Brighid’s Diary
The iceman cometh and Ginta lands on her well-heeled feet
The week began as many good things do — with a coffee. I was standing outside Ragazzi in Dalkey, stuffing my gob with a jammy apricot croissant and an espresso when I noticed this powerfully built fella dressed in black, sporting massive biceps that were covered in tattoos. You would just know by looking at him that he was a tough cookie. He had a taut look to his mouth that said, “don’t mess with me”.
“That’s Ger Kennedy, the ice man,” says my friend Harriet. “Do you know him?”
I never met the bloke before but Harriet knew all about Ger, an endurance athlete who is famous for pushing his body to the limits by swimming under metres of heavy ice. That evening Harriet phoned him and asked him to call down to me at the cottage. And fair play to him, he did.
He arrived outside the half-door looking like he was going on a mission to Afghanistan. Wearing hiking boots, a black beanie, combat trousers, a black T-shirt, there was a tough, rugged look about him. Yet, despite the hard exterior, I found him gentle, courteous and fun.
I brewed some tea, and thought about the bould Ger, who was waiting patiently for his cuppa outside. I mean this man swam seven continents and completed a Polar Zero Ice Mile in 0.5°C water in Antarctica in February last year. Unbelievable stuff.
“Jesus, Ger,” I say, “you must have a fierce amount of crap to unload to do this kind of stuff.”
“I do,” he laughs. “I have had the wobbly years.” He is talking about a period of despair, divorce and a bit of depression that has long passed.
In 2010, a friend brought him to the Forty Foot. “I was standing there just looking at the water. This aul fella said, ‘Get off your clothes and get in.’ I lasted 20 seconds.
That was the birth of me and cold water swimming.
“I started going to Lough Dan in Wicklow during the winter. There is no buoyancy in fresh water. It was 3°C. Jesus, it was grim. I had marks on my tongue from chewing it. I couldn’t walk afterwards. I can tell you, Biddy, my balls were literally in my mouth. Nothing moved between my legs for four months,” he says, laughing.
“I remember going home to Cabinteely and my father and mother ate the head off me. At that time, they didn’t realise that there is a structure to ice swimming. You take a pre-medical, an ECG, and a doctor has to sign you off.
“The heavy stuff is in Russia. Yakutsk is the coldest city in the world. The water there was 0°C and you swim 500 metres in the dark. I remember standing in the prewarm tent drinking whiskey with the Russians, but I was sh*tting myself.”
Ger stood appalled before the icy hole. “The dark is so intimidating. But in Russia, men are men.” He manned up to the challenge, tucking into three Siberian pony steaks to celebrate afterwards.
He has no time for what he calls the “soft lad” epidemic. Put it like this — he wouldn’t be the sort of man that would be weighing a chicken fillet or putting away a plate of smashed avocado.
“The water is my life,” says Ger, “those wobbly years gave me empowerment and a second chance. Now,” he says, with that bad-ass look in his eye, “I am marching you down to Coliemore for a swim.”
Naturally, I obeyed.
Who did I see in Bloomfield Shopping Centre on Thursday? You guessed it, Ginta, my Russian friend. You couldn’t miss her. In the retina-shattering lights of Tesco, she stood out. With her long black tresses and red pout, she had poured her physique into a purple Latex onesie. The black leather face mask finished me off. The only thing she was missing was a whip.
“It good to see you, Biddy,” she roars in broken English.
Even at the two-metre distance, I was knocked out by the whiff of perfume. “That smells divine,” I say.
“Roja Dove Parfum,” she says, “my favourite.”
Great, I thought with sudden joy, she’s got a trolley. My chief emotion as I peered into it was curiosity. You can tell a lot about someone by the food they buy. Guess what was in hers? Ten boxes of clementines, a bag of buckwheat and a bottle of champagne. Taittinger, no less.
“Now that’s what I call the perfect shopping,” I say, “oranges and champagne. There’s plenty of Bellinis there.”
“Not for me,” she says sharp as a razor. “For my old neighbour.”
Jesus, my nosiness was getting no freedom at all. Now, it may seem harsh but Ginta doesn’t strike me as someone who would be helping anyone, except herself of course. And as for the neighbour’s story, I just wasn’t buying it. In Donegal, they would call her a “hunker slider”, someone who is fond of the auld fib. Of course, I could be wrong. And God, wouldn’t that be awful.
But as I suspected, there was rather more in this present enterprise than mere zeal and goodwill. “My neighbour has a car but no drive because of bad leg, so I use car.”
The story was getting better by the minute. I hung around to see if she wanted a lift. Suddenly her crystal-covered iPhone shrilled. There was a quick conversation in Russian, while everyone at the checkout waited behind her. “Biddy, I have car coming.”
I followed her out to the front of the shopping centre. “You so kind, she says, “but you go, you go, it is so cold.” Well, I can tell you one thing, Biddy wasn’t moving.
“I have good news,” she says, lighting up a menthol cigarillo. “I getting ‘Hollywood smile’. It expensive but I showed dentist picture of Paris Hilton’s white teeth and now he make me some too. I pay him cash.”
The poor art student I had first met had obviously come into the big bucks. Where, I wondered, was all this dosh coming from? With one black talon, she pressed the torchlight on her phone, pulled her mask down, bared her horsey gnashers. Jesus, I was blinded by a grand gob of gold.
“What are you going to do with all that bullion?” I ask.
“Igor my dentist melt down to make Louis Vuitton chain for my teddy bear.” Well, I heard it all. A gold chain for her teddybear.
Finally a sleek black Mercedes pulled up, the boot purred open. A burly man, all dressed in black, escorted Ginta to the passenger side and tucked her in ever so gently. He unloaded her groceries into the boot. She waved gaily. They were off.
That night I googled her perfume. It was €1,650 a bottle.
I was standing there just looking at the water. This aul fella said, ‘Get off your clothes and get in.’ I lasted 20 seconds