Read Online Jaywalking with the Irish by Lonely Planet - Free Book Online
Authors: Lonely Planet
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bride soon discovered that she had been sent to the local cemetery, which doubled as Mary Osborne’s outhouse.
While she was away, an old codger tipped forward on his seat and warbled, “I weep for Donal dead,” or something close.
“Will you give us a song?” Mary Osborne demanded before Jamie was barely settled back into her stool.
“I’m not much of a singer,” the new wife tried.
Mary would not have it. “Every human being has a song.”
“I can’t remember the words to any,” Jamie protested.
“Look at you now, all beautiful and young and newly married. You must sing, for your husband and all of us gathered now.”
“Go on lass, give us a song,” the fella nearest added.
My bride looked at me helplessly, perhaps gazing into our strange future.
“You must,” I chuckled.
So it was that Jamie, whose love of silliness I have always adored, bequeathed upon Ireland, land of haunting ballads, the immortal words of a ridiculous advertising ditty that started: “I went looking for a noodle, a different kind of noodle, that is golden light, tastes just right. And I found what I was after . . . a golden noodle.”
She’d found her noodle all right. It was me.
The next day we drove up to Howth. Bun’s gate lodge, the archof vines, and undoubtedly my robin had all vanished, replaced by four concrete bungalows that looked as if they belonged on the moon. Flash money was already contaminating the land.
More recently, the producers of Riverdance , that spectacular of modern stage-Irishness, purchased a “tear-down” bungalow by the now unmanned Baily Lighthouse for £1 million and replaced it with an 8,500 square-foot house with indoor swimming pool and subterranean parking for five cars. Then they grabbed up a neighboring Georgian house for £3.9 million, followed by another dwelling on the other side – such is life in the new Irish Beverly Hills.
If only Ireland’s new rapaciousness was confined to a single address. In 1984 it was impossible to know that the carefree days of even those back-of-beyond pubs like Mary Osborne’s were numbered, like so many other pages from Ireland’s past. Developers now pay hundreds of thousands of euros for any pub license that can be transferred to city establishments worth ten times that; these reincarnated city pubs are then dressed out in Paris-Los Angeles-Prague chrome ’n’ leather fittings meant to evoke swank foreign dreams. Meanwhile, Dublin syndicates have filled warehouses with sufficient bric-a-brac to create endless reproductions of these supposed icons of Irish authenticity all over the world – six hundred export kitsch pubs were thrown up in the year 2000 alone, in places like Beijing, Paris, Houston, and Milan (there are ninety others in Italy). I once met a Cork musician who had been dispatched to belt out ballads in the six Irish pubs a syndicate had recently created in Dubai. He loved it.
Irishness – “Oirishness,” as the natives ironically pronounce it – cannot be trapped in a jar. Often, only a wild blunder can lead to the country’s elusive heart. Heading back to Ireland on our first anniversary in June 1985, Jamie and I ploughed west from Dublin in a rental car until exhaustion set in. We randomly located a former “glebe” or vicar’s house on a side road that now took in travelers. Bordered by lush pastures, it looked perfect. We strolled, ate, and retired for the night.
While preparing to pay the next morning, I examined a map ofIreland on the entrance wall. Something odd at once caught my eye. “Sorry,” I said when the owner appeared, “but I couldn’t help noticing the pins stuck into your map. Inishbofin, Brittas, and Borris, Terryglass, Mulhuddart, and Howth – I’ve been to every one of these places.”
“How extraordinary,” the tall, auburn-haired woman said.
“There’s a family named Wilkinson that has houses in every place where you’ve stuck a pin. I had a dear friend named Bun Wilkinson who took
While she was away, an old codger tipped forward on his seat and warbled, “I weep for Donal dead,” or something close.
“Will you give us a song?” Mary Osborne demanded before Jamie was barely settled back into her stool.
“I’m not much of a singer,” the new wife tried.
Mary would not have it. “Every human being has a song.”
“I can’t remember the words to any,” Jamie protested.
“Look at you now, all beautiful and young and newly married. You must sing, for your husband and all of us gathered now.”
“Go on lass, give us a song,” the fella nearest added.
My bride looked at me helplessly, perhaps gazing into our strange future.
“You must,” I chuckled.
So it was that Jamie, whose love of silliness I have always adored, bequeathed upon Ireland, land of haunting ballads, the immortal words of a ridiculous advertising ditty that started: “I went looking for a noodle, a different kind of noodle, that is golden light, tastes just right. And I found what I was after . . . a golden noodle.”
She’d found her noodle all right. It was me.
The next day we drove up to Howth. Bun’s gate lodge, the archof vines, and undoubtedly my robin had all vanished, replaced by four concrete bungalows that looked as if they belonged on the moon. Flash money was already contaminating the land.
More recently, the producers of Riverdance , that spectacular of modern stage-Irishness, purchased a “tear-down” bungalow by the now unmanned Baily Lighthouse for £1 million and replaced it with an 8,500 square-foot house with indoor swimming pool and subterranean parking for five cars. Then they grabbed up a neighboring Georgian house for £3.9 million, followed by another dwelling on the other side – such is life in the new Irish Beverly Hills.
If only Ireland’s new rapaciousness was confined to a single address. In 1984 it was impossible to know that the carefree days of even those back-of-beyond pubs like Mary Osborne’s were numbered, like so many other pages from Ireland’s past. Developers now pay hundreds of thousands of euros for any pub license that can be transferred to city establishments worth ten times that; these reincarnated city pubs are then dressed out in Paris-Los Angeles-Prague chrome ’n’ leather fittings meant to evoke swank foreign dreams. Meanwhile, Dublin syndicates have filled warehouses with sufficient bric-a-brac to create endless reproductions of these supposed icons of Irish authenticity all over the world – six hundred export kitsch pubs were thrown up in the year 2000 alone, in places like Beijing, Paris, Houston, and Milan (there are ninety others in Italy). I once met a Cork musician who had been dispatched to belt out ballads in the six Irish pubs a syndicate had recently created in Dubai. He loved it.
Irishness – “Oirishness,” as the natives ironically pronounce it – cannot be trapped in a jar. Often, only a wild blunder can lead to the country’s elusive heart. Heading back to Ireland on our first anniversary in June 1985, Jamie and I ploughed west from Dublin in a rental car until exhaustion set in. We randomly located a former “glebe” or vicar’s house on a side road that now took in travelers. Bordered by lush pastures, it looked perfect. We strolled, ate, and retired for the night.
While preparing to pay the next morning, I examined a map ofIreland on the entrance wall. Something odd at once caught my eye. “Sorry,” I said when the owner appeared, “but I couldn’t help noticing the pins stuck into your map. Inishbofin, Brittas, and Borris, Terryglass, Mulhuddart, and Howth – I’ve been to every one of these places.”
“How extraordinary,” the tall, auburn-haired woman said.
“There’s a family named Wilkinson that has houses in every place where you’ve stuck a pin. I had a dear friend named Bun Wilkinson who took
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