You can run, but you can't hide

by Grace Cooper (Australia)

I didn't expect to find Australia

O’Malleys, Paddys, O’Reillys… All I need to do is hear the name of an Irish pub and I feel the exquisite anticipation of what I know will be a guaranteed good night out. Although I am yet to discover it, there is a scientific reason why it is impossible to be sad in an Irish pub, and it’s not just down to liquid joy. In my adopted home town of Canberra, Australia there is a painstakingly perfect Irish pub. Comfortable chairs fill every nook and cranny and there are a myriad of interesting knick knacks and old Guinness advertisements to lend talking points should conversation dry up. Like clockwork, as the pints you’ve enjoyed whilst putting the world to right with your companions take their effect, you start to feel your knee involuntarily tapping away to the faint music. The band starts tuning their strings and people take their place on the dance floor. The next few hours are spent dancing to the live band whilst you test your lung capacity by dancing and singing at the same time. The perfect saturday night doesn’t exi…. Yes it does- and it’s happening at an Irish pub near you. A city essentially built for government workers, Canberra’s grey exterior can resemble a concrete playground with wild bush land in the distance at every direction. However, hospitality awaits behind every door and thanks to a high volume of immigration, Canberrans can walk between the tired old buildings and enter different worlds behind each door from Indian restaurants emitting the most delightful aromas, to Chinese cafes complete with beautifully lit red lanterns. My Irish pub fits snugly within this environment and it is where I spent many important evenings such as watching nail biting rugby games on the big screens to celebrating my graduation. Of course, I shared many a first kiss on the aforementioned dance floor. One such kiss marked the beginning of one of those relationships that consumes your whole being and rocks your entire world. Then it ended abruptly and as these things tend to go, my heart ripped out of my body and I developed an insatiable need to leave everything and everyone behind- including my Irish pub, which I unfairly blamed for being the place of that fateful first kiss. Not being a person who does things by halves, I decided to switch careers from lawyer to English teacher and book a one-way ticket to Mexico- effective almost immediately. In a painfully clichéd way, in the weeks leading up to my departure, I shed my belongings and long held beliefs. This was going to be “new me” and I was open to it all. Upon arriving in Mexico (Puerto Vallarta on Mexico’s Pacific side to be exact) instead of searching for the nearest pub, I sought out beach bars and relished burying my toes in the sand whilst gorging on shrimp and sipping ice cold margaritas. Instead of gravitating to places I could hear live music thumping through the walls, I paid extortionate cover charges to enter clubs in which you cannot distinguish one song from the next and it resembles one long ‘boomp, boomp, boomp.’ Sure, the music wasn’t as good but my heart was healing and I felt confident that upending my entire life would end up working out. A few weeks into my ‘vida Mexicana’ I was out to dinner with my colleagues one Wednesday night. After dinner, we decided to walk around our new area. Soon, I began to feel an instant urge to go in the opposite direction and soon enough, I saw green lights and a fuzzy shape that soon revealed itself to be a shamrock. An Irish pub in Mexico? This was not part of the plan. However I felt a magnetic pull to enter. And there he was, big brown eyes that crinkled as he welcomed our group into Murphys Irish pub. Despite spending every cent I’d earnt and burning quite a few bridges to catapult myself into a new life, some things defy change. I didn’t expect to find happiness in an Irish pub on the other side of the world, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.