How to Be Irish

by David Slattery

  It is also recommended that you stand still while speaking, which in my experience as a wedding guest is very sound advice that is often ignored. Standing still makes it easier for a group of guests to grab the speaker if required. You should also breathe in and out (without actually saying ‘breathe in and out’). After alcohol, forgetting to breathe is the single most important contributing factor to the speaker blacking out.

  It is recommended that you bring in an anecdote relating to your earliest memory of the bride or groom when they were young, which gave you an insight into what they would be like when grown up. For example, if you are a parent you can refer nostalgically to some exchange you had with your son or daughter; or, if you and your bride/groom are childhood sweethearts, you can recall your first meeting as children. But remember, you are Irish. Do this in the spirit of having moved on. You have put that day behind you. After twelve years of counselling, you are over it.

  You are also advised to mean what you say because, allegedly, the room is charged with good will, love and happiness. Because this advice is idealised, you need to adjust it to your specific guest list. The best man should take this opportunity to tell the bride how much he ‘really loves her, yes really, like, really loves her. Not, like, loves her but really loves her. Always has, since the first day the groom brought her back to the flat they shared…’ If this isn’t working, the best man might decide to ignore the breathe-in-and-out advice and go for a tactical blackout. With all that honesty in the air, it is also an ideal opportunity for the father of the bride to announce his intention to leave the mother of the bride because he really, really loves Bernie from down the road. It is also a good time to shed a few tears. As a member of the audience at many of these events, I find crying very therapeutic.

  Finally, you are advised that you should be yourself!

  If you are in the crowd, do sneak out to the bar and return three hours later when the speeches have ended. Speeches traditionally end a half hour after the last collective gasp of dismay is heard in the bar from the dining room.

  The Don’ts of Public Speaking

  When speaking in public, frequently remove your list of what you shouldn’t do from your pocket. Study it carefully, committing its contents to memory. The first item on your list should be a reminder to actually not be yourself. It is not the occasion on which to announce your existential insights into the nature of your true political ideology, sexuality or your own existence in general. In traditional Irish fashion, try to be someone else for ten minutes.

  The problem with having a list of things that you shouldn’t do or say is that, under the stresses of the occasion, you may become confused between those things you should do and those that you promised yourself you wouldn’t do. The problem with don’ts is that, once you have been handed a long list of them by the groom, the mother-of-the-bride, the bride and bridesmaids, confusion can set in, especially if there was any miscalculations in your intake of alcohol, prescribed for slowing down your natural manic speaking velocity.

  Further down the list it should say: ‘Don’t be crude or smutty.’ This generally means not detailing any sexual partners of either the bride or groom in the past or present. In particular, you should not relate the story about how ‘When we all went away together on a camping holiday, I was going at it with the bridesmaid in a sleeping bag in my tent – well, I thought it was her because it was pitch black – and then, when she came into the tent with a flashlight, I said, ‘I wonder who this is’, and I looked down and – ha ha – wasn’t it only the bride herself. Jaysus, how we laughed.’

  Don’t forget to substitute the names in the internet speech with the names of the other main characters at your wedding. Remember, you are not marrying Julie and your father is not Seamus, as far as you know.

  * * *

  When I got married, my sister threw the rice so hard at us as we came out of the church that I had to seek medical assistance to have a grain removed from my eye. Whoever heard of rice at an Irish wedding? My brother-in-law, who drove our wedding car, was bursting to go to the toilet so he drove away from the church so fast that most of our guests got lost. Many never made it to the reception but ended up in a nearby pub where, apparently, the craic was great. This wouldn’t have happened if we had had a professionally driven Rolls-Royce instead of a diesel saloon that had been a temporary home to a pair of calves.

  Next day, when we drove off on our honeymoon, we were obliged to pick up three of our guests who were thumbing their way home in the snow. Best wedding ever. Everyone had a great time!

  5

  Health: Overheard in the Waiting Room

  [The Irish] is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever.

  (Sigmund Freud)

  Medical anthropologists study health and disease patterns, and there is no hard evidence that they all failed to get into medical school. Medical anthropologists see beyond biology and recognise that people become ill within a cultural environment. Patients differ because they belong to different cultures and experience their illnesses differently. In an Irish context, we get fat, we don’t take exercise, and we smoke and drink too much. And we do our best to deny we have anything wrong with us until the very last possible moment, which is usually in the ambulance.

  You can’t be Irish just by wishing the condition on yourself. You have to work on adopting our national characteristics, one of which is the way in which we deal with illness. If you really want to be Irish, there are a range of traditional Irish diseases available to you. Some of the very Celtic ones you will need to have been born with, like haemochromatosis, but the others you will be able to develop for yourself. These range from depression, or should I say misery, to heart disease and diabetes. My own personal favourite is hypochondria, because that allows you to have them all, sometimes simultaneously. Mammies can play a central role in Irish mental health and diet, so you may have to get yourself an Irish mammy right away. Try an adoption agency. As we will see, there are lots of childless couples that would gladly take you on.

