Dunlavin, the town closest to the Steiner school, boasts a magnificent if tiny library, a tiny garda station, two pubs, a chipper, a convenience store, a greengrocer, a bakery, a dry goods store, two churches, two national schools, and a fire station. There used to be a bank, but the Georgian house that housed it is now up for sale.
So you can imagine the excitement in town as two enterprising women decided to open a coffee shop across from the Centra. At some point during my brother's stay, we had 30 minutes to kill before picking up his nephew from school, so we stopped in and had soup and sandwiches. Upon arriving home, and after a detour to two gas stations (one for gas, one for air), my brother noticed that he could not find his driver's license. (As an aside, it is part of my family's genetic makeup to loose at least one item a day while traveling. I am fortunate that this gene appears to have passed me over.)
With only a few days left in his stay, we made a half-hearted attempt to locate it at the gas stations, but I wasn't due to trek south to Dunlavin for another week. And then life intervened, and the next thing I knew, two weeks had passed. On my way out the door for yet another quick trip to the US, I asked my dear spouse to pick up the veggies, which were languishing at the bakery, and by the way, could he check in the coffee shop to see if the license might have been left there?
And indeed, my big brother had left it on the coffee table (don't ask me why he had his license out to eat a sandwich). The owner, surmising that this was a person not from these parts, did her part, calling the local B&B's to see if a person of that name might be staying with them, but predictably came up empty-handed. So the upstanding citizen called in the local Garda, James. James, who divides his time between Dunlavin, Donard and Blessington launched his own full-scale investigation, which consisted of calling some B&B's in the area and coming up equally empty-handed.
About this time, my dear husband shows up with his sob story at the coffee shop, and Rose, the coffee shop lady, puts two and two together and gets on the phone to the Dunlavin station, but there's no one in. Since James is in none of his usual haunts, she puts in a call to Baltinglass, where Brian tries to catch up with him in a patrol car in Blessington. They patch husband through to the car, but James isn't there, so Brian promises to call once he's located James and license.
And here the trail goes cold. After a week of not hearing from Garda Brian, I headed out to Dunlavin today to pick up my veg box (the cool weather means lots of crispy greens). Since James' car was not in front of the Garda station, the boys and I put on our detective hats and headed over to the coffee shop. Rose recognized us immediately, and soon the fellows working on the sign out front were also chiming in. We decided I would call James after 3, when the note on the door said there would be someone in the station.
At 3:16, I placed the call. someone-not-James answered, and said he had heard that James had tried to ring all week. He promised to call me right back: sure enough, James still had the magic piece of plastic. Our address duly noted, James promised to mail it to us when he's back on duty Monday afternoon.
Case closed.
