Down the Hatch: Teddy's celebrates its 60th birthday

Daily Mail, 26 April

It’s Saturday, the first of July, 1950 and a small hatch in a whitewashed wall slides open. A queue has formed on the shaded side of the road opposite Dun Laoghaire’s sea baths. It snakes its way from the People’s Park down to Number One Windsor Terrace. Adults and children, dressed in their weekend best, chatter and count coins. Suddenly, the queue jerks forward as a hand reaches out from the window. It’s holding an ice cream cone, swirled and peaked to perfection, with a crumbly Flake rooted on its slope.
There is a rattle of coppers in a till. Teddy’s – the most famous ice cream parlour in Ireland – has opened for business.
Half a mile down the road, another crowd is queuing in silence. It’s waiting for the mail boat to England. Ireland, still reeling from the Emergency years, is bleak and broke.
The contrast couldn’t be more pronounced. The cheerfulness of Edward ‘Teddy’ Jacob’s shop-front is a show of defiance to the miserable ’50s. It’s a joyful affirmation that, no matter how grim life is, you’ll always find summer queuing at Teddy’s window.
Post-Celtic Tiger, it still is.
Teddy’s is more than just an ice cream shop. It stores memories of water wings and blue skies. Of standing under the fountain in the baths or chasing a beachball at Sandycove. Of sticky ice cream leaking through a cone. It reminds you of a time before mortgages and bills.
Teddy’s red sign is as identifiably Dublin as the Pigeon House’s candy stripes.
From Friday, that sign will also hang in Dundrum shopping centre as Teddy’s expands its little empire (there’s one in Enniskerry). The owners are opening a new parlour and grill to mark the 60th anniversary of Edward Jacob’s entry into the ice cream business.
Edward, although a public figure, guarded his privacy. Even when he passed away in Thailand in February, his death notice didn’t give a date of birth. Just “sadly missed by Austin and many friends.”
“He was never keen on people talking about him. If he was interviewed about the shop, he would say ‘please don’t mention me’,” says current owner, Yasmin Khan.
Edward was raised on Ulverton Road in Dalkey, where the locals Christened him ‘Teddy’, because of his flamboyant, Teddy Boy, dress sense.
He built his landmark shop in the former garden of the last house on Windsor Terrace. As business boomed, Teddy expanded into the house with a gift ‘boutique’ and a café/grill, where couples drank coffee after the Pavilion and the Forum.
The café and boutique – like the cinemas – closed down, but the heart of Teddy’s survived. Even as the emigrants queued up again in the jobless ’80s, customers still queued for Teddy’s comforting brand of nostalgia.
In 1994, he retired to the south of France but, to maintain tradition, he sold Teddy’s to his ice cream supplier, Brian Kahn. South African-born Brian’s late wife had lived beside Teddy’s mother in Dalkey.
Brian’s daughter Yasmin now runs Teddy’s with the same passion that Teddy and her dad brought to it.
“I started working here when I was in school. The shop has always been an important part of my life. When I took over I was told, ‘If it’s not broken don’t fix it’.” It wasn’t broken: she didn’t ‘fix’ it.
When you enter Teddy’s, you step into a ‘reverse Tardis’: it’s smaller than it seems from the outside and ungoverned by time.
The counters are made of dark wood and beneath their glass are clusters of Dairy Milks and jellies. Along the wall is a row of jars filled with childhood favourites: mint humbugs, cough sweets, bon bons, sherbert lemons … I’m drooling.
“We’re going to produce our own apple drops,” says Yasmin. “They will be red and white – Teddy’s trademark colours.”
The sweets are still weighed out by the quarter on Teddy’s original scales and served in paper bags. Remember the taste of paper-clad bull’s eyes?
In the corner, behind a cooler, sits a Dublin legend, Rita Shannon. She’s been working at Teddy’s for over 40 years. She came to fill in for someone who was on holidays and just never left.
“Teddy was a lovely man,” she says. “We were always like one big, happy family. I love it here.” She recalls when Teddy’s would stay open until 2.30am, while people sat chatting on the wall beside the baths. In the winter, when the shop is closed, she still comes to sit and look at the waves.
From her hatch, Rita can see the generations changing. Many middle-aged parents queuing today remember their first childhood sighting of Rita. In your earliest years, she was a disembodied hand that passed cones to your parents. Your rate of growth could be gauged by Teddy’s wall, as each summer you got nearer to the sill of the hatch. Finally, you made eye contact with Rita. You were ‘grown up’.
“We’ve seen people come and go,” she says. “If we don’t see people for a long time we wonder what’s happened to them. You get attached to them. You miss them.”
People may come and go, but widowed Rita won’t ever lack for company.
“She’s like a granny to me,” Yasmin confides, adding that Rita’s even gone on holidays with her and her husband Craig.
She proudly lists some famous names that Rita has served: Bono, Sinead O’Connor, Tubbers – all happy to queue and chat with the locals. “Everyone is equal at Rita’s hatch.”
Yasmin loves her job. “This is the kind of place you could never give up,” she says. Like Bridie, who passed away in 1988. Rita and Yasmin are convinced the shop is haunted by the former ice cream swirler.
“Bridie always worked late into the night. After she died, the machines started playing tricks on us. They turn themselves on at night…”
Teddy’s traditionally opens from St Patrick’s Day until October, although it’s now common to see muffled-up walkers queuing for cones in mid-November. It’s all-weather ice cream.
“On a good Sunday, we can serve 5,000 customers,” she says. “The average is 3,000.” Those impressive figures are reflected on Teddy’s Facebook page. It made 5,000 friends – from South Africa to America – on its first day.
Those friends hadn’t forgotten the Teddy’s taste of Teddy’s ice cream, which is made to a “top secret recipe”. Yasmin is giving nothing away.
I’m handed a cone, the first one I’ve had in years. I bite into it. It’s gorgeous: thick, cool and sweet. Childhood memories race back.
Will the new Dundrum shop sell ‘designer’ ice cream? Will there be Yummy Drummy flavour, I ask.
“It will be plain vanilla and sold from a hatch,” Yasmin says, emphatically. Without any syrup. Tradition must be upheld.
Outside, a businessman crab-walks against the light breeze blowing in from Scotsman’s Bay. His jacket is sheltering a 99. Schoolkids are running along Windsor Terrace, money at the ready. The sun is shining and cloud-shadows skitter across the sea to Howth. There’s timeless, summer-like feeling in the air. The feeling that Tigers and recessions will pass, but Teddy’s will always be here. And so will Rita Shannon, sitting at her hatch, swirling memories for another generation of children.

