‘Are you all right, love? I know I shouldn’t be looking at your Facebook page (don’t kill me!) but I am your Mammy and I do worry!!!”
This was the text message my mother sent me a few weeks ago after seeing a status on my Facebook page. The status read quite simply: “Ohhh shite”. I had thought it was obvious that I wasn’t the author.
The status was orchestrated by my housemate, who had taken her chances with my unlocked phone and thrown together a poor excuse for a frape. (The “shite” update status was a “frape”, which is defined by Collins dictionary as “the practice of altering information in a person’s profile on a social networking website without his or her permission”.)
I reassured my mother that I had not, in fact, taken to social media to proclaim my frustrations with the world, and we laughed. She admitted to being “a complete Aisling” and has been signing off her texts “Love, Memmeh” ever since.
But what is “a complete Aisling”, you might ask? And what on earth does “Memmeh” mean?
Both terms originated in a group on Facebook called Oh My God What a Complete Aisling, where users come together to tell the tales of a fictional Aisling, her Memmeh (Mammy) and a host of other rural Irish characters.
Aisling is your stereotypical country girl working in Dublin. She is probably in her mid-20s and hasn’t quite embraced city living. She is described on the page as someone who loves “a good removal”, a cheeky Coors Light in McGowans of Phibsborough and “heads home whenever Mammy needs her to be a good daughter”. Aisling has NEVER dyed her hair, but most importantly, she hates people with “notions”.
“Notions” is a derogatory term usually uttered in a dismissive tone of voice while rolling one’s eyes. It denotes practices considered to be whimsical nonsense.
According to the Facebook page, Aisling considers the following things to be “notions”: nut butter, men who wear scarves, Yogalates, herbal tea, the Labour Party, Marks & Spencer, only having one child and dressing up your dog.
Generic John
Aisling’s boyfriend is Generic John, who has “good road frontage”, works in a bank and goes home every weekend to play for his local GAA club.
Memmeh is your stereotypical Irish mammy. She keeps a good candle in the bathroom but only lights it when there are visitors. She fills the fridge up on a Friday for when the childer come home from college and she loves a good Mass.
My mother texts me updates on local gossip from home and what the roads are like. She asks if I’ve seen any updates from my brother on Snapchat. She hides the good Molton Brown hand soap in the bathroom cupboard and only takes it out when there are visitors. She wraps my pyjamas in a hot-water bottle on a Friday.
I teased her about the text message and we laughed about how she ticks all of the Memmeh boxes. But in my haste to lambaste her for being the epitome of the Irish mammy, little did I realise that I too fit into a stereotype all of my own: the country girl in the big smoke.
On the first week of my fancy new job I kitted myself out in suit pants, fluffy pink cardigans, cream blouses and sensible court shoes, standing out like a sore thumb among my leather jacket-clad colleagues smoking roll-ups and chatting about hot yoga.
My experience of Dublin nightlife is largely confined to Flannery’s and Copper Face Jacks, except for when I’m feeling a little more sophisticated and go to Capitol for two-for-a-fiver cocktails. Truth be told, though, my spiritual home is Dunnes bar in Carrick-on-Shannon on a bank holiday Sunday.
My subconscious holds a long list of what I consider to be “notions”, such as: double-barrel names, flat whites, hipsters, buying wine based on the region rather than the alcohol percentage and women who swing their arms while walking (“eejits”, my granny calls them).
My boyfriend is in no way generic but he does love a good dose of club football. He refers to his Roscommon home as “paradise” and all he wants for Christmas is to win a county title.
Spiritual home
I run home to my Roscommon hinterland of Ballaghaderreen every weekend I can, where I immerse myself among my own ilk. There, we give out about people who watch rugby instead of “the gaa”, we blame the Irish Water crisis on the Dubs not knowing what it is to pay for water and we spend the first 15 minutes of every conversation – without fail – discussing the weather.
But despite all of this, I have realised that my existence straddles both extremes. I go to Pilates, live in Dublin 8, own a Nutribullet and enjoy painting a nice watercolour in my spare time. I look forward to when the rose beds in the war memorial gardens have finally come into bloom. To top it all off, I have the most notiony job of all: I am a journalist.
So what's worse than being the stereotypical country girl in the big smoke? Being the stereotypical country girl in the big smoke and having notions.
