Know Your Power Lines
If you ask an average Irish person about power lines, they will probably tell you that they are writing to the ESB to complain about the one running behind their house, because they are confidently expecting that either themselves or their children will grow an extra head due to the electromagnetic waves bouncing through their sitting-room. If you ask your average blow-in about power lines, they will hand you a book that either they or their neighbouring blow-in has written on the subject. Many blow-ins are attracted to the West of Ireland because of the ancient monuments, passage tombs, mound tombs and standing stones that are not randomly scattered over the landscape but built in conformity with a strict pattern of ancient subterranean occult power lines.
For the blow-in, a power line is the special energy in the landscape that marks a line connecting one ancient monument with another. The invisible lines linking our archaeological monuments are an important source of the blow-in’s natural energy which they draw from the rocky geography of the West of Ireland.7 Modern Irish people, who live in the landscape, should be aware that they are joined to their ancient rugged ancestors through these connections. The locals don’t realise it, but they draw their natural energy for life from these lines. Obviously, sometimes the power is turned off. The power lines are also a valuable source of artistic inspiration for the blow-ins, the vast majority of whom are artists. Farming blow-ins live in West Cork because there are less power lines there, naturally. As it happens, Irish churches have been built on these lines without the original builders being aware of it.
Taboos
Even the most advanced Plastic Paddies do not hang out at the back of the church at Mass on a Sunday morning smoking fags with the locals. That is seen by blow-ins as a step too far. Another custom that is avoided is attending the funerals of locals, whether known or unknown. The general consensus was that funerals, in general, are too morbid. Besides, ‘You would really need to know the people who are dead.’ But how can you ever get to know them if you don’t go to their funerals?
Continental blow-ins tend to be more comfortable with buffet food at parties, whereas we like a good feed piled in a pyramid on our own plate. At an Irish public feast, you should position your arms on the table to encircle your plate and mutter to yourself, ‘It’s mine. Keep away.’ This practice probably has its origins in the nineteenth century Great Famine and is still widespread in Cork and Kerry. The buffet throws us into confusion.
Blow-ins also think it is remarkable that Irish people take longer to mature than their Continental counterparts. Parents in Denmark, for example, treat their children as independent adults on their eighteenth birthday. Irish mothers wait until their sons are fifty-three, just to be on the safe side. In Holland, allegedly, there are modern fathers who take joint responsibility for child rearing. In Dingle, there are fathers who put their children in the back of a jeep while they plough the nearby field. It’s okay because they can all see each other through the windows.
Blow-ins have a lot of time on their hands. They use it to do a lot of thinking. They have developed a belief that the nearer to the sea shore you are, the friendlier the natives. On this principle, blow-ins try to congregate as near to the sea as possible. The further you go from the coast, the less friendly the people – until you eventually arrive in Athlone. The message is: stay near the sea. An historical explanation that I was given for this by Antonio was that people who lived on the coast were used to visitors who arrived in ships from over the horizon. Therefore, they are more open-minded. I thought it was a nice idea so I didn’t remind him of the Vikings’ reputation for making friends along the coast a thousand years ago.
Antonio’s workshop is in an old forge on the coast, where the locals used to gather to exchange news and gossip over centuries, while they patiently watched their patient horses getting a new set of shoes. The horses and locals are now gone, but the anvil, furnace and stone water-trough remain. In this forge, which stands on the junction of several major power lines, Antonio makes Celtic headstones for those blow-ins that end up staying forever.
The Rules of Being the only Black Man in Corca Dhuibhne
For the sake of my anthropological investigations, I was advised to meet Sam, the only black man in Corca Dhuibhne, to find out how he became a local. I rang his wife to ask if I might meet him for a chat. She told me that we could meet in Páidí Ó Sé’s pub in Ventry at half eight. ‘How will I know him?’ I joked. I suggested that we might wear red flowers in our lapels. She was not amused.
