Scrap Bloomsday - give us 'Dubliners' Day instead

Sunday Tribune, June 21

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan leaned on the parapet of the Martello tower and examined the snot green sea. Filling his nostrils with salt-tang air, he picked up his shaving bowl and noticed a throng below him.
"Who," he wondered, "are that shower of w****rs?"
And w****rs they were indeed. Some wore bruised panama hats and novelty spectacles. Others wore bowlers, blazers and deck shoes. Women wore shawls over designer dresses. All about were ad-hoc Edwardians who had half-plundered their wardrobes in an attempt to look 'period'. A bearded gentleman in a linen suit was high-camping it on a pushbike, cooing "how's your giblets missus?" Small groups of Japanese, Scandinavians and Americans leapt out of his path, hugging their ragged copies of Ulysses, the book in which Buck was a character.
Sighing, Buck called to a young boy passing by. "You there! What day is this?"
"Why, it's Bloomsday sir!"
"Bloomsday? Here's a guinea, buy that goose in the butcher's window."
"But sir, you're confusing Ulysses with A Christmas Carol."
"That's not possible," Buck protested, "I've never read Ulysses."
"Don't worry," said the boy, "neither have most of these w****rs."
And so Buck retreated, leaving the narrative to me.
I live a seven-minute walk from Joyce's tower and every 16 June my head is done in by the pretentious gobdaws celebrating Bloomsday. Mentally, I moon at them.
My father used to celebrate Bloomsday. Like me, he had never finished Ulysses. He would plump up his cravat and grab someone's walking cane (even if they were using it) and head off with our pleas of "Don't! You look a twat!" ringing in his ears. I don't know if he ever made the tower but he definitely made Fitzie's pub.
I suppose he enjoyed himself and there's something to be said for that. Although it's really irritating, Bloomsday does provide some people with a respite from the prevailing Gloomsday.
What is REALLY annoying is that people confuse Bloomsday with a celebration of Dublin. It isn't. It's a middle-class pretence-fest. Dublin should be celebrated, but not in such an exclusive way.
Joyce celebrated the mundane aspects of the city as well as the landmarks. He drew a detailed human map of toilet smells, snot and other body fluids. He hoped that if Dublin was ever razed, it could be rebuilt using Ulysses.
Physically, this would be difficult. Joyce's short-arsed Dublin now spreads out beyond the pale. Dedalus's shoreline is now dominated by monolithic office blocks in Booterstown. Monto is gone and Talbot Street is now full of new lowlife.
