Michael Harding: It was strange to be back in the hotel room where I had my heart attack

I was naked except for the hotel dressing gown as I stood at the window in Blanchardstown, looking down on the traffic and all the little humans rushing about the car parks with trolleys of food, cheap clothes and electronic gadgets. Everyone looked tiny because I was on the 6th floor of the hotel and I presume nobody down there could have been disturbed by my indiscreet attire.

It was a deluxe room with a king-size bed even though I had nobody to roll around with all night. But what made it special was that I slept in that same room in 2018, the night before my heart attack.

It happened at 9am. I phoned the emergency services as my chest began to burst and the cardiac team arrived at reception 10 minutes later and said they needed to access my room quickly. But I hadn’t informed reception of the unfolding drama so reception phoned my room to check.

“Excuse me sir,” an officious voice inquired, “but did you order an ambulance?”

Michael Harding: The Camino only makes sense when it’s over

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Michael Harding: The magpies and I could both do with shedding a bit of weight

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The view from Fanad Lighthouse fills us with a sense of our own mortality

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Michael Harding: A funeral reminds me of the sweetness of silence, when conversation was more than just chatter

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I wanted to say, “No, I ordered scrambled eggs” but I held my tongue.

[ Michael Harding: ‘My indigestion turned out to be a heart attack’ ]

It was a strange feeling to be standing at the same window, looking down on the same car park and shopping centre and the facades of Harvey Norman and TK Maxx five years later.

I have felt gratitude every single day since, for that ambulance team which reached me so swiftly and saved me from the abyss, so that I could continue writing columns and enjoying swanky hotels when I’m on the road with a book tour.

That understated confession conjured up an extended silence, and she looked at me as if she had an unwritten novel weighing her down.

Although it’s not just hotels that I enjoy when I’m on the road. I love filling stations, coffee shops, libraries, and cafeterias in various department stores. And I love walking through urban landscapes; the pretty town squares and street markets, the gentrified docklands, the endless wasteland of empty parking spaces, and of course the malls that reverberate with the music of urban spiritual desolation.

In the hills above Lough Allen I walk in the company of God, sheep, goats or the occasional horse. The shopping malls are a far cry from that serenity but there’s only so much conversation you can have with either sheep or God.

That’s why public spaces in towns delight me. They are godless and pulsate with the anxieties of human life, and everyone is a storyteller.

I was enjoying a coffee in the hotel foyer when a woman recognised me. She approached uttering the words: “My mother loved your father.”

It was in Cavan as a young man that I cultivated a relish for conversation.

I was nervous she might be about to reveal some secret affair but she just wanted to say that she remembered him coming to their house when she was a child.

“Your father and my father would fall about the place laughing; which my mother loved because my own father didn’t laugh very often.”

That understated confession conjured up an extended silence, and she looked at me as if she had an unwritten novel weighing her down.

[ Michael Harding: After my heart attack I needed more exercise so I went to Aldi ]

It was in Cavan as a young man that I cultivated a relish for conversation.

I was a member of a distinguished drama group called the Hacklers and we drank regularly in Blessings Bar on Main Street. One of our company enjoyed conversation so much that he would regularly bi-locate; making appearances in separate pubs at the same time.

If we were in Blessings snug, he might order a pint, and halfway through, he’d slip over to the hotel across the road to see who was there. And maybe a conversation would arise in the hotel while the pint in the first pub was going flat.

Then he might excuse himself from the hotel saying he needed to check something and rush back to us in the bar, pick up the conversation and the flat pint for 15 minutes, before excusing himself once again on the foot of needing to check something else.

When I was checking out of the hotel the receptionist asked if I had enjoyed my stay.

“Oh yes,” I said sincerely, “isn’t it great to be alive!”

I manoeuvred my car out of the underground car park and set the satnav for Kilkenny. Another town of ancient streets and coffee shops, public benches for watching life go by, and a theatre for storytelling.

Sometimes people say it must be lonely being a writer locked away from the world all your life. I assure them that there’s more to writing than sitting in a lonely shed: I write with my ears.