Paul Howard, aka Ross O'Carroll Kelly, considers his transformation from Dub to culchie - or Dulchie, as locals call him
We're spoiled, we Tiger cubs. My mother and father - and most of their brothers and sisters - had to leave Ireland in the economically depressed 1950s and 1960s for better lives in England, Australia or the US, saying goodbye to family and friends whom they'd rarely set eyes on again.
My generation doesn't know how lucky it is. We gripe incessantly about traffic - "It's, like, bomper to bomper at the Red Cay Inn" - but, for us, the New World is just off the N2, the N7 or the N11. It's Ashbourne rather than Melbourne, Wicklow town, not London town. It's Naas, Arklow, Dunshaughlin and other buckle holes on Dublin's ever-expanding commuter belt.
A couple of years ago I made the trek, Magellan-like, to Avoca, the village I now call home. It's a stunning place and one of Co Wicklow's best-kept secrets - only I, the few hundred other people who live there and the 35 million television viewers in 23 countries who regularly watched Ballykissangel know about it. So . . . ssshhh!
For this Dublin boy, decamping to what the local tourist trade calls the Sunny Southeast has been a culture shock, and virtually every day something happens to remind me of the social and cultural chasm that exists between town and country. And it's usually something comical.
Not so long ago I brought the main street to a standstill by walking into a shop and asking for cashews. Well, I wasn't as blithe about it as that. Some part of me must have realised it was a long shot, because I tried to lessen the shock by first inquiring whether they sold nuts.
I was reminded of the famous scene from The Blues Brothers - "We got both kinds of music: country and western" - when I was asked whether I wanted them salted or dry-roasted.
"Er, neither," I said. "I'm actually looking for cashews." I quickly added that they were for a recipe I was working on, because, from the looks I was drawing, I was half-expecting a deputation at the door that evening, of people bearing pitchforks and flaming torches, demanding to know what strange powers I be meddling with.
"Cashews!" a voice in the shop said. "Do you hear him?"
I tried to argue that cashews aren't such an unusual item to ask for - you can get them in most pubs.
"Well," the voice said, with expert comic timing, "why don't you pop into Fitzgerald's and see how you get on?"
Naturally, the joke got around quickly. Now, whenever I see two or more people gathered in the village, I can always detect an air of complicity between them, as if they're sharing a laugh at my expense, perhaps speculating what kind of craziness would pour out of this Dublin chap's mouth today. Avoca was a village waiting for an idiot until the day I moved in.
But they are wonderful people: warm and funny and welcoming, to the point of getting on first-name terms with you from the day they meet you. In the past two years I've discovered the joy of the particularly rural ritual of never passing a stranger in the street without saying hello. And, on a long walk, having to stop every couple of hundred yards to refuse yet another offer of a lift.
Most of the friends I grew up with in Dublin are now scattered like buckshot around Co Wicklow, Co Meath and Co Kildare. When we get together we spend hours comparing our experiences of this house-price-driven reversal in the traditional migratory trend. We wind up saying things like, "You can really see the seasons where we live," and talking about animals that never existed for us before, except as road kill.
A couple of friends have reported "ethnic tensions" where they live. One was told by a stranger in a pub: "Our kids can't afford to buy houses because of you lot moving out here."
Mostly, though, it's good-natured banter. The locals have names for us. In Wicklow we're Dulchies. A couple I know who moved to Gorey are referred to by their neighbours as Wexicans.
And every day a new experience. A couple of weeks back a speckled thrush - see how the names trip off my tongue - flew into one of my upstairs windows, which unfortunately for him was closed at the time. He must have been flying at a fair clip, because I found him lying motionless in front of the back door, where a cat would surely have finished him off, had I not happened upon him when I did.
The bird, it seemed, was winded, or concussed, and I discovered that the way to treat any creature so impaired is to confine it to a dark, warm place, with soft bedding and food - and minibar, trouser press and adult movies, if you like - until it passes.
So St Francis of Assisi here scooped him up, put him in a cardboard box, taped it up and put it in the shed. After four hours he shot out of the box like a bullet from a gun.
An hour later I was telling the story to a local shopkeeper friend and was surprised by how emotional I was. He must have heard my voice catch, because from the look on his face I could tell what he was thinking: These Dublin fellas.