Ventry is a village in the parish of Corca Dhuibhne. It comprises a pub, a church, a shop and two houses. I punctually entered the huge bar, which was completely empty except for a barman behind the counter, and a white man and a black man at the bar. ‘Give my informant here a pint,’ said I to the barman as I shook hands with everyone. After a few minutes of me blabbing non-stop, the barman was becoming visibly irritated. I was surprised that Sam had very little English, coming from London, but he smiled and sipped his pint. ‘What is your problem?’ the barman eventually asked, no longer able to endure the scene across the counter. ‘I am looking for Sam, the only black man in Corca Dhuibhne,’ says I. ‘That’s not him,’ says the barman. ‘That’s Eric, the only tourist from Paris. Arrived today.’
I sat in a far corner nursing my pint and embarrassment. After a few minutes, Eric came over to say goodbye. He gave me a crystal, thanked me in French for the pint and left with the impression that the locals were uncommonly friendly. Another black man came in a few minutes later. Going on the assumption that I had by now reached the limits of the black population of Ventry, I introduced myself again.
According to Sam, when he first arrived he was paranoid that the locals were talking about him, in front of him, in Irish. He decided to learn just the word slán (goodbye) in Irish. He went round to all the pubs and sat there listening to the locals talking, without being able to follow a word. When he left, he said, ‘Slán.’ This caused the locals, in turn, to become paranoid that maybe he understood them after all.
Now, after more than ten years living amongst them, their jokes run to calling him a Suffolk – which is a black-faced sheep – which seemingly is hilarious if you are a local sheep farmer. They sometimes remark, ‘The sun must be fierce hot over in Ventry,’ and then all laugh. Sam is delighted to be included in these small witticisms at his expense because it is a mark of belonging. Laughing at an often-repeated joke is an important winter pastime, and the more stupid the joke the better.
To better fit in, he learned about Gaelic football from the television channel TG4. He learned the names of all the players on the Kerry county team going back twenty years. Kerry is handy because there is no hurling in the county. His advice to blow-ins is to slow down and practise doing everything in slow motion; practise gossiping every chance you get because this is the main pastime in the pubs and Lidl; you don’t have to go to Mass if you go to the pub; get out regularly because then people won’t be able talk about you behind your back. Sam told me, ‘People are great around here. They leave you alone and mind their own business. If you were dead in your house three weeks they wouldn’t bother you.’ If you practise these techniques, you will end up like Sam.
His greatest pleasure is to come into the pub on a winter evening when all the tourists have left. He enjoys knowing everyone inside. The fire is blazing in the hearth as the rain lashes against the windows. He takes a pint over to the fire and sits down with his new family, the winter locals, for an insider’s gossip and to talk shite. Perhaps a German blow-in has gone back to Berlin. They speculate about what will happen now because, when one German goes, they all go. For Sam, he is home.
Sometimes blow-ins blow out suddenly. You get up one morning, late of course. Your neighbours have either gone or are dead in their houses. You should wait the customary three weeks before checking. But before that the rumours will be flying around Lidl.
The Rules of Bending
For a balanced
perspective, I worked my way along the coast in the direction of West Cork. I visited small isolated farms, small craft shops and organic food businesses on the seaboard in the direction of Schull. We owe our national identity to a small army of Plastic Paddies dedicated to keeping our traditional culture alive. Never mind your Gaeltacht; we would be lost without our blow-ins. Our TB cheese8 and bodhrán-making businesses would be wiped out, along with most of our pottery and landscape painting, if they all left.
On the way I stopped in Dunmanway, which is the capital of the New Age Traveller blow-in. I visited a makeshift hippie village. The collection of semi-derelict stone cottages surrounded a large bender that rose up like a medieval church in the middle of this improvised community. A bender is built by layering canvas or plastic sheeting across long poles that are secured in the ground at each end to form a tunnel of arches. Wigwam designs, inspired by the North American Plains Indians, also technically count as benders. The community gather in the bender for public events like meeting me. I sat amongst ten adults and their children – not to mention the dogs, cats and countless scrawny chickens – all wandering in and out of the rain, drinking tea and cider, and eating huge slices of bread that was freshly baked in a skillet, heated over ashes from the roaring central bonfire. The smoke left the bender every time someone opened the flap to get in or out.
