Hi everyone, I hope you all had a good Christmas break! I had this great plan to translate and write new posts over the holidays, but my laziness thwarted that idea. Luckily, it’s January now, the month during which everyone tries to be a little better! Here’s a new translation from the archives, originally written on July 8th, 2017 (see the Dutch version here). Yes, that’s almost a year after the last post – life caught up on me and I completely forgot to write all my ‘adventures’ down. By July 2017, however, I had settled down a bit more, found a new place and job, and made some new friends – in short, I was in a good place, and that prompted an outburst of creativity on my blog. I wrote six posts during that month, so hold on tight! (NB: Not all posts are ‘translatable’, I found, so I won’t have to bombard you with nonsense too much.)

It’s a disgrace. I’ve neglected this blog for months and months, as per usual whenever I try to write regularly. Of course, I could come up with all kinds of excuses, such as I didn’t have any inspiration (false – I’ve repeatedly thought ‘This would be a great subject for a blog post!’ over the last few months), I didn’t have time (also false – I had loads of time in January, when I was sat at home without a job, and I’m often doing fuck all during weekends and evenings), or I didn’t feel like it (partially true – but I rarely feel like doing anything, and the only way to remedy that is just to pull myself together and do it anyway), but the simple truth is this: I am a lazy bitch. God, saying that felt really liberating. Hi, I’m Fem (Hi Fem!) and I’m a lazy bitch.

Anyway, I gave myself a kick up the arse, sat down behind my laptop, and set up a schedule. After all, I’m always yapping on about how I love to write, so I feel like I have to put my money where my mouth is. All that endless, useless scribbling in hundreds of notebooks should lead to something productive at some point, right?…I mean, up to now, it only led to my room being filled with clutter, and me not being able to reach my door without stepping onto some of my written-down thoughts carelessly strewn about. Maybe that’s the reason it always takes me ages to get out of bed, not to mention out of the house.

My idea is to write two or three posts a week now – I’ll post on set days, will try to keep it a bit shorter than usual, and will try to break it up into different themes and categories.* How ambitious of me! Every Sunday, I’ll write ‘A Dublin Update’ (Dubdate?), in which I will tell you about my adventures and mishaps in the fair city. Wednesdays are for Lists, cause I love making lists and would like to acquaint you with that particular passion of mine. On Fridays, I will tell you something fun or odd about Ireland. I will try to write ‘ahead’ as much as I can, in case life catches up with me again, or I’m incapacitated because of a hangover or a seized-up upper back (more about the latter in a later post).

First of all, I’d like to tell you what has happened to me over the last 9 months or so.

-After I quit my archaeology job in Mayo, I went back to the cafe, and although I met a great many cool people there, I now know: never again. I won’t be able to get into detail too much, as some of you know where my workplace is located and what it’s called, but I will tell you this: if you think your boss is a psycho, you’ve clearly never met the guy who runs the cafe-that-must-not-be-named. Have you ever been accused of turning off the lights at your workplace for 5 seconds, just so you could quickly wolf down a piece of cake without anyone noticing? Has someone ever held daily meetings with you to discuss what they saw on CCTV? (Probably illegal, by the way.) Has someone ever tried to fire you because they said you deliberately left bags of lettuce everywhere where they weren’t supposed to be? Or because you didn’t dust the antique record player in the window daily, even though that wasn’t your task? Or wait, did someone ever tell you you were scaring the customers away because you broke your leg and it was in a cast, and your ‘hobbling around’ made people uncomfortable? Or accused you of faking a migraine because you didn’t want to work? Well, these are just a few scenarios me and my colleagues had to deal with all the time, and I’m not even telling you the worst bits, as I’m still afraid I will have some gangsters sent after me if I do. Thankfully, my colleagues and I were all of the same mind – i.e. completely fed up with it all -, and we decided to collectively quit, being the nasty women that we are. We celebrated our newfound freedom with a Christmassy cheese-fondue at my place. Every time I’m cycling past that cafe, I feel a strong urge to shout: “So long, suckers, I will never come back!”

