IN EIRE
I’d hitched across England and Wales to Southern Ireland. Eire in those pre-EU days was one of the poorest nations in Western Europe, made up of a hospitable and talkative people. I was given lifts by farmers driving their pigs to market and beckoned in by mothers taking carloads of kids to school. A very drunken man on his way home from an afternoon’s drinking stopped his car for me and complained as we swerved along on our way about the impossibly high car insurance premiums in Eire. ‘They say it is due,’ he told me, ‘to the high number of motor accidents that occur, inexplicably, on our quiet, rural roads. I can’t understand it.’
On my way home, leaving the charmless industrial town of Limerick one drizzly day, I walked backwards with a raised thumb for miles along the Dublin road. Desperate for a lift, as a motorist advanced towards me I fell to my knees and held up my hands in prayer. The car stopped.
The driver of the car was an Englishwoman in her thirties. A toddler was strapped into a child’s seat. I asked the woman what she was doing in Ireland and she told me the following story:
“I originally came to live in Ireland with a man from County Clare I’d met in London, where I’d been working. I’d fallen for his charm and the blarney and he persuaded me to come back with him in Ireland. But our love fell apart, as so many couples’ love does, and eventually I left him. We hadn’t been together long enough to talk babies. I think I was afraid of settling down and so was he.
“I got my own flat in Limerick City and a receptionist job at the Bauxite factory down on the Shannon Estuary. It was undemanding work, an undemanding life really. But the constant rain got me down and I didn’t feel at home among the Irish, however pleasant and undemanding they may be. I missed home.
“My dad’s an engineer and at that time he and my mum lived in Zaire, in Africa where he was working on water projects. I saved money, packed in the job and the flat and flew out to stay with them. I wanted sun and a total change of atmosphere and to be among people who knew me well and loved me. I’d thought I’d stay in Africa six months or so, relax a bit, sort out some kind of long-term career plan, then go back to the UK.
“A week after I arrived I met a metallurgist, Paul. We fell in love, got married and ended up staying in Zaire seven years. Last year Paul got offered a job with perks we couldn’t refuse, at the Bauxite factory back here on the Shannon Estuary. I’m very pleased to be back. And it felt like coming home. This feels like home.
“The Bauxite factory, Limerick, Ireland: they’re the same as when I left seven years ago, they’ve hardly changed at all. It’s not about place, or work, or the people around you. Do you see what I mean?”
The ferry from Dublin docked in Holyhead after midnight and I was one of the last foot passengers shooed out into the cold dread night. It was too late to hitch and I couldn’t face unpacking my tent so I found a roundabout outside town and lay on the springy turf to snooze until dawn. It started to rain. I found shelter under a boat at the yacht club and early the next morning walked back to the road and stuck out my thumb.
I dozed through most of the lifts that day. Along the coast roads of south-west Ireland my path kept crossing with that of a fellow hitcher called James, a New Yorker. We ended up lift-sharing – the one already moving along in a vehicle getting his ‘driver’ to stop for the other if seen standing on the side of the road ahead. James kept falling asleep in the vehicles that picked him up also. ‘Moving hotels,’ he’d called them.
After catnapping through most of Wales I awoke in late afternoon close to Llanymynech. I got the driver to drop me off and after a short walk came to the driveway of a modest Georgian country house. A sign on the gate stated members of the Caravan Club were welcomed. An ideal excuse for an introduction presented itself to my mind. I walked up the driveway. A grey-haired man of about sixty was weeding a flowerbed.
‘Hello,’ I said.
On my way home, leaving the charmless industrial town of Limerick one drizzly day, I walked backwards with a raised thumb for miles along the Dublin road. Desperate for a lift, as a motorist advanced towards me I fell to my knees and held up my hands in prayer. The car stopped.
The driver of the car was an Englishwoman in her thirties. A toddler was strapped into a child’s seat. I asked the woman what she was doing in Ireland and she told me the following story:
“I originally came to live in Ireland with a man from County Clare I’d met in London, where I’d been working. I’d fallen for his charm and the blarney and he persuaded me to come back with him in Ireland. But our love fell apart, as so many couples’ love does, and eventually I left him. We hadn’t been together long enough to talk babies. I think I was afraid of settling down and so was he.
“I got my own flat in Limerick City and a receptionist job at the Bauxite factory down on the Shannon Estuary. It was undemanding work, an undemanding life really. But the constant rain got me down and I didn’t feel at home among the Irish, however pleasant and undemanding they may be. I missed home.
“My dad’s an engineer and at that time he and my mum lived in Zaire, in Africa where he was working on water projects. I saved money, packed in the job and the flat and flew out to stay with them. I wanted sun and a total change of atmosphere and to be among people who knew me well and loved me. I’d thought I’d stay in Africa six months or so, relax a bit, sort out some kind of long-term career plan, then go back to the UK.
“A week after I arrived I met a metallurgist, Paul. We fell in love, got married and ended up staying in Zaire seven years. Last year Paul got offered a job with perks we couldn’t refuse, at the Bauxite factory back here on the Shannon Estuary. I’m very pleased to be back. And it felt like coming home. This feels like home.
“The Bauxite factory, Limerick, Ireland: they’re the same as when I left seven years ago, they’ve hardly changed at all. It’s not about place, or work, or the people around you. Do you see what I mean?”
The ferry from Dublin docked in Holyhead after midnight and I was one of the last foot passengers shooed out into the cold dread night. It was too late to hitch and I couldn’t face unpacking my tent so I found a roundabout outside town and lay on the springy turf to snooze until dawn. It started to rain. I found shelter under a boat at the yacht club and early the next morning walked back to the road and stuck out my thumb.
I dozed through most of the lifts that day. Along the coast roads of south-west Ireland my path kept crossing with that of a fellow hitcher called James, a New Yorker. We ended up lift-sharing – the one already moving along in a vehicle getting his ‘driver’ to stop for the other if seen standing on the side of the road ahead. James kept falling asleep in the vehicles that picked him up also. ‘Moving hotels,’ he’d called them.
After catnapping through most of Wales I awoke in late afternoon close to Llanymynech. I got the driver to drop me off and after a short walk came to the driveway of a modest Georgian country house. A sign on the gate stated members of the Caravan Club were welcomed. An ideal excuse for an introduction presented itself to my mind. I walked up the driveway. A grey-haired man of about sixty was weeding a flowerbed.
‘Hello,’ I said.