O'Leary will get us back with a getting-off-the plane tax

Sunday Tribune, 25 April

Michael O'Leary had that look on his face. The one where he appears to have a bad smell lingering around the end of his nose.
His horse, War of Attrition, had run a spectacular race at Punchestown. It was a day of celebration. He should have been feeling magnanimous. He wasn't.
"I'm not paying for a holiday for someone who bought a Ryanair ticket for €10," he told reporters. It just wasn't "fair".
O'Leary was going to break the European law that says airline owners have a duty of care to stranded passengers. He'd see those spongers in court. Here he was, working his racehorse's legs to the bone, while they were sipping Slippery Nipples in Santa bleedin' Ponsa – at his expense. The man of the people would take on the people. Now pour the Krug and stop hogging the foie gras.
O'Leary sees villains and idiots everywhere. If it's not freeloading passengers he has to contend with, it's stupid airspace regulators. He believes the latter's blanket-ban on flying was an over-reaction. Was it really? Is O'Leary an expert on volcanology?
It had been a week of over-reactions. There was the traditional 'Irish' over-reaction, where we went looking for someone to blame. In Ireland, there's no such thing as a culprit-less crime. If an earthquake opened a chasm in O'Connell Street, we'd all be on to Liveline blaming the Corpo. "Nearly fell into it, Joe. Disgraceful."
Last week, stranded callers struggled with not having any heads to roll.
"Joe?"
"Go ahead, Mary in Santa Ponnnnsaaa. You're on the LAVA-Line…"
"I'm going to sue that bleedin' volcano, Joe…"
Even singer Tony Kenny phoned the LavaLine with a tale of woe. Tony and half of Ireland's showbanders were stranded in a Ford Transit somewhere in Europe. Quick, I thought, let's seal the borders before they get back.
It struck me that I'd heard this LavaLine conversation, in reverse, a month ago. It was during the passports fiasco. People had waited weeks to get passports and now had to wait a week to get home.
That's Ireland for you: you can't get out of it quick enough – and you can't get back into it quick enough.
There was the inevitable media over-reaction too. Sky News had me believing fall-out was on the way. "The ash is descending. If you get runny eyes – go back indoors immediately." Is that ash on your collar? Please, God, NO! It was akin to the bird flu scare advice: "if you see a swan sneezing or a chicken with a Kleenex, DO NOT APPROACH IT".
While we were phoning Joe and Sky was sounding the air raid sirens, Europe was continuing to over-react in a way that actually helped matters. Airspace regulators had seen a huge cloud of ash and didn't know what to do. Rather than take any chances, they stopped us flying. It was a nuisance, but better to over-react while working out what to do in future, than under-react.
O'Leary, unlike the regulators, has a woeful track record at judging crises. His reaction to swine flu was to tell us to stop whingeing and take "a couple of Strepsils". Strepsils weren't much use to the people that died.
His talk of disproportion is a bit rich, considering his airline will stop you flying if you're 20 seconds late at check-in. Hand luggage slightly too big for the measuring frame? Can't fly. Wrong ID with you? Can't fly. Now he's getting a taste of his own gamesmanship. The rules may be disproportionate and unfair – like Ryanair's – but they're still the rules. They're OUR rules – and that must really hurt.
O'Leary blames the EU, the regulators and his passengers for shafting him. He even blames God. O'Leary discommoded by an act of God? Who's this 'God', anyway?
He's pursuing that great tradition of looking for culprits when there are none. Instead of whingeing and threatening stranded passengers with court, why doesn't he bully the companies whose insurance he sells into sharing some of the burden?
O'Leary thought that by breaking the law he could bully stranded, and in some cases broke, passengers into the Hobson's choice of suing or taking the financial hit. This backfired when the regulators smacked him and he had to back down. It was gratifying to see. For once, officialdom stopped the Great Unwashed being trampled on by the elite. For now, at any rate.
O'Leary will get us back, you know. The phrase 'reasonable expenses' is a bit arbitrary. This is a man who wants to charge you to go for a leak, after all. He'll dream up some way of getting that money back. He may charge a Getting Off The Plane Tax (€200). Or start selling Volcano Value Packs (contains parachute and map to the ground).
He probably started angrily dreaming up ways of getting even after he'd finished celebrating at Punchestown. Right after he'd ordered that bottle of Krug.
Last week, as the banks crisis continued to rack us, and Seanie and Fingleton continued to enjoy themselves while we counted coppers, as life seemed so bloody unfair, we finally had a reason to laugh. So thanks, Mick. I'd like to see a picture of O'Leary with his horse today. Just to check which one has the longer face.

