The little toy shop stood at the highest point of a steep winding lane of shops all painted different colours, near the harbour.
So quaint, so beguiling and magical was this place, it was like walking into your childhood memory box. On the shelves of games on the back wall I found KerPlunk, Connect 4, Buckaroo, Guess Who, and all the old favourites.
I needed some board games because a friend was coming to stay with his four children and we would need to while away the long West Cork evenings which would probably be rainy and windy. We are usually happy doing nothing in front of an open fire but I assumed that kids would not be so sanguine.
Every time they go in there to buy something they have to listen to the toy shop owner’s political manifesto
I wandered along the shelves spellbound. As well as games, there were brightly coloured jigsaws and boxes of Lego and Barbie merchandise stacked floor to ceiling.
The man behind the counter noted my accent as I placed down Cluedo, Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit. ‘Oh you’re from England…’
He then skipped the small talk and said: ‘What are you English doing? You’re mad. You’ve lost the plot. Look at what’s going on in your country. It’s unbelievable.’
I mumbled something conciliatory, assuming I was in for a lecture about the far right, but he launched into a long rant about the English being too left-wing and soft.
He concluded about 20 minutes later, with me barely getting a word in edgeways, by weighing into the English blow-ins waving Palestinian flags in his town on market day. The cheek of them, he said.
As it happens, we have not lately seen so many of the dreadlock-haired, rainbow-outfitted Brits who walk around town squares waving the pan-Arab colours alongside the Irish tricolour.
They make me feel particularly mortified, because you’ve got to have some nerve to wave two flags, both not yours.
The builder boyfriend and I have been shouting at them extensively ever since we got here and realised that, despite leaving London, we still had to cope with the ubiquitousness of the Pally-rally.
I shout at the women that they’re idiots because ‘You wouldn’t be allowed to march around shouting your opinion in that outfit if you lived there!’
The BB confronts the men, usually while sitting having a coffee in the square as they march past him singing: ‘From the river to the sea? Do you even know what that means? Do you know which river and which sea? Well, do you?’
One expat waving his Arab flag told the BB to ‘Go back to England!’
The BB said: ‘Oh that’s nice, isn’t it? That’s racism for you. I’ll have you know half my family are Irish born and bred. I’ve come home, thank you very much. I am in my country. Why don’t you go home? Go on, sod off back to Islington.’
I assumed it was just us shouting like this, until I was in the toy shop. ‘But I thought the Irish supported the Palestinians,’ I told the toy shop owner.
‘People here have had enough!’ he snapped. He said the demonstrators had been barred from standing outside a lot of the shops. ‘Why are you doing this? Is this really what you want?’ he demanded.
‘I really can’t say,’ I said.
Two young girls were queuing up to buy Barbie stuff in pink plastic boxes. They waited while the shopkeeper launched into: ‘Why are they attacking Elon Musk?’
‘I honestly don’t know. I don’t know anything,’ I stuttered.
‘See that Keir Starmer?’ he said. Oh dear. ‘I voted Labour when I lived in London and even I think he’s the biggest feckin’…’
Lavish swearing ensued. His face became puce. ‘Far right?’ he shouted. ‘I’m far right now, am I?’
‘Er um,’ I said.
The children looked like they had heard it all before. Possibly every time they go in there to buy something they have to listen to the Irish toy shop owner’s political manifesto.
I pushed my debit card over the counter. He punched in €70 but didn’t press the final button to put the sale through.
He got his mobile phone out and called up a video of someone arguing on YouTube. ‘Good, isn’t it?’ ‘Er, yes, um…’
The kids clutched their Barbie boxes. There were more children behind them now, and a woman holding a paddling pool. As for me, I really did need those board games.
But the toy shop owner was not concerned by the queue, or by selling anything. ‘I’ll tell you another thing,’ he said, and he addressed everyone in the shop now, including the children and the other woman. ‘Anyone who comes into my shop and starts insulting Elon Musk or Donald Trump will be told to get out…’
The kids stood there, tight-lipped, quiet as mice. They looked like they would have happily worn MAGA hats and chanted ‘Fight!’ if they could just get their Barbie stuff.
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