Along with the rest of you, I’m seeing the news about the virus, with countries closing borders, schools, restaurants and what have you; and looking back, wasn’t I only saying to Biddy Donoghue there in the Post Office the day after New Year, as soon as she wished me a happy one. ‘Mrs Donoghue,’ I said, ‘there’s something strange, something not quite right with the new year.’
And then, without a sound coming out of her mouth, or from any other part of her body for that matter, didn’t she give me one of those looks that I’m getting more frequently as the years go by, and not just from Biddy Donoghue.
‘Optimism,’ I said, ‘or rather an absence of. I’m sure all the other new years I can remember have started with a feeling of optimism in the air. You know what I mean? You’re listening to the last bong of twelve o’clock and you can sense that people are thinking, this could well be the year when it all comes good; like it’s only a matter of time before Lady Luck or the wheel of fortune delivers. Have you not felt it’s different this year?’
She appeared unimpressed. It’s likely that Biddy Donoghue and the concept of optimism have never been closely acquainted, or possibly never even introduced to each other at all.
‘Did you ever stop to wonder,’ she said, ‘and what with your music and your books and all the rest of it I suppose you didn’t, what the village are starting to think of you?’
It was my turn to say nothing as I ran through a mental list of what she might be including in the “all the rest of it” category. Surely not the goat fancy dress competition I ran at last year’s summer fair; the way Mickey Ryan managed to get his goat looking so like Abraham Lincoln was a triumph, down to the last whisker.
‘Do the arithmetic, Fiontan,’ she said. ‘You can check it over there.’ She pointed to a calendar hanging on the wall behind the counter, where the picture for January was of the Atlantic Ocean doing its best to batter the hell out of the Cliffs of Moher.
‘I may have left school before you were born,’ she said, and she was right, ‘and you might be thinking that old Biddy Donaghue’s mental capacity must surely be starting to fail, but didn’t that ol’ divil of a teacher beat into me that if you take two thousand and nineteen, and add one, you get two thousand and twenty, which is the next whole number, never mind your fancy fractions and decimals, which means that this new year is not just any old random new year, it’s exactly the feckin’ year it’s supposed to be, and there’s nothing strange about it at all.’
By the end of the sentence, her voice had risen to a point where heads in the queue were starting to turn, and the usually imperturbable Conor Flaherty behind the counter was giving us looks of concern over the top of his glasses.
I nodded. ‘You’re right, Mrs Donaghue,’ I said. ‘Whatever must you think of me?’
‘The same as the rest of the feckin’ village, I imagine,’ she said. ‘I’ll bid you good day.’
As she was leaving, I dismissed the idea that she was known as Biddy because she did a lot of bidding. And when I think now about what she said, I take comfort, optimistic comfort, that the likes of Biddy Donoghue will be more than a match for Covid-19.
Her words, though, have also made me think that it’s time to review my P.R. strategy.