Have you ever seen Peig on a souvenir tea towel?

Sunday Tribune, April 18

"On will too tine?"
"What?"
"On. Will. Too. Tine?"
Gaeltacht headmaster, Mr P 'Fart' Faherty's face hovered over mine. His moustache smelled of mince and onions.
"Knee higgim," I replied.
"What?"
"What?
"An bhfuil tu tinn: Are you bloody well sick?" I had a hangover to rival anthrax-poisoning and we both knew it.
"I've a pian in my bolg," I said. Mr Fart stamped around the bedroom looking for evidence of contraband drink. He even looked in the bin, where all he found was an empty Yellow Pack shampoo container and a Dettol bottle. The vein in his forehead squirmed. If anger could have 'fadas' and 'shayvoos' all over it, then his did.
"The shmell of alco-hawl is dishgushting, so it is," he shpluttered in his thick Connacht accent. I could see the hairs in his nose shrivelling in the fumes of my hangover.
"I think I'm going to be sick," I said.
"As gaeilge!" he shrilled.
"I'm going to be sick… with a fada over the 'I'?"
I retched theatrically and he backed off. "I'd shend the lot of you shcoundrel hoors home exshept there'sh no boat off the island till Winsday next."
He slammed the door, shpluttering and farting in annoyance.
I was 16. I have always thought of this as the real dry run for my Leaving Cert oral Irish exam. Unlike the orals that are taking place this week, my interview with Mr Fart could have had tangible consequences: ie, a boot up the backside.
I hadn't shone in that test, but I had 'passed'. I had gotten away with it.
I've always associated Irish with 'getting away with it'. I also associate it with excruciating boredom. The kind that lasts three weeks and drives you to drink smuggled vodka out of shampoo bottles. Mr Fart should have checked that bin more thoroughly. I got away with that too.
School was all about 'getting away with it'. In Irish class we'd risk handing over history essays instead of gaeilge ones to our half-blind teacher, 'Harry Weed'. I used to spend the class seeing how many Blu-Tac balls I could get to stick to his tweed jacket. Poor Harry. I think we broke his brain.
The chief problem with Irish was the humourless, dry way it was taught. Pádraic Ó Conaire's 'M'asal Beag Dubh' ('My Little Black Ass') may have sounded like a Harlem porno mag, but was as interesting as watching donkey poo drying.
Who can forget Peig Sayers? "I am an old woman now, with one foot in the grave and the other on its edge." Now there's an image: Peig doing the splits over a hole in the ground.
She's off the syllabus now, but little has changed. Schoolkids still don't love Irish. RTé reported last week that more students are seeking exemption from doing it on learning-disability grounds. However, half of this year's exempted Leaving students are sitting other language exams.
Some parents are using the exemption to get their children out of studying what they see as a difficult subject. It's entirely understandable. Dropping Irish means a better chance of more points, which means a better chance of a job. Irish should not be compulsory for the Leaving Cert – its outcome is far too important.
Still, it's perplexing to think that parents will brand their kids 'special needs' to get them out of doing something difficult. To teach them it's okay to break the rules if you can get away with it. Maybe I'd do the same if I had kids. Maybe abusing the exemption is our generation's revenge on Peig.
We had no need for Irish and were never given any reason to love it. Gaeilgeoir fundamentalism was a major turn-off. This fundamentalism was in evidence again in Clare last February. County councillors complained that they had spent €30,250 translating three development plans into Irish, but nobody wanted to buy them. Then-Gaeltacht minister Eamon Ó Cuív insisted the practice should continue nonetheless. Idiotic wastefulness like that turns people against Irish.
What gaeilgeoir fundamentalism also ignores is that Ireland loves English. Whenever we market ourselves abroad, we point to our great writers: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce. They all wrote in English, not Irish. Have you ever seen a souvenir tea towel with Peig Sayers' face on it?
Gaeilge can't compete with that kind of marketing. For it to appeal to a wider audience it has to dumb down. It has to be conversational, not literary. It needs to be promoted as Ireland's secret language. The one you can insult foreigners in, when they're eavesdropping, for example.
Perhaps Mary Coughlan should commission an Irish slang dictionary (with curse words). Or employ Richie Kavanagh as a special adviser. He topped the charts for six months with his 'Aon Focal Eile'. It was awful, but at least he got people spouting a few words of Irish. That's more than Peig ever did.
If we stripped the earnestness out of Irish, people might start using a phrase or two. That's the best that can be expected. A cúpla focail is better than foc-all, as Richie and Mary might say.
I need to wash my mouth out after saying that. Now where did I leave that
Yellow Pack shampoo bottle?

