DATE 30 – THE MOOMINONE

Plastic Paddy and I have been messaging for a couple of weeks now and it has become a secret game of mine to see how many times I can get him to mention the ‘homeland’ in our conversations. He did admit that he is English born; and yes, he is English educated; and well, yes he has lived in England his whole life and only visited Ireland once; and indeed that is a proper East Landan accent; but Good Lord don’t call him English…. he is pure, 110% Irish Export (his exact words).

This did not fill me with hope for an excellent finale for my 30 Date Challenge so I thought perhaps it would be better to arrange something to keep his thoughts off the Emerald Isle.

I rish you were really Irish….

So we booked tickets and went on an Adventure to Moominland instead – a fictional world of hippo-like creatures, created in the 1940s by the Finn novelist, Tove Jansson. The tour was lead by a Moomin-like lady who vaguely resembled an animated hippo. She enthralled us all with her enthusiasm and dramatic character as we were lead around the interactive exhibition. My date was more of a Groke who kept getting hit in the face by the props in the rooms.

Plastic Paddy tried many times to start a conversation about good ol’ Éire but thankfully the Moominlady kept interrupting us so he couldn’t keep telling me about his Gaelic heritage. As bait in my Irish game, I had mentioned in our WhatsApp conversations that I lived in Limerick for 5 years as a child. Unfortunately he took this as an omen from the Celtic gods as to our future. I, however, am certain that those gods are as likely to materialise as is a second date with him.

6 May 2017

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