Luck o' the Irish

“Rolling down the streets in my new town with the lights blinding and my heart played down”

Ireland is supposed to be the friendliest nation in the world and I think that what I have written so far about my experiences of the Irish people can only confirm that the Irish are really nice people. However I have come to realise that there are some people who aren’t as nice as you’d like them to be. I promised to write about the good things and the bad things.

I’m not going to sugar-coat anything so therefore I’ll tell you my very first impression of the young people in Mullingar. Sweats, jumpers, tracksuits etc. These kids look like a bunch of chavs and I don’t mean that in a good way. I find that a lot look really scruffy and to be honest I’m not sure if I would want to meet them out in the street when it is dark. I honestly don’t get scared easily by the appearances of people, but I think some of these kids could send chills down my spine if I was to meet them alone at night. Now when that is out in the open I’d like to say that it’s not every person in Mullingar who looks scruffy, but you always tend to remember the bad things.

Having people telling me that I should remember to lock my bike and at John Daly’s they’ve even told me to bring my bike with me so we can put it out in the back when I’m there. Up until Tuesday I took it a bit loosely because who would want to steal a bike in a town where hardly anyone rides them? I learnt my lesson Tuesday night when I went to watch Champion’s League at John Daly’s. I came into town about 2020 and parked my bike outside of the school, near the cathedral and almost in front of the Garda Station (that is the police station. I have no idea why it’s called Garda over here). When I came back around 2230 my bike had disappeared. Walking up and down the street repeating, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” in my mind I couldn’t do anything other than to see if I could find it. So I walked down to the canal, up to the street, around corners to new streets but with no luck of finding that damn bike. Since it was around 2300 at that time and black outside I decided to take a cab back to The Cottage. The driver (who may I add had a very strong accent. I could hardly understand what he was saying), told me that you wouldn’t want to leave a bike in Mullingar. How the hell am I supposed to go anywhere if I can’t take my bike with me? I still refuse to believe that you can’t leave your bike in town. I got home pretty pissed off. They say luck o’ the Irish, I say fuck off Irish!

I woke up the next morning wondering what the hell to do. I would have to report it to the police in case they found it and also so I could report it to my insurance. I was already thinking about how I would get money to buy a new bike and the only conclusion I could come up with was oatmeal and to see if I could get the money back from my flight ticket back to Denmark for Christmas. Even though I’m getting the ticket as a Christmas present I’d still have to buy one back to Ireland. In the morning J, knocked on my door and asked if I needed anything in town. I told her about my bike and she gave me a ride into Mullingar. She told me where I could look for the bike and that she also thought that I should report it. She also told me that people are poor and don’t have jobs at the moment so they would steal each other’s eyes if they could get away with it. This is where my thoughts about the scruffy chavs are being slightly confirmed. I looked for it for about an hour and then decided that it could be anywhere in the town. I went into Coláiste Mhuire, the school, and the cathedral to see if it was hidden on their grounds and I looked down the canal again to see if I could see anything in the water. I didn’t find my bike in the water, but I sure as hell found a lot of cans and trolleys. To be honest I’ve never seen anything like it.

There's a whole festival down there and it just continues down the canal!

I went to the police station and spoke to a really nice cop. He wrote down the details of my bike and told me that they would keep an eye out for it. He also took me out to see if it had been brought into their custody, but it was nowhere to be seen. I left feeling a bit better about everything, mainly because he had been so nice to me. J gave me a ride back home and we even drove around the town to the poorer places to see if the bike would be there.

Then in the evening when I had got home the cop called me and told me that they had found my bike. A cleaner at Tesco had found it in the parking lot in the morning and he had brought it inside, so it was locked away. He told me to go to Tesco and tell them that they had my bike and I would get it back. He also said that now I knew who he was so if there was anything, I could just call. But as J says they want to make sure that the foreigners are treated nicely. J drove me to Tesco, we got my bike but unfortunately the lock was damaged so I couldn’t unlock it. We put the bike in the trunk and drove back home.

This morning J gave me and my bike a ride into Kenny Bi-cycles and John, the man who works there got the lock off and I got a new lock. So I’m back on rolling! But I’m definitely going to attach my bike to something and take up on the offer at John Daly’s next time I go there. Lesson learnt!

I think I’ve had enough excitement for this week and I actually have a lot of other things to write about, but I’ll save those for my next entry since this one turned out to be quite long. In the heat of the moment I was angry at the Irish people and I was unsure about whether I would actually want to get to know anyone in this town, but as I said it was in the heat of the moment. I like the Irish, but maybe I do have the luck of the Irish.