How to Be Irish

by David Slattery

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  Where to Blow into

  Blow-ins and Plastic Paddies are mostly found in the West of Ireland. The better-off and celebrity ones have made their spiritual capital at Schull, in West Cork. The poor and X-Factor runners-up ones find refuge in Dingle, in Kerry. However, isolated groups can be found as far north along the coast as Sligo and Donegal. Individual examples have been known to settle in Leitrim. Hard-core Plastic Paddies, who crave the full-on Irish experience, blow into the Gaeltacht where they are known locally in Irish as stroinséirí (strangers) or in Hiberno-English as not more eejits from Germany.

  Ideally, you should blow onto about 2.4 acres of land of mixed quality with a cottage needing renovation. You should have enough room for a plastic tunnel in which unseasonal vegetables can be grown when you can get around to it. The cottage should be restored with great care with insulation values as yet unknown in our vernacular buildings. A pylon with an electricity generator should be erected just to the side of your cottage, regardless of whether or not it works, because it is really a flagpole marking your territorial headquarters and indicating your alien status. When you place two large solar panels on the roof, you are set for the life of the Plastic Paddy. If you can’t afford to buy or renovate straightaway around Schull and you don’t want to move towards Dingle, you can live in a camper van, caravan or a canvas bender beside your very own ruin. You can restore your cottage bit by bit as your dole money comes through or as quickly as your parents in Berlin can be persuaded to send you the cash.

  If you don’t know where to settle, a camper van can be handy because you can move off quickly. Select your campsite carefully. First impressions can be misleading, especially for the nervous travellers who are usually found in camper vans. There is a handy rule: keep away from quiet scenic places because they are not what they seem. I will relate just one experience of many that illustrates this rule. On a particularly beautiful summer evening, a Belgian family parked their van in a remote but exceptionally scenic part of West Cork, beside a church and a primary school about twenty yards down a country lane off the regional road. The car park in which they had parked is usually deserted during the summer months when the school is closed. Rob, my Anglo-Irish informant, is himself a blow-in who lives in a house on the hill overlooking the car park, with a view of the church and over the fields to the sea.4 Rob, looking out his window, saw the Belgian registered camper van pull off the main road and come to a stop in the car park next to a little stream. That Saturday night witnessed one of the most spectacular sunsets that West Cork could produce. Rob’s heart gladdened for the Belgians who were straight off the ferry from a land without such natural wonders. He thought they would have a memorable stay. He was right.

  At about 1.00 a.m., a mob of local lads gathered just yards from the camper van to indulge their love of competitive ‘doughnutting’ on the regional road where it widened into the corner. They spent twenty minutes furiously ‘laying down rubber’ from the brand-new tyres on their small souped-up hot hatches with all the noise they could get out of their screaming engines. Then they suddenly vanished into the dark only to return after a half hour for another flurry. As their established doughnutting track stretched in a ten-mile circuit around the hills overlooking the car park, the noise from all the engines would fade and grow in turn in the dark. As the bend on the road just twenty yards from the camper van happens to be one of the best locations for laying down rubber, the noise was amazing. It must have suggested to the Belgians, trembling inside their fragile van, that the world as they had known it had ended with the sunset and that Mad Max had taken over. Rob told me that the boys laying down rubber ‘would be the typical local lads who would do anything to help anyone, but the din in the darkness of the night would give the newly arrived a sense that they were likely to be viciously murdered at any moment.’ The cars came back regularly for most of the night so there was no letup for the Belgian tourists, who may well have been contemplating a move to West Cork.

  When the Belgian family woke late the following morning, they discovered that their van was wedged in between one hundred and fifty randomly parked cars. It was Mass time in the church. Rob saw that the camper van curtains were jammed shut. When Mass ended, the cars all left the car park together. Rob saw the camper van departing at speed towards the ferry and the safety of Belgium – potential Plastic Paddies needlessly lost to the country. There is no evidence that anyone is paying the locals to encourage Belgian tourists to keep moving.

