In Letterkenny
The hatch opened. I grabbed my dusty backpack from the coach, strapped it on and looked around. I was in Letterkenny, a dot on the North of Ireland map, close to the border.
On a two month break in between jobs I told myself I was going to travel Ireland, meet Irish people, talk and write stories.
One piece of advice if you ever feel the same way, don't try and do this by busing around the country during the high season. You'll find yourself chatting away with Australians, hooking up with South Africans, fleeing Germans, dodging Italians and sharing meals with the French. But you'll be hard pressed to find an actual living, breathing Irish person.
That was one mistake I made. The other was not reckoning with my paralysing shyness. It didn't take me long to realise 'writing' people's stories wasn't going to happen. All I managed to scribble down were self pitying poems of debilitating loneliness.
I had found myself on Achill Island, stuck in a hostel, surrounded by woolly socked sandal wearing Germans with a copy of Boll's 'Irisches Tagebuch' in their immaculate backpacks. Achill, home of OAP's (all the young folk have emigrated), is barren and windy and I tried in vain for hours to get off the island, unsuccesful in securing a lift. My writing that evening mentioned throwing myself off the island's cliffs, keening 'as Gaeilge': sin e a la, ar thainig an bhrón.... I was truly pathetic.
It seemed I could not find a groove anywhere and I realised all I was doing was running away from every town I arrived in. Running away from me. I ran from Achill. I ran from Sligo. I was scared and ran from a dorm room full of drunken, puking, smelly male backpackers in Clifden at 6 in the morning and booked into a B&B. I ran from the quays in Kenmare where an crusty old man tried to chat me up. And I ended up in Letterkenny and went looking for a place to stay.
I found the Back House hostel.
The Back House hostel looked like your granny's mouldy ould flat. The front door was open so I went in and looked for a proprietor. I found the living room, where a handful of people were seated in front of the fireplace. Newspapers were strewn across the floor, people looked tired, sipping tea.
'Hey,' I said.
'Hey,' they said.
'I'm looking for a room. Anybody around to help me?'
'Oh, they're not here,' said a girl. 'There's a room and a bed down there. Just grab it.'
I hesitated, but they said it was ok, the proprietor would be round later.
It was sevenish, I was hungry, so I walked down the main road in search for some food. Letterkenny seemed deserted, uneventful, unable to wrestle itself from the 50s. A place to pass through, never to stay in.
I found a neonlighted chipper, got some greasy chips, doused them with vinegar and brought them back to the hostel. Nobody had moved, they were still sitting in front of the fireplace.
I took one of the greenish armchairs, got a mug of tea, and eat my dinner from its brown paper bag.
We got talking.
The handful of guests had all been there weeks. I had a feeling they didn't move from their chairs much, didn't venture outside of the hostel. They had their own little thing going and were living their own personal Hotel California: 'you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave'.
Some of them were English, some Irish and one was a Canadian man with unkempt hair. There was nothing on the rickety telly, so we all told each other our shortened and carefully edited life stories. No proprietor showed up.
The clock was ticking away, it got later and later, and more cups of tea were consumed. They started telling ghost stories, of which I had none and being a levelheaded Dutch woman, I really didn't believe in any of that nonsense anyway.
'You know,' said the Canadian, sniffing his nose, 'there are magazines dedicated to serial killers?'
'You're joking, I said. I didn't like him much, a shifty feller with a lazy eye. I didn't like his big blue aran sweater, fuzzy with wear.
'I'm serious, there are magazine dedicated to American serial killers, you know, Son of Sam? I used to read them,' he said, and left a pregnant pause, 'regularly.'
He gave me the shivers. When he went into details about various serial killers' lives, I thought it time to go to bed.
My tea was cold, anyway. I retired to my room, keeping my backpack close to my bunk. I kept thinking about the Canadian, his magazines, and axe murderers.
Needless to say, I didn't sleep a wink that night. I clutched at my sheets and half expected the Canadian to enter my room.
I skipped breakfast in the morning, packed hurriedly, and ran back to the bus stop, catching a bus back to Donegal.
Deciding I had seen enough of the West, I ran all the way back to Dublin, dumped my backpack with a friend and went straight to the trusted Docker's pub on Sir John Rogerson's Quay for a comforting pint. That would sort me.
It was there I met Saint Brendan. It was there I finally found something to write about. But that is, as they say, an entirely different story.
(And the moral of this story is? Don't go chasing stories. Sit down, relax, they'll come to you._