Field Report 20:
Ireland- September 13, 1999

By Jeff Bell
 

Notes from the Road

• A guy I met saw the recent total eclipse. He told me that it was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen; he saw it without any interference from clouds. Not me. Not to worry, he said, another would be passing over the U.S. in 2017. OK.
• Check out the movie "Chance or Coincidence", a French film. Very French, you can clearly see the neurosis and drama of France played out allegorically in the story line (not a new thing in French films). An attractive, talented, slightly aging woman (France) is a successful dancer. She despairs at the loss of her husband and son (France's future world status), she travels the world (France's influence worldwide), finally finding some comfort in recognition from a young admirer (from Quebec). Every character in this movie—Italian, Turkish, American, Quebec—neatly represents a satellite spot in the psyche of France. Who is the American? A rich, black ex-boxing champion, jazz club owner, ex-choreograhper, good natured, sympathetic, platonic friend, pays big bucks for French art ...and doesn't speak a word of French.

Ireland — Dublin

There are a lot of things in life that you can't take literally. Take the very first conversation I had in a pub in Ireland. An animated pair of lit up blue eyes tells me, in all seriousness, that Dublin is the greatest city in the world.

This sort of intense pride, faith, naivety, was a theme that I'd see over and over in the people throughout Ireland. Typically I would hold a serene exterior, listening, allowing them to complete the prosyletizing or praise about Ireland. It was the path to the maximum happiness for all. Totally off the deep end in reality, "daft", I'd be tempted to let them know, but if you played along with the game it was kinda fun.

I learned a lot about Ireland, and at the top of the list for me was my understanding of the subtleties of a good glass of Guinness. Over here, pouring a glass of Guinness is a three step process—fill to about 85%, let the foam rise and settle, top off to 100%. I was told that it takes 3 1/2 minutes (called "the time to cook"). A good head of foam is the key, and I think I'm permanently spoiled, the Guinness over here in Scotland where I am now doesn't taste as good, I'm sure the U.S. version now is gonna be a disappointment.

Of course there is a dark side to that blind form of faith in Irishness. Now and then I'd hear the words "Irish blood" in some context. This is a country with next no immigrants, out here on this rainy island (an island off of another island really), there's a mentality of it being a remote place, out on the edge of the inhabitable world. What would they do if and when they do accept more immigrants?

The Irish and English have a peculiar relationship. It's like Enlgand is the overbearing father who dominants and amoung other things, tells his son all his life that he's no good. The Irish, while having been independent from England for 75 years or so, just cannot exorcise the ghost of it's father's influence. 30% of Irish in a poll said that they thought North Ireland would NEVER be united with Ireland. In a pub, I heard a band sing about the (400) years of English domination, talking much about Oliver Cromwell's massacres. Oliver Cromwell lived in the 1600s! In other words, the Irish doesn't want to let go, can't imagine life without the fight against it's more powerful neighbor, England.

Being close to England has brought some benefits to Ireland. Ireland is remarkably small, Dublin has a million people, the next largest city, Cork, has perhaps 250,000. The adoption of the English language (over Gaellic, which is still alive, though not much) has allowed Ireland to have a disprotionately large influence around the world, through immigration and the arts. Many of the great actors and writers in England are or were Irish.

Being in Ireland does cause me to really feel the anger that the English caste system generates. How it breeds extremist philsophies and racism. For example, in America we generally unflinchingly admire Churchill for all he did, while Churchill—in fact ALL British figures—are still by definition controversial—because they ALL represent the class they are associated with. Surprising as it may be to us, to some people over here in the UK/Ireland, Churchill is more of a symbol of class division than savior of the free world. Meanwhile, the Irish, preoccupied with their fight with Britain, during WW II chose to be neutral. Head in the sand. My prediction—as the British class system slowly dies its inevitable death, the more you'll see Ireland become more international, it's already happening. And you when you travel here, you will hear less and less often that Dublin is the greatest city in the world.

On the Bike

There's this scene in Apocolypse Now, a slow fade transition from the mad scene with the GIs at a massive party with the Playboy bunnies to the next day out in the jungle on the PBR boat. Who can't relate to the extremity of this situation? But the scene resonants, because of it's similarity of the morning at work situation after a wild party. That's what I was reminded of when I jumped onto my bike leaving Dublin. Now believe me, there are no dancing girls in Ireland and riding a bike is no war. But riding is hard work. I felt like I was back during something familiar, but it was tough getting going again. It was hilly, and I was beat up from all the riding through England and Wales.

This is the Emerald Isle you may know and it is a perfect description. The grass is sometimes so green that it's almost neon in color. After traveling around for a week, I was about to board a train for Belfast to leave to Scotland, and I just spontaneously skipped it and went off biking for another couple of hundred miles. The West Coast of Ireland in particular is often breathtakingly beautiful.