Mundane, human Dublin is vanishing fast, too. If Joyce set Ulysses in 2004 instead of 1904 he might have walked down Moore Street recalling how Joe Murphy founded Tayto there in 1954 – the year of the inaugural Bloomsday. Fifty years on, they were still being made in the capital. In 2005, the citizens' crisps, and jobs, were outsourced to Meath.
He might have stopped in Davy Byrne's and asked for a Jacob's cracker to go with his gorgonzola. Jacob's stopped producing biscuits here last month after 156 years. The Fig Rolls we unfurled as kids are no longer made in Dublin.
He might have glugged a Guinness, unaware that two years later Diageo would talk of closing St James's Gate.
On the way home, he might have stopped for a spice burger. Soon the latter may be gone. Tomorrow the company that invented the burger, Walsh Family Foods, goes into receivership. For more than 50 years, they've been made solely in Dublin and are as old as Bloomsday. Unlike Bloomsday, spice burgers are quintessentially Dub. They're our equivalent of haggis and never caught on outside of Ireland.
Walsh's passing cuts another tie to Dublin's pre-boom past. The city is becoming homogenous. Internationally bland. Blow away the froth and it's as beige as the latte underneath. In its rush to become refined it's lost a lot of its Dublinness.
Think of the little touches that have gone: the sound of the Premier Dairies milkman rattling and whistling you awake. The shout of "c'mere ye little bollix" and the rasp of the bus conductor's boot as you jumped off the back step without paying. Someone calling you "love" over a counter. The things we associate with Dublin are being outsourced. The dirty Dublin they represent was the one celebrated by Joyce. Tight-scrotumed Bloomsday isn't a fitting festival for his city. It's exclusive and snobby. If you're going to celebrate his work, celebrate Dubliners. It's more accessible and is actually read by Dubs.
'Dubliners Day' should be held on 16 June every year to commemorate its real citizens, from Joyce through Luke Kelly to Willie Bermingham. We could all dress up as Dublin characters, like Fortycoats and Bang Bang. I'll dress up as the Faker Baker in memory of Jacob's Fig Rolls. He's fictional, but more real to Dubliners than Leopold Bloom.
We could fling Dublin's false heroes into the sea (Bertie, get your Speedos on). We could throw out the pretence of Bloomsday, but keep the traditional breakfast. With one noble addition: let's stick a spice burger on with the liver and kidneys. Stick one on for Molly too.
Malone, that is. Mrs Bloom has had her day.

