South Dublin

by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

  It's often said that to live in Sandycove is to be singled out for God's special blessing. It's no surprise that so many giants of popular entertainment have been besotted by the place, including Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, Party Boy from ‘Jackass’ and James Joyce, who used it for the opening scene of his gibberish classic Ulysses… Sandycove is Pleasantville-on-Sea, a picture-perfect utopia where even dog shit on the pavements doesn't smell. Glenageary is its landlocked soulmate, home to a huge number of South Dublin's old-money rich and West Brit Protestant gentry, a fact reflected in the hundreds of houses in the area named Ben Nevis and Sandhurst. Both villages are located between Dún Laoghaire and Dalkey, and whether your pleasure is walking, dining or simply playing fast and loose with your credit card limit, they will seduce you with their snotty, upper-class charm.

  There's a lot more to Sandycove and Glenageary than tennis clubs, Victorian terraces and streets with ridiculous names like Wilmont Avenue and Otranto Place. Here you can get up in the morning and do almost anything – enjoy a jojoba soak sensation, send your dog for a mint-and-lavender scrub or smoke a Cohiba the size of a baby's arm. And you can take out your mickey! The Forty Foot bathing area is famous for its nudist swimmers. It's where South Dublin men do something literally that they also enjoy doing figuratively – showing people the size of their balls.

  If publicly exposing yourself without fear of prosecution is not your bag, there are a hundred other activities that will appeal to all tastes. You can shop in posh boutiques, buy fine wines that cost 300 quid a bottle and eat rich caviar until it brings you out in hives.

  This little paradise is sure to enchant you, just as it has the stars of stage and screen. Jane Seymour loves shopping here, as do Mrs Bono and Rosanna Davison, a bad girl who in 2003 was voted the biggest ride in the entire world. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman spent a lot of time in Sandycove during the filming of Far and Away, which may explain why their accents in the film were like no Irish accents anyone had ever heard before.

  Martin Sheen was once spotted walking the

  SANDYCOVE OR GLASTHULE?

  In Northern Ireland the use of either ‘Derry’ or ‘Londonderry’ is a cipher by which the user identifies with one or other side of the community. So it is with Sandycove and Glasthule – two nominally different areas with no discernible boundary between them.

  If you refer to the area as Glasthule, it's generally assumed that you are working class.

  While most people know that Sandycove is one of the most desirable addresses in Dublin, this quirky sub-group of people is proud to say that they are from Glasthule. Until, that is, they're selling their houses, when they suddenly live in Sandycove.

  seafront area and Britney Spears’ visit to posh frock shop Rococo has become an urban legend. The singer is said to have followed up her spree in Sandycove by taking the Dart to Bray – to get a tattoo.

  It goes without saying that there are no tattoo parlours in Sandycove or Glenageary.

  History

  Napoleon Bonaparte loved his decadence – antiques, paintings, fine food and even his own type of brandy. He would have loved Sandycove and Glenageary – and didn't the people there know it, erecting a 40-foot-high tower with a 24-pounder cannon in the roof to persuade him to keep his filthy foreign hands off their æufs de lompe and VSOP. The Martello Tower in Sandycove succeeded in keeping Napoleon out, but not the French influence, which is reflected in the fact that Sandycove consumes more foie gras per capita than, well, France.

  Today, the inhabitants of Sandycove remain as protective of their little paradise as their forebears were. In the 1990s plans were mooted to develop the nearby Victorian swimming baths into a water-leisure centre and the green area on the seafront into a car park. The locals considered the horrors that this would visit upon the area – verrucas, Speedo ‘posing pouches’, Daihatsu

  A WORD FROM ROSS

  Yeah, they're no strangers to my handsome mug out that direction either. There's a big boarding school out there for birds called Rathdown. A lot of goys call it Bet-down, though I've always thought that was way horsh. There's always a few little nuggets of gold in there, roysh, even if you do have to pan through a lot of muck to find them.

  In 1999 I did what many people considered the impossible, attending the debs balls of Rathdown and Mount Anville on the same night, without either of my two dates for the evening suspecting a thing.

