“Screech like a banshee and hope for the best”
Never Kiss a Man in a Christmas Jumper“Screech like a banshee and hope for the best” is Maggie O’Donnell’s comic motto for life, and the phrase becomes sharply literal when she meets another bicycle on a snowy High Street passage. Its movement from self-deprecating joke to instinctive cry captures the collision between Maggie’s wry account of herself and a moment she cannot control.
Meaning and Use
Maggie thinks of “screech like a banshee and hope for the best” as a motto that might belong on a T-shirt. The imagined slogan makes a joke of responding to uncertainty with noise and hope rather than a plan. It is also a piece of self-characterization: Maggie recognizes this reactive style as familiar enough to sum up her life.
The Phrase in Action
The saying acquires immediate physical force when Maggie sees another bicycle coming toward her at what seems an impossible speed. With too little time to avoid the impact, both riders try to swerve, but their attempt comes too late. Maggie’s cry is no longer a proposed slogan; it is her response as the collision begins.
She is thrown from her bicycle, which freewheels into wrought-iron railings and crumples against them. Maggie lands on frost and slush, and her helmet bounces on the ground hard enough to leave her temporarily cross-eyed. The sequence turns the phrase’s comic promise of hoping for the best into an ironic description of how little hope can alter events once danger is already upon her.