dave@davekenny.com

June 21, 2009

Sinn Féin: a lot done, more to do if it wants our respect

Sunday Tribune, 14 June

Mrs Smith had dusted the parcel every day for two weeks and kept it on her telephone stand in the hall. Not many people dust their next-door neighbour's post, but she wanted it pristine for their arrival home from holiday. It would also show that there had been no sneaked preview of its contents.
Mrs Smith was Protestant, middle-class and well-liked on her 'mixed' road. Her neighbour, Mr Murphy, was a well-known Republican with a brother who still makes the news occasionally. On the other side of her lived a Catholic family whose uncle was an outspoken cleric who constantly angered the IRA. A few doors down lived another Protestant, a Second World War RAF man. Across the road from him lived a German family. By today's standards, the road was hardly multicultural, but in 1978 Ireland it was an Olympic village.
When she heard the tyres on the Murphys' driveway, Mrs Smith grabbed the parcel and hurried out. Curiosity was killing her.
She saw the colour drain from Mr Murphy's face as he watched her approaching. He waved her away. His family ran indoors. She stared at the parcel in the same disbelieving way soldiers stare at a wound before the reality of pain rushes in.
The explosion lifted everyone off their feet.
Fortunately for Mrs Smith, it happened several hours after her drama on the driveway. Mr Murphy had helped the terrified woman place the letter bomb on the ground. The army later detonated it before an excited crowd of rubber-necking kids.
Mrs Smith wasn't her real name and Murphy is an alias too. Their story is a forgotten episode from the Troubles. It didn't happen in the north. It happened on my road in leafy Glenageary, south Dublin when I was 11. Things like this didn't happen in Glenageary. The memory took root.
In 1981, the green shoots appeared. The older kids sat in their gardens talking about the hunger strikes and recalling the bomb which nearly killed Mrs Smith. A friend wore a 'Bobby Sands MP' badge which was replaced by a 'Bobby Sands RIP' badge when summer arrived. A world away from Belfast, the Troubles had spread down the clipped lawns of Glenageary again.
The hunger strikes politicised a generation of middle-class Irish youth. Some went on to become notorious. They had their heroes and you didn't dare disrespect them. They weren't my heroes. They were too blood-stained. Bobby Sands' death was heroic, but his poster was never on my wall. I have never supported Sinn Féin.
A quarter of a century on, they are sharing power in the north. The last I heard of my friend with the Bobby Sands badge was he had settled down with a Protestant girl. Times change. People change. Not everyone though.
Last week there was braying from the usual quarters about Sinn Féin's demise here. One paper called them 'revolting'. Enda Kenny sacked Fine Gael's director of elections for linking his party with them in a possible coalition. Some people refuse to acknowledge change.
Some perspective wouldn't go amiss. Everything Sinn Féin does must be measured against how much they have changed. Nobody in the 1980s would ever have envisaged them saying the war was over. They have said it.
In the South, we conveniently forget how our democracy was born out of radicalism. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's founders fought a savage civil war. They are now 'respectable'.
In Brussels, Dublin is represented by a man who was interned in the Curragh for IRA membership. Former Official Sinn Féiner, Proinsias De Rossa, is now a Labour party statesman.
Eamon Gilmore first ran for the Dáil in 1982 for the Workers Party. That party had links to Official IRA/Sinn Féin. He, too, is a respected statesman.
Change is always possible. History proves that, with every turning of the democratic tide, radicals are either rinsed, reshaped and polished or washed away. Sinn Féin should be encouraged to fully immerse themselves.
That said, it's not easy to like them. On Tuesday they disgraced themselves with their reaction to councillor Christy Burke's resignation from the party. He claims it under-funded his by-election campaign as they concentrated on Mary Lou McDonald's. Despite being a former IRA prisoner, Burke is widely respected for championing Dublin's underprivileged. Not by Sinn Féin, though. In the North, they paint murals of their heroes; in Dublin they let them go to the wall. Aengus Ó Snodaigh demanded he resign his newly retained city council seat and "return what is a Sinn Féin seat to the party".
A "Sinn Fein seat"? Do they think they own a place on the council? Are direct elections meaningless? The sense of entitlement was worthy of Fianna Fáil. The spat revealed, again, that they still don't fully understand democracy. Burke has served his fellow citizens for 25 years. The seat belongs to them and they chose him – not Sinn Féin – to occupy it. They are free to choose their own heroes.
Sinn Féin has come a long way since the bloody 1980s. That should be constantly acknowledged. However, it still has a long way to go. It still has to earn our respect. It can start by accepting the wishes of the people of Dublin.
It also needs to learn that if you don't respect your own heroes, you can hardly expect others to respect you.

