"So here lad, will I get a number off him or what's the craic?"
"Jays, ye needn't be asking them boys for a mobile number, sure they were lookin' into the microwave for years thinkin' it was a television..."
This is what drifts across the forecourt of a petrol station close to home and is indeed typical of exchanges in petrol stations the length and breadth of Northern Ireland. For the more we have our differences the more we stay the same.
I thought we'd do a little montage of home as I'm soon to be leaving it behind, not forever and ever amen like the emigrants of old, but it has just about sunk in that life, barring accidents and emergencies, will now be across the water. I'm sure someone relatively famous once had the right of it when they said "Ireland's greatest export is its people."
The land in question has been drenched in glorious sunshine for the past couple of weeks which is most unseasonal. People are now becoming suspicious and long for the good old days of not having a clue what the weather was going to do next. There's talk of droughts. In Ireland. Madness.
To grab the bull by the horns we begin with acknowledging that home is a place with a troubled history and it's only now, with experience of England, Spain, France and a weekend in Germany that I'm able to see just how much damage that past has done, and not just in the cost of queuing up police Landrovers to hold back the seething mass of rioters that is the Ardoyne interface come marching season or scrubbing paint and worse from Orange halls and churches. There's a huge political, social and financial gap that will take time to close. Rends in communities that only time and fading of memory will heal.
I don't mean forget, for if we forgot how could we learn? But talking to my mother about the times that there were and the fear and the tit-for-tat and bloodshed that was part of life and living back in those days makes you realise that though we moan about "the stop-and-start of the peace process" NI has never had it so good. It's getting better. But what happened was so terrible that we need to dull the memory, because if we remembered every atrocity in glorious Technicolor I'm not sure anyone could ever forget nor forgive.
But enough of that, NI is full of lovely things and lovely people and lovely idiosyncrasies. And I shall share a few that I shall sorely miss.
Did you know that we technically have three official languages. They're all in the post title; English, Gaelic and Ulster Scots. English is fine, we all speak English. Not identifiably mind you, and a few of us should come with subtitle options, but it's definitely the unifier.
But Ulster Scots and Gaelic? Well, each to his own, and I mean that because every sodding things that's in the public domain has to be translated into each to appease each side. We'll start with Ulster Scots I went to an online translator to be sure I had the "Norlin Airlan" part right. It was called "Scots Online; Pittin the Mither Tongue on the Wab."
Now, far be it from me to offend anyone and may I just make clear that I love linguistic diversity, I love "Kist o' Words" on BBC Radio Ulster, I love the accents giving life to the "mither tongue" from mellifluous DerryLondonDerry to the Antrim coast's glottal-stop-fest. It's a lovely dialect.
It is not a f**king language.
Did anyone have any great difficulty reading Trainspotting? Aye (or in English, yes) it was Irvine Welsh's first novel before Danny Boyle got his hands on the film rights. But the point is it is all written in phonetically accurate Edinburghian. Or Ulster Scots. I would joke here that a more accurate name would be Ulster Sots because it does sound like an eighty-five year old called Jackie is halfway through his fifth shandy sitting down by the fire in a pub in the glens of Antrim lamenting "them there daysh when ye coulda lit yer smokes wi'out thon EEEE YOU pokin' their noses where their not a wantin'." I shall translate. He wants a cigarette indoors.
Don't get me wrong, the freak out about having everything from Stormont info leaflets to public urinals double signposted in English and Irish is just as sinful. Where in the name of God is that one eejit from the Gaeltacht complaining, "An bhfuil Gaeilge cad agat?" He doesn't exist. Let us stop wasting Executive time and money on the language one-upmanship. Please.
What that whole ramble meant was that I'll miss how we speak and how we phrase what we say. There's a reason for the saying "gift of the gab." Eskimos have a thousand words for snow. Irish have a thousand for hello and how are you? How's the form? How's she cutting? S'craic? Bout ye? Are you well? Favourite chat up line is to follow this with a "cos you're looking well." Classy.
I will miss driving through country roads. The type that you actually can't meet another car on without one of you having to back up three miles to someone's tarmacked front gate. And the type you take at sixty mile an hour. Paradox? Never.
I shall miss Graham's ice cream. God, the only reason I want to become an acclaimed and famous blogger of wit and wisdom is that so one day someone in that wee shop in Rathfriland will see this shout out and make it so that I have free baby cones (vanilla, Graham's own, secret recipe) with chocolate dip for life. You think I'm joking. I am emphatically not.
I shall miss nights out at home. Drinking wine at a friend's house (she knows who she is...) where the tunes be blasting and the night is going so well you never actually make it out. But when you do you go somewhere where Usher and Sean Paul be blasting but every soul in there knows the words to "Rock me Mama like a Wagon Wheel" when it is requested. And the whole country's looking "the court (pronounced "curt") or "the shift." Go and find someone from the province (preferably a good culchie lad, jesus I'll have to explain that too, a good lad from the country) to explain it to you if you're not from round 'ere. It's perfectly innocent, no Sex and the City antics here. But the last time I tried to explain "the court" it was to a middle aged barrister while quite drunk. Me not him. I think he got it in the end...
I'll miss my dog. He's a cutie. Words cannot sufficiently convey the feeling of having a bad day and this wee scruffy collie dog wandering up to you at the end of the day with a sock in his mouth only looking to play. I heard that's how one five year old described love. "When you leave your doggie alone all day but he still wants to play with you when you get home." Cute.
I will miss Tayto. Jesus, but I'll miss Tayto. Maybe there'll be an expat shop for the Irish, hidden in among the "Polanski" and "Taste of African" there'll be an O'Hagan's with Tayto and southern Dairy Milk. A girl can dream.
I will miss the family. Very much so. We're a close bunch of bananas.
But here I am yapping on like I've spent the last five years saving for a one way ticket to Darwin, Australia and don't know when I'll be back. In the words of the Dubliners "those big airplanes go both ways" and I am a Ryanair flight from home at all times. An hour. There and back. Sure it's not like I'm moving to John O'Groats!
There are bigger, brighter things ahead and I'm flying out of the nest with Aer Lingus. Luxury! By gods, what if they can smell the budget airline on me, I'll have to get the Febreeze on the old suitcases...
So next time I'll be typing from London. From a new life. I could be a real writer and socialite! I don't have the legs for it, but the wit I got in spades! I might start narrating everything in my head Carrie Bradshaw style. Become neurotic and hopelessly romantic.
Except no, because you know in that one episode where she puts on her "fuck-me" dress and heads to Big's unannounced, but he's loving watching the big fight alone with popcorn and he's still all like "Come in, come in" and gets her a drink and then she starts pulling the moves (like a baby gazelle learning how to walk but all concentrated in his lap) and he's like "Woah, darling, just a minute, this is the end of the fight" and she throws this huge hissy fit and storms out in her dinky Manolos (which how does she afford?). I never understood that. LET THE MAN WATCH HIS SPORT! Phone rings when I'm halfway through a Mad Men season finale, you better be sick or dead, I shit you not...
Whoops. Carried away. I italicised to be sure you'd get the joke. Maybe a bit like Bradshaw. But more like me. Young professional excited me. I can't wait to get started.
Great expectations, here we come.
xo
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