The Quiet Hour

THE QUIET HOUR An Observed Scene at Cardoon's Bar, Hilltown, Dundee Federation Site Publishes: Third-Person Account, Submitted to Media Intake ———————————————— [A note on how this visit was arranged, included because it differs from the previous two. The request came from this crew rather than from Ms. Drummond's representative. It was not answered for four days. When the answer came it set out the same terms as before — a crew of two, no interview, no directed movement, one hour, published only as a third-person account with no footage clips appended — with one line added: that we could come back to Cardoon's if we wanted, but that nothing had changed there and we should not expect it to have. The federation agreed. The following is that account.] ———————————————— We arrived at two in the afternoon, the quiet hour. Lunch trade finished, evening trade not yet started. The room was as it was. Ms. Drummond on the stool at the bar itself rather than a table. Her grandmother behind it, this time doing the bottle fridges rather than the optics, and not stopping for most of the hour. The regular at the far end with the folded newspaper, who did not look up, and whose name we were again not given. The radio on, low, older records, untouched. Ms. Drummond was in a tracksuit. Hair down. No plaster on the knuckle this time. There was a pint on the bar in front of her that she turned occasionally and drank from twice in sixty minutes. The bar top to her left was empty. We record this because the previous account devoted a paragraph to what had been sitting there, and it would be a failure of the format not to note its absence. There was no holdall on the floor. There was nothing on the bar but the pint, a beer mat, and — for part of the visit — a folded sheet of A4 that had been printed off somewhere and read more than once, judging by the state of the fold. She never referred to it. When she got up at one point to go through the back, she left it face down on the bar. When she came back she did not pick it up again. The crew did not read it and did not ask. ———————————————— She spoke four times. Her grandmother spoke twice, which is once more than last time. The first was at approximately 2:09. Her grandmother, without looking up from the fridges: "Barrel'll need changing before six." Ms. Drummond said: "Aye, in a minute." She did not get up for another twenty minutes. Her grandmother did not raise it again. The barrel was, we observed, changed before we left. ———————————————— The second was at 2:26. There was no laptop this visit. Instead she was watching something on her phone, propped against the beer mat, the volume low enough that we could not hear it and had to infer the content from what she said after. What she said, to nobody in particular, though we were again the only nobody available: "She's told everybody she's got to come at me early. That's not a plan, that's a confession." A pause of some length. She turned the pint a quarter turn. "And I'll tell you what I'm not doing. I'm not standing off her for ten minutes waiting for her to run out. Everybody watching that would know what I'd done. I'd know. You don't beat Bríd Ó'Súilleabháin by beating a clock. You'd have won the match and not the fight, and I'd have to live in this town after." She put the phone face down and did not pick it up again either. ———————————————— The third was at 2:41. This was the crew's single permitted question, agreed in advance. We asked whether she wants the championship back. She took a while over it. Longer than the Voss question last time. "That's the bit I've been chewing. I thought I'd want it back the second it was gone. Everyone tells you that's how it goes — you don't know what you had till it's off you, all that. And it wasn't like that. I got home and it wasn't on the table and I didn't think about it for four days." She said the next part looking at the empty stretch of bar rather than at us. "So no, I don't think I'm going out there Saturday to get a belt back. I think I'm going out there because they've put Bríd in front of me, and I've never once in my life had somebody put in front of me and gone, aye, no thanks. That's not a philosophy. That's just what I am." We asked no follow-up, per the terms. "If the belt's what's on the other side of her, then that's what's on the other side of her. I'll deal with the belt when it's the thing in the road. She's the thing in the road." ———————————————— The fourth exchange was at 2:53, as the camera was being packed down, and it began with her grandmother, who had said nothing since the barrel. Still facing the fridges: "That Irish one's older than you." Ms. Drummond said: "Aye." Her grandmother said: "Doesn't mean she's slower." Ms. Drummond looked at her for a moment. The newspaper reader turned a page. The radio kept going. Ms. Drummond said: "No. It doesn't." Her grandmother nodded once, went back to the fridges, and did not raise the subject again. As far as we observed she has never in her life watched a wrestling match. ———————————————— What we observed, in summary, is the following. A former champion of this federation prepared for the most consequential match of her year by sitting at her grandmother's bar during the quiet hour, watching approximately four minutes of footage on a phone, drinking most of a pint, and changing a barrel. She did not train during the observed hour. She did not describe a strategy, and explicitly ruled out the only one available to her, on grounds that were not tactical. She was asked whether she wants the championship back and said, in effect, that she has not decided and does not consider it urgent, and that the woman standing between her and it is the more interesting object. The A4 sheet stayed on the bar, face down, for the second half of the visit. She left it there when we left. The bar top to her left remained empty for the full hour. Nobody in the room mentioned it. It is possible that nobody in the room noticed, and it is possible that this crew was the only party present for whom it was a subject at all. The pub went back to being a pub. That is all. ———————————————— End of submission. Filed by Allison Crawford STRIFE Media Documentary Services on behalf of Lacey Drummond