I asked the woman who was filling the role of the wise clan elder where she was originally from and what she was doing in a bender outside Dunmanway. Like a storyteller of old, running up and down a small path beside the fire, while waving her arms and miming all the parts with great skill, she told me that she was originally from Leeds but had left her family and home when she was young in search of enlightenment as a Hindu. She travelled for years around India studying with various Brahmins, before finally queuing up at a temple to kiss the foot of a famous rishi. For an entire day and night, she stoically queued to reach the head of the massive line of devotees. Miming the part, she showed me how, at last, with trembling lips, she took the rishi’s foot in her hand to plant a devout kiss on his instep as a prelude to dedicating the rest of her life to the study of the Bhagavad Gítã. Foot in hand and with puckered lips, she saw that he was wearing surgical stockings. He explained, when cross-examined by her, that he was worried about catching disease from all the devout foot kissing. She immediately dropped both the foot and her faith and, after a few more years of aimless wandering in a spiritual wasteland, she found a home in the bender in Dunmanway.
In Ireland, she explained, ‘We don’t wear surgical stockings. We are real!’ I started to tell her about the foot inhibitions back west in Dingle but thought better of it. I was very moved by this story because it says something profound about our natural simplicity. It had nothing to do with the eight pounds of home-grown grass that they were working their way through in the suffocating bender. When I was taking my leave in traditional fashion, by insisting everyone come to visit me – ‘Come for tea,’ I demanded – I was surrounded and asked to stay. There was always room for one more in the bender. ‘Stay with us. You can join our clan.’ I pleaded that I had a clan of my own and eventually got back on my journey towards Schull.
Plasticus Schullus
The Plastic Paddies who live around Schull are of the improving kind. Their defining quality is their desire to improve us. Schull is a very improved village. Running parallel to the marina is a long street that has a tapas bar, run by real Spanish people, a fish and chip shop, run by real French people, a book shop and a venue for hosting the annual short film festival. As one rare resident, Pauline, put it, ‘What more do you want?’ Amongst Pauline’s many roles in the village is that of taking tourists round the pubs to make sure that they are evenly distributed amongst the few locals and many blow-ins.
One of the things that makes Ireland so attractive to the blow-in, though we would be too polite to admit it, is how tolerant we all are of the noble projects to improve us that have been going on for centuries. The best way to resist a blow-in’s efforts to improve you as a local is to just nod in agreement and smile. Hence the origins of our smiling and apparent friendliness, much publicised amongst blow-ins.
The improving project means that this population of blow-ins are more forthcoming about our national flaws than their Kerry cousins. Many of the Schull-based blow-ins suffer from bouts of exasperation brought on by contact with the locals, of whom there are fortunately few. Most of those live in land. But, in between these bouts, life is very harmonious. When exasperated, such blow-ins can tell us that our principal nationalistic obsession is worrying about what impression we are making on blow-ins.
Plasticus Urbanus
While waiting for the train from Cork back to Dublin, I gaped in tourist-like ignorance for any indication of which platform I should be on. I approached a friendly looking traveller.
‘Excuse me. Can you tell me which is the platform for the train to Dublin?’
‘Well, I am on Platform One,’ she said, not so friendly after all.
‘But where are you going?’
‘What’s that to you?’
‘Never mind. I’ll ask someone else.’
I was told that urban-based blow-ins are more philosophical than their country cousins. They spend more time reflecting on the meaning of Irish life. To test this theory back in Dublin, I convinced Italian friends to become my city-based blow-in informants. They are urban blow-ins but not aspiring Plastic Paddies; they are just blow-ins. She originally came to study and he followed for love. Before coming to Ireland, she was aware of some of our archaeological heritage but that knowledge was not a deciding factor; she came to study with another blow-in who was already living here and was an expert in Plastic Paddery. Her boyfriend was familiar with some traditional Irish music that he enjoyed. He had albums by Thin Lizzy, Rory Gallagher and The Pogues that made a very good impression on him and made the decision to accompany his girlfriend easier.
