Fresh fish and gossip, from Korea to Mullingar

I WAS IN an internet cafe during the week, surfing the net, when suddenly I came across Main Street, Cavan, on a live webcam. I sat for ages just staring at it. I felt like a fish gazing at the river I was born in, and longing to go home.

At first I thought the website might be a deception. It might just be a recording, repeated over and over again. So I watched it for a long time, and I couldn’t see any recurring image. Eventually I saw a car coming down the street for the second time, and I thought, “Ah-ha! It’s not live!” But then I realised that the car could have been looking for a parking spot and could have gone round the town twice, because I’ve often done that myself.

I used to do it when I was looking for a spot close to the Post Office on pension day. Sometimes I would stop on double yellow lines while my mother went in for her money. The traffic warden used to frown at me and I’d point at the window of the post office, where my mother stood in the queue, and I’d be thinking, “Go on mother, just skip the queue and hurry up.”

One thing you can’t hurry is a mare in foal, and apparently there’s a stable yard some- where near Mullingar where one mare is six weeks overdue. She fell and injured herself last year and was put in foal in the autumn and was supposed to be due at the end of March. But apparently the dates were mixed up, and so now everyone is holding their breath for an Easter birth. I know this because the girl beside me in the internet cafe was talking about it on Skype to one of her friends in Korea. Her friend headed out to Australia in early March, but so far only got as far as Seoul.

The two girls gossiped across the world as if they were in adjoining rooms.

“There’s lots of markets here,” the girl in Seoul said. “They have all kinds of fish, and some of them are still alive.” Clearly she had a limited knowledge of fish markets; the van in Mullingar on Thursdays sells tuna, salmon, mackerel and whiting; but the fish are usually dead, gutted, and sliced. In Seoul the young traveller had been shocked by the big eyes and open mouths of dying fish flapping around on the stalls.

She said she wanted to rescue the living ones and bring them to her hotel and put them in the bath, but her friend in Mullingar said they might get big in the bath and when she was moving to Australia, she’d have to kill them herself, which wouldn’t be nice. “I suppose that’s true,” said the voice from Seoul.

Then her Mullingar friend told her about the dogs. Someone they know has two fine pedigree bitches. It was the owner’s dream one day to breed from them and recently she decided to get them covered, but learned that because they were sisters and had been reared together, they were not able to have pups.

The girl in Korea was astonished. “Does that mean they’re lesbians?” she wanted to know. The Mullingar girl couldn’t be definite about that. “They just can’t have babies,” she said. “What time is it there?” said the Mullingar girl.

“Five o’clock,” said the Seoul girl.

“What are you doing for the evening?”

“I’m going to walk around the stadium for exercise,” she said, “and then I’ll go to another market again, ’cos they’re always interesting, and I’ll go into the city on a train later. What time is it in Mullingar?”

“10 in the morning,” the Mullingar girl said.

“And what are you doing?”

“I’m heading for the library,” she said, “to do a bit of study for the Leaving.”

“I’ll Skype you later in the week,” the voice from Seoul said.

“Yeah,” said Mullingar, “do that. Miss you.” “Miss you too,” said the voice from Seoul, and the screen went blank and the Mullingar girl switched off the computer, left the shop, and headed off down the street, her emotions hidden by sunglasses. But no one could tell how the girl in Korea hides her emotions, or her love for Ireland, and all the fields and horses, the dogs and foxes, and her parents and brothers and sisters, when she’s mooching around in the late evening in Seoul, looking into the eyes of dying fish.