, months and perhaps even years, I’ll be sending this column back whenever I’ve got something to say. Or whenever Mr Pong wants me to pay my bar bill. Of course, I do realise that I could well be setting myself up for a serious fall here. As my father encouragingly commented just before I left, “You on a beach? Ha! I give you three weeks – four, tops.”
So what? If I come back, I come back. So be it. But if I do return to Ireland (and my girlfriend just might have something to say about that) there’ll be no need for any of you lot to comment on my failure to make it as a skirt-wearing, hut-dwelling, Thairish beach-bum. I’ll be sure to run into that girl from Sweden again, sooner or later. Sorry, I mean I’ll be sure to run into that guy from the bridge again, sooner or later.
But hopefully later.