An Irish ruin

I spent last weekend in Limerick. As I boarded the plane from Bristol to Shannon, I had a clear idea of what to expect. Ireland is the Emerald Isle, right? It’s a country of green fields, leprechauns and rainbows, Guinness and people who enjoy a good craic, right?

Well, the last bit was true.

The friend I was off to visit was Norwegian lass I met at university, and had only seen once since those days. I wasn’t concerned about that though – A is the type of girl people gravitate towards, and I knew we’d get on as famously as ever.

And she hadn’t changed a bit, apart from gaining a slightly disconcerting Irish lilt to her Scandinavian accent, and a few letters after her name.

Now mostly through a PhD on European Politics, A now teaches seminars rather than taking them, giving our sessions of reminiscing about our student life together a new twist.

As A puts it, she’s currently testing her boundaries, trying to see just how eccentric she can be before her students call her up on it.

So far no one has commented when she’s done impressions of Tony Benn, Basil Fawlty or the cast of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. This week she’s contemplating wearing bunny ears to work. She sounds like my favourite kind of lecturer.

We re-lived the student lifestyle to the full, including two nights out on the lash in Limerick City, also known, delightfully, as Stab City. We danced in clubs to the same cheesy hits we loved at Uni (Blues Brothers, Footloose, YMCA, Brian Adams and Bon Jovi!) until I felt we were in a time warp (probably the only song that didn’t come up).

But to show how much we’ve grown up, we also went for a meander in the woods and came across the gorgeous old ruin pictured above, and A cooked Pad Thai for dinner – a grand improvement on the pot noodles and ginger biscuits we used to survive on.

It reminded me that however much time marches on, part of me will always be that 19-year-old girl living in halls of residence, daydreaming about what her life will become. Not a bad way to while away the days.

Personally I hope that part of me lives for ever, even while the rest of me frets about tiresome adult concerns such as rent, bills and cholesterol levels. And part of me will always crave ginger biscuits.