An incident on the line: my Derry Girl’s moment
Watching Derry Girls last week I was reminded of the time I thought I’d brought a bomb on the train.
Watching Lisa McGee’s Derry Girls is like reading my teenage diary. It really captures how it felt growing up in Ireland - everyone knew an Orla, a Michelle, an overdramatic Erin (if you didn’t know one, you were one). Which Derry Girl were you?
Derry Girls nails the feel of mid-90’s Ireland: the music, the parenting, the dubious fashion and hair — and less fun stuff like “incidents on the train line” that everyone knew was a bomb threat.
I grew up as far south in Ireland as you can get from Derry without jumping in the ocean but the violence of The Troubles felt just down the road. It was constantly on our radios and TVs and in our minds.
So you’d have thought when a complete stranger asked me to take a mysterious package on to a Dublin-Belfast train for them, I might have thought twice about it. Or at all.
It was just after the Good Friday agreement was signed, and only my second trip in my life north of the border — to Belfast, for a conference. I was solo, I was excited, and as I was 21 I was doing things right at the last minute. I needed to get on this train.
So a strange man in his twenties runs up to me as I am about go through the barrier. I can barely see his face over the huge brown bag he is shoving into mine. I take out my headphones and realise he speaking superfast, begging me to take this bag on to the train. It’s sweets for his kids, his wife is along on the train with four of them, she is blind and he has no ticket and they won’t let him through the barrier and please please please…
They’re calling that the train’s about to leave. I can hear the sharp hiss of the brakes getting ready to release. So I smile at him and take the bag — of course I do — and then I rush straight onto the train between the closing doors.
The door closes. The train pulls out of the station. And then I stop moving, look down at the very big, very heavy, very very rattly brown paper bag. And say “Fuck”.
I should point out here that people asking me for help is a regular occurrence. I look very friendly. I am very friendly, to be fair. Whatever the opposite is of resting bitchface, I have it. I have a bit of an Orla-face.
I am also short and all that, combined with my near-deafness, means my default expression and reaction is amiable confusion. I am nearly always the least intimidating person nearby to ask for help.
Look at me, with my wide eyes and loads of freckles and literally no idea what is happening at any time. See me there, smiling happily at a passing dog. Look at the big gormless head on me. Clearly I am a woman who can be trusted with your precious bag/dog/baby/bomb for 15 minutes.
I digress. So, I am standing there, on the Dublin to Belfast train, with what I now realise may be a bomb. I can’t open the bag. I can’t find any staff members to ask. It’s too big to throw out the window. And, maybe just maybe, I am being an overdramatic Erin about things and it is just a bag of sweets.
So I walk.
Look, I’m still here and not in bits or prison, so you know what happened. It was a very long walk down all the carriages. It turned out she was literally in the last table of the last one, surrounded by children and very grateful to see me.
She gave me some sweets. It was about as good as a result as I could wanted.
So which Derry Girl am I? Probably Orla. Maybe James somedays. How about you?
