Wrapped Up & Intertwined

Nóirín’s point of view:
The winter in Éire was awful. It was so cold and grey all the time and it made me feel depressed. I was sitting in my bedroom looking out of my windows at the lifeless fields that used to be so green and wild in the summer; the fields that would put a smile on my face and the fields that made me feel home. As a child I used to run through the fields in my dress with wind in my hair and sing old Irish songs my grandpa had taught me and then I would come home with a handful of flowers for my granny.

Now I was packing the last of my bits because I was moving to London. My parents lived in Manchester, but for the last two years I had studied at University and had been unable to move. They knew I wanted to live in London and had bought me an amazing apartment in the heart of Chelsea and I couldn’t wait to be a part of London. I had always adored that city more than I adored New York, but not more than I adored Ireland. I was proud to be Irish even though the Irish might not have been proud of me all the time. I finished college in June, but I decided to stay with my grandparents for a little while before moving to London. They had enjoyed it and I had really enjoyed it, but the enjoyment could not last forever.

I was trying to pack my clothes which would have been easy if I weren’t going on vacation to Koh Samui in Thailand. I had to decide which clothes to take with me on vacation and which to ship off to London. Once I had shipped it off it was not to be regretted. I had to ship my things before leaving for Koh Samui because once I returned I would have to go to my apartment in London instead of going back to Ireland. I was going on vacation with my best friend Mollie who I got to know at the country club my grandpa was a member of. Mollie was British but her grandparents lived in Ireland next to my grandparents and whenever she paid them a visit we hung out. She was one year older than me though. I was putting a jumpsuit in my holiday suitcase when my phone buzzed.

“How’s everything going?” I read the text out loud from Mollie.

“Great. Almost done packing. It’s hard though..” I texted her back. She was in Ireland too and we would leave in three days.

“Lunch at 2 at TDBR?” TDBR was Teach Dolmain Bar and Restaurant. It was our favourite place to go to eat or to grab a beer or cider.

“Yea sure, I’ll meet ye there.”

At two I entered the pub to find her already waiting for me. I sat down at the table facing her and judging by the look on her face she wanted to ask me something.

“What is going on with you and Tom Cleverley?” She asked me not even giving me the chance to sit down properly.

“Nothing is going on with Tom and I. We are just friends.” I answered her question.

“Now Magazine says that you have been out on a date. They reckon he’s leaving his girlfriend.” It was fun how the magazines mixed up a lot of things.

“Yes I have had dinner with him, but we weren’t alone. We just left at the same time and shared a cab, because we were going in the same direction and the others wanted to go to a pub after dinner. It is all quite innocent.” My dad was manager of Manchester United so it was not weird that I hung out with the whole football squad. I knew most of them quite well. When Sir Alex Ferguson had retired after the 2011/2012 season my dad had become the manager of Manchester United, which was amazing and still unbelievable.

“Good cause anything else would have been a mess. Anyway my grandfather got me tickets for One Direction in London and guess who is going with me?” Mollie was crazy about One Direction. She had always loved boybands. N*Sync, Boyzone, Backstreet Boys, Westlife, JLS, The Wanted and so on. I on the other hand liked music, but I didn’t appreciate it as much as Mollie. I was more of a football girl. Growing up in a world of football with my dad, an Irish football player, assistant manager and now manager of Manchester United, made it quite natural for me to like that world. “It is of course VIP tickets.” Mollie’s dad was a successful stock market investor so she grew up in the same world as me. We knew our families could pull some strings and we made them do it.

“Guess you are joining me at a football match then.” Mollie always made me go to concerts and festivals and I made her go to football matches. We got the best of both worlds.

Sometimes I wished I could have just been a normal child, who would have grown up with parents with a much tinier income, because for me everything fell either very easy or very hard. I was in magazines whenever I did anything bad and when I didn’t do anything bad they still thought I had done something. They were never writing about how sweet a person I was. It was always about my style or my drunken nights.

“You will love One Direction.” She told me and took a bite of the burger she had ordered. At that time I didn’t know how much I would love One Direction. I just thought it would be like all the other bands. Oh dear I was wrong…