Thinking about the sort of post that I want to write next kept me busy over the weekend.

Unfortunately I got so tangled in my own thoughts – what do I really want to write about, what do people really want to read and the grey area in between where I seem to spend a lot of time – it got me thinking about an influential post in my life.

This is not a clever or inspirational article by one of the Blog Gods. This was a real post – one of those old, weather-beaten sign posts that stand at a crossroads, pointing to half a dozen towns, the names almost invisible after years of exposure to mud and wind and bird droppings.

The Road to Nowhere

My mum and I were touring Ireland a few years back. I had recently broken up with my boyfriend and was feeling lost and afraid. I was due to return to London in a week and the sum total of people I now knew in the city wouldn’t have filled a telephone box.

I felt torn between staying in London and trying to make a go of a new life alone or returning to Australia with my mum, back to the life that was familiar and secure.

Understandably, the road-trip banter had pretty much dried up.

I had the important task of navigating – I’m usually brilliant with a map – but I couldn’t keep my mind on the job. I felt as bleak and uninspired as the winter landscape we were travelling through.

After an hour of silence, mum peering through the rain-drenched windscreen and me turning the map book in circles, we both came to the same conclusion.

Despite my best efforts (in the circumstances), I had got us lost.

My mum kindly pointed out that it was an adventure to simply be in Ireland, but I couldn’t accept that sort of thinking. My life was falling apart, I had no direction or support and there was no way I was going to just give up and not get us to bloody Limerick!

We travelled on in silence until mum suddenly jerked the car to a stop and we stared in disbelief at the the sign by the cross-roads. Somehow we had turned in a big circle – not once, but twice.

We had seen this old, weather-beaten sign twice before and neither time did it manage to direct us to our destination.

This must be a Irish gag, I thought. Some sort of joke at the expense of Australian tourists. I glared around, trying to spy the sniggering locals hunkered down behind a hedge. But other than a curious cow and a tractor abandoned in the middle of a paddock, we were alone.

“This can’t be the same sign!” I moaned.

“Well, if it is, someone is moving paddocks on us.” My mum pointed out the right-hand window at the abandoned cow and tractor. “They were on our left last time we passed through.”

“We must just be reading it wrong,” I said angrily and throwing open the door, stamped through the rain and mud to glare up at the sign.

Like everything in Ireland, the writing on the sign was cramped and whimsical and it felt as if the whole township of Limerick was grinning down at me. In a show of childish temper I kicked the post with my crusty boot.

Driving in Circles

As I stomped back to the car, I saw my mum bent over the wheel. At first I thought she was crying and felt my heart clutch in my chest, but as I climbed back into the car I saw tears of laughter on her cheeks.

“What’s so funny?” I demanded, outraged.

“Look!” she gasped and as I followed her pointing finger, I felt the paddocks around us shudder with a cold breeze. As the cow bellowed its displeasure, the signpost caught the wind and began to rotate as merrily as a carousel.

I watched in disbelief as Limerick spun in a circle, my mum laughing beside me, “We had to come all the way to Ireland, to see something as wonderful as that!”

An Ode to Irish Road Maintenance

I have to admit that I didn’t see the humour in the situation until many months later. I was too busy dropping my mum at the airport, finding a flat and a job and getting through every day alone in a big, cold city.

But eventually the road stopped twisting beneath my feet and I could think back on the sign post with a smile. Maybe it was just the result of Irish road maintenance, but I like to think that the sign was still trying to help me find my way.

The reality was that either road I chose – whether I stayed in London or went home with my mum – it was up to me to sort out the direction in which I was headed and to make the most of it.

What it actually led me to was life-long friends, white Christmases, amazing holidays on the Continent and the best souvenir I’ve ever found on my travels: my husband Sokol.

So in the spirit of Irish good fun (and not a lot of talent), here is a limerick dedicated to my travels around the Irish countryside:

There was a tourist who made a boast
To drive the length of the Irish coast
But in a wild breeze
The sign turned 360 degrees
For six months they’d been circling a loose post