Ireland first struck these Mediterraneans as being disturbingly green. Almost intolerably green. They found it very hard to deal with the colour green, which eventually produced in them a Mondrian-type alienation from nature. They retreated into the brownness of the city where they have remained, afraid to venture too far into the countryside. From their first arrival in Dublin Airport, they began to notice our need to throw litter around. They have since become expert litterers. They realised that this would help them to both fit in and deal with our vivid greenness. They would advise would-be blow-ins that pocketing your waste will only draw attention to yourself.
The more observant urban blow-ins recognise that, unlike them, deep down we are very superficial – which is one of our proudest attributes. When we want to be deep, we talk about someone else’s feelings. We are very friendly on the surface, which means we are actually very friendly through and through. Many blow-ins who come from more expressive Latin cultures initially suspect that we are hypocrites, because they imagine that we must have thoughts other than those we confess to having, which are the ones we express aloud, usually in pubs. This idea that we are hiding our real feelings and our true views on the world behind a hypocritical façade is a recurring view amongst blow-ins. Their suspicions are reinforced by a paranoia that no one can be as friendly as we seem to be. Friendships are made when blowins stop insisting that their new neighbours ‘open-up’, ‘get in touch with themselves’ or ‘express their true feelings’, and embrace our innate two-dimensionality.
In the view of my blow-in urban philosophers, we could be accused of being emotionally stunted because we give the impression that we have only a few emotions. The two most frequently used are friendliness and complaining. We give the impression that these two emotions are not linked to our circumstances at any point in time but that we access them randomly. Confusingly for blow-ins, we appear to have different feelings when we are drunk, simply because we speak louder and more emphatically. We repeat a point more than once, often very many times, in a desperate bid to win agreement
from our listener on topics such as sport, where player W or team X is deemed to be the best in the world – no, really; relationships, where person Y is deemed to be a complete bollix – no, really; or work, where person Z is deemed to be a complete bollix – no, seriously.
When drunk, we have access to two less subtle emotions: sadness – or, more precisely, melancholia, which is a form of desperate complaining – and violence, which is a form of desperate protest. When drunk, we access these two emotions randomly. This makes it exciting for blow-ins to drink with locals because either emotion can suddenly appear at any point in the pub. The differences between our sober and drunken conversations cause blow-ins to imagine, foolishly, that the drunken views are in some way nearer to our ‘true feelings’ or more telling or profound, rather than just other superficial emotions being expressed more loudly.
Many blow-ins who come here from more sober cultures just don’t understand drunken conversations because they didn’t have the opportunity to practise enough when younger. The inverse of this is that, while certain blow-ins would be classified as having alcohol problems in their home countries several told me they blended in here, with their consumption of alcohol going relatively unnoticed. These blow-ins did not feel that we were hiding anything, nor did they believe that we were emotionally stunted. So there!
If you become a Plastic Paddy and convince yourself that you have mastered the rules of being Irish, you will realise with the rest of us that we are the most interesting, exciting, diverse and charming people in the world, and not at all prone to exaggeration.
* * *
I was on the no. 140 bus heading into Dublin City. Two elderly German tourists got on and put three euro each into the money slot, took their ticker-tape tickets and sat down just behind me. Out of professional curiosity, I tried to eavesdrop. They began to study their ticket printouts. From the increasingly loud German clamour, it was apparent that they had discovered that they had been credited €1.35 each, as the fare was €1.65 and no change is given on the bus. They engaged the bus driver in conversation but were twice asked to stay behind the white line and then to sit down in the interest of safety. Eventually, having arrived at their stop, they demanded to know how they could claim their refunds. The driver slowly explained that they could go to the head office on O’Connell Street. He told them that it would cost them 50 cent each to get there on another bus and that they couldn’t use their current tickets. With lightning mental arithmetic, they worked out that that would leave them with a net balance of only 85 cent each. So they continued their protest and the squabble went on for several minutes. At last, a shabby, old arthritic Dublin woman slowly shuffled her way to the front of the bus. She opened her purse and took out some change. Handing some to each of the German tourists, she said: ‘Listen luvs. Here’s the fecking money. God help us, ye poor craters. How much is it? €2.70? There ye go.’ A cheer went up from the rest of us on the bus, who were impatient to get moving again.
How to Be Irish Page 6