RID YOUR HOME OF CANADIANS OR YOUR MONEY BACK

I finally managed to oust all of the Canadian contingent of Cork. Clara had been gone for many months, Kim recently also toddled off to meet her, and Ellie – my roommate who taught me all about my ‘horny electricity’ – jetted off to sunny Bilbao to impress her whirlwind canuck-Irish temperance on an unsuspecting basque population. She’s probably one of the more explosive things to pass through that country in recent times.

The taxi-driver rapped on our door promptly at 5 a.m. on the morning of their departure, heard by everyone except Ellie and her fella Javi themselves. Not wanting to barge into her bedroom, I decided to call her by phone. I had to ring her several times, which is no mean feat considering the only way I can get reception is by pressing my face up against the third floor bathroom window or leaving the house entirely and going up to the grotto up the road where the Virgin Mary seems to be a good conduit for talking to more than just God. But she was smiling at me that day, I managed to place a call through to Ellie from our living room - and I gave Mary a thankful nod through the window from where we can see her glow in her neon-blue electric holiness. A few minutes later I heard a shuffle and a panicked ruckus, before they finally spilled out the door of 53 Ballyhooley Road for the last time. She knocked on my door to offer me an appreciative teary goodbye. She got in return a heartfelt pillow-muffled “nynnngg”.

As if clocking in for their Canadian-in-Cork shift, Clara and Kim returned just as Ellie left. It was nice to see them again though, especially Clara who had gone missing for an age and a half. It’s always interesting to hear a foreigner's take on things Irish, the absurdity of things buried in a peat-bog of multiple absudities, where oddities of our land are preserved but forgotten about.
"Your ads on T.V are crazy" Kim said with a poignant eloquence that somehow broke through her beery slurs, "every second one is for some sort of yogurt or something that helps your digestion. All the others are for loans. You guys have to stop spending money on expensive yogurts that help your digestion and then you wouldn't need loans." I was about to argue that Ireland isn't in fact obsessed with it's digestive tract when Clara kindly reminded me of that chat-up line I used on her: "Do you want to come in for a cup of tea? I've got peppermint tea, you know it's very good for your digestion..." More fool her though. The line actually worked.

Now that that double-act have again departed, Cork is more serene place. No longer is there a whiney north-American drawl to razor-blade through the silence, no longer does the beamish-and-dogshit Cork air have to carry the impossibly-loud octave of a people who must all live very far apart from one another 'cause all they seem to do is shout. And do you know what? I'm going to miss it. After spending so long bumping randomly into Canadians - after for so long not really believing it was a real country at all - the silence will be deafening.
Oh well, I've plenty of hillarious accents around me to keep me happy for a while. I do live in Cork after all.