dkenny@tribune.ie

June 14, 2009

Tottering trinity of power collapses but we'll pick up the tab

Sunday Tribune 7 June

Money is the first thing to greet you as you approach a churchyard: it calls from the collection tin being rattled at the gate.
Money is the first thing to greet you as you pass the font, forehead dripping. Catholic newspapers for sale – and "every Catholic home should have one".
Money is everywhere inside the church. The candles near the altar can be bought for a special intention. The slot in the wall is for the parish dues. The second collection is for the upkeep of the priests.
Money is there when you first enter the spirit of the church. Silver is given for christenings. Money is the first thing you hope for when you receive First Communion and are confirmed. A Catholic childhood is marked by this trinity of religious landmarks and windfalls. Adulthood is marked by the trinity of births, deaths and marriages, requiring gifts and donations to the church. Irish Catholicism is awash with money and we are bred to receive it as children and give it back as adults. Only the church gets to keep it.
A Catholic life is mapped out by trinities. A Catholic country is too.
Those of us under 50 didn't know the trinity that once ruled Ireland: the church, the banks and the state's biggest party, Fianna Fáil. We do know, however, what it's like to watch it falling from grace.
The banks have been falling for months, the church – by which I mean the entire organisation from bishop to brother – has been damned by the Ryan report, and Fianna Fáil have been flayed at the polls. Natural justice is prevailing.
Fianna Fáil were in power for most of the 1950s and all of the '60s, that dark period investigated by the Ryan report. It colluded, one way or another, with the church in the abuse of children. In 2002, it colluded again and capped the orders' liability at €127m while they lied about the extent of the abuse. The man with ultimate responsibility for that deal was taoiseach Bertie Ahern, a visibly devout Catholic.
Last Thursday, Fianna Fáil again spoke to the orders, who said they were willing to make "substantial additional financial contributions". The government must wait two weeks to learn how much that will be. It hopes it will equal the state's contribution.
Instead of finding a legal way to undo the black knot tied by Ahern, the government is sitting on its hands waiting to be dictated to by the religious orders. It's waiting outside the head brother's door, hoping it won't get smacked again.
This government has looked after its banker friends with billions and is still kow-towing to the cloth. It should put a gun to the church's head and make it pay for all the 'redress'. It's as straightforward as that: drag the church to its knees and punish it.
Those are hard words to type. I was baptised a Catholic. To have faith and to lose it is worse than never having believed. The realisation that the church which taught you how to pray at night was actually the monster under the bed is almost too hard to comprehend.
Twice daily, the church reminds us of its presence. At lunch and teatime, God's dinner bell rings out for the Angelus. With every clang of the bell, we are reminded that this is a Catholic country – and reminded of the sins perpetrated by our predecessors.
And here is the point: none of this is my fault. My generation is not responsible. We are paying for other people's sins. While perverts are at liberty, the victims are, rightly, seeking compensation. Thanks to Fianna Fáil, we are picking up the tab.
I want the victims of abuse to be properly cared for, but I am not willing to pay for it while the church can. It's rotten with money – we are not, thanks to Fianna Fáil's developer friends. The state that existed back then is gone. Today's generation should not be sharing its guilt. I would rather bankrupt the church than accept any of the blame for what Ryan revealed. The church must rip up Ahern's 2002 deal and prostrate itself before its victims. It should not be given two weeks to decide what contributions it wants to make.
There are many good people in the church. This must be heartbreaking for them. They would still be good people even if there was no church. Their contribution should not be forgotten.
Eighty six per cent of us said we were Catholics at the last census. Many of us are really just à la carte, picking the bits we like – weddings, Christenings – and ignoring the rest. After Ryan, how many can stomach being associated with the church, even on that basis? A similar question can be asked of Fianna Fáil's 'rump' supporters. After all the revelations, how could you vote for it last Friday?
According to a Newstalk poll, 73% of us want a general election. Fianna Fáil must give it to us now.
For the past month, their canvassers have vied with the collectors for Catholics' attention at the church gates – a reminder of the old trinity of politics, piety and the sound of money.
Today, just the charity workers remain – without politicians to hinder their work.