  I am interested in the topic of medicine because I am a hypochondriac. When their doctor tells an Irish hypochondriac that they are dying, they are unlikely to query the accuracy of the result, being more comfortable with our national fatalism. If told they are fine, they will usually question the accuracy of the diagnosis. Even if they become convinced that they are okay, they know anything could happen on the way home from the clinic. If my long-suffering GP tells me I am fine, I am likely to conclude that he just couldn’t be bothered helping me with the funeral arrangements. Not his job really.

  The other face of hypochondria is denial. If you are not actually imagining every possible affliction, you should be actively ignoring that head-sized lump growing on your neck. If you want to be Irish, you have to know how to be sick like an Irish person. You have to learn how to balance the baseless fatalism of hypochondria against the groundless optimism of denial.

  In order to find out how Irish people suffer, both mentally and physically, I decided to hang out with members of the medical profession, the ones who actually got into medical school.

  * * *

  In general, Irish people talk continuously about a seemingly endless array of topics. However, there are definite taboo subjects, even in a hospital. If you are an exhibitionist, you might mention that you are constipated, for example, but only as a hint to the paramedics before passing out. Likewise, while you are allowed to tell haemorrhoid-based jokes, you would never make reference to your own piles. However, within the privacy of your own family, you can discuss your genes. Our particular way of complaining about each other would not be possible without our strong commitment to the role of genetics in influencing our everyday behaviour. This is an example of the superior influence of nature over the nurturing effects of parenting. Responsible Irish parents are usually able to trace the influence of at least four generations of genes on their children’s behaviour. Genetics covers everything from your lif
e expectancy to your personality and your good or bad luck. For example, in my own case, my mother’s family had a reputation for coronary disease, or dodgy tickers, while my father’s family, though long living, tended to be mad. When I was about ten, my mother sat me down to tell me that I was old enough to know the truth. She informed me that two possible genetic roads lay ahead for me. On the one hand, I could live to be a hundred, but most of those years would be ruined by insanity. On the other hand, she said, tapping her sternum, if I was lucky, I might die young from a massive heart attack with my wits still intact.

  For Irish children growing up in this highly scientific environment, it is common to hear a parent say, ‘You get that from your [insert the name of a member of the other parent’s family].’ If you’ve strangled the cat, your mother will say: ‘Your father’s side of the family were all peculiar around animals. There was your Uncle Tom, your father’s brother, who had to be sent away when he was twelve for what he did to that poor sheep. That sheep was never the same after. No one could bring themselves to eat one bite of it.’ When Irish children do something praiseworthy, they are reminded by a parent of the outstanding achievements of that parent’s family. Typically, that parent will say, ‘I am not surprised that you solved Fermat’s Last Theorem. Wasn’t your uncle, my brother, great at mental arithmetic.’

  Children in single-parent families miss out on much of this because they lack competing genetic role models. Also, children who are lucky enough to be raised in orphanages remain ignorant of their genetic inheritance.

  The Rules of Confession

  Sigmund Freud had this much in common with Catholicism: he believed that sex was the cause of all emotional problems. Traditionally in Ireland, when we wanted to talk to a complete stranger about sex, we went to confession. Confession was very good value because it allowed you forgiveness, not just for past transgressions, but for future ones as well. You just asked the priest to forgive ‘these and all my other sins [the ones you haven’t mentioned]’ – and it was free. However, afterwards very few of us were willing to talk about what we said in confession.

  Your psychotherapist’s clinic has replaced the confession box as the place to talk about yourself to people who have to listen. While going to confession was never hip, and few boasted about the sins they confessed, psychotherapy, which is now very popular in Ireland, is cool.

  You can increase your social cachet with appropriate hints about your emotional imbalance. A sophisticated range of neuroses has replaced good old-fashioned guilt caused by having too much sex, having not enough sex, thinking about sex too much or not thinking about it often enough. In contemporary Ireland, it is acceptable to be neurotic as a form of social style. Your particular form of neurosis is very much dependent on your social aspirations. There is a counselling or psychotherapeutic approach for all your ambitions. If you have no friends, or your nearest and dearest have lost all patience with your obsessive single-minded moaning, you can take yourself along to an analyst. When you go for analysis, you should be prepared to talk dirty because we know from Freud that all madness is about sex. Of course, you have to pay. Prostitutes are reluctant to waste their time chitchatting with a client. When you go to the analyst, you can spend the whole time just talking about sex.

  Many Irish people feel that this is an essential service because they have limited opportunities for talking about sex in ordinary conversation. If you are socialising in polite Irish society, it is considered gauche to talk openly about sex. However, at an appropriate pause in conversation, between trays of canapés and Hendrix gin with a slice of cucumber, you can subliminally talk about sex by re-starting the conversation with the sentence: ‘I don’t know how I will cope because my analyst is out of the country for the next month.’ Don’t say, ‘My analyst advised me to get in touch with my inner me,’ because everyone knows analysts don’t advise. They just listen. Counsellors advise, but only people with embarrassing and practical problems see counsellors. Be prepared for someone to ask, ‘Is your analyst a Lacanian or a Kleinian?’, a question which demonstrates their sophisticated and nuanced insight. In answer, mutter something about the need for confidentiality and your worry that you may have already said too much.