  I took a bird called Siún Freehill to the Rathdown debs in Jurys in Ballsbridge and Carla Queenie to the Mount Anville one in the Berkeley Court around the corner. I spent the evening pegging it between the two hotels. I bought two boxes of Butler's chocolates, went to two gaffs for pre-debs drinks, even ate two focking chicken supreme dinners. Heroic is the word you'd have used to describe it.

  Of course, the word got around town. Everybody was talking about it. So I ended up being officially banned from attending the Rathdown debs for life for – get this – ‘emotional cruelty’. What can I say? There's a lot of birds out there – and only one of me to go round.

  Charades – and gave the developers something like Napoleon would have got, a bombardment with a fusillade of petitions and solicitors’ letters until the plan capsized and sank without trace.

  Sandycove and Glenageary have a proud history of dissent. Evidence of the role the area played in the women's liberation movement can still be seen today in the famous MEN ONLY sign in the Forty Foot bathing area, under which someone has painted a polite: NO, WOMEN, TOO. Note the perfect punctuation. Even in the fervour of the burn-your-bra sixties, correct grammar was still considered more important than gender emancipation.

  Famous Residents

  Oliver St John Gogarty moved into the Martello Tower in Sandycove in 1904. Gogarty was a physician and ear surgeon who gave it all up to become a Dublin wit, at a time when the market was flooded with them. Gogarty, who counted W B Yeats among his fans, won a bronze medal at the Olympics in 1924 – for poetry. This was back in the days when Ireland won medals and didn't have to give them back a few weeks later.

  Gogarty took James Joyce in as a flatmate, but quickly fell out with the famous freeloader who

  elevated twaddle to an art form. Joyce spent only seven days in Gogarty's ‘gaff’ (above), complaining that the rent was exorbitant. ‘It's focking Sandycove!’ Gogarty is reputed to have told him. ‘Hello?’

  Roger Casement, poet, patriot and troublemaker, was born in Sandycove in 1864. His work in the British consular service in the Congo, where he denounced the forced labour system, won him few admirers in this part of the world, however. Nor did his activities in the lead-up to the Rising in 1916, when he tried to enlist German support in the Irish rebellion. Had he had his way, Marine Parade would be called Kaiser Wilhelm Walk, Teddy's Ice Cream parlour would be selling bratwurst and Britney Spears would be shopping not for dresses but lederhosen.

  Another notorious troublemaker, singer Sinéad O'Connor, grew up in Glenageary, though locals will tell you that she was ‘more towards the Sallynoggin end of things’.

  Shopping

  If you have a hankering for posh frocks, antiques or fine food and wines, you'll find everything your heart desires in Sandycove or Glenageary. Glasthule Road is the area's very own Rodeo Drive. Pop into Rococo, Denise or Mrs E and you're sure to need a Sherpa to get your bags back to your car.

  Mitchell & Son Wine Merchants is where you'll find reasonably priced wines – as well as reassuringly pricey ones. The back of the shop is where you go if you're looking for a bottle of Château Ducru-Beaucaillou St-Julien for €166, or a nice Château Angélus 1995 for €199. Hang around long enough and you'll hear customers saying such things as, ‘It's flinty and sharp, yet with a certain unctuosity, not to mention big chewy tannins,’ and other hilarious poppycock worthy of Joyce himself. Mitchell's also stocks a wide range of Cuban cigars, including Romeo y Juliettas and Partagases the size of the dog turds that litter the seafront area in summer.

  At Buckley's auction house you can
pick up anything from a William IV extending dining table to a George III longcase clock – for the price of a modest-sized house.

  A WORD FROM OISINN

  Being in the beauty business myself, I know how much birds love pampering themselves. And a serious amount of them end up in Bliss, which is owned by that Clare McKeon, who I seriously would, if you're asking. It's all eyelash tints, argan facial massages and jasmine blossom floats. That's Sandycove for you. If you asked me to choose a scent that captures the essential essence of Sandycove, it would have to be Touch of Pink by Lacoste – an expression of magnetic and carefree sensuality, like a shoulder freckled by the sun.