dkenny@tribune.ie

April 18, 2010

Two reasons to be cheerful: Hassan and Hussein

Sunday Tribune, 11 April

There are days when you just have to get out and walk. Push the chair away from the PC, fling the radio in the bin and bang the door closed. Walk with your eyes half-shut and your fingers in your ears, in case you see a headline or overhear a conversation about bankers.
There are days when you have to block out the constant bad news. Last Thursday was one of those days. I walked for hours around the coast at Sandycove, trying to think of something positive to write about. I'll write about spring, I thought. I'll talk about the stretch in the evenings and the warm, collar-loosening breeze tripping in from Dalkey Island. I'll say "forget Nama, Anglo and financial haircuts. Forget about economic green shoots – the green shoots of spring are here. Take a walk. Enjoy the sunshine. It's free."
Horse crap. A sunny day isn't going to make me forget my mortgage. Or you yours.
I stopped to buy milk and was drawn to the Herald's front page. There was a picture of two babies, asleep in each other's arms. They were nose to nose.
I'm not a 'goo-goo, ga-ga' merchant. I won't thank you for showing me photos of your tots napping, crapping or being 'adorable'. This picture was different. It hit me in the solar plexus and forced a lump up into my throat.
On Wednesday, twins Hassan and Hussein Benhaffaf from Cork underwent an operation to separate them at the chest. I thought of their parents, waiting 14 hours, hoping for good news. I had nothing to measure it against. All my own worries were dwarfed by the boys' tiny faces.
Walking home, I thought about the Ireland they would grow up in. I imagined them in 20 years' time, riffling through the newspaper coverage of their operation. I saw April 2010's other stories spilling out of the pages.
Last week's news kicked off on a raunchy note, with Dan Boyle sending everybody porn. Next time, Dan, just send me flowers. 'Dan Boyle' and 'porn' are words I never want to see in the same sentence again. Dan's Twitter account had been hacked.
The following day, Dublin's city councillors asked to be trained to use Twitter. Coincidence? They discussed how much this training would cost.
Question: who needs to be paid to be 'trained' to use Twitter? Are our city councillors really that thick? Evidently so.
Councillors weren't the only public servants finding ingenious ways of wasting money. Judge James O'Connor wasn't impressed when he heard the authorities had spent €1,500 escorting a prisoner from Dublin to his Kerry courtroom.
What was the prisoner's crime? He had failed to display a tax disc. If ever a story summed up state-sponsored wastefulness, this was it. No wait, there's another story that sums it up better.
Another desperado is driving around with gardaí in tow at our expense – to the tune of €170,000. That's what Bertie Ahern's state car bill cost in 2009, as he promoted his book. Bertie needs his car, as he hates being in one place for too long. That place is the Dáil. He spent just 12 minutes there for Lenihan's Nama speech before shouting "Quick! To the Bert-Mobile!"
I'd love to be his driver. Ever see the ending of Thelma and Louise, Bert?
Twenty years from now, Hassan and Hussein may turn the page on Bertie and switch on Liveline. Joe may still be talking about banning head shops. Last week, minister Seán Connick told Hotpress he had an open mind about them. Hopefully, despite out-of-touch politicians trying to be 'cool', the twins won't grow up with a head shop down the road.
Hopefully, they will grow up healthy and strong enough to hurl for Cork – while half the country's adults are getting their cholesterol checked. According to a Kelloggs survey, 55% of Irish children don't play sport. The Celtic Tigers spawned pampered Celtic Piglets. Piglets who may have to pay extra to fly Ryanair. In 20 years' time, the airline will probably have introduced the 'tax' on overweight passengers it dreamed up last April.
It may also have introduced a loo charge. 'Spend a euro to spend a penny'. Last week, it hiked baggage charges by a third for July/August. Fat, bursting for a pee and wearing layers and layers of holiday clothes to avoid bringing another bag – that's the future of aviation, Ryanair-style.
As I walked along the coast, fuming over the general crappiness of life, I tried to focus on that picture of the twins. I eventually realised why their struggle meant so much to us. We needed something to take us out of ourselves. We needed to set aside the bitterness and feel positive emotions again. Humanity was at work. Hassan and Hussein gave us a brief respite from last week's cynicism and selfishness. Nama, Anglo, Bertie, Ryanair: none of them matter to the twins' parents. They have a higher priority. It's a matter of perspective.
At home on Thursday evening, I switched on the news. I crossed my fingers. You probably did too. Hassan and Hussein were stable after their operation. It was the news we needed. It was something to write about.
Sometimes the green shoots are there. You just have to know where to look for them.

