How RTE medium wave brought me home

I worked in the Isle of Man the summer I was 18. It was listening to 2fm on medium wave that brought me home.
(It was discontinued within a decade and RTE radio broadcast instead on long wave which is now at risk of being axed, and the inspiration for this post).
No really, I was home in New Ross, Co Wexford the next day. Having found and lost three jobs, I was the only one of my schoolmates lounging around the flat on my own listening to the radio that day. Two had gone home on the boat the previous weekend. The rest had jobs, I knew I wasn’t cut out for this and running low on money.
Cast adrift
There was no wide use of internet or mobile phones in 1996. Entertainment on your own for the day was tuning into what you knew best, Irish radio.
I hadn’t been one bit homesick the previously summer, a 17-year-old working in Selfridges on Oxford Street in London.
The link to home
But here, it was different, and when I heard that the winner of the quiz on the radio show was from New Ross, Co Wexford, something akin to homesickness must have hit in. I can’t describe the feeling to hear the name of a place you know so well mentioned on this crackling radio, at once affirming your distance while also circling you with a warm hug.
Time to say goodbye
I went to the ferry office, booked my ticket for the next day. I rang my mother from a pay phone and sussed out what time she’d be leaving work in Waterford the next day. It would be a surprise.
It was also a surprise to my friends when I broke the news that evening. I’d be on the next boat.
I knew the bus timetables to Waterford from Dublin and knew I could get to Waterford bus station by the skin of my teeth before she could clock out of work, I rang from the pay phone when I got off the bus and she collected me on her way home, it was lovely.
And all thanks to listening to 2FM on long wave.
Summer of memories
In case you were wondering, that “summer” in the Isle of Man was two weeks and a half weeks from which I have some of the strongest memories as if they stretched out over months and months.
Five of us travelled over together and befriended two on the way. Our accommodation had been arranged beforehand but not jobs, unlike another group from my town whom had jobs arranged in a fish factory.
Warnings before we left Ireland
Our first encounter with reality was waiting in Dublin Port to get the ferry. A well-meaning mammy of some girl obviously on her way home warned us against working in X hotel.
Guess where my first job was? In said hotel. I recall delivering plates of kippers out to holidaymakers in the breakfast room. My friends made beds.
Wary of it, when the opportunity to work in a shellfish factory in the next town came up we jumped at the chance. We jumped at the chance! Seriously!
A pound in your pocket
The job was to cut queenies or scallops from a shell. The first day we were paid hourly, the second day was piece work. With a pound in my pocket, not enough to get back to the town Douglas with, I was stranded when I decided to hand in my notice about 10.30am.
The factory where the other girls from my town worked was opposite. I watched, waiting and hoping I could hitch a lift back in with them if their minibus was going. No luck.
Another’s misfortune
Next the factory owner came out the door. He needed my help. The grandfather of one of my friends was on his deathbed and her parents had been in touch to send her home. He drove us back to our flat. She got the next plane home.
5+2-1-1
I can’t recall if the girls did stay on in the factory. Probably not. Our five had become four within a week, and then we took in the two we had befriended on the ship over.
It was when they went that I went. My third job was working behind the bar in an Indian restaurant. I liked that, though if I wasn’t nervous enough pulling my first pint, the keg ran out and nothing but foam filled the glass.
The art of holding down a job
Finding work in the real world wasn’t as easy as learning to serve customer in Selfridges like I had done the previous summer.
In London, living and working with a relation and working in a basement on those scorching summer days, there was no need or room for things from home like 2fm.
You can get away from Ireland but not from being Irish
One day though we ventured to nearby Kilburn, and I was shocked to catch our reflection in a shop window. Her fair, me dark; her 10 years away from Ireland and me not there a wet weekend; we may not have looked related, but there was no doubt about it, we were Irish and we couldn’t get away from that.

P.S.I saw Prince Charles in the Isle of Man. I was about two foot away from him.