It’s a Straight Line to the Nearest Irish Pub

When you move about as much as we do there are certain constants that you need to keep in your life to stop you from going round the merry twist – for example, himself always needs a pot of Marmite in the cupboard and I always need access to some of the worst forms of English TV – we’re talking Eastenders preferably, Corrie if not and if we really have to scrape the barrel I’d even put up with repeats of The Two Ronnies…actually I wouldn’t, I’d get my mum to tape Enders and mail it to me, it’s been done before!

Now one of the other things that is essential and actually far easier to predict no matter where in the world you rock up next is that there will be an Irish pub in the vicinity…and this time I think we have just about hit the nail on the head, cracked it and, by jove, got it – a hole in one!  It’s a straight line to the nearest Irish pub from my new house and the barmaid already knows my ‘usual.’

There are certain things you will never be able to put a price on in life and one of those is walking into a pub after a hard days typing away and being set up there and then with your favourite tipple and a smile…and for some unknown reason the barmaid at Finbarrs in Nicosia already knows me, knows himself, knows what we like and even where we like to sit.  My God, it’s not like we go in there every single day…well, no, not really, no, not nearly!

I guess she just has an exceptionally good memory!

The funny thing – read ‘embarrassing’ thing - is that when we were first contemplating upping sticks and relocating we visited the area where we now live in Nicosia and ended up at Finbarrs late one particularly messy Friday night with some unsuitable friends (!) and then the next time we frequented the premises we’d pretty much made the move a permanent thing and there were a good few weeks in between but the frickin barmaid bird remembered us – yes – after just the one previous visit – hell it was a messy Friday night mind you….

And well, here we are – turns out both himself and myself were wearing the self same shirt/top as we had been the previous time!  When we’d sat and mused, puzzled and frowned over how on earth the barmaid could’ve placed us (cos it’s a busy pub) we were then so mortally embarrassed we contemplated walking out never to return.  But you can’t burn off an Irish pub especially when it’s so damn good and even more especially when it’s in a straight line to your house.

So instead we made sure we went home, got changed and came back the next day with completely different clothes on and so it came to pass, he has his Marmite (you can buy anything in Nicosia), I have UK TV thanks to Showtime and we both have our friendly Irish ‘local.’ Suffice to say, we have arrived.