  It is necessary, on blowing into Ireland, to give the place a chance. Where you blow in from is an important factor in social integration because different blow-ins have different baggage. I tracked down a variety of blow-ins to ask them about their own efforts to fit in and become Plastic Paddies. Regardless of from where they blew in, surprisingly few want to blow out again. Blow-ins who arrive by accident, having boarded the wrong flight, want to stay. Blow-ins who come here for love stay long after the relationship has ended or after they have actually gotten married. People who come here on holidays don’t want to leave. What is wrong with these people? Don’t they have any homes to go to?

  Dingle, the Poor Plastic Paddy’s Schull

  The further west you go, the more serious the blowing-in activity and the more seriously it is to be taken. In Dublin, blow-ins are just more strangers in the city. In Kerry, many blow-ins work flat out trying to be Irish. There is a border running between West Cork and Kerry that separates the blow-ins into the well-off, early-retired businessmen and media stars centred around Schull and their lower-rent cousins, who still have to work for a living, who cluster around Dingle. I was told by Kerry-based blow-ins that the Cork ones are more advanced. The Dingle Peninsula (Corca Dhuibhne) is a Gaeltacht and reservation area where Irish culture is kept artificially alive in an open-air incubator. In winter, the locals speak Irish to each other at the back of Mass and in the pubs. In summer, they speak Hiberno-English to the tourists and the blow-ins.

  I drove to Dingle over the Conor Pass to meet a variety of blow-ins. At the Pass, the sun, which was shining all the way from Dublin, vanished behind a low wet cloud that clung to the mountaintop like a comfort blanket. Inching my way through the mist, I eventually emerged after two kilometres of road and an unknown number of years of time travel into the blow-in Shangri-La beyond. I drove down the mountainside into the gateway town of Dingle.

  Would we have been forced to read Peig in school if she had had a great time growing up in Dingle? Would we have had to read her miserable life story if she had been great craic? Would she have been mandatory reading if she had died young from a drug overdose which was part of a rock-and-roll lifestyle on the Blasket Islands? We would not! Her biography would probably have been banned if it had been fun. Fortunately for Peig she had a completely miserable time so we all got to read about it.

  You might find Peig’s relation, the local leprechaun, behind the counter in The Craic Shop in Dingle selling folk CDs and sterling silver shamrocks. He is working in the Kerry tourist industry. But, as it was still winter when I arrived, The Craic Shop was closed and a sign on the door said: ‘Elfin has left the Building.’ This is beside the Chowder Café. Up the hill in the direction of the church is Finn McCool’s Surf Shop. Outside Dick Mack’s pub there are limestone stars embedded in the footpath commemorating former famous drinkers. Many of these are from the cast of Ryan’s Daughter who drank here when the film was in production on the peninsula in 1970. I made a note of the names. I had to Google half of them to find out who they were. Dominating the streetscape is the Presentation Convent, which, like almost all convents in contemporary Ireland, is in end-stage decline. But for just €2 you can go inside to see the magnificent Harry Clarke stained glass windows. It is obvious from these windows that Harry wasn’t all that good at being miserable. He is not really an Irish artist because there is no Patrick amongst the saints. I continued up the hill as far as Curran’s pub and shop where Peig once worked. I wanted to see those she
lves that were stocked by the very hands of our national icon of misery.

  Inside, I ordered a pint. Before I could sit down I met my first blow-in. He was an Englishman who came to Dingle as a sparks5 on the set of Ryan’s Daughter and stayed. He had dropped into Curran’s on his way back from the funeral of a chippie6 who had come over with him and stayed till the end. This was the beginning of my wanderings around the parish of Corca Dhuibhne, tracking down blow-ins in their traditional cottages and converted barns to find out from them the rules of fitting in. Blow-ins I spoke to on the phone were comfortable with the local sat-nav technology. I followed instructions such as ‘first right past the Black Cat, tenth house on the left. If you lose count, there is a red shed in the garden. I have washing on the line. A bright red dress.’

