“You might think about travelling a bit lighter, like.” This unsolicited feedback clips me over the ear like a halfhearted rebuke as I struggle off the Shannon Airport bus with an enormous suitcase. It’s not an elegant struggle. It’s the sort involving unsettling grunting sounds and the sense that someone is unwisely attempting to lift something which may take them with it when it inevitably hurtles to the floor.
The advice – which I don’t really want but then I’ve always observed that this rarely matters to people who like offering it – is delivered in the breathy tone of the first native Limerick accent I’ve heard in 18 months. It contains the precise medley of good humour and disapproval that was a familiar feature growing up in my hometown.
The man passing comment has come forward to help me with my stupidly enormous suitcase, which is very good of him, and to vocally judge my packing, which is less so. He doesn’t know where I’ve come from, how long I’m staying, or what is in the suitcase. It could be full of defibrillators en route to a local heart clinic or puppies just saved from a blazing house.
When returning from Australia, a proper Limerick woman, presumably, would struggle off the airport bus not with a heavy suitcase... but a large wooden cross suspended upon her back
In fact, the suitcase mostly contained 16 kilos of socks (I worry about running out) and Australian Cadbury Caramel Koalas for my niece and nephew. I take my role as their aunt seriously, and intend to expose them to the native cuisines of other cultures.
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“Grand so,” I reply, puce and breathless, with a mix of gratitude and wild resentment as I struggle off the bus. “I’ll be sure to stick to a carry-on next time I come home from Australia for five weeks.”
The man laughs as though we’re old friends, one of whom overpacks unnecessarily and is prone to bouts of affable idiocy. I cannot shake a sense of irritation that my feet haven’t yet even touched Limerick soil and I’m being “Limericked”.
This happens a lot in Limerick. It’s a feature of Irishness, but like every other part of the country (except Foxrock and Monkstown in Dublin, where notions are tolerated and even encouraged), Limerick has its regional flavour of observing that you’re making a spectacle of yourself if you render yourself too visible (even if that visibility is a function of wrestling with a large suitcase on wheels on the airport bus). This Limericking (by which I mean being judged and told – if jocundly – to amend your behaviour) is a record. I’m generally home at least a couple of days before someone makes a comment policing my insufficient levels of Limerickness (a grown woman once hung out the back window of a moving car in order to point out that my notions Rains backpack was in fact notions. That is commitment to giving someone a good Limericking).
When returning from Australia, a proper Limerick woman, presumably, would struggle off the airport bus not with a heavy suitcase full of items she may need to live and novelty T-shirts for the children, but a large wooden cross suspended upon her back.
It’s been a strange trip home.
Three flights and 30 hours to get to Heathrow Airport went pretty well considering the concerning flatulence of the man seated beside me for both flights two and three. That’s my fault for choosing the direct flight from Sydney to Singapore’s Changi airport where, after announcing that possession of cannabis will (not can) result in the death penalty, the flight attendants turf you off the plane after seven hours to fumigate it (I hope) before herding you all back on for another 14 hours to London. London is a place where they won’t kill you no matter how much cannabis you have, or are selling, but where you may go to social prison for not realising that fitted jeans are very “last year”.
Despite this, I made it back intact. Even the jet lag wasn’t too bad.
I feel like Muhammad Ali being squared up to in a bar by a weedy little gin-drunk man. I am, I think, overqualified for this last, short flight home. But I forgot. I forgot how Ryanair works.
The way they funnel you into overheated waiting areas because the plane isn’t here yet and they might have lost it altogether. How nobody makes eye contact with you. How when you get on the plane, it is as though somebody is deliberately turning up the temperature to harvest your sweat in case it has resale value. The first flight on my journey home was from Canberra to Sydney on a small but comfortable plane. It takes about 40 minutes and they give you tea and a little cake as all decent airlines should, to keep you passive and give you something constructive to do with your face until you hit land again.
Nobody kicks you up the arse to get you to board faster. The flight attendants don’t give you the withering stare of a competitive, overzealous father watching his knock-kneed child fall over and come last in the sports day egg and spoon race.
It’s a joy to be home, but sometimes I wish Ireland would just let you love it without all the complexity. I drag my suitcases home over pavements I’ve traversed a million times, hunching into my too-thin cream denim jacket as the early autumn sun descends.
“Nice jacket, Dolly Parton,” comes a shout from a passing car.
I drop the suitcase handle in exasperation – “Oh, for f%@k’s sake!”