dkenny@tribune.ie

June 7, 2009

Chance to rip the weeds of cronyism out of local politics

Sunday Tribune 31 May

"The camera never lies." Now there's a redundant cliché. The camera frequently lies and in this post-digital age, can seldom be trusted. Especially when it comes to politics. Just look at the election posters: all those huge inflated heads and not a blemish in sight. Politicians being strung up on lamp-posts shouldn't look this good.
Occasionally, the political camera lets its guard down and tells the truth. The expression on former spin doctor Frank Dunlop's face last Tuesday wasn't the result of a touch-up. No one had digitally enhanced that look of fear as he entered court for sentencing.
It was a powerful image. Here was the man with the brown envelopes who facilitated Dublin's debasement by grubby little men with greasy fingers. Here was the property developers' bagman who helped undermine our faith in democracy and, ultimately, lead us here to Nama-land. Here he was, brought down and about to be jailed.
Now consider another picture. It's of a grey-haired man with a pale, worn face. If it's been airbrushed, then they missed a line or two. It's smiling but is tough and not to be messed with. The eyes, however, betray sensitivity as they stare down from the lamp-post near the Dáil. Writer Mannix Flynn, former bête noire, is running for a seat on the same council that Dunlop bought off in the 1990s.
While Dunlop enjoyed a life of money and influence, Flynn spent most of his suffering. He was a slum boy, destined to be crushed by the authorities. At the age of three he had been singled out as "trouble" by a state-paid psychiatrist. How can a three-year-old be "trouble?"
By 14 he had run the gauntlet of industrial schools, including Letterfrack, where he was tortured for two years. For all his adult life he has railed outside the institutions of the state that helped scar him. Now he is looking for the chance to effect change from within.
On Wednesday he spoke to Newstalk's Eamon Keane about the Ryan report into child abuse. It was a compelling piece of radio: brutally honest, intelligent, angry and sad. His message is that he wants to bring accountability to local office and give hope to the "disenfranchised". It's hard to doubt his credentials.
His ideas won't be to everybody's taste. For example, he suggests a pilot scheme for the controlled distribution of heroin to addicts. This won't ever happen, but at least he's stirring up debate. That's his strength: making a difference by challenging the status quo.
There are others like him. In my own home patch of Dun Laoghaire, Richard Boyd Barrett has taken permanent residence up the nose of the establishment. In 2005, he was at the helm when residents from all backgrounds 'blockaded' the local Baths. The council had agreed a €140m private development plan to build apartments on the site. The march stopped the deal and won the leftist Boyd Barrett many admirers in the traditionally Fine Gael area.
Labour councillor Jane Dillon Byrne later requested that double glazing be installed in the council chamber – to keep out the noise of his protesters.
All across the country there are decent candidates like these two, favouring community over clientelism. In fairness, they are not all independents and some are suffering for that preference. Dun Laoghaire's Fianna Fáil councillor Cormac Devlin is widely respected as hardworking and conscientious. He has also been critical of issues such as Minister Mary Hanafin's scrapping of the Christmas welfare bonus. No surprise then that Hanafin is trying to shaft him in favour of her personal assistant, Peter O'Brien. More Fianna Fáil cronyism overriding the interests of the people.
According to a Newstalk poll last week, only 0.5% said they would vote for a candidate because his/her family was involved in politics. Dynastic politics – and by extension cronyism – is out of fashion. Hanafin, take note.
On a daily basis, we discover more about how our government has been mismanaged. At local level as well as national. In my own area, the council was so inept that for a seven-month period in 2006, not one single motion was debated. The entire system needs shaking up.
When we go to polls on Friday we have a unique opportunity. We can make this more than a de facto referendum by setting aside party politics and choosing candidates genuinely committed to the greater good. We can throw out the nod-and-wink merchants who will try to buy us off with personal favours and then do dodgy deals with developers. This is a real chance to rip the weeds of cronyism out of local politics. This is a chance to make local government the training ground for national government, where we can nurture change from the ground up.
We need to encourage mavericks like Mannix Flynn. They can help rescue us from the cynicism created by Frank Dunlop's political crimes. Next weekend, we can replace that picture of the broken bagman entering court with another – a snapshot of our generation pulling itself away from the past.
There may be another picture too. Of a decent man, crucified by church and state, picking up his cross – and successfully battering down the door of City Hall with it.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Get outta Dodge, Sheriff, before you get us all shot

