Olga the Irish Punk

I'm probably going to make any Irish people reading this blog guffaw at the naivety of the crap I'm about to write. But hey, blogs are a free world.
This post has been inspired by reading quite a lot of an enchanting blog at dervala.net. She speaks for herself, I'm not going to rant and rave, but I just really like it.
Her family are based in Limerick. Now I have spent some time and drunk many a pint in Limerick, and this is part of that story.....
Alrighty then.
It starts in grade 10 when a crazy Irish girl named Olga started attending my high school. I think she was asked to leave the only Catholic High School in town on account of her wonderfully outrageous behaviour. I loved her exuberance and devil-may-care attitude. She already knew some of the girls in our group so her arrival was such an easy transition, she just fitted us like a glove.
She was madly obsessed with Adam & The Ants. She drew pictures and designed logos endlessly and talked of marrying Stuart Goddard (the head ant guy). She was arty farty and interesting and I hero-worshipped her.
I remember this mad sleepover party at her house. We ran down the street in the middle of the night and threw rocks on the roof of the geekiest girl in our class (I'm sorry Regina). We skinny-dipped in the above-ground pool in her front yard and pretended to kiss each other with hands over each others mouths. (Quite pseudo-lesbian really, I didn't think that we were suppressed until I think about it now.)
There was another party that looms large in the memories of all my friends - it was our watershed, our coming-of-age. I think I'll do a whole blog post about that party another time. Anyway Olga got hideously drunk at that party and there were rumours of behaviour with boys (only Lee B can verify if it was true - Lee are you out there?) and scandal and vomiting and coffee in the shower and me trying to carry her home and her being too loud and wanting to smoke cigarettes in the spare bedroom of my house when my parents arrived home. Aaaaah, memories. And that was only her role at the party! Wait till I tell you what happened to everyone else.......(another time).
Then there was the poor girl we victimised out of the school who made the mistake of pashing off with Olga's (newly)ex-boyfriend after roller-skating one Saturday night. I couldn't wait to offload my information with glee to Olga. Oh we were such spiteful cows together....(Justine, I am truly, truly sorry - I read your letter at the school re-union some years ago and it made me cry).
Half way through these exciting times, Olga's parents decided that they wanted to return to Ireland. For some reason, Australia just had not turned out the way that they had wanted it to. There was an excruciatingly pathetic airport scene with much blubbering and hugging and holding hands and pledging eternal friendship. And then she was gone. Just like that. And our lives were much quieter. And the parties weren't quite the same for some years.
We heard from her every now and then. She moved from Cork to Annacotty, just outside of Limerick. She left school and started studying ceramics at Limerick School of Art and Design. She was head of the Limerick division of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She told us tales of her loathes and loves, and it all sounded very foreign and exotic. And meanwhile we got on with our lives.
She was gone for five years. And then a letter was received - she was returning!Mum and Dad did think that Australia was OK after all!
Most of our gang had moved on. Some of the gang didn't care. I cared! I was so damned excited! I turned up at the airport at 3am after a night of clubbing with "vows of eternal friendship" intact. Dewy eyed, I waited outside customs! There she was - spiky pink hair, cigarette hanging out of her mouth, and pissed off as all hell because her suitcase had gone to Timbuktu. Was disillusionment setting in?
Stayed tuned for the next exciting episode.....
Cos I'm off to bed. Tell ya more next time.