Irish supermarkets do great sandwiches. There’s usually a deli at the back and someone will make it for you right there. Mine was filled thick and I could hardly eat it, at least not with any decorum. I did my best by a glass-fronted library, sitting on a bench in the rain. I looked, embarrassed, at a passerby as lettuce brushed my eyebrows and a good portion of contents peppered my lap.
The town was called Edgeworthstown. It was named after the family who once owned it, one of whom was a famous novelist 300 years ago. There was a bronze bust of her head on a tattered pedestal beside the library. She looked dramatically over her shoulder, at a bike rack. “If we take care of the moments,” cold iron letters said beneath the head, “the years will take care of themselves.”
A jalapeno flopped onto my thigh.
I left a disparate pile of debris as I made my way to the road, passing a dog who watched me from under some shutters and a bar with the Alcoholics Anonymous handbook in the window. There was a framed drinks list next to it with all the prices tipexed out.
I kept my waterproof on as I waited on the roadside, Mullingar on my sign. A driveway offered the only place to stop but the road was busy and slow so I wasn't worried about waiting long.
Someone stopped shortly after. My bag joined a biscuit-coloured cardboard box, two brass dumbbells and some bottled water in the boot. I got in the front and said hello. The driver was called Declan and he had thick glasses with thick rims. He was cheerful and enthusiastic and immediately good company. He said he was going beyond Mullingar to Navan.
Declan lived in Westport with his wife from Bilbao. She had two sisters, one married an Irishman and one a man from Brentford which made Christmas good fun. His wife worked in a botox factory. Declan said Westport is where they make all the world’s botox. The smiles you see on billboards, on TikTok and TV, turns out they all come from Westport. They call it the global botox capital. Nearly a fifth of the five and half thousand population work in the factories that make it, employed by a company called AbbVie. You’d never have guessed it walking around.
AbbVie is one of America’s biggest pharmaceuticals. Last year they made $1.5 billion in profit from botox alone. It was a jump from the year before, thought to be thanks to Ozempic. Rapid weight loss leads to wrinkles, botox gets rid of wrinkles. Everyone’s a winner, at least for now.
“The other day,” Declan told me, “The CEO came over with a briefcase chained to his wrist full of botox. You know, the global head of this huge company, with this briefcase with all the secrets in. And I was thinking,” he looked at me directly and pushed his glasses back up his nose, “Horror movie plot!”
Declan didn’t work in the factory, he never had. In fact, he was retired. He told me cheerfully that he gets 220 euros a month from the government which isn’t much but his wife’s still working, she does accounts, and will be for another seven years. “She wants to keep working. Doesn’t want to be staring at me all day. That’s one reason to marry someone seven years younger!” He laughed warmly.
Declan had an English accent. He’d lived in London until he was 11 and when he returned to secondary school in Dublin they called him Ingo because of it. After school was college and then travelling. Beyond that he found himself without much of a plan.
“I was in an offy and I picked up the Guardian. In those days it was always the Guardian. And there was an advert saying 'Are you a graduate and are you unemployed’? Well I was, and so I ended up doing a business course up in Manchester.”
After that, he tried setting up a business which never really took off. It was in the early days of the Internet, trying to get people to automate some of their processes with a new technology. “But nobody took the bait, or I wasn’t good enough at business. Probably that…” He laughed self-deprecatingly. “So in the end I became a teacher.” He taught in colleges for the rest of his career.
I asked what was taking him to Navan. “Well,” he said with the hint of a sigh, “last year my mother passed away and four months later my sister died too leaving her son all alone. He has Downs Syndrome and lives in Navan so I come over quite a bit.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It must have been tough, he was very close to them both. But he’s ok. He lives with several carers and other people with Downs so it’s good. No, he’s doing all right considering.”
Despite the obvious challenges, Declan spoke about it typically cheerfully, always looking for the positives. For one he’d got to know his nephew better.
Having said that, Declan didn’t think Ireland was a great place for the young nowadays. There’s not much here for them. He thought the country had gone down the drain and he winced a bit as he said it.
The issue in his mind was all the free marketeering. There’d been a centre-right government in charge for 30 years now and it had steadily got rid of most of the social services and left young people with little opportunity. Declan thought the American laissez-faire ideologies were inherited from the Irish. It was an interesting thought.
We turned off at Mullingar, and took the road to Navan. Declan had spent much of the last year on this road and knew it well. It made me think of all the stories roads hold, how they’re venues for thoughts and conversations.
Declan asked what I was planning to do that evening. I said I was thinking of either pressing on to Dublin, I had a flight back home the next day, or finding a room somewhere in Navan. We weren’t too far from the airport and I could hitch there in the morning.
“If you like you can stay with me,” Declan offered. His nephew wasn’t there and he would be on his own. There’d even be a spare room.
I accepted enthusiastically and thanked him very much. We’d established we were both rugby fans and there was a World Cup game that evening so we made a plan to go into town. The promise of a few jars excited us both.
We arrived shortly after. The house was a handsome bungalow with dark wood window frames. Declan unloaded a TV from the backseat and showed me my room. It was nice not to be in a skinny hostel bunk.
We didn’t stay long inside. We gathered our things and made our way back out. A light drizzle accompanied us as we walked down the hill into Navan, our steps light with the promise of an evening ahead.
“Take care of the moments,” I thought to myself. Maria Edgeworth would be proud.