I would say that I had about a dozen spots that are burned into my mind as spectacularly beautiful, near the top of the list of my whole trip. The cliffs of the Burren, the treeless hills (from the movie, "The Field") of the Conamarra, the spectacular valley of Dongalough, the beaches on the Dingle Peninsula. Often times, the light, the time of day was what made the difference, and it was usually around sunset times.

It was tough some rainy days. August is supposed to be the good month to travel here. I went into a pub for lunch one day and the news was on. There was a picture of Ireland, with all these little clouds all over the entire island, a few of them with rain. One guy at the bar turns to his friend, "pretty good for end of August". I was baffled.

They surf in Ireland. Talked to a kid who had just come out of the water, trying to explain to him how strange it seemed to me to see someone surfing this far north. The water however, was pretty warm, and the swells were decent too. Should have been here yesterday, he said.

One day I'm looking at this huge BMW straight on. It's in a parking spot and there's a kid, maybe 14 years old sitting there looking like he's about to get ready to drive off. I'm thinking, gees, this country is more well off than I thought, and they sure let them drive young. Just then, his mother comes along and gets into the right side of the car and I realize, oh yeh, the steering wheel's on that side.

When you rush through a country in 2 weeks, the impression you get of it may not be exactly accurate.

The Swans of Galway

Galway, a university town on the West Coast, was my favorite place on this stay. Like all towns, there are gobs of pubs, and gobs of people making a lotta noise in each one. Kilkeny for instance, while a tourist town, yes, had 88+ pubs in a town of about ... 25,000? Story I heard was that a liquor license cost about 180,000 pounds (in Dublin). That's a lot of pints to pay off that license.

Every other pub has some musicians playing. Sometimes they were very good. Very good. Some traditional music was played by youngsters and some by elders, with a lot of feeling. In fact, the music was so much a part of the fabric of pub life that people often didn't applaud at the end of songs, and mediocre or poor musicians (noted by the playing of what I would call the idiot strum on guitar, which I tend to when I pick up a guitar by the way—dum..dum-de-dum..dum..dum-de-dum—and singing plantively, awfully) were just tolerated. No musician who makes an attempts gets put down. And one cover rock band I saw was as good a band as I had seen in years. Excellent.

The sky was often a dark, solid grey blue color in Galway, a tone just lighter the dark grey stone bridges and ships in the harbour. The sky color would be reflected in the waters creating this canvas that looked like a carefully contrived painting by one of the old Euro masters.

In the middle of the river that flowed through the town, there were dozens of swans sitting, spotlessly white against the grey, heads down in the water, still against a running current. Each of them would periodically pop up for air. They seemed to reflect, well, one way to slice Irish life—full of beauty, head in the drink, oblivious of the rest of the world, trusting that no danger is emminant. Not entirely fair or accurate, but some truth there.

The Irish Life

The old days of storytelling may be a thing of the past. Evidently in the past few decades, the percentage of farmers has dropped from 50% to about 10%. TV and electric lights have put a further dent in the storytelling tradition. One other story I heard was that there used to be more dancing, but since carpets came along and replaced stone floors, that has subsided too.

Such is the price of change. Still, Ireland still lags behind most other EU countries in terms of liberal thinking. Divorce is absolutely illegal. Abortion is illegal and universally agreed that it should be (women go to England, an Irish way of having their cake and eating too). A quote in the liberal Irish Times I read suggested that the Irish who immigrated to Australia often married Protestants because "they were orphans and had no one there to chastise them or guide them properly." Well, well. The big news on talk shows was not East Timor or what's happening in the EU, but the fact that some parish priest in some town had in a sermon called a well-known athlete "a common slut" who had baby out of wedlock.

There was a story I read in my book of woman in a town whose husband beat her up and left her. Another man had moved in with her and had a child with her. The locals accepted the relationship until a new priest came to town and denounced the relationship from the pulpit. The townspeople followed the word of the new priest, turned on the couple, and he was eventually forced to leave town.

The Talk that Goes On About Town

The Irish love their poets, especially Yeats, whose poems I would be see painted on walls in the most unlikely places. They love to gab—parking ticket enforcement is evidently a new thing, and I saw one guy delivering a lengthy silioquy to a couple of cops on parking, tieing the whole thing somehow to national pride, character and unity. I doubt he got off. One tour bus driver pointed out a stone monument which he suggested were older than the pyramids. A good Irish tale perhaps?

Once I was in a book store when the lights were suddenly turned out. The clerks explained that a funeral was going by. Lots of sad looking faces went by the window while the clerks geniunely said, "poor girl", "yes, so sad, that poor girl". And then, "ah look, there's Molly so-and-so", "yes".

Drinking

Pubs are where the action is in any town. Contrast this to Italy, which does not have pubs. Just how bad is the drinking problem in Ireland?

I read a book on Ireland by a British guy and the only discussion of drinking in the entire book was a small sub-chapter entitled something like "Cooking habits are changing and pubs are in decline".

