Years ago me and my Friend Liana were travelling in India and had a very weird experience. Everywhere we went people wanted to take our photo. We were very curious about this and wondered what on earth they were going to do with a photo of two random white girls. The sceptics might think it was boys or men but we were sitting down at lunch one day and were asked to have a photo with the couple’s daughter. It was a strange experience and we couldn’t make sense of it. We are on school trip photos, family photos and random photos and after two days I started taking photos of the random people that were taking our photos. It came to a peak when we visited the Taj Mahal and had to eventually tell the growing crowd ‘sorry no more photos, we have to go’.
I have been thinking about this recently because I’ve discovered that being a mother of twins in Ireland has attracted a level of attention I had not expected. People aren’t asking to take my photo but nearly everyone that passes us stops to talk to us. Then today I was having a coffee in Ballina and got talking to someone who after a short while I mentioned the age of my daughter and she said ‘I’ve just realised you’re the girl that has the shop in Belmullet’. As one of my friends told me everyone is talking about you. I don’t mind but I think no matter how long I live here I will still not get use to this.
In the UK people might look and comment to each other but they wouldn’t stop and talk to you like they do here. Even the men stop and comment….that definitely wouldn’t happen in England.
There is a warmth and genuine interest that Irish people have in other people. I remember when I was 8 months pregnant being on the phone to sky and saying to the operator ‘I’m 8 months pregnant and really don’t have the time or the energy to be dealing with this’ to which he replied ‘Congratulations when are you due?’ it always stops me in my tracks. I went with Tom and baby girl swimming and the boys were sleeping so I got out the book I was only half way through and trying to finish for book club that night. I felt positively rude, as people came and peered into the pushchair and cooed over my beautiful boys, with my head in a book but it was a rare twenty minutes of peace. So I will accept my new found status as mother of three and just add an extra 10 mins to all my errands.