Stereotypes in Potato Land

First advertisement seen: An ad in Shannon airport's toilet for Murphy's stout

First billboard seen: Ad ad for potatoes. No kidding. As per photographic evidence below.

First cringe worthy ad seen on TV: Riverdance the show. REALLY not kidding....

Remember that being, ah hem, "hot" about 12 years ago...? (Even that is somewhat debatable.) I recall that my English teacher in year 10 had a thing for Michael Flatley's arse, and had insisted on playing certain parts of the show in slow mo. What that had to do with English, I don't know. And yes, I'm still somewhat traumatised. Although in defense of the Irish, every time I mentioned this to somebody, (Riverdance, not Michael Flatey's arse,) they seemed to get all embarrassed and would conveniently try to change the subject.)

Name of first guy met: Patrick
Name of second Irish guy met: Patriw
No kidding.

No typo there. And it's not that his handwriting was bad that the "c" and "k" ended up looking like a "w". I know this because his name and signature is in my passport. (Yeah, that's the other strange thing. The local police are involved in immigration.)


Common boys' names: Patrick. And all other variations - Patrix, Patriw, Padrig, Paddy.... (Yeah, they all sound the same when you're drunk anyway.)

Common girls' names: Aileen, Eileen, Ciara, Sinead, Siobhan

And yes. EVERYBODY keeps on asking me whether I have a connection with the Irish.


Local bakeries, real estate agents and photographers are called: Murphy's O'Brien, O'Connor, O'Shea and Twomey.

Typical Irish Products (aside from potatoes)

1. Barry's tea

2. Brennan's bread - "Today's bread today"


Gingers.

According to wikipedia, red heads make up 10% of the population with 46% of the population having the recessive red head gene. I swear that it's more like over 50%. My department is mainly made up of red heads and when I went on my manual handling course, out of the 15, 9 had red hair. I told A. that when he comes over here, he's going to blend into the background and disappear forever. For the boys who aren't technically ginger, they will, as all true blue Irish, grow ginger beards.

I had so many encounters of the "curious red heads" that I almost contemplated writing up an entire blog entry on the very subject. It probably would have gone something like this:

July 10th: Dear diary, went for a run today. Had a red headed man call out saying that he'd come join me tomorrow.

July 11th: Dear diary, took the bus to the city today. Had a man with red hair shift seats so that he could specifically come and talk to me. I wasn't quick enough with my ipod ear phones.

July 14th: Dear diary, started work today. Everybody in my department has red hair. I am contemplating how to surreptitiously take a photo without appearing stalker-ish or insane.

July 16th Dear diary, took the bus to the city today. A red head lady asked me where I bought my shoes from.

July 19th: Dear diary, I was at the petrol station refuelling my car when a "bus" drove up next to me. In the "bus" was a family of red heads - mum, dad and five kids. Obviously Catholic.

July 22nd: Dear diary, I had this little red headed boy stop in the middle of the store to openly stare at me until his mother, who was holding his hand, realised that he was no longer following her and yanked him away, yelling at him for staring. I was also in my car at a set of traffic lights and some guys who were crossing the street actually stopped in the middle of the road to have a good look at me and then when they got to the other side, stood there looking until I started to drive away.

July 31st: Dear diary, I was at my local hardware store when a little girl came up to me and asked, "Hi, what's your name?" obviously thinking I was some strange new pet. Her mother got all embarrassed, hushed her and dragged her away.

I asked one of my red headed colleagues whether the ginger kids get picked on at school over here, and the answer is obviously no.

It's obviously the brunettes.