When Ireland is Hampton Beach, NH

You would think I would tire of talking about the weather but New Englanders and Irish folk are endlessly fascinated by weather and since I am of both worlds, I fekkin' love it. Anyway, maybe global warming is to blame but we've had a spate of warm, sunny weather again. On Tuesday temperatures were the hottest recorded in Ireland since 1887. All the gorgeous beaches finally got some use and the newspapers were full of pictures of splashing kids and hotties in bikinis. lovely.

Went to a wedding up north last weekend that took place in a seaside town and damn, it was almost like a proper hot, New England, summer weekend. The seaside town was, like seaside towns everywhere, a main street morphed over time from quiet, sleepy, village, overlooked by mountains and on top of the sea, choc-o-bloc, with kids eating soft serve icecream and begging their parents for change to play the penny arcade. There was the local hardware store selling inflatable dinosaur water-wings and family-run hotels and little greasy spoon diners for your fried breakfast. Despite how diverse the world really is, it's comforting to know that from Wolfsborough, NH to Newcastle, Northern Ireland, little kids get icecream all over their faces and play ski-ball and run around on the beach while their parents nurse their hangovers with a platefull o' grease...nothing like eggy goodness with toast and coffee to help recover from a late night. The more things change...

Well, paint me brown and call me spud

I have truly become accustomed to my surroundings so it would seem. I am no longer reomotely surprised or disappointed by the weather here (last summer was a shock I tell ya) and have learned to expect to wear "trousers" and carry a jumper all year round. But that's not all. I have flipped, joined the darkside and embraced the world of the fake tan.

The last time I used fake tan I was about twelve years old and had already turned my hair a horrifying shade of orange with sun-in. (Don't tell me you don't remember sun in. Every pre-teen girl was walking around with brassy orange hair that year pretending to be a California blond...) Apparently orange hair was not enough for me that year, I needed orange skin to match so I bought myself a bottle of fake tan and smeared copious amounts of it all over my pre-teen self. I, of course, didn't know to wash my hands after applying and my hands and feet turned an even brighter shade of pumpkin orange than the rest of my body which more closely resembled a bengal tiger with uneven stripes. Never again I told myself. At a time when I thought Bic perfume (pronounced Beec in a french accent and shaped like a Bic lighter) and strawberry lipgloss were the height of sophistication, even I knew that the fake tan was a disaster.

Either fake tan has come a long way or I've become a lot better at exfoliating and applying various creams and lotions... cuz I'm in love. I found this moisturizer with just a bit of fake tan in it and I'm using it to top up my real tan (and yes, I do have a real tan. It might not be hot here but the sun still shines from time to time. ;) ) I'm a brown goddess... Oh joy for small pleasures. Just like fiji it is, only colder and rainy and expensive.

Yank Spotting

I had the strangest experience... I am starting to be able to identify Americans on first sight and I have no idea why. I'm not talking about the obvious ones with pot bellys and two cameras around their necks loitering around the Guinness Brewery with shopping bags full of Guinness t-shirts. I was on the DART today (Dublin's commuter train) on my way home from Ringsend where I'm currently working when I spotted two Americans. The train was sitting at the main train station in Dublin while a million sweaty, rumpled commuters tried to get on and off the train at the same time. Amidst the crowd, I noticed a girl, probably around 8 years old and an older woman (presumably her mother) and right away I knew. They weren't particularly overwieght or overwrought with technology or decked out in Old Navy gear or reading a Dublin map so I honestly have no idea how I knew. The woman was pale and freckly with ginger hair and an Irish looking sunburn and the little girl was skinny and tan with light, sunbleached hair and brown eyes. There was nothing about them that obviously said that they were yanks and I was preparing myself to be wrong. Onto the train they tumbled with the disgruntled office workers of Dublin and sat right across from me. I waited for them to speak (sad the things you find to amuse yourself while commuting) and out came a little American girl accent and an American Mom (not a mum or a mam.) Spot on.

At this point, I get kind of a cozy feeling when I encounter Americans here - I mean your average, everyday Americans, the kind of people you'd see on the street everyday in any American city just going about their day. Sometimes someone will pass by me on the street and I get the same feeling I got today. I just know they're yanks. Maybe it's an earnestness in their faces or the casual way that they're usually dressed (more for comfort than couiture) or the way they seem to be taking in their surroundings. Was it the gangly kid legs with super white trainers on her feet, the sun kissed hair? Honestly I don't know. People are just starting to look American to me in the same way that you might say someone looks Italian or Jewish or Irish... Given the multi-ethnic nature of Americans, the identifying characteristics are vague but nonetheless there.