culture shock

Aoife was perched between Keith Mathews' da and his mate, Dave, a quiet, lean kind of fellow with a big toothy mouth on him, the two lads facing grimly into dirty pints in an easy silence as she giggled in between. Then along comes another friend of a friend - "Jayz, how's she cuttin" - who sits down beside me, and starts a conversation about, as far as I could make out, horses. Or maybe toddlers who run on grass a lot. Two-year-olds, one way or another. Dave and himself, shooting off at each other to beat the band with accents you'd need a machete to cut through. All the while, your man beside me is absently petting a dog that's appeared from nowhere under the table. As it's early on a Wednesday evening, the bar is obviously jammers, and people are mulching into eachother on the seats, giving it the"sorry can I just get by you there?" as they trample all over you. And a young one who's trying her best to sidle into the bench beside Keith Mathews' da notices the snout peeping out from under the table, and says to your man beside me: "Is that your dog?" And up pipes this lad on the other side of her, with: "Ah no, that bitch left him some time back." And there's lots of grunting and nodding and big winky pints floating above the ring stains on the rickety tables, and it hit me with the force of a mighty wallop: I'm not in Buenos Aires any more.