An Ireland rugby shirt and a pint of Guinness - sure signs of being in Dublin.
When you have lived in a place for a while you grow used to your surroundings, and novelty soon merges seamlessly into the ordinary. I have been in Ireland six months, and I am now driving around with more confidence, and less reliance on my trusty map book. I have grown used to the trees and the vivid shades of green that contrasted with what I was used to seeing in Shetland. I am used to seeing race horses grazing in the fields, but still miss the sight of Shetland ponies and moorit sheep wandering around the hills. I have a gorgeous view of the Wicklow Mountains from my bedroom window, which is starting to make up for the unrestricted view of the sea that I used to enjoy.
Ireland is not so very different in appearance to Britain. The similar landscape is dotted with familiar looking architecture and experiences the same, often dreary weather. The same high street shops fill the shopping centres over here and McDonalds and Tesco seem to have set up camp on every street corner. But there are enough subtle changes to be a constant reminder that I am in a different country. I am still getting used to working with kilometres instead of miles. I re-set the speedometer in my little Citroen to make sure I never inadvertently go over the limit, but from time to time I still experience a split second of fear when I look down and see that I am travelling at 120 on the motorway (which is the speed limit in kph). I still recalculate distances into miles in order to get a better feel for how much further my destination is.
The other evening I was driving to Clondalkin, a suburb of Dublin, and I experienced that warm sense of familiarity that you get when you are driving somewhere you know. I realised that I was not paying quite so much intense attention to the road signs, because I already knew what they said, and I had stopped seeing the countryside as something different and to be observed much like you do when you are on holiday. The fact that I was going to see a friend I have known for over 20 years also created that feeling that I was not abroad any longer.
And then just as I was getting comfortable I had to stop at the traffic lights, and I sat for a while watching a group of young men running around the playing fields beside the road. They were playing a game of hurling, which is a totally mad game, kind of like hockey on steroids. This short glimpse of the game, before the lights went green reminded me once again that I was in a foreign land.
It also reminded me of some time I spent at Shetland College studying a module on Visual Sociology, as part of my Cultural Studies degree. This module looked at the semiotics of photographs and basically involved looking at lots of interesting pictures to see what they said about people’s lives. I found this module very interesting, although quite challenging, as I am not a visual person. I prefer words to pictures anytime. However, I enjoyed looking at the stunning pictures taken by Dorothea Lange that depicted life during the American Depression.
Semiotics is just a fancy word for signs, and during the lectures we would look at photographs and learn how to read and analyse the signs. A seemingly ordinary family photo could reveal an extraordinary amount of sociological information when you paid sufficient attention to the detail. But for the most part we don’t pay much attention to those details because they are familiar to us. When we look at a picture of friends or family, we don’t normally try to analyse class, race, age, occupation or status of the people in the picture, or from the setting in which it was taken. We look at how old Auntie Mary is now, or how much little Michael has grown or how much weight your sister has lost or gained.
I realised when I continued my drive through Dublin that I am still noticing all the semiotics of my new landscape. Although I might know my way around quite well now, I still notice the novelty of green post boxes and the dual language signage, the different style of car number plates and the Garda cars sitting watch over the motorways, instead of the police.
I wonder how long it will take before I cease to notice these details as something different.
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