dkenny@tribune.ie

April 11, 2010

Leave us with the only pillars of society we really love

Sunday Tribune, 4 April

It was the most boring day of my life. The memory of that school trip around Dublin Port and Docks is so watery, I keep expecting these words to slide off the page.
The best thing about it had been the anticipation. We gabbed for weeks about the messing we'd get up to. Our stomachs rumbled at the thought of the special packed lunch: ham sandwiches instead of Easi Singles, a bar of Dairy Milk, Tayto, a can of Club Orange. We prayed it wouldn't rain.
It rained. I've never seen rain like it. It ran into your mouth and up your nose, into your ears and under your anorak hood. It was like being water-boarded.
It was so wet we couldn't leave the bus and just drove around for hours, in almost zero-visibility, as the driver droned on about tonnage and fuel depots. Lunch was all gone by 11.30am. The fun of writing rude words on the fogged-up window soon wore thin. The bus stank of that wet-dog smell peculiar to classrooms and damp children.
Eventually, the rain eased and we were thrown off to look at a stack of palettes.
A man with an 'eff you' expression was leaning against them. He cupped his hand around his cigarette and sucked on it as if he was siphoning petrol from a garda car. He was a 'Real Dub'.
"D'youse know wha' dem lads are really for?" He nodded in the direction of the striped towers at the Pigeon House. We shook our heads.
"Day are, in fact, a pair of barber's poles belonging to my cousin, Mad Barry the Barber."
"He must be a big man, mister."
"Oh, he's big all right. And you should see his barber's razor. It done DIS to me…" Before we knew what was happening, Real Dub had ripped all the hair off his scalp and shot his bottom teeth out of his mouth.
"Arrrrrgggghh!" he roared and we scattered, screaming, back to the bus. A boy from Eden Villas wet himself. Another boy said it was just as well his "ma had made him wear his brown trousers".
The bus drove off to roars of gummy laughter from behind the palettes and someone saying: "Jaysus, Paddy, you're some bollix with that wig. Put your teeth back in."
The Pigeon House towers have dominated my mental landscape of Dublin since then.
As I grew up in the '80s, they became synonymous with Dublin's drabness, and emigration. They were the last thing you saw as you left the country by boat or plane. They were also the first thing you saw coming back. As time passed and life improved, they became a welcoming sight. They were as Dublin as eating Burdock's chips in the rain. They symbolised home.
Last Wednesday, the towers stopped puffing clouds out over Dublin. They will probably be demolished as the Corpo hasn't listed them.
The Mail ran a story on Thursday about a €1bn plan to turn them into giant windmills. It was a particularly good April Fool's joke and I nearly fell for it. After the week we've just had, you'd believe anything. We're bailing out Anglo for billions. Hahahaha! April Fool's? No, we're serious.
Our lives have been signed over to pay for the debts of developers who saw Ireland only as bricks and mortar. The Pigeon House towers are now being looked at in the same way – to maximise profit for the ESB.
They are more than bricks and mortar. They are rooted in our culture: featuring in our art, movies, music videos. When they were operating, they symbolised an elegant city which was rough around the edges. They were like two old hard chaws, smoking and working away, looking down disdainfully on the pretentious gits below.
The city's contrariness is stacked up in them. They say "welcome to this glorious kip – Dirty Dublin. What're you bleedin' lookin' ah?"
The depth of emotion over their destruction says a lot about how Dubliners view their city. It's hard to imagine the same reaction to the Spire being uprooted. Dubliners made the towers 'ironic iconic', unlike the Spire which came pre-packaged as a symbol.
You can't force a symbol on Dubliners: they will always choose their own – from the contrariest of places. Last month, 15,000 people signed up to a Facebook campaign to honour Dublin character 'Dancing' Mary Margaret Dunne who preached on O'Connell Street for 30 years. The city missed her. Dublin may have stopped producing characters, but it hasn't stopped loving them.
There was an outcry last year when it seemed another Dublin symbol was doomed – remember the spice-burger crisis? Characters, burgers, chimneys… these are the things Dubliners believe define them, not grand structures. They're the symbols of a city that can't take itself seriously. A city that gives direction by pubs rather than street. ("It's near Mulligan's.") That sees two grimy chimneys as being as symbolic as the Eiffel Tower.
Tearing them down will feel like another victory for the developers. They've taken enough from us. We need these high-rise towers to continue symbolising our modern city with its modest, low-rise attitude.
Last week, Nama began pulling down the former pillars of Irish society. As Ireland changes, these are two pillars of society that deserve to remain standing.

