Free 1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge by Tony Hawks, Prefers to remain anonymous

you were saying you were going to be starting in Letterkenny, so I’ve been keeping an eye out for you.’
    ‘Brilliant. That’s very kind of you.’
    ‘I didn’t know who you were until I saw that fridge, and then I thought…’
    Laughter took him over for a while, before he managed, ‘Ah, it’s all a good laugh.’
    Good, he understands.
    I took a moment to digest all that was happening. The fridge, far from being a hindrance, had become a positive boon, and the protagonist in; an excursion which was growing ever more surreal.; From the haven of the truck’s cabin I watched the driving rain I pelt against the windscreen and felt somehow invincible, especially I when Jason announced that he was going to my chosen destination—Bunbeg. All right, I’d have to wait while he did some deliveries but I I didn’t mind that. Why should I? Yesterday I’d done toiletry sales—today groceries, deliveries thereof. And I was seeing at first hand what makes the world tick over—good honest labour.
    Our first stop was McGinleys in Dunfanaghy, and watching Jason struggling with boxes and crates, I felt as heartened by the sight of his dogged industry as I was reassured by my own lack of involvement in it. It looked hard. Some people are born for this kind of work and others are born to watch it I had no difficulties in identifying to which of these two categories I belonged. For many years I had measured success in my chosen career in terms of how little heavy luting I had to do. Heavy lifting is good for the soul but bad for the back, and tends to interfere with lolling about.
    The Mace supermarket in Dunfanaghy suitably replenished with groceries, we embarked on a journey through some of Ireland’s more wild, unkempt and windswept scenery. Austere grey mountains towered over dark tranquil loughs, boglands and streams bordered the apology for a road, and stubborn sheep blocked the route wherever and whenever they felt the urge. Never mind that there was a bloody great lorry hurtling towards them, they were going to move as and when they were ready, and not a moment before. As far as I could see, there were miles and miles and miles of open spaces all around these sheep offering excellent grazing facilities and yet they still chose to congregate in the middle of the road. You’re not telling me they don’t take some perverse pleasure in the inconvenience that this causes. Sheep aren’t stupid. They’re petty, spiteful and bloody minded. Well, fuck ewe’ I thought as the truck was forced to a standstill for the umpteenth time, deciding there was a case for popping mutton on the menu that night.
    Somehow we left the sheep ‘conference area’ behind us and Jason made headway through the ten gears of his giant lorry until we started to experience something like its top speed. A lot of European Commission money has gone into the improvement of the roads in Ireland but there was exiguous evidence of any of it having been lavished on the road surfaces of Northern Donegal. Jason had his own particular method for dealing with the road’s over plentiful relief, his policy being to accelerate into the bumps.
    When we crashed over the bigger ones, I took off, my arse momentarily liberated from all things solid, and I was rewarded with an all too brief taster of unassisted flight. The uncomfortable downside came a fraction of a second later in the form of landing, and was immediately followed by the sharp top left-hand corner of a small fridge impacting at force with my defenceless shoulderblade. On each occasion this happened, which regrettably was about every twenty seconds, I tried not to recoil in pain and instead smiled at the unflinching Jason, unflinching because he had the advantage of knowing where the bumps were, and was spared the fridge slamming into shoulderblade’ pain which I had to endure.
    ‘That fridge all right behind you?’ said Jason.
    ‘Yes, fine,’ I lied.
    I didn’t want to make a