  I consulted a psychiatrist for my research. He told me that the Irish mammy was almost single-handedly responsible for most Irish male mental disorders. (Poor Irish mammies are blamed for everything!) Officially, your Irish mother will drive you crazy. My psychiatrist told me of a 55-year-old man who had lived with his mammy all his life. In a reversal of roles, he took his mother to the doctor after she started exhibiting symptoms of dementia. He was frustrated because his domestic harmony was being disturbed by her behaviour. The doctor told him that his mother had Alzheimer’s. The son told the doctor that it was very difficult for him to come to terms with the fact that, after fifty-five years of her looking after him, it was now his turn to look after his mother. The doctor asked if he had any questions. He had just one – could the doctor recommend a good nursing home where he could send her?

  Misery Is Not just for Christmas

  Misery is very common in Ireland. If you want to feel part of the crowd, you should work on your own depression. Depression is fairly easily acquired. The best way to become chronically depressed is to follow a few well-tested procedures. In no time at all, you will be one of us. The following is a brief self-hindrance programme I put together with the help of my psychiatrist. It helps if you can get a close family member or a friend involved from the beginning to undermine your confidence and determination as you go along.

  In order to experience authentic Irish depressive episodes, the last thing you will want to do when you start to feel really down is to talk to anyone, especially anyone who can help. If you do that, you will ruin the low you can achieve. Remember that being Irish means that you don’t confide your problems to anyone because your problems are unique. Keep in mind that, in the history of human kind, no one has ever felt the way you do now. After all, your mammy has told you how special you are. Remember, this is Ireland: there is no help out there. Money problems, marital problems, anxiety about leaving the house, obsessions about electrical switches and if you really turned off the cooker, worrying about your son ending up in jail, that mysterious lump on your neck – any one of these things could be unique to you. To discuss it with anyone else would be ridiculous, an assault on our long-held traditions.

  You will have no chance of reaching the depths of despair if you go to the doctor. Remember, she can’t help you because she is only useful if you are actually sick. For fast and effective results, do the following:

  Hang out with people who are only interested in themselves.

  Never deal with a problem today that you can think about tomorrow.

  Drink loads of alcohol, because a) alcohol makes all real problems go away and b) alcohol helps the depression get worse.

  If you are eventually carried bodily to the doctor, lie as much as you can and don’t take the pills. They will only make you feel better. Remember, we’re Irish. We don’t like feeling good because it makes us feel guilty. But that’s good because guilt leads to depression.

  The Rules of Losing Weight

  It is also popular to become miserable over your weight. Weight gain in Ireland is often the result of health fads such as taking exercise and quitting smoking. Exercise causes injuries and injuries lead to sitting around the house consolation eating. My psychiatrist told me that many of us comfort eat because the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s is buried deep in our psyches. Many of us even look like potatoes. Quitting smoking causes weight gain that in turn leads to yo-yo dieting. As an Irish person, you have a choice between dying skinny or fat. You choose.

  We avoid fish probably because it is good for us. If you see a fish coming, run. If you go to dinner in someone else’s house, it is customary to say, just before your plate is placed on the table in front of you, ‘Oh, did I tell you I don’t eat fish. Never eat them actually. Hate t
hem. I don’t agree with the cruelty involved in catching them. Think of the poor dolphins getting caught up in the tuna nets. Dolphins are just so intelligent and giving. They are smarter than people really.’ If you are serving the tuna, resist saying, ‘Speak for yourself.’ If you are Irish, do say, ‘That’s no problem. I’ll just put on a few fish fingers for you.’

  If you are rich, serious about losing weight and you really want results, you can try liposuction. It works every time, if you regain consciousness. Or you can hire someone to manage your weight for you, and engage in one-on-one motivational sessions.

  If an Irish person is serious about losing weight and keeping it off, they can join Weight Watchers for life and subject themselves to the spur of public humiliation.

  At Weight Watchers, you have just six weeks before you have to get into that white jump suit or that white wedding dress. Remember, in the words of one team leader, ‘A dream is just a dream, but a goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline. Remember that “desserts” is “stressed” spelt backwards.’ Weight Watchers routinely changes its points system to keep you on your toes; if you get confused, you can buy yourself a points calculator. Or you can use an app to keep track. The point is to become utterly obsessed. Here are a few Weight Watchers recipes that I picked up:

  Take a tin of tomato soup, which has practically zero points; add two spoons of curry powder. Serve with rice and, hey presto, you have a curry. Or take a can of Weight Watchers mushroom soup and serve over pasta topped with low-low cheddar cheese – gorgeous and practically food. You can eat as many tomatoes as you like. If you don’t like tomatoes, you can eat anything else you like as long as you jog while eating it. It is an important tradition to break out while dieting. Just one packet of biscuits will provide all the points you need to go over your daily allowance without eating anything else. Once you have scoffed the biscuits, you may as well go mad and just start all over again tomorrow.