-After this dramatic exit, and after I visited the homeland for Christmas, I was unemployed for a month. It was HELL. You know, I’m used to being poor and all – I mean, I was a student not too long ago – but I usually still had that certainty of money coming in every few weeks or every month. Back during uni life, most people around me were just as poor as I was, and if I was completely broke, I would just go to my parents and drain them of their food for a few days. Now, there was none of that. I had to manage my own shit. I’d just spent three weeks abroad, during the most expensive time of the year, and had come back to a dark and dreary Ireland with almost no money in my bank account. January is the worst month of the year at any rate, and it’s just that tiny bit worse when you have to sit it out in Ireland. It’s like you’re leaving near the North Pole: it’s freezing, and the sky never really gets bright. I felt homesick, I was on my own in a huge apartment, and I had no idea what to do with myself. I had to live on 2 euro a day, and didn’t even have money for public transport. I tried to get on welfare, and went to the dole office, where I was surrounded by single mothers, guys in tracksuits, drug addicts and old people (a sad insight into the state Ireland is in right now). One positive point is that I got to know the city much better: to make sure I’d get out of bed at a decent hour every day, I planned little (free) trips for myself, and would take walks around town or hikes in the mountains, or go to museums that didn’t charge an entrance fee. Still, it isn’t a great feeling to wake up every morning saying to yourself: well, what will I do today? How will I fill in the endless hours that lay before me? And this was only a month of unemployment, a month! – I cannot even begin to imagine what it’s like if this is your everyday life.

-Thank fuck, I did find a new job – after a lot of waiting around, that is. I applied for a position as archaeological site assistant in Dublin, on an excavation just around the corner from where I live, but obviously, the procedure ran on Irish time. “The site will have an imminent start”, the big boss told me, “don’t worry. We’ll call you.” Three weeks later I still hadn’t heard anything back, and was so frustrated I googled the exact meaning of the word imminent (possibly the most Irish word ever – it just means ‘in the near future, sometime’, which gives all Irish people the freedom to do whatever the fuck they want). The office did e-mail me, asking if I would be interested in working somewhere in the middle of nowhere. No! I wanted to work in town! Thank God, I got a phone call a little later: it was decided I could work on the city dig anyway, starting the following day at 8 am.*
Now, I’ve been working there for almost half a year, and even though I still find it hard sometimes – I feel like I’m a total nitwit, and can get a bit anxious about that – I’m getting used to it more and more, and am even starting to enjoy it. I’m learning a lot, and wish I could tell you all about it, but since this is still an ongoing project, I’m not allowed to part with any information.* The digging itself is nearly finished, however, and we’re just a literal ‘skeleton crew’ now (we’re digging up human remains), which is a lot of fun. I made two new friends, and we’ve become near inseparable (something that happens often when you’re digging around in the mud together for months on end): one is a happy-go-lucky metal-head from Yorkshire, the other a dry-humoured, romantic soul from Kerry (in the far southwest of Ireland). It was really hard to understand both of their accents when I just started working there, which may have delayed (or helped?) properly developing the friendship, but now I’m so used to their way of talking that I’m even starting to take over some of their idiosyncrasies.

-I celebrated my first Halloween, New Years Eve and Saint Patrick’s Day in Ireland! As I said in my last post, Halloween is truly my holiday, as I love dressing-up, creepy shit, and hot whiskey (I will tell you more about the latter later on). New Year’s Eve was a bit of a bummer, even though I tried to make ‘oliebollen’ (a Dutch treat, consisting of deep-fried dough with raisins – we do like our stuff deep-fried) – there wasn’t a firework to be seen*, and when we went out to party, it just felt like a random Saturday night. Paddy’s day (please never say ‘Patty’s day’, that’s only for silly Americans) was one big green haze, even though there was no green beer (silly Americans again) and I stood out as a foreigner because I was one of the only ones actually dressed in the national colour. I have no idea what time I got home, I only recall that I woke up at three in the afternoon, in my dumb green clothes still on, and my bed sheets all covered in green face paint.

-I’ve had some more visitors, such as my friend N., my brother and his girlfriend, and my parents – they all got the ‘real’ Irish experience, from listening to live fiddle-dee-dye music to visiting the wild outdoors, and meeting my truly local colleagues in our truly local pub. I think they nearly all said that they wanted to move to Ireland as well, but they have yet to put their words into actions.

