Correct. And some of them even read your blog.

:-)

What’s more notable is that I believe that Darren owes me a pint.

I’ve even heard of the Hanleys.

Now there’s an interesting point — will Dublin have to developing a dating scene if labour mobility increases?

(I reckon the US dating scene is entirely a result of the high degree of mobility — people routinely (well, relatively routinely) uproot and travel to a new job in a new town, thousands of miles away from their prior social circle.)

Also, I’m horribly rich.

I think the Irish method of choosing long-standing friends works well if you’re lucky enough to benefit. But it is tough for those who lack such a circle—ex-pats, returned emigrants, and those who simply weren’t ready during the first round of coupling up, which is pretty early. You’re right that American labour mobility means cities like New York couldn’t cope with such a constraint, so they develop these other meet ‘n’ screen systems that scare the bejesus out of me.

Dervala’s single friends are in a position where they would be in the States if they were at a certain age: for, at a certain age your circle of friends inevitably declines. In any case, many Americans do not particularly like the American dating scence either; and think it a different form of the meat market.

I think – from reading her log – that Dervala has not, in fact , erally experienced the dating scene in America or Canada.

Her experience in Canada was definitely not the same as the American “date” which often amounts to a double interview with a stranger, both sides interviewing each other for the position of lover.

I should make the point that societies have different ways of organising this stuff; I prefer the Irish method of knowing, and falling for, people in advance even if it takes dutch courage to obtain the first snog :-).

Americans, however, need a different methodology because it is a more fluid society, more mobile, more individualistic – with widely variating circles of friends – thus they get the interview scene; which they are pleased to call a dating scene.

As a stranger to the loathsome puke and fuck culture of meat markets like Copperface Jacks and Break for the Border, I was under the impression that Irish people met and fell in love in the normal way – through interconnecting relational circles of friends, family, school, college, work etc.

I think your friends might have difficulty finding suitable “long-term” partners in a night-club setting in any city in the world; although sex with a foreign lounge lizard might be the more rewarding for not being beer addled.

Stick that in your metropolitan pipe, and smoke it.

I guess two unrelated—or perhaps related—points came out of this post, and more usefully, the comments.

1. I believe Irish adults still have a strained vocabulary for their genitalia. I used the example of the North American toddlers to illustrate my own difficulty with this. They get their vocabulary and their openness from parents our age.

2. As Darren (Canadian-in-Dublin) observes, Irish dating culture relies heavily on drink, and people seem to be shy about expressing interest without it. Single friends I’ve spoken to—more than five—tell me that this makes it hard to find love there, both in Dublin and outside Dublin. I believe them.

These are my observations, which may well be metropolitan provincialism. So sue me!

Arguments like this are typical metropolitan provincialism, if you know what I mean.