I SHARE my swimming coach with a lovely Parisian woman. She looks a damn sight finer in her all-in-one, but I’m casting off gracefully the joys of youth, loving my 50s spare tyre a la Michelin and embracing the moment.
We are learning how to breathe and swim crawl at the same time. This is not easy. I can do both things but never simultaneously. Think Fred and Ginger and how she had to do everything backwards in high heels.
It’s the breathing that’s the problem. I’ve put a snorkel at the top of my Christmas list.
The class is a miniature melting pot– she is from France, our teacher is from Australia but his mother hails from Belfast and I’m the local blow-in.
My chic Parisian friend married an Irishman and is settled here. It’s taken a while to get used to Belfast, she jokes.
“When I first came here, I went into the shops and a woman was trying on a coat. ‘What do you think?’ she asked me. I thought she was mad... she was talking to me and she didn’t know me. In Paris strangers don’t talk to each other like that.
“But my husband said I should talk back – that’s how you do it.”
Yes, it’s true, that’s how we do it. As I’ve got older, I find myself telling complete strangers that the coat they have tried on is just gorgeous.
“Buy it,” I’ll say.
Everyone talks to everyone about here. Even the woman sitting at the edge of the road begging for money has her say. Hand her a takeaway coffee and she’ll ask about the sugar to go with it.
I’m finding that with age, inhibition is slipping away. And it reminds of my Aunt Eileen, she of the pillar box red lipstick, who has just turned 93 and never was inhibited in her life.
She took all six of us to Woolworths pushing the big brute of a pram and lost one of us. Even now I’m wondering how she broke the news to our father.
“John I’ve lost young John,” she must have said.
Young John turned up at the police station eventually. He told the officers he was John Patrick, so they set off on a false trail.
My Aunt Eileen never took people seriously. She would waltz into a fancy shop, point to a pricey coat and inquire of a snooty shop assistant as to how much it cost. When she got the price, she’d laugh raucously and announce to all in the shop: “Wrap up two, why don’t you!”
There were never any airs and graces.
That’s what I love about home, I tell my French swimming friend. People are so friendly. They stop in the street and go out of their way to help tourists. Where else in the world does everybody say thank you to the bus driver as they get off the bus?
I cannot attest to how polite people are after a trip on the new glider route – a friend says seats are at a premium and she has spent too many journeys with her nose jammed into a stranger’s armpit.
“But don’t you feel like you’re on the tube in London or the metro in Paris,” I tell her.
“No,” she sighs.
However, on the 7 bus route, the etiquette is second to none and we all clock the driver with a graceful “Thank you” on exit.
What I love about home too is the smallness of it. We live within five minutes' walk of our best friends.
Now the world has come full circle and we’re back to how we were 30 years ago before the pitter patter of small feet sent us all into a tailspin. The small feet are clodhoppers now and off on their own adventures.
We were round with our empty nester friends on Saturday. They have inherited a dog and the conversation turned to vets. When you bring your pet to the waiting room at the vets, their name is tagged to yours.
So the vet will call: “Chance Lynch, please.”
My brother’s cat was one “Lucky McCann”.
It’s the perfect place for a would-be novelist to sit around and pick up names for characters.
What I love about home is how friendly folk are, where everyone talks to everyone and even the dogs have surnames.