dkenny@tribune.ie

April 4, 2010

Was it for all this the men of 1916 fought and died?

Sunday Tribune, March 28

My great grandfather delivered Pearse's farewell letter to his mother. As the fires crackled around the GPO, the rebel leader wrote: "Whatever happens to us, the name of Dublin will be splendid in history forever. Willie and I hope you are not fretting for us …" He sealed the envelope and great-granddad kept it safe. By the time he delivered it, Pearse was dead.
History sees Pearse's sacrifice in terms of bloodshed. My great-granddad, Matthew Walker, saw it in the face of a mother who had lost two sons.
You won't have heard of Matthew. He was one of those remarkable figures who prefer to work behind history's stage. You may remember from school that Parnell had lime thrown at his eyes during a rally. Matthew was the friend who shielded his face with his hat. Anonymous, forgotten.
On Easter Monday 1916, Matthew – who was 69 – walked eight miles from Glasthule to the GPO. He was dressed in full Edwardian fig of top coat and top hat. He also had corns on his feet, but his generation "didn't grumble". He was determined to "to play his part".
As he entered Sackville Street, Matthew would have seen the first casualties – two dead horses belonging to the lancers. He would have felt the giddiness of the slum bystanders waiting to see blood.
He would also have seen a tricolour flying over the GPO.
For Matthew – IRB man, publisher – Easter Monday was the culmination of his life's work. He was given the task of printing Pearse's Irish War News, as bullets ricocheted around the city. Each night, he bravely walked home through the cordons.
His Abbey actress daughters, Maire and Gypsy, were 'out' in 1916 too. Gypsy, my grandmother, lost her pacifist lover to a looter's bullet. A priest refused to marry the couple on his death bed.
Despite the pain, their generation valued sacrifice. Their selflessness seems very remote as you survey today's Ireland.
Last week, the tricolour Matthew may have seen over the GPO failed to sell at auction. It had been valued at $500,000. I wonder how he would have felt about this. After the week we've just had, I wonder what he would make of the Republic he risked his life for.
If he was publishing a newspaper today, Matthew's editorial would probably compare our Taoiseach's power-at-all-costs philosophy to Pearse's. It would condemn the cynicism of hoarding power at the expense of the democracy people died for.
Coming from an age when people risked their lives for principles, what would he think of Beverley Flynn? Unprincipled Bev's belief that democracy should serve her was in evidence again last week. She said she deserved a place in cabinet. She would "flower". She couldn't understand why the media picked on her. Drop around Bev, I'll tell you why.
What would he make of the people who keep electing her? Or Michael Lowry for that matter? Or Mary Hanafin, who along with seven other deputies, still refuses to give up her teacher's pension. Or smug Mary Harney, with no party behind her.
Let's be fair to politicians, though. They're not the only self-servers living in this great Republic.
Matthew would have led his newspaper with the story of the CPSU denying people their passports. He would have been livid. A passport isn't a bargaining chip. It's proof of the citizenship fought for by people like him and Countess Markiewicz.
Not that we care about the countess any more. She would appear on Matthew's 'page 3'. (With her clothes on.) He would report that she isn't included in an MRBI poll of greatest Irish people. Neither is President McAleese. Louis Walsh is, though. What does that say about us?
Matthew would look at what the vacuous Tiger generation allowed happen to Tara and run a story warning about the same happening to under-threat Newgrange. How many would read it?
He would look at Seánie Fitz and wonder why we allowed a new landlord class of bankers and developers to be created.
He would look at the whole, sorry mess our Republic is in and scratch his head.
Over the next week, you'll hear a lot of misty-eyed manure about 'reclaiming the spirit of 1916'. The Republicanism that Matthew and others strove for wasn't notional. It was based on the solid principle that your neighbour has a right to expect your help – as you do from him.
The current mess is being made worse by a general unwillingness to take some responsibility. We know who the chief culprits were, but we all bought into the Tiger crap to some extent.
If unity helped achieve our freedom, then it can help us maintain it. The refusal by some to take a hit is not acceptable. The new Civil War of public against private has to end. We need to start behaving like a republic or stop calling ourselves one.
I wonder what Matthew would have said about that GPO flag being valued at $500,000. A copy of his Irish War News fetched €26,000 in 2007.
I'm sure he would look at that tricolour and see more than money. He would know its true value. He would know whether it was worth fighting for, or not.
He would know whether we were worth fighting for. I hope we were.

dkenny@tribune

How can you threaten an abused child with hell?