  The Rules of Greeting

  Blow-ins are initially impressed with our friendliness. In Ireland you can smile at strangers without arousing suspicion. One of my European informants told me that, when she first arrived in Kerry, she moved into a cottage in a tiny village. She was very impressed, if a little worried, when the locals passing by smiled at her while blessing themselves as she came in and out of her cottage. She thought that perhaps they imagined she was a benign vampire or a retired anti-Christ. It took several months for her to realise that, as she lived beside the church, they were just blessing themselves every time they passed the steeple and, of course, smiling at her – an example of local multitasking.

  Apart from smiling, we also appear to be friendly because we ask them how they are when we see them passing on the street or cycling by on a wildflower-collecting spree. Committing their first social faux pas, they stop to tell us precisely how they are at that moment in time. Soon they learn that this is a common Hiberno-English greeting, which means ‘Hello. Don’t stop. I don’t really want to talk to you. Keep cycling. Just shout “I’m fine, thanks” at me and keep moving.’ Many European blow-ins pride themselves on their exceptional standard of English, not to mention the English and American blow-ins’ competence in the language. Imagine their shock when they realise no one in Kerry speaks English. Realising their linguistic confusion, many blow-ins are motivated to start attending Irish classes in the mistaken view that the locals may be addressing them in Irish. Irish classes are just a front for Hiberno-English classes. They keep up these classes for an average of three weeks, which is how long it takes them to learn the standard responses to greetings in Hiberno-English. Here is a sample of what they learn on the syllabus:

  Greeting: ‘How are you?’

  Response: ‘Fine, thanks. How are you?’ [Keep moving.]

  If you are unable to move because you have been paralysed from the waist down, having been knocked off your bike by a passing tractor, you might add the traditional response: ‘I’m fine. Not a bother on me. It’s a grand day, thank God.’ The latter idiom can be added regardless of actual weather conditions.

  After meaningful social contact has eventually been established, blow-ins must learn the traditional leave-taking phrases or risk being stuck in someone’s company forever. A blow-in should not say ‘Goodbye’ but should use the Hiberno-English expression ‘We must get together soon. You must call round for tea,’ which in English means ‘We must not get together soon. I will die of shock and consternation if you call to my house for tea. I don’t even have a tea bag.’

  In the area of greeting, Continental blow-ins have made an impact on local practice: when meeting and leave-taking you are allowed to kiss the air once over each cheek. That’s twice in total. Hesitation between kisses is common because this practice is new to the locals. As a local, you should hold the other in an awkward embrace while hoping they know the correct number of kisses. The new tradition is two kisses, but don’t make lip contact with the skin. No one, not even the mountain men in town for the market twice a year, shakes hands. That is so passé.

  The Shoes-on-or-off Rule

  Blow-ins will do almost anything to fit in. Local habits that present fundamental cultural challenges just have to be endured if the population cannot be reformed. One such habit is the wearing of shoes inside. Many European blow-ins come from homes with polished wooden floors. They bring the practice of removing their shoes at the door with them to Ireland. One of my informants told me that, having settled into her new home outside Ballyferriter, she had a beautiful wooden floor installed. Every day, she liked to compulsively polish it to a gleaming shine that reminded her of the floors in her parents’ house in Denmark. She was delighted that she actually managed to get people to call to her house for dinner. Imagine her terror when her Irish guests arrived at her door straight from the fields, with mud-covered boots. Staring at their feet in horror and seeing their obvious readiness to dash inside her house, she hesitated at the open door. She realised in that instant that shoe removal was not an Irish custom. The first guest pushed past her outstretched arm to begin trailing mud across the hall. In desperation she cried, ‘Oh, can you please remove your muddy boots?’ The boot-wearer would have been less shocked if she had asked him to remove all his clothes. He loudly wondered what kind of a foreign harlot was after moving into the neighbourhood. To a local, ‘Please remove your shoes’ is the equivalent of a request to strip naked before coming in. Once your shoes are off, why stop there?

