I found myself alone in Dublin last weekend drinking a pricey coffee. Sitting outside on a crisp bright morning, I watched the world and his wife go by in all their glory.
A couple in their late fifties with matching Fontaines DC t-shirts; a guy with half his face tattooed; an old couple holding hands and wearing over-sized clothes; a princess tippy-toes in her thirties; dumpy teenage girls with too much make-up, giggling; a hipster with a satchel riding an old bike; three tiny Japanese women tourists; a couple in going-out gear nipping each other; an Asian man dragging along a woman with a sad face…
On and endlessly on.
The reason I was a witness to this ocean of souls oozing by was that I had been ordered to leave the Irish dancing shop by Fionnuala. We were there because Imogen, our eight-year-old, is a fine dancer and her rather chunky teacher, Ursula, had instructed us to get a dress.
“How much?!”
I nearly lost control of the car as we steamed over the Mary McAleese Bridge near Drogheda.
“Stop going on about it, Fabien.”
Fionnuala wasn’t one for making things worse, but I was.
“Thirteen hundred euro! Holy God, Fionnuala. Is that not what eBay was invented for?”
“They are almost as dear second hand. And this dress will do Fiadh when Imogen grows out of it.”
I saw Fiadh’s face in the mirror. Her round, worried little eyes. She was a below-average dancer whose heart wasn’t in it and she looked at me, afraid to speak as the temperature in the car began to soar.
A tough guy in red DM shoes and a Man Utd hoodie; a hire car with two confused people in a pedestrian area; a handsome, rich old couple; American tourists with loud voices and Twin Peaks baseball caps; a professor in slacks, blazer and briefcase, with grey, flowing hair and expensive glasses; a drunk man with huge sideburns, stumbling softly.
“Thirteen hundred euro!” I repeated in a higher register. “What is this dress made out of? Ancient Chinese silk? Himalayan cashmere? This whole thing is nothing but a rip-off.”
“Just stop right now, Fabien.” Fionnuala’s eyes blazed.
“I know it’s very dear, Daddy.” Imogen spoke quietly. “But the teacher said I won’t climb the ladder without the right costume. And it’s so nice.”
“Well, the teacher is wrong, love. You would win in your pyjamas. This is just exploitation.”
Fionnuala was by now in a rage. Her jaw ticked a bit and I sat seething as I drove, the girls wide-eyed in the back. Racing through my head was the teacher, Ursula. She had annoyed me at a Feis I went to a while ago when Fiadh came third and she laughed off the idea of speaking to the adjudicator.
“There’s always another Feis,” she had snorted, and I knew this was all just gravy for her.
I never saw her dance; just bark shrilly at the wee ones, not even a smile when reminding me the monthly fees were due. I had begun to despise her. And my mood blackened as we struggled to get parked in the city.
I sipped my latte as the magnificence of mankind inched past.
A dad with a 10-year-old child strapped into a wheelchair; a smiling man with cool clothes and a Celtic plastic bag; a Deliveroo cyclist from Syria or somewhere; two teenage boys poring over a Smiths record; office workers with lanyards small-talking; a smiling family on bikes; a couple of dodgy guys in grey tracksuits smoking a spliff; a young student couple – him with bad hair and a terrible moustache, her lovely; a mother loudly admonishing her pigeon-chasing toddler.
And as I waited for my family to arrive with the world’s most expensive Irish dancing costume, I wondered how I was going to make it up to them.