Sunday Tribune, 21 March

Stop. I know what you're thinking. You've looked at the headline and you're saying "not another piece about the church". I know how you feel. Please don't skim by. This column isn't about the church – it's about us.
Last week, as Charlie Bird bounded around the Oval Office like a spaniel on heat, Barack Obama hinted he might visit Ireland. (If he leaves soon, he could sit beside Charlie on the plane home.)
On the same day, the papers reported that the Pope will not be visiting Northern Ireland on his trip to Britain. To some, this seems like he's skimming past our sodden little island – as if he's too embarrassed or too afraid to face us.
The announcement of his bypass coincided with Cardinal Sean Brady's apology for his part in the Fr Brendan Smyth cover-up. The cardinal said there needs to be an end to the "drip, drip, drip of revelations". His words didn't hold much water, as the revelations continued to seep out. By the end of the week, many of us had stopped listening.
The drip, drip, drip of abuse stories has brought us close to saturation point. You can only absorb so much misery before it runs off you like the rain in a Frank McCourt book.
On Thursday, RTÉ appeared to reinforce this saturation point theory. The Irish Independent reported the station had "refused" to screen a film about clerical abuse survivors. RTÉ claimed there was "not much appetite" for movies about the subject. The survivors were angry, but RTÉ's decision reflected a reality which is not just confined to clerical abuse.
How often do you find yourself reaching for the remote during the news? Nama, recession, repossessions. Drip, drip, drip. Saturation point.
Politicians use our saturation point to their advantage. They know if they brazen it out long enough, we will move on to something else.
For example, last week we learned that Bertie Ahern had almost doubled his number of foreign speaking engagements in 2009 to 16. Instead of being in the Dáil, he was earning a minimum of $40,000 for each Washington Speakers' Bureau gig he did.
Bertie is coining it by avoiding doing the work we pay him to do. Will he continue to do so? Yes, because most of us have reached saturation point hearing about him. Saturation point is also how he got away with helping the church cap compensation for abuse victims. Remember that?
Here's another example: will fellow politicians, Conor Lenihan and Mary-go-round Harney, continue to get away with their phenomenal junketeering? What do you think? They know we'll eventually reach saturation point and calm down.
This saturation point is turning clerical abuse into the new Troubles. It's becoming our number one switch-off. The reports have become page-turners, in the negative sense of the phrase. Every bomb drove us further away from headlines with 'north' in it. We reached saturation point – and the IRA knew it. For every drip, drip they needed what they called a "spectacular" to catch our attention again.
Last week's revelations were a spectacular. How could Brady listen to a child saying he was raped and not go to the gardaí? No protestation that the past is a different country can excuse it. There's no excusable time to allow a paedophile to stay at large.
Then there was the oath. How do you swear a child to secrecy on pain of losing their soul? How can you tell him that if he breaks his oath with the pope, his soul will spend eternity in hell with his abuser?
Has the church now 'forgiven' these victims for breaking that oath of silence? Has it given them back their souls?
Are there other dinosaur clerics like Msgr Maurice Dooley, who say they would refuse to hand over a paedophile priest to the gardaí? Is he a lone loose-cannon when it comes to Canon Law?
On Thursday I read about how an eight-year-old girl had been abused for 10 years by a priest in Derry. She had been silenced in an out-of-court settlement.
Drip, drip, drip. Saturation point. I closed the paper. Later, I wondered what that said about me. Am I a flawed person for not wanting to absorb any more misery?
The problem is that when you reach saturation point and stop reading their stories, the victims are silenced again. Their voices become tinnitus in your soul, constantly ringing but ignored. That's the sad reality.
Like the Troubles, the drip, drip of revelations is turning us away from headlines with 'church' in them. A 'spectacular' is needed. That spectacular must be Cardinal Brady's resignation.
Despite his failings, he is a good man. He has done nothing technically wrong, but could show leadership by martyring himself for the greater good. He may not restore the Catholic faith that's been lost, but he can restore some faith in the humanity of his church.
Next week is the last Sunday in Lent, which commemorates the welcome Jesus got when he entered Jerusalem. I wonder what reception the Pope would receive if he came to Ireland now. I suspect the Pope's Children will save the palms for Barack and the brickbats for Benedict.
Lent is an appropriate word to end with. Benedict's Irish Church appears to be living on borrowed time.

