Reflections on Ireland and the irish and doing things differently - perhaps

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The abandoned skeletons of half finished houses litter the west coast of Ireland. They sit alongside hundreds of for sale signs, fire sale signs might be more appropriate. Each one a memorial to the great Irish experiment now lying in ruins like the occasional old abandoned castle you pass on the side of the road. 30 years ago Ireland began a bold experiment. It made a conscious commitment as a nation to invest in education. When Ireland joined the EEC, it had this ready-made workforce of highly educated young people. IT and other innovative companies and drug manufacturers set up or moved their European operations to Ireland. All looked rosy. UNTIL the financial spivs and the desk jockeys moved in. Average punters were encouraged to borrow beyond their capacity to repay on the promise of ever increasing house prices, like a kind of real estate ponzi scheme. And of course it was left to the government to pick up the pieces and now the country is saddled with crippling debt.
Paddy, our walking tour guide (that’s not his name. I can’t remember it but all Irishmen are named paddy or Mick), stopped us outside the Irish Central bank where the banking regulators reside. He cautioned us to be very quiet as the regulators were all asleep and had been dozing for more than 10 years. Droll and effective.
Monday
National Library and a Yeats exhibition. The National Gallery, Most venues are closed on Mondays AND something about a visiting president. We decided to avoid the crowd, and watch the speech on TV. We did get to see his motorcade drive by. I’m sure I saw him, well I saw his outline in the back of the car... I think. We found his speech quite moving and appropriate. Nice line about looking for the missing apostrophe. I can’t believe that the Fox bullies are complaining because he downed a pint of Guinness. If I were in the Obama camp I would be going back through the vision of both Bushes and Reagan and finding examples of where they were having a drink while overseas and there were crises back at home (there are always crises back at home).Nice Indonesian meal capped off the day.
Tuesday
Quick trip to the James Joyce Centre before we picked up our car, another Fiat and drove to Newcastle County Down. Clare, Claire, our GPS, must have had a touch of the THCs because she took us down this goat track that was barely passable and told us to turn right up a walking trail. Eventually we found our B&B and ate that night at the PERCY FRENCH Hotel. Percy wrote the Mountains of Mourne, a most beautiful song that I used to sing to Jess at night before she went to sleep. The line “in the place where the dark Mourne sweeps down to the sea” is absolutely accurate.
Newcastle itself is a very pretty little town. We had fun picking “parallel landmarks” with our own Newcastle. The pubs seemed to open late though.

Wednesday
Rain! Lots of driving. Went to Raphoe to see another stone circle. We kept driving in and out of Northern Ireland. At one stage we drove north from the NORTH and ended up in the SOUTH and then drove South from the SOUTH and ended up in the NORTH. Go figure.
We drove to Kilkelly the name and site of the best song about the Irish diaspora ever. I first heard it by chance about 20 years ago on the radio. Took me ages to track it down. It is based on letters written from a father in Ireland to his son who has emigrated to the US. What a pity the locals weren’t as aware of its significance. The only man who had any knowledge was on holiday in France. Went to the cemetery but every gravestone had no names. Big disappointment.

We drove to Mayo (Claremorris actually) where we stayed in a pretty ordinary hotel. A window would not shut so the rain came in, and the promised cooked breakfast was unavailable cause ‘chef doesn’t start till 10”. No refund!
Thursday
More rain! Spent the day driving. To Galway to Limerick to Adare (old village but overly commercialised) to Ennis. Don’t ask!!. If we were organising the trip again we would do it differently. I have come down with a bad cold. All this getting in and out of cars and warm buildings so have been feeling pretty miserable. Our hotel in Ennis was very good. Probably the best hotel we have stayed in this trip. I ate soup for dinner.
A Novocastrian traveller it transpired
Found himself in Limerick inspired
To try metre and verse
His wife's comment was terse:
"Your poetry leaves much to be desired."

FRIDAY
Drove.... to a ferry crossing the Shannon. Missed it by 10 minutes. Had to wait an hour. Then drove to Dingle and the western most point of Ireland. This area around Kerry is spectacular. We have decided that we needed at least another 2 days in Ireland each spent in this southern area. Again hindsight is 20/20. We finally arrived in Blarney. Straight to the castle and we both kissed the Blarney stone (photo €10 each thank you very much). Some might say that Blarney is my spiritual home but after this experience I look forward to an increase in eloquence matched by a corresponding reduction in my verbosity.
So what do we make of Ireland?
It’s not called the emerald isle for nothing. Everything is green. And the countryside is spectacularly beautiful.
It’s such a conflicted country with such a conflict-ridden history. Paddy our walking guide told us of Daniel O’Connell, the first real political agitator for democratic change and equal rights for Catholics. O’Connell was visited by Frederick Douglas, the first great black American leader just prior to the US civil war. O’Connell developed a tactic of convening large crowds: 50, 60,000 people who would gather to agitate peacefully for reform. In this he inspired both Ghandi and Martin Luther King. Unlike them though when push came to shove and the British banned one of his rallies, he blinked and called it off and the movement was never the same.
Charles Parnell was the second great patriot. Towards the end of the nineteenth century he convinced Gladstone of the need for home rule – in effect autonomy for Ireland. But he had an affair with a married woman and his support evaporated. One of the first examples of “social wedging” by conservatives.
And then Easter 1916 and the civil war and De Valera and Collins and Yeats and Synge and O’casey and the expats Shaw and Wilde and Joyce.
And then last week the Queen and Obama. Strangely enough these two visits appear to have acted as a catalyst. As one of the speakers on the day at Obama’s speech said: I’m sick of the negativity. I’m sick of being down. Today gives me a new sense of hope.
In talking to people as we moved around the feeling we got, at least from the reasonably educated people we spoke to was that they don’t want to forget their history but they want to look forward not backward. Who knows maybe the recalcitrants in the North might take a leaf out of the Irish Rugby Union team which is selected from all of Ireland including the North. Maybe they might realise that at the end of the day, they’re all Irish after all.

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