The woman pushing a wheelchair was causing such a rumpus in the supermarket that whichever aisle I was in I could still hear her shouting.
She was an Englishwoman abroad if ever I saw one. Resplendent in sleeveless vest and leggings, she was pushing her adult daughter around an Irish supermarket as a friend or family member pushed their trolley, and she was making sure that as many people as possible were aware of her.
She was shouting so much, about everything, that nobody was taking the slightest notice, and she became the soundtrack of the shop, an integral background kerfuffle.
Neatly dressed Irish people went about their business as the be-vested Brit rampaged through the aisles
She shouted at the crisp shelves, she shouted at the frozen pea compartment, she shouted in the shampoo and shower gel aisle. It wasn’t clear exactly what she was shouting at or for. She made so much noise that the entire supermarket reverberated with it, but the noise was all in such a strong estuary accent that even if the staff had wanted to help her with her inquiries, they would have struggled to understand.
As it was, they only intervened when she was flinging things off shelves and dismantling displays of discounted homewares, and then only to replace fallen items and tidy piles of fallen packets.
Neatly dressed Irish people – for the Irish dress up nicely to go shopping – went about their business as the be-vested Brit rampaged through the aisles yelling.
Her daughter, aged in her late teens or early twenties, was slurping from a can of Red Bull as her mother pushed her round, and seemed oblivious to whatever she was cross or happy about.
I did my weekly shop without once understanding a single sentence she yelled, and even when I was right next to her I could not make out what on earth she was either angry or happy about. They were ahead of me in the queue, the mother still shouting in a ceaseless monologue, and they began to leave before I had finished checking out.
As I unloaded my shopping, I heard her screaming something unintelligible at the cashier about something she either didn’t like or liked a lot, and then as I started packing, they disappeared through the doors in a blaze of shouting.
I thought no more about it, but when I pushed my trolley outside a more intelligible commotion had begun. A woman had pulled into the last remaining disabled parking space by the door, and the English woman, pushing her daughter, had stopped by her car in the other disabled space and was shouting: ‘You wanna be ashamed of yerself! There’s people need them spaces! I’ve got a disabled daughter I ’ave!’
It appeared that even though she had a space, she was very much focused on policing the space next to it, and it occurred to me that this was a very English thing to do. While the locals here are undoubtedly interested in everyone’s business, they tend not to censure each other as the authorities might. No one Irish would dream of pointing out to anyone else that they’re parked incorrectly. The unanimous view is, if you can get something extra then good luck to you, and if everyone can fiddle the system, so much the better. This is particularly true of the deep south.
I heard recently of a parking warden visiting the nearest market town to us and ticketing a few cars pulled up haphazardly outside shops, but after the locals finished with him, he never returned.
You could park your car in the middle of the main road all day in West Cork and no one would complain. No one has once beeped their horn at me in the two years since I moved here, to give you some idea how laidback they are.
Not realising this, the English woman let rip as the Irish woman got out of her car, which did not seem to have a blue badge. ‘My daughter can’t walk and now we can’t get the car doors open to get her in cos you’ve parked next to us!’
Whereupon her daughter, like Andy Pipkin in the Little Britain sketch, got up out of her wheelchair and walked to the passenger side of the car, which was unimpeded, swung wide the door and got in.
While doing this, she deftly grabbed a bag of crisps from the shopping bags, chucked the can of Red Bull asunder, and sat in the car tucking into the crisps.
It was as she enthusiastically crunched her crisps that an elderly man began very slowly to get out of the passenger side of the Irish car to reveal that he wore a leg brace. He hobbled to the curb, dragging one leg, revealing that one arm also hung limp and inert, and waited for his wife to help him.
The Irish couple then continued towards the shop doors with absolute dignity. But the English woman continued to shout abuse at them, even though it was now clear that the poor man was crippled.
This was when the Irish lady finally tipped over her West Cork edge, and turned back and walked up to the English woman, and she let rip with the best the rebel county could offer, shouting into her face a diatribe made up of the sorts of things we Brits are not allowed to say to each other any more, and so no longer expect to hear, and it went like this: ‘Shut your fecking mouth! Your daughter’s disabled is she? Look at the size of her! And you’ve just taken her in that supermarket and bought her more food!’
And with that, she left the English woman standing there with her mouth open, just for a few seconds dumbfounded, before she recovered enough to say in a very shaky voice: ‘I ain’t ’avin’ that! I’m gonna complain! I’m getting the manager! I want the manager!
But manager came there none. She looked around the car park, and she walked towards the shop doors gesticulating. If she was waiting for someone to come out and offer her a complimentary 12-pack of Red Bull by way of apology, then she was going to be standing there for a very long time.
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