dkenny@tribune.ie

March 21, 2010

The luck o' the Irish needs all the help it can get

Sunday Tribune 14 March

This Wednesday, Brian Cowen will hand a bowl of weeds to the world's most powerful man. Only the Irish could get away with giving weeds as gifts. Anybody else might get a smack in the chops.
The shamrock ceremony in Washington will be the high point of a week spent selling Paddywhackery around the world.
Most of us will watch proceedings and feel reassured that America hasn't forgotten us. Most of us will also feel a little bit queasy about the blarney but accept that it's good for business. There's a national confidence deficit and every pat on the head we get is welcome.
That confidence deficit was behind an exceedingly stupid row last week. This concerned the opening of the Leprechaun Museum in Dublin.
Eire Nua was outraged that this symbol of our blarney past has been dredged up. Blarney the Dinosaur was supposed to be extinct.
The leprechaun is "a derogatory symbol," a Tourism Ireland mandarin sniffed.
"Truly the Jedward of museums," one Twitterer wrote. "This is not the Ireland we want to portray abroad," he said. The snobbery was obnoxious.
The culture police needn't have worried about the museum portraying Ireland as Leprechaun Land – there were plenty of other embarrassments to do that.
There was the health service allowing 58,000 X-rays to go unchecked and 3,498 doctors' letters to go unread at Tallaght hospital.
There was disgraced Nationwide boss, Michael Fingleton, demanding an apology for being called names in the Dáil while Nama board members' salaries rose by up to 70% since last December.
There was Noel Dempsey spending €850,000 on a competition to choose an operator for Terminal Two – and then just handing it to the DAA anyway.
Worst of all, there was Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly's damning indictment that "parliament has been sidelined and is no longer able to hold the government to account". We're not living in a democracy any more.
Ireland is Fianna Fáil's Fun Park – also known as 'On the Never-Neverland'. Instead of a Ghost Train we have Ghost Estates. The Roller Coaster has been replaced by the 'Coaster', which is an easy ride for top civil servants. The Big Dipper is run by the bankers who are still putting their hands in our pockets. Mary Harney's on 'The Mary-go-round' (when she gets back from her six-month junket to New Zealand). There's even a Hall of Mirrors so that we can see ourselves as others see us – vaguely comical.
We live in a madhouse and, yet, people are getting upset about a leprechaun museum. A bit of balance is needed.
We've grown sophisticated over the years, but we're not the suave boulevardiers we'd like to think we are. We're much more interesting than that. We are a confusing, contrary, annoying and highly likeable race. We are a low-rise people who used to value the ability to laugh at ourselves. We need to remember that.
Ireland must realise it has a unique brand to sell – its Irishness. The Leprechaun Museum is just another, daft, manifestation of that Irishness.
What was lost amid all the righteous indignation about the museum is that it's a good example of someone using a sustainable resource (Irish folklore) to make money. In 2009, tourism generated €4bn in foreign revenue earnings and €1.2bn in tax. Where there's blarney there's money.
Here's a question: if you have a natural resource that someone wants to buy, do you (A): talk it down or (B): sell it to them?
If the yanks want leprechauns, give them leprechauns. If they want to kiss a rock, charge them. Kissing the Blarney Stone is one of the greatest tourist marketing feats ever dreamed up.
Look at the airport, with its leprechaun hats and suits. Crap sells. Cork firm The Auld Sod Export Company has made millions from selling 1lb bags of Irish soil for $10 to Irish-Americans. Irish muck sells. Riverdance and Enya made hundreds of millions out of the cheesy re-branding of Irish dance and music. Then there's the Oscars, with Granny O'Grimm's Irish take on fairy tales and The Secret of Kells.
Do we really want to culture-up every tourist? Do we expect them all to go to the Abbey? Are we so sophisticated now that we look down on a real opportunity to make some money?
We may not see the value of Brand Ireland, but some foreign companies do. Volvo has decided to finish the 2011-2012 Ocean Race in Galway. This will generate €80m. Why Galway? Because Volvo wants to bring it to "a country that really knows how to celebrate". Ireland is, apparently, a fun place.
If you still believe that the leprechaun museum is ill-conceived, then buy the current edition of Time magazine. There's a 900-word article about its opening. What new Irish businesses are making Time magazine? Remember what that did for U2.
The Yanks have wild west shows, the Brits have the royal pageantry… we have leprechauns. If there's a crock of gold to be made out of a crock of crap – let's make it.
The world knows we're not leprechauns: they hoard their money in pots, we've blown ours.
So embrace your inner leprechaun this week. Remember, without the shamrock in it, the pot that Cowen hands to Obama on Wednesday would be just another begging bowl.

dkenny@tribune.ie