Smartphones & tales of the unexpected

Ten minutes was all I was supposed to be up there. We were only looking for the loan of a trailer. To make a short story long, Denis finally got a smartphone for his birthday. After years telling anyone who’d listen that the internet was rotting the brains of the youth, his own little phone packed up so the children bought him this thing that’s about the size of the wing mirror on a van.

And now he’s addicted. “Hang on a sec, I’ll look it up, Ann,” he says about 10 times a day. He’d be there looking at this Norwegian weather app and telling me the forecast and the “percentage likelihood of precipitation” and I’m saying to him: “Shur Denis, look out the window. And anyway, what do you need with the weather. You’re only planning to stay on the couch looking at the internet.”

It was useful for something though because he bought a load of dry turf on the internet. Now we needed a trailer to collect it. Which brought me up to Liam Curley’s.

Anyone who knows Liam knows that you need to set aside about an hour more than you think because Liam will keep you talking. There’s no one who can talk like Liam Curley and now that he’s retired, every bit of time he has is for talk. And he’s on the internet as well, like Denis, but Denis is in high babies compared to this fella. I’d say if RTÉ got a hold of him, they’d never need Diarmuid Ferriter again.

I’d rung Kathleen to try and get in and get out quick.

“C’mon away up now, Ann, he’ll be watching the History Channel – there’s something on about the top 10 tank battles of World War II.”

But she got the times wrong because we were there hooking up the trailer and out comes Liam in his socks. And it had only just rained. (Denis’s app let him down because he said it would stay dry for the day.) But the wet ground didn’t bother Liam Curley because off he went. And each time Kathleen would be trying to get him to stop:

Liam: “You see, Ann, the thing is that in a few years’ time the trailers will be automated so they’ll just go and collect the turf for you. It’s all done on GPS but actually GPS was first inspired by the Russians, Ann, because they launched the what-do-you-call-it ... Sputnik.”

Kathleen: “Ann would want to be getting that trailer, Liam.”

Liam: “And then some people would say that we’re actually all a computer simulation, Ann. That this is one giant experiment by advanced beings in the future. What do you make of that?”

Kathleen: “She’d make a lot more of it, Liam, if she could get home to have a think about it.”

Liam: “But colour isn’t actually colour, Ann. It’s just the way light hits it and it gets into our brains. They say now that the old languages, for instance, didn’t have a word for blue and scientists think our ancestors didn’t notice the colour even existed.”

Kathleen: “Is that the phone, Liam? I’d say it’s the phone going in the house.”

“There’s your chance,” says Kathleen as Liam went to investigate. “G’wan away now.”

“He’s good to talk,” I said.

“He’s gotten worse since he gave up the cows. He used to talk to the cows. I’d go down to call him in for the breakfast and he’d be there talking about the Cuban missile crisis and the poor cow looking at me as if to say: ‘Will you put on the shagging cluster? I’m bursting.’ But do you know something, he was away for a couple of days visiting the sister in London and the house was awful quiet without him. I had to turn on a radio in the bedroom and listen back to programmes I’d already heard during the day, trying to get to sleep. Ask me anything about Nama now, Ann. I’ve heard it all twice.”

Himself was leaning against the wall, looking at the sky, checking his oul weather app when I got in. “Why don’t you get off that phone and talk to me?” I said. CL