"Just go"

Today on the train back to Galway I met a young couple. They sat down opposite me - early to mid twenties probably, a boy and a girl. He was wearing a baseball cap he never took off and a smart black body warmer. She had long blond hair and ripped baggy jeans.

An hour or so in, we got to talking.

He’d never been to Galway. She thought this was gas. She’d been all over, started listing counties, he was mumbling some back, a little defensively but there was no heat in it. They had loads of questions about Galway, where to go, what to do. Is it true you can get a boat out to an island and they only speak Irish? He only knows bainne.

She was telling him sagely about Lil Bros - very expensive but delicious - and O’Connells, you can get good pizza there too. He kept calling it the country, but she assured him it was a city, like Amsterdam. That was another place she’d been to. Had he not been even to Amsterdam? He’d lost his passport so they couldn’t go to visit England, that had been Plan A. Jumping on the train with zero planning was, well, not Plan B, but just what happened next.

I was saying that Galway is great. Safe, friendly, quieter than Dublin but still loads going on, good nightlife, only thing is it’s always raining. She realised she was in a shortsleeved top. He realised he was in a tracksuit so he might not get let into bars. They only had what they were wearing and in their pockets. Penny’s’d be closed when we got there. Even though it was only gonna be a little after 9pm and it’s late night shopping on Thursday. That’s being out in the country for you. It’s not even a bank holiday.

I loaned them my laptop charger because their phones were dying and they didn’t have a USB-A cable, so they couldn’t charge on the train. I also looked a few things up for them, like how long a joey spends in a kangaroo pouch¹.

It didn’t make me feel old, exactly, just grown up. These two kids, who were winding eachother up and poking fun, hopped on a train and booked a hotel on a whim, quickly before their phones ran out, with no idea of what to expect.

Hope they have a great night!

1. Don’t worry, I got you. At least 6 months, but some species for as long as 18 months! It’s where they nurse, and like humans, some species do extended feeding, long into the joey being on solid food. ↩︎