Two euros and fifty cents

It was the Wednesday before St. Patrick's Day. I had been to the library to access the Internet (I am a paid-up member of a one-room library in a small town in Ireland, at least until next March!) and was now wandering up and down the main street of town trying to pick up some St. Patrick's Day decorations - flags, hats, pins - and maybe some chocolate, too.

I had had more luck with the chocolate. Every store in town had an extensively decorated front window, with streamers in green, white, and orange (or "gold", as many call it), Irish flags, leprechauns, what have you. But within, no such items were being offered for sale for the most part. One store had Irish flags and big tricolor hats, but they were pretty expensive and I wanted to shop around. None of the stores I stopped in had anything else - well, I did get some groceries, including chocolate, at one of the three supermarkets in town.

There are two things you should know about shopping in Ireland: most small towns have busy, extensive Main Streets with plenty of shops of all sorts. This is mainly because there's nowhere else to go. There are no malls or Wal-Marts lurking on the outskirts of town - well, not the outskirts of small towns, anyway - to lure away customers and starve the local shops as has happened in so many towns in America. The only alternative to doing business with the local radio shop or supermarket or dress store or barbershop is to travel to the next closest town and shop at their versions of the stores, unless you're prepared to travel many miles. So each store has a sort of monopoly on whatever sort of product it offers, and can charge prices just short of the point at which shoppers will decide it's worth their while to travel to the next town, or to a faraway mall, and see if they can do better. So the bottom line is: while each small town has a busy and thriving downtown, most consumers are paying through the eye.

The other thing to remember is that most of the chocolate you can get in Ireland is made by Cadbury, but it comes in a dizzying range of varieties.

Anyway. I had been to the store with expensive Irish flags and tricolor hats, stopped at one or both of the supermarkets on the main street (the third is a bit more out of the way, best accessed by car) and bought some groceries, including several bars of chocolate, and marched uphill to the SPAR Shop, a convenience store that I knew had nice St. Patrick's Day badges.

I bought a badge - a gold-coated plastic harp on a green ribbon - and began my hike downhill to the first shop to buy a flag and a tricolor hat. I stuffed the badge into my bag of groceries (another thing you should know: bring your own shopping bags to Ireland - they'll charge you 15 cents per bag at the stores) and headed down into the crowds of people on the sidewalk. Ahead of me I saw a hulking man who looked a lot like Elliott Gould. I glanced at him for only a second and made eye contact.

Ooops.

The man loped directly up to me. "Excuse me," he said. I tried to keep moving, but he stood directly in front of me. "Excuse me. Would you be able to give me two euros and fifty cents?"

What? Two euros and fifty cents? Why not two euros, or three euros? Why such a precise amount?

"I'm sorry," I lied. "I don't have..." I hefted the grocery bag. "Groceries, you know." I hoped he didn't notice my pockets bulging with coins of every denomination, including plenty of two-euro and half-euro coins.

He seemed to accept this explanation and moved on to his next mark. I carefully fingered my wallet and my passport pouch to make sure that both were still there.

Why two euros and fifty cents?

I found out why a few days later. Much of Ireland and Irish TV had been preoccupied that week with the Cheltenham Gold Cup, a series of horse races being held in England where several Irish horses with names like Beef or Salmon and War of Attrition were competing. Most of the regular daytime TV schedule had been pre-empted or rearranged to accomodate the races. Some people, I was told, would skip out of work to watch the races so they could have a better idea how the horses would perform in upcoming Irish horse races. Many, many bets were being placed at the legal bookmaker's shops that were scattered throughout town.

And the minimum bet?

Two euros and fifty cents.

I wonder if this guy bet on War of Attrition?