If lost please return to the swimming pool

Displaced in Mullingar:In a weekly diary on his new life in Mullingar, Michael Hardingplans to go for a relaxing dip in the local pool, but has neglected to bring his togs

Although the Christmas lights were turned on last Saturday, and the streets are now glowing like Bombay during Diwali, I am determined to relax. Wind down. Resist the shops. So during the week I went to the library and borrowed a tape of Dolores Keane, and a book on cooking. Then I went down to the swimming pool.

It's not a long walk from the library. Just go beyond the video shop and turn right, into the town park.

It was lunchtime, so the park was full of teenagers in school uniforms with their shirts sticking out, and their faces smudged with tomato ketchup and their ties all askew, as if someone had been trying to hang them. One couple on a park bench were glued to each other at the mouth in a rapture of stillness, which made them seem more dead than alive. I was reassured when they unstuck themselves to take in air, and nibble like two doves on the chocolate sweets in her open hand.

So in I went to the reception area of the swimming pool.

Nobody there.

But then a swimmer emerged from the dressing area. A wet-headed man with shoulders like a weight-lifter and legs like a jockey, in a tracksuit, still towelling his head as he came out. I'm just wondering, said I, do you know when the pool is quiet? I didn't like the thought of jumping into a bath of teenage boys who don't use handkerchiefs.

Well, he said, do you want a swim now? I said no. Not really. That is . . . yes, but I was just wanting to know what was a good time.

He said, now is good.

It was Thursday lunchtime.

He said, Thursday from half 12 is always quiet.

Well now that's a pity, said I, because I hadn't any togs! Or a towel! Ah, he said, if you go over the road, to Texas, you can get all that over there and it's not expensive. The swimming hat you can buy here.

Right, said I. Sure I'll tip over to Texas.

I was back in 20 minutes with a new towel and a pair of togs, and I bought a black rubber swimming cap at the desk, with the rather unimaginative words "Mullingar Swimming Pool" in bold white letters on the black rubber. I suppose if I forgot who I was, and happened to walk down the street naked and got as far as Kinnegad, then they'd have some clue as to where I came from, and what I was last seen doing in Mullingar.

Anyway, the swim was good and I had a slice of chocolate cake and a cappuccino on Mount Street afterwards. Mullingar is not a European Capital of Culture but it does have a bakery that sells fresh buns and an arts centre down the street, so that's a start.

Mullingar Arts Centre is contained within the refurbished County Hall. There is a cosy feel to the bar in the foyer, and a sort of town-hall feel to the auditorium, with its conventional proscenium arch and its walls and ceiling painted in a stunningly distracting blue.

I strolled in one night to watch Mick Lally and Mary McEvoy go through their paces in JB Keane's The Matchmaker.

I imagined the ghost of Keane in the wings, smiling to himself as he listened to the sound of a packed house laughing their heads off.

Lots of couples with grey hair, coy and shy. Some weather-beaten faces. Rugged hands holding handbags and folded coats. A full busload of elderly ladies. And everybody munching chocolates.

They had all come out to watch the play; to relive moments of absurdity which pass for intimacy in a poor world. And they were having the night of their lives, as Mick Lally and Mary McEvoy delivered Keane's comic ballad of sexually repressed country folk with malicious relish.

Keane's work doesn't quite compare with Mozart's, though both artists had a weakness for the frivolous. Yet, staring at the blue walls of the Mullingar Arts Centre, I could not resist comparisons with the Garnier Opera House in Paris, with its Chagall ceiling, and the equally distracting six-ton chandelier, beneath which the townsfolk of Paris sometimes gather to watch the opera, and to relive moments of absurdity which pass for intimacy in a rich world.

And with the same hands they all eat the same little chocolate sweets.