Back in July/August, when hisself and I were looking to move, I knew August would bring a range of choices that hadn’t been there before.
Houses, nice houses, were difficult to get in this town, we were told. I figured that the builder’s holidays may bring job losses and that some of the New Irish might find they had enough of Ireland move to somwhere with jobs, even there own countries.
I don’t know if that is what happened, but I definitely noticed more houses to let in the local newspaper. A sign of the times, I thought.
A more obvious sign of the times though was last Thursday morning as I boarded the 7.10am bus to Dublin. There were two blonde girls who looked to be early 20s, wrestling with a large suitcase. When they boarded the bus, the driver sensing they were not Irish and trying to figure out whether they needed a single, day return or monthly return ticket, asked “When are you coming back?” No answer. He quickly followed with another question. “Or are you coming back?” They said no.
Maybe they were on holidays from a foreign country, or visiting from another part of Ireland, as there wasn’t a crowd of friends or fellow nationals in tears seeing them off. Then again, who wants to be standing at a cold bus stop at 7am when they could be curled up in bed or enroute to work? My gut feeling is they were returning to wherever was home. I don’t know why, but I do feel I witnessed some ever so small part of the exodus we are told to expect. Reverse migration has started.
This blog post was first published in October 2008 on a now deleted blog: http://therecessionreadingrooms.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/are-you-coming-back-at-all/
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