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

No 17 Erindipity Does Cork

Biggest county for being better than Dublin (whether it is or isn't)

LAST week this column received a nice email from a reader in Cork. Dave McArdle is his name and he hosts a radio show on RED FM.
Dave asked if we'd put together a special Erindipity Does Cork Miscellany for his listeners, which we are more than happy to do. To the rest of you non-Corkers, we say, please read on as we hope you'll find a ramble around the Rebel County invigorating. Let's get started with the . . .

Eight reasons why Cork is better than Dublin

>> Cork has more vineyards than Dublin.
>> Cork gave the world the name of one of its greatest revolutionaries. Ernesto Guevara took the nickname 'Che' after watching Cork characters 'Cha' and Miah on Hall's Pictorial Weekly. True story.
>> Cork is a bigger county than Dublin.
>> Michael Collins was a Corkman, not a Dub.
>> Michael Collins was shot in Cork, not Dublin.
>> Cork has the widest trees.
>> A Corkwoman once rogered the king of France.
>> Cork has more muck millionaires than Dublin.

Best place for making muck out of brass

Before we get to that, let's explain a couple of things. Ireland's widest tree is a Monterey Cypress (12.05m wide by 27.5m) and can be found in Innishannon, Co Cork.
The tallest tree in the country is a 56m high Douglas Fir in Co Wicklow. Douglas is also a place in Cork. Is this a coincidence? (Yes. ) Cork has three vineyards (Blackwater Valley, Longueville House and Thomas Walk) while Dublin has one, Fruit of the Vine.
Corkwoman Marie-Louise O'Murphy (1737 . . . 1814) was King Louis XV's mistress for two years.
Now back to the muck and brass.
One Cork company loves its home province so much that it's exporting it to America.
Crookstown firm, The Auld Sod Export Co. , is getting filthy rich shipping Irish muck to the yanks for $15 a bag. The 340grm packs are sealed for "freshness". Well you wouldn't want your muck to be 'off ', would you?
When the business started in 2006, one 87-year-old ex-pat snapped up $100,000 worth to fill his American grave. Another spent $148,000 on . seven tons to spread under the house he was building in Massachusetts.
The company's website is currently offering four bags of Official Irish Dirt, four bags of Shamrock Seeds and free shipping . . . for only $20. What are you waiting for?
There's a typically Cork twist to this enterprise. Where do they get the muck from? Tipperary.
Exporting their county is one way of avoiding the Tipp boys in hurling, we suppose.

Better for being older than Dublin

According to legend, Cork was established in the 7th century when St Finbarr kicked a huge serpent out of the Lee and set up a monastery. This makes it older, and therefore, better than Dublin which was founded in 988. The serpent yarn is rubbish of course.
Everybody knows St Patrick got rid of them in the 400s.

Best name for a rebel county

The name 'Cork' derives from 'Corcach mor Mumhan' which means the 'big marsh of Munster'. This explains why 'Mallow' is in Cork.
Cork is also known as the 'Rebel County'. This is because the inhabitants have been giving stick to outsiders for centuries, long before Mick Collins did.
One theory is that the county got its name in 1603 when Cork's leading Catholics refused to accept James I as king. The lovely Lord Mountjoy stamped out the revolt. Mountjoy, by the way, was named after a jail in Dublin.

Interesting fact: Cork harbour is the second largest natural one in the world after Sydney. This means that it's better than anything the dockers of Dublin have ever worked on. Also, as Sydney is very, very far away, Cork harbour is better than that too.

Tallest building

The tallest building in the Republic is the Cork County Hall (67m). Liberty Hall is only 59.4m. Dublin does have the tallest sculpture though (the Spire at 120m). Mind you it's a hell of a lot uglier than the Ballycrovane stone in Co Cork, which is the tallest Ogham standing stone in Europe (5.2m). If that doesn't impress you then Cork has the longest building in the country . . . the former Eglinton Lunatic Asylum.
It was built with long, long corridors so the loonies would never have to go around the bend.

Best place to go to the loo

In 2002 the VHI hosted a beauty contest . . . to find Ireland's loveliest public loo. This was part of a bladder control awareness campaign, although you'd want to be pretty dopey not to be aware that your bladder's out of control.
To win the 2,000 prize all you had to do was submit a photo of your town toilet's interior and exterior.
Let's reflect here for a moment on the bravery of the photographers who stood inside their public loos taking photographs ("no really, officer, it's for the Top Toilet competition").
Naturally, Cork won and the best place for a wee is Gougane Barra.

Interesting fact: Traditional Cork food consists of tripe, drisheen and crubeens. That's a combination of stomachs, guts, blood and pig's trotters. Anyone who can stomach a foot which has spent all of its life caked in pig poo is some man. Or a foot fetishist.

Best Place to survive a nuclear attack?

During the '70s west Cork was invaded by continental hippies who believed it would be the safest place on earth to survive a nuclear holocaust. Word had gone out on the hippy wire that Ballydehob's latitudinal/longitudinal coordinates,
51 33 45 N and 9 28 38 W, rendered it immune to fallout-carrying winds.
What the hippies didn't know was that down the road, UCC was storing 2.5 tonnes of uranium and a so-called "student training reactor". In 1980 energy minister George Colley told the Dail that "the sub-critical device" was acquired under a "grant provided by the government of the United States of America".
Students? Uranium? Rag week?
God help us.

Interesting Cork slang fact: Bernhard Langer is not an affliction of the trouser department caused by chaffing.

10 of the best Corkonians

>> Sir John Arnott . . . famous businessman who owned Arnotts Department Store in Dublin.
>> Thomas Croke . . . Archbishop of Cashel who has a stadium named after him in Dublin.
>> Sir Hugh Lane . . . patron of arts whose gallery is in . . . Dublin
>> Gerald Goldberg . . . made first Jewish lord mayor in 1977 . . . 21 years after Robert Briscoe was made first Jewish mayor of Dublin.
>> William Annyas . . . first ever Jewish mayor in Ireland, when he became top dog of Youghal in 1555. The last Jew to become mayor in Ireland was Ben Briscoe . . . in Dublin.
>> Jack Lynch . . . taoiseach whose day job was in Dublin.
>> Sam Maguire . . . GAA man whose trophy is awarded in Dublin every year.
>> Sean Og O hAilpin . . . Cork hurler (from Fiji).
>> Rory Gallagher . . . Cork musician (from Donegal).
>> Eddie Hobbs . . . Cork TV personality.
Definitely not from Dublin: we don't want him.

A final clatter of Cork facts

There's a Cork Street in Dublin, but no Dublin Street in Cork.

The first Turkish Delight chocolate was made in Cobh, County Cork, by the Hadji Bey company in the 1890s.

The tallest Irishman ever, Patrick Cotter O'Brien (1760-1806), was born in Kinsale. He measured 8ft 1in (2.46m).

Elizabeth St Leger of Doneraile Court, Cork became Ireland's only ever female Freemason in 1712. She was forced to join after eavesdropping on a ceremony through a hole in the wall of her family home. Some masons, leaving a hole in the masonry like that.

In the 17th century Baltimore was famous for having the biggest Curry House in Ireland, which is where it gets its name from (Baile an Balti Mor).

And finally . . .

If that lot doesn't satisfy the Leesiders, they can stick a Cork in it.