Sunday Tribune 24 May

Imagine this column is a saloon in the Old West. The swing doors burst open. An old timer rushes in, wearing a racoon hat and long-johns, hollering: "Gunfight! There's a-gonna be a gunfight!"
Two lawmen are heading for a showdown. One stands for the big ranchers and is gathering a posse of new laws to clean up Newspaperville. His name is Dermot Ahern. The other is a moustachioed hero standing for its townsfolk (journalists). His name is Gerry 'The Sheriff' O'Carroll.
The Sheriff is a former garda who writes a column for the Evening Herald. He's not a fan of minister Ahern and, like the rest of us, has been kicking him over his privacy legislation, which is before the Dáil.
A part of Ahern's Defamation Bill, this legislation forbids the "disclosure of documentation" – including documents that are in the public domain such as planning applications. It also prohibits "stalking/harassing" of possible wrongdoers which will hamper the work of our latter-day Veronica Guerins.
It says invasions of privacy are justified only when fair, in good faith or in the public interest. There's a conundrum. If a reporter is halted by an injunction before he/she has completed their investigations, they have no way of proving justification. Therefore they have broken the rules. This legislation – which Gerry and the rest of us rail against – will take away the basic tools the journalist uses to expose corruption.
There's no denying that the media sometimes crosses the line. Last year, Dubliner Michelle Herrity was awarded €90,000 against Associated Newspapers over articles in Ireland on Sunday in 2003 about her relationship with a priest. These were based on the illegal tapping of her phone calls and, according to the High Court, were an unjustified breach of her right to privacy.
Each time something like this happens, it undermines the argument that we don't need a privacy law. It plays into our politicians' hands. Here's a statistic. According to Dublin City University research, two-thirds of all privacy complaints over the past 25 years came from public figures – mainly politicians. They want the new law more than anybody else.
Two weeks ago, the Herald led with pictures of Ryan Tubridy walking with his new partner. They had been taken by an opportunistic dogwalker and sold to an agency. This wasn't as bad as phone-tapping but Tubridy was, understandably, unhappy. He believed it was mean-spirited for someone to take a picture of him from behind a tree and sell it.
His anger annoyed the Sheriff who felt the papers were justified in publishing the pictures and Tubridy had no right to complain. In Wednesday's Herald, he shot "the kid" down. Bang, bang. Tubridy was disingenuous about the pictures and knows that publicity is the oxygen of celebrity. Bang, bang. "If you look at his own show on a Saturday night, it is all celebrity tittle tattle… The kind of stuff he's giving off [sic] about." Bang.
The piece was peppered with lines such as "The kid's angry" and "Listen, kid, grow up and enter the world of the big boys." Bang, bang.
According to Gerry, Gay and Pat had no problem with being in the public eye. I don't ever recall them being photographed strolling through the woods, together or otherwise. They were allowed, in the main, to keep a lid on their private lives.
Still, according to Gerry, this erosion of Tubridy's privacy was the price of getting the Late Late. Actually, the pictures were taken before Tubridy had been given the gig. Would they still have been published if he hadn't landed it?
As a journalist, Gerry said, Tubridy should know better than to give "cannon fodder" to privacy-law-toting Dermot Ahern. Take your medicine, kid.
The Sheriff is relatively new to journalism. Hearing him dispensing advice to "the kid" was beyond cringeworthy.
He's missed a few key points about Tubridy. He's not part of the micro-celebrity herd. He doesn't seek out publicity in the same way as Rosanna Davison or Glenda Gilson, or Brian Ormond and his girlfriend do. He doesn't go to every launch or talk about his 'love life'. He doesn't want to play the Diary game. Fair enough.
As publicity guru Max Clifford said about the pictures last week, "If he hasn't courted publicity for his own ends, it's not justified." Tubridy, as Late Late host, will have to sacrifice some privacy, but not to the extent that he should have to check under bushes for cameras. Gay and Pat never had to do that.
Publishing those pictures was an invasion of privacy, plain and simple. I've been a tabloid hack myself and so have no right to be too judgmental about that. What sticks in the craw, however, is O'Carroll's pompous lecture about press freedom. How Tubridy was giving "cannon fodder" to Ahern by complaining.
Hypocritical statements like that by O'Carroll only strengthen the minister's position. If you're going to invade someone's privacy while prattling on about press freedom, then at least have a decent reason for doing it. Highlighting wrongdoing, for example.
Stop shooting your mouth off about press freedom, Sheriff.
You're just shooting yourself – and the rest of us – in the foot.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Jenny O'Connell proves hope is lurking everywhere