It's possible, and there's some EU data to back this up, that the French and Germans actually drink more per capita than the Irish. Certainly the English and Scotish drink..well, a lot.

The entire UK seems to subscribe to what I would call the Quantum Theory of Drinking. Drinks come in pints, and a pint is a lot, and the beer is generally strong. Hence, drinking here has it's distinct quantum states. One pint, you're feelin friendly; two, you're buzzed bud; three, take care that ya don't slur; and four, well, you are radioactive my friend, that and anything above, you are in an unstable state.

Some of the older Irish, like one bus driver I had, carry on this notion of drinking as a central fabric of life. Characteristics: pink faces with tiny red veins, sense of humor intact but with a slight edge and impatience, listens to music with embarrasing lyrics about Irish people drinking in bars all over the world. Hello? Did anyone bother to mention that alcoholism is a progressive disease?

In spite of drinking's high profile, I saw very few alcholic bums on the streets, certainly more in London or San Francisco. It's hard to say what the younger people think, in general if they drink, they think of it as just having fun. And by the way, the word "pint" and "point"? They are pronounced identically by the Irish. So what's the pint?

Yur Bar Scam

Here's a bar item to take note of. Ever notice when the bartender in a rush leaves the cash register tray open and rather than ring your drink up on the register, just puts the money in the register? If he's the owner, he's probably escaping income tax on that sale. If he's not the owner, he's likely adding your total to a sum he's got going in his head and pocketing that money later in the evening.

The Look of the Irish

In practically every country in Europe I think, "ya know, I think I look like I could be from here." Lots of Europeans (and Americans) look like they could belong in one of a number of European countries. Once I ran into a black guy in Norway and assumed by the way he was dressed that he was American. He was Norwegian.

There are a few Irish faces here I've seen which have been particularly interesting: I've seen a look alike of Jim Morrison, Johnny Rotten, Richard Harris. Classic lassies with long dark, waving hair, beautiful bright faces. Red haired, freckled fellows and girls. And my favorite, not a face, but an accent, was a father sitting behind me at a coffee shop who when he ordered sounded exactly like Robert Shaw—you know, the captain in Jaws, the bad guy in The Sting.

Belfast

Paranoia is no stranger to me. Sometimes you can see it for what it is and have a laugh at it though. A bit of a nervous laugh.

More people get killed in North Ireland driving their cars then in the war. I say war, because that's basically what it is. A couple of hundred people have died, on either side, every year for the past 30 years in Northern Ireland. Saddening. Neither side wants to give up the violence.

On the train in Belfast, the glass on the windows were double layered and said "Securite/Toughened". Things like that take on a different meaning in places like Belfast.

I took an hour taxi tour through West Belfast which was fascinating, sad, and unsettling. The conflict has so ossified that the walls, graffiti, gravesites, barbed wire, fortressed police and IRA headquarters, makes you realize that the war has generated a momentum of its own. The flags, murals, and slogans on the walls of either side make it worse, begging you to chose a side, implying that to be neutral is not an option.

My taxi driver had an Irish mother and German father, and while his stories were of the people on the Irish side (had met Gerry Adams, "he drinks there", had been in a bar when masked Unionist paramilitaries came in), basically he was like most people—had no love of and a good fear of violence. Most people in Northern Ireland want to see the violence stopped. The "Troubles" seem to be an indication of how a certain mix of geography, heritages, religions, government mistakes can cause people to act barbarically. The stories on both sides are atrocious. The most powerful images I'll remember are the gravesite on the Irish side where a group of hunger strikers are buried, and on the Unionist side where enormous steel doors which close at 9pm seal off one side from another to reduce raiding gangs crossing over at night.

A Wee Scare

I was sitting in the rail station waiting for my train, and it's about 2 minutes away, when I realize: I've lost my journal. I try to think. Did I leave it at the pub at lunch? At the little store? I've got 2 minutes to think, the next train won't be for hours. Should I stay or should I go?

I think of one possibility, it seems unlikely. I came into this station an hour ago, I saw I guy by coincidence, an American, who was at the hostel I was at in Kilkeny. Maybe I put it down then (why?) and he found it and turned it in.

I run to the ticket window. I can hear the train coming. I look through the window, my journal is sitting on the other side of the office. A fat little book with lots of scribbling, but no name, address, no way to find itself to me on its own.

I allow 1/2 second to get composed. "Say I left my journal here, I think it got turned in...?". My heartrate slows back to normal. In the minutes before however, I had already accepted the loss. You see, I'm not home, and I may lose it yet. I hope not, but things just have a way of disappearing. That's their nature, idn't it?

The One Constant

I've come to the conclusion that there in fact one constant in world travels—Italians. Everywhere I go, their sing-song voices seem to pop out. Makes me feel secure, like I'm never that far away.
 

To read more Field Reports, click here.