Shopping a go-go in the very best Continental style – a Suir thing

IT’S Clonmel. That’s Clonmel, home of cider. Hermione and Medders are enjoying not so much a staycation as a day out. They have had their romantic walk hand in hand by the River Suir and they have relished their cup of tea with socially distanced scone in the Comeragh View Café. Now Hermione has declared that no such day out is complete without a spot of what she cheerfully calls retail therapy. They pull The Jalopy into the commodious car park at the Clonmel shopping centre. She is wondering whether they have a branch of Pongo in the centre where she may pick up the latest in plastic bones for The Pooch. And also whether they have a branch of Logo where she may acquire the latest in sporty tee-shirts for our Eldrick, not to mention a branch of Blingo where they are sure to offer a selection ear-rings to suit young Persephone.

If Medders feels that it is not really, totally, absolutely necessary to bring home a souvenir for every member of the family from such a short break away, then he has the good sense not to mention such mean-spirited heresy out loud. If it crosses his mind that there are outposts of Pongo, Logo and Blingo back home in Our Town, each carrying stock identical to that found in Clonmel, then he contrives to keep such irrelevant thought to himself. If he believes that what his wife calls retail therapy has become retail monotony due to the overwhelming domination by these multiples, then he is not about to share any such notion with Hermione.

Besides, though reluctant to admit it, he is all agog to discover whether or not they have a Django on the premises with their bargain bins of classic jazz CD’s, well worth a rummage. Perhaps the line-up includes a Kango hardware – his favourite sort of shop – or maybe even an old-fashioned book seller, doubtless called Go&Read.

Husband and wife pause at the entrance to the Showgrounds to pull on their masks in compliance with regulations dictated by the pandemic. She has hers in place over nose and mouth in a well-practised trice while he makes a cack-handed palaver tangling the elastic of his mask with the arms of his spectacles. Once this has been sorted out, they proceed into the bright and airy concourse – if that’s the correct word? – of the shopping centre.

They pass the Undergo lingerie store, the Donotpassgo board game emporium and the Pogo punk fashion depot. Then Medders meanders to a stuttering halt, his nose twitching like some animal picking up an unfamiliar scent blown on the breeze across Serengeti.

‘What’s the matter?’ enquires Hermione. ‘Have you forgotten to take your pills again?’

‘No I swallowed the full dose at breakfast, dearest. It’s just it occurs to me that Clonmel is…’ He paused in search of inspiration. ‘Clonmel is pretty?’

‘Yes, of course it’s pretty – just like yourself in that regard - but that’s not the word I am looking for.’

‘Clonmel is warm? Clonmel is busy? Clonmel is not such a very long way from Tipperary?’

‘No. No. No. Nothing like and of those, my dainty sugar-pop. I feel Clonmel is Continental, definitely Continental, but I really can’t tell you why.’ So the couple resume their progress though he is clearly still trying to work out why he has reached his ‘Continental’ conclusion. He scarcely spares a glance for the Tango ballroom costumier, the Cargo the auto-factors or the All-Go travel agent.

‘Clonmel has an Indian restaurant, I noticed,’ says Hermione, always ready to be helpful. ‘Perhaps you mean sub-Continental.’ No

‘That big church we passed has a bell tower on it that looked a little German in its style to me.’ No.

‘I suppose it would be pushing it to describe O’Connell Street as Clonmel’s equivalent of the Champs Elysees.’ Yes, that would indeed be pushing it.

He walks on, head bowed, brow furrowed, before he finally works it out. Eureka! He points at the floor which has been liberally adorned with arrows pointing a one-way system for be-masked pedestrian shoppers to follow on their way around the centre.

‘There you are, honey-bun, the arrows direct us to the right-hand side of each corridor. Not the left, but the right. How Covid-Continental is that!’