Green toenails, green fields...

St. Patrick's Day in the Irish house in Tegucigalpa. We are, as you know, three girls, and so apart from the obvious brewing margaritas (kinda green) while listening to the Pogues, the afternoon's preparations had to involve green glitter, orange jewellery, and matching emerald toenails. Our St Patrick's Day party was highly anticipated, and I think it made the grade.

Anticipated. By the Honduran staff in the office mostly, who have a policy of being as Paddyphiliac as possible until the moment the stereo is turned on. There was a flurry of excitement for literally months beforehand, and the officious but fabulous administrator in the office insisted on making lists of attendees, budgeting for food (but never enough for drink: that had to be heavily subsidised by the Irish who knew how much would be drunk), and staying up into the small hours all week cutting out paper shamrocks, and designing green paper hats. The effort put into it all was phenomenal. The patio looked like 5th Avenue before the parade. And the piñata! The giant, leprechaun-shaped piñata! Stuffed with green sweets and condoms (because one year they got green condoms, and somehow it's passed into the received wisdom that condoms are a specifically Paddy's Day treat), and smashed open violently by three boys using the crozier of St Patrick himself. (Is the crozier the hat or the stick? Obviously, I mean the stick. Please do correct me if I'm wrong, religious pedants of the world).

So all things Irish and delightful - with the exception of the music. Salsa, merengue, regatón, all night long. From time to time, one of us would slope over to slip on some U2, or Thin Lizzy - you know, it wasn't exactly Enya (although my Canadian friend did try to put on Enya at about 4AM: I vetoed that as loudly as I did the Cranberries). Not a chance - it would be whipped off before you could bellow a single word plaintively into the ether (" All's Quiet, On.... what the fuck??!"). I don't know what it is about this most tolerant, even placid of people. But our rousing celtic tunes don't rouse them. They slide off the dance floor despondently, just as the Europeams hop up, ready for some headbanging fun, and sit around the sides of the patio waiting patiently for us to put on another song that allows for hip grinding and carefully simulated sex. So the playlist didn't get played: no Christy, no Frames, no Emotional Fish or Hothouse Flowers or Waterboys. And by the time, at 5AM, that I was refusing to go to bed until we had all danced just once to Where's Me Jumper, the CDs were uniformly coated in rum.

It was, my friends, a fantastic party.

Lá 'le Phádraig Shona Dhiabh go léir.