Sunday Tribune 17 May

A friend of mine once had a rare audience with punk legend Joey Ramone. Joey was, as always, sporting his trademark sunglasses. It was late at night after a gig at Dublin's TV Club and Tony asked him, jokingly, if he ever took them off.
"No, man," replied Joey.
"But can you actually see anything through them?"
Joey shrugged, implying the negative. Tony persevered.
"Does that not bother you?"
"Look, man," said Joey, his pupils hidden behind two almost-opaque walls of glass, "there's not a HELL of a lot I WANT to see out there."
It was an interesting world view – or, rather, lack of it. I was reminded of it last week when I read the profoundly touching story of Dublin woman, Jenny O'Connell, who has had her sight partially restored after 46 years. Jenny went blind when she was 11 and will soon, hopefully, be able to see her husband and children. She will see a lot of other new things too, which must be exciting, and daunting, for her.
As Jenny was entering into darkness in 1963, Ireland was emerging from it. Kennedy visited, the showbands jived and Sean Lemass was lowering unemployment. The queues Jenny may have seen for the Mail Boat were shrinking. She won't see any today because there is no escape route for the 380,000 unemployed. She will, however, be able to see what a modern dole queue looks like: multi-racial and full of highly-skilled people.
Among the many coloured faces Jenny will see here now are those of the Orange People – 1960s' freckles are extinct. This month, scores of Irish children are being sprayed-tanned orange for their Communions. These little tangerines may grow up to become the Jaffa-hued models who inhabit the diary pages like Rosanna 'Rubex' Davison and her boyfriend, Whasisname. Are they on? Are they off? Will they please get lost? Jenny can now fully appreciate the fake-tan-deep, appearance-obsessed vacuousness of post-Tiger Ireland.
She can also put a face on Brian Cowen and see those voluptuous, bee-stung lips mouthing phrases like "what's the point?". That was his despairing response to heckling over his handling of the Monageer tragedy report. Like the rest of us, Jenny will not be able to read all of the report as it's been censored. She can, however, see photographs of the little Dunne girls who were killed by their dad.
Along with Cowen's mouth, she can also marvel at some necks: those of Ireland's developers. They are setting up a federation to dictate how the National Asset Management Agency operates. Developers created most of the ugly landscapes Jenny is seeing for the first time. Now they are forming a union to fight the state. Imagine the first AGM: all of them in one room. Hopefully the roof will cave in.
In 1960s' Ireland, the bank manager was cock-of-the-walk. Jenny nearly got to see one of those cockerels being egged at AIB's EGM last week. Pensioner Gary Keogh said he snapped when supremo Dermot Gleeson told a shareholder to "sit down while I'm speaking". He flung eggs at the stage and was 'whisked' away by security. What was that old phrase about never teaching 'your granny how to suck eggs'?
Jenny will see her first Dart, Luas and euro. She will see her first Limerick gang funeral. She can watch all the bad news she likes on digital TV. She can sample other digital treats like generic text messages ('CU L8R'?) and the internet at its clinical, automated worst. From tomorrow, Ryanair passengers will have to check in online and print their boarding passes at home, or be hit with a €40 penalty. Jenny has children to do this for her. Ryanair apparently doesn't care about those who don't.
Joey Ramone said there wasn't a hell of a lot he wanted to see. If the above examples were all that were on offer, you'd have to agree. They aren't.
Along with the new sights, there are old ones for Jenny to rediscover. She's from Dun Laoghaire. In time, she will be able to walk with her blind husband along the seafront there on a sunny day, like last Tuesday. She can describe what she sees to him. The colour of the sea foaming over the walls of the Fortyfoot at Sandycove. A nutter in a rickety boat see-sawing through the swell to Bulloch Harbour. People sheltering from the breeze in the lee of the wall at the half-moon-shaped beach. Sunburn glowing above the collars of old folk sunbathing with their coats on. The Mr Whippy van arriving, children paddling, dogs chasing waves. Someone poking a jellyfish with a stick.
She can stop in Fitzgerald's pub and admire the murals or watch, for the first time, a glass of stout slowly change from marble to jet black. She can describe the bubbling, fleeting happiness of a sunny day in our odd little country. How we savour that small morsel of happiness and declare it a feast.
Maybe, someday soon, she'll read this article to her husband. I hope she does, because I'd like to thank her here for lifting people's spirits with her story.
Thank you, Mrs O'Connell. Life sucks right now, but you've proved that hope is lurking everywhere.

dkenny@tribune.ie