I was in the Imperial Hotel in Dundalk at the beginning of February, sharing the space with a lovely collection of young people on romantic breaks. But as I floated through the lobby with my bags, I might as well have been invisible.
Music pumped out from the bar nearby and young couples swarmed around the foyer in a frenzy of excitement, arranging rooms and dinner tables and cashing in gift vouchers. I stood like a scarecrow in the queue, a tattered coat upon a stick, before checking in and disappearing into the lift.
The following morning I had scrambled eggs and dallied over coffee but I was still invisible to the love birds around me. I suppose they were too absorbed in remembering the pleasures of the previous night to notice an old man like me. They shovelled muesli and yoghurt into bowls and waited with flushed faces for waitresses to carry plates of sausage and bacon and pots of coffee to their tables. They held each other’s hands and wallowed in each other’s gaze.
I spoke to a couple after I had checked out. The woman had spent three weeks in tunnels below the steelworks of Mariupol, enduring a ferocious Russian siege in darkness. She gazed at me with ice blue eyes but said nothing
In such moments young people cheer me up. It’s lovely to see them enjoying themselves and it’s a relief not to be burdened by all their anxieties. Being elderly, I may be invisible in some situations, but I am part of the tribe and “belonging” is a good vibe.
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Since January I’ve been on a book tour around the country and something similar happened me in another hotel, where all the notices on the reception desk were in Ukrainian, and all evening I kept passing people on the corridor who didn’t seem to notice me. Although on that occasion, my invisibility was not caused by my age.
At breakfast the following day there was an unusual hush in the restaurant. It didn’t feel like a normal hotel. There were no businessmen in white shirts, with laptops and English accents, no women armoured with make-up for high-level executive meetings to disturb the sombre mood and no buzz from any of the staff whirring around with pots of coffee. Instead it was just families dressed in the same casuals that they might have worn in their Ukrainian homes on a day off work. The silence stretched from wall to wall, as smartphones lay open between cereal bowls and breakfast plates and people scrolled through Facebook for emotional comfort.
Needless to say the Ukrainians had too much on their minds to be bothered with the only Irish guest in the room buttering his toast. They texted friends or just stared blankly at each other with a weight of grief in every face.
I spoke to a couple after I had checked out. They were holding the door open for me as I manoeuvred my suitcase. The woman had spent three weeks in tunnels below the steelworks of Mariupol, enduring a ferocious Russian siege in darkness. She escaped with her teenage son, who is now at college in Ireland. And she gazed at me with ice blue eyes but said nothing.
“She doesn’t speak English,” the man explained. He tossed the butt of his cigarette into a cigarette bin and off they went down the avenue in the rain. They were heading for town. Maybe they walk around town every morning just to get air, or escape the claustrophobia of a small hotel room.
A book tour can be stressful so I try to relax on my days off. I go to Bundoran and wander around the shops or sit in the car park above Tullan Strand, looking down at the long beach, the blue ocean and the white waves.
I know a Ukrainian woman who, when she first arrived in Ireland, spent every day walking that beach with tears in her eyes. But nobody noticed her, because she too was invisible
It’s spectacular. People far away resemble sticks, twigs or dots, just like the matchstick people of LS Lowry’s paintings.
Children kick a ball. Two men in black wetsuits march with surfboards into the waves. A child in pink is so far away that she or he appears only as a coloured speck on the white foam.
I know a Ukrainian woman who, when she first arrived in Ireland, spent every day walking that beach with tears in her eyes. But nobody noticed her, because she too was invisible.
For me invisibility is not painful; I feel I belong among the people around me, whether it’s a hotel lounge or a Donegal beach, even when they don’t pay me much attention.
Whereas Ukrainians become completely invisible overnight. Old women and young girls, men with children and men alone; their narratives are all erased in a single moment with a single word. Refugee.