  For months she gave up trying to get her guests to strip off their shoes. She felt constant floor washing was a small price to pay for social integration. But one night there was an unexpected breakthrough that gave her hope. A dinner guest shyly asked if anyone minded if she removed her shoes because her feet were ‘killing her’. What followed was an embarrassed fumble under the table and the naked feet were kept well hidden from the rest of the guests. But this was progress. There wasn’t even an overwhelming smell.

  My informant offered our attitude to feet in the Gaeltacht as proof that we have no confidence with naked limbs. We will condescend to remove our shoes only if we have a good strong pair of knitted socks on. My informant wondered if we keep our boots on because we are always ready to run out of the house if the need arises.

  Continentals are better with nudity than us Irish. They will casually strut through the house without a stitch on their feet. They think nothing of taking on and off their shoes and socks in broad daylight in front of anyone. On our beaches we can be seen fumbling under large towels clamped under our chins, trying to maintain our modesty as we get our socks on and off. There are parks in Germany where Germans lie naked in the summer sun being stared at by Irish sightseers in woollen topcoats and boots.

  Food and Drink Rules

  My blow-in informants ‘thanked God’ for sending Lidl to Dingle. Lidl actually sells rye bread and goat cheese, which are the staple foods of most blow-ins. Before it came to town, blow-ins were unhappily living on Brennan’s white sliced pans and Calvita Cheese. Consequently, Lidl has become a Mecca for German and Italian blow-ins. It is a place to meet and exchange gossip. Blow-ins generally find pub life too trying because very few of them can drink fifteen pints of lager in one sitting. Lidl makes the life of the blow-in more independent.

  A Sicilian sculptor blow-in, Antonio, told me that he gave up going to the pub when the smoking ban came in because all his mates kept getting up and going outside to smoke. He was left inside on his own. He tried taking up smoking but it only aggravated his asthma. He got sick so he had to quit. Now he stays at home and invites people round for food, drinks and smoking indoors. Few, if any, of the Irish ever turn up because they take him literally when he says, ‘You must come round tonight for pasta’; they think they will get nothing else but pasta. When they do come around, they stand outside his kitchen window smoking cigarettes while he sits inside looking out at them. Uncharacteristically for me, because I don’t like to interfere with the balance of nature, I did meddle by recommending Hiberno-English language lessons to help improve his social life.

  Rules for Making Commitments

  Many of my blow-in informants were of the view that the lo
cal Irish are commitment phobes. In order to renege on commitments, one must first enter into them. The more commitments you can take on, the more phobic you can be when it comes to showing up. This has given rise to the local custom of undertaking to meet people at every possible occasion. Instead of talking about the weather, you should make a commitment and instantly forget you have done so. The first month of every blow-in’s new life in the West is spent waiting in vain for the locals to show up for tea, coffee, cake, haircuts, hypnotherapy or even dinner.

  Most blow-ins told me that, to survive, they had to radically adjust their internal clocks. They had to slow down. Those coming from big cities had to learn ‘to take it feckin’ easy’. This meant that, if something was scheduled to happen on Wednesday morning, it would be Friday week before anything actually happened. We are all familiar with our service providers or deliverers ringing us up demanding that we make ourselves available because they will call to our house between ten in the morning and one in the afternoon, which means five minutes to one, if at all. For blow-ins in Dingle, a Wednesday appointment with a courier or tradesperson between ten and one means a ten-day wait in the house. Everyone else promises to call for tea but never do. But if you wait long enough, perhaps fifty years, they may. The average blow-in is resilient.

  One blow-in, who ordered regular supplies online for his home-based business, was told by the courier that he didn’t like delivering stuff to his house and that, instead, he would leave my informant’s parcels with Seamus in the vegetable shop in the village. Every couple of days, he travelled to the village and pretended to check the freshness of Seamus’s vegetables, none of which he bought because they were twice the price of the vegetables in Lidl, while he casually enquired if his parcels had arrived.