-I had to move again! My former apartment was due to be renovated, and I was chucked out. The search for a new room was an interesting experience, to say it mildly: I criss-crossed the entire city, saw both beautiful Georgian houses as well as places where three people were sharing one bedroom (two people in a bed, even, and they told me: “Yeah, it looks bad, but you’ll get used to it!”), and was subject to archaeology-discrimination. Yep, you’ve read that right. I had found a lovely place in Kimmage, was accepted by my future flatmates, and was happy as can be – I even bought some cookies for my colleagues to celebrate, which they accepted with true Irish politeness (“no, thanks, I’m grand…are you sure?…”). Sadly, the landlady wasn’t happy with me, because she realised archaeological jobs are usually project-based and therefore, I didn’t have a full-time contract. She was afraid I wouldn’t be able to pay the rent, and decided I couldn’t live there. Oh my God, do I look like an idiot that doesn’t understand how money works? (Come to think of it, maybe I do.) I was so annoyed that I wrote an angry but entirely reasonable (*ehem*) e-mail to the agency, but as expected, nobody responded to me.

The next course of action was to try and find a barge to live on, as you can take the girl out of Amsterdam, but…etc. My Yorkshire colleague and I went to every dock, left little notes, met the nicest hippies who happily lived their life on a boat, but alas: there was no room for us. Our search for a shared apartment also didn’t work – any time we thought we found something nice, it turned out the owner was weirdly enough not living in Dublin but in London/Edinburgh/Aberystwyth/Land’s End/other random British places, so they sadly couldn’t come over to show us around, but you know, what if we just wired all our money to this account here, and they would make sure their friend would come and give us the key? Sure, sure, sure….

In the end, one of our supervisors heard we were looking for a place, and casually mentioned that he had two rooms to spare. So, long story short, we now live somewhere in the far north of the city, in a green and local neighbourhood full of young kids, red cats, fighting magpies and people stabbing each other over the weekends. I bought myself an orange bike to cycle to work. We cook for each other and eat together like a proper family. The Yorkshire-girl is leaving glitter and unicorns everywhere, I scatter books wherever I go; we watch romantic shows together (Outlander! First Dates!) and go on weekend trips. We’re practically married. Life is good.

-Two weeks ago, I went to a festival called Body & Soul, with the Kerrywoman and a French friend of mine. It was great! For those who don’t know, the festival is organised on castle grounds in the Irish Midlands, and it’s a full-on experience. You can listen to all sorts of music, from electronic to Irish trad, but you can also participate in group meditations, go to a seaweed-spa, have your face painted, watch classic films from your childhood, stroll along art installations in the forest, and, most importantly, eat fancy food. People bring their entire families, organise themselves in beautifully decorated camps, and walk around dressed like living artworks. My favourite items of the weekend were colourful balloons with a little light inside, which somehow showed up all over the festival terrain. It was magical.

Isn’t it weird how much can change within a year?

See you soon!

*This idea has long since been ignored. I still write many long-ass posts, usually once or twice every month instead of every week. The themes and categories are also not as ‘strict’ as I thought they’d be.
*I’ve later learned that this is a totally normal procedure here when it comes to starting up sites. It usually takes awhile to set up the dig properly, figure out budget and how many people you need, and you usually have to deal with other stakeholders (such as the client and the construction company, who were both especially annoying in this specific scenario). If I’d know that before, I’d probably have been less frustrated.
*The site is now finished, the report is written, and I could tell you all about it, but since I’ve bad-mouthed the client and construction company in my note above, maybe I’d better not. You’re welcome to send me a message and I can give you all the info you’d need directly. There’s a cool little booklet about the site that features some of the pictures I took of finds, amongst other things.
*Fireworks are an essential part of the Dutch New Year’s Eve celebration (Oud & Nieuw, ‘old and new’). Anyone can use them, and although there’s supposed to be an age limit and police is supposed to confiscate illegal fireworks, it’s entirely normal to see ten-year-olds throwing around heavy explosives like it’s nothing. Big cities turn into colourful war zones, and the night isn’t complete without some people losing an eye or a hand. Many Dutchies, like myself, are now calling for a ban on this barbaric ritual, but I do have to say – you do miss the fireworks when they’re not there. It’s just not the same. And this from someone who once nearly got a lit firework rocket in her face because an idiot decided it would be fun to throw it like a spear.