  Cavistons

  You know the feeling. You've just settled in for the night when you discover you're clean out of terrine de faisan aux noisettes and gluten-free shortbread. What do you do? Well, if you've been favoured by God with a home in Sandycove or Glenageary, you can nip around to Cavistons.

  This famous gourmet food emporium is an institution on this part of the Southside and is a hive of activity at any given time of the day, whether it's tennis moms popping in for a French stick and some Mediterranean-style cheese and beetroot blush, or Southside dads sniffing out the finest Caspian traditional æufs de lompe or some terrine of pheasant with boysenberries to wow the partners at tonight's ‘dinner porty’.

  Cavistons draws not only gastronomes and connoisseurs of fine food but also those who like to people-watch. You could kill a couple of hours

  A WORD FROM JP

  Like a lot of people, I associate Sandycove with Cavistons on Christmas Eve. My dad would go there some time around mid morning to collect the turkey, goose or occasionally mallard, and, of course, the spiced beef, chestnut and sausage-meat stuffings, mince pies with lattice crusts and brandy butter. Until quite recently I would have regarded this as being a happy childhood reminiscence. Now all I can think about is the unnecessary extravagance of it and, of course, the waste of food.

  Proverbs 23 tells us: ‘When you sit and dine with a ruler, note well what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony. Do not crave his delicacies, for that food is deceptive.’

  standing in this compact little shop, watching the locals being ‘posh’ – men in golf sweaters with clogged-up arteries being knowledgeable about Gouda; women with cut-glass accents saying ‘divine’ and ‘fab-a-luss’ a lot, with accompanying limp-wristed hand gestures.

  Then there's the food. Caviar. Yams. Fresh wild salmon. Venison. Blueberries. Truffles. Foie gras. You'll feel like you've broken into the pantry at Buckingham House. And don't miss the famous cheese counter – which stocks every type of cheese known to man, except, of course, those plastic-coated processed slices that are very popular with poor people.

  How to Get Around

  Sandycove and Glenageary are both well served by public transport, which is unfortunate. The Dart and bus services have made this once unspoilt paradise all too accessible for working-class people – and the Gardaí are powerless to do anything about it.

  The No. 8 bus serves – for want of a better word – Glenageary Road. The 111 also passes through Glenageary, as do the 7 and the 45A.

  Happily, Sandycove is not so well served. The 59 is a bizarre and thankfully little-used bus route that takes in the Sandycove Road. There's also the 7D, which stops in Sandycove, too, though mercifully only once a day.

  There are Dart stations at Sandycove & Glasthule and at Glenageary – accounting for the number of working-class people you'll see on summer days walking through the town wearing soccer jerseys, especially those of the popular team Glasgow Celtic.

  Where to Eat

  How many times have you heard it said that you simply can't get good roast guinea fowl in Dublin any more? Well, Odells is the best possible retort to that. In the 1990s Hollywood celebrity couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman ate there. Nicole absolutely loved the flake. In fact, she married him. As for the food, they loved that too, both licking their plates clean. Chris de Burgh is a regular as well, though don't let that put you off. He doesn't sing.

  There could be no better recommendation for Daniel's than to say that Patrick Guilbaud has eaten there more than once, as have Jean Kennedy Smith, Liam Ó Maonlai and Pat Kenny. Chef and host Daniel Harkin can perform miracles with a saucepan and a bit of halibut, but it's the Lobster Thermidor and ten-hour seafood chowder that'll bring you back time and time again. They also serve an indigenous working-class dish called ‘goujons of plaice’, known locally as the Glasthule Lobster.

  A WORD FROM ROSS

  You can't go to Sandycove, roysh, without checking out Teddy's, the famous ice–cream place on the seafront? It's a great place to go for a first date. The beauty of it is, roysh, if you end up copping off with a bird in, say, the Club of Love or, like, Reynords and can't remember what she looks like, you can arrange to meet her – we're talking midweek – for a Teddy's and a walk on the pier. If she turns out to be a hound, the night's only cost you the price of a 99 – or two, if you pay for hers as well. Plus, meeting her outside Teddy's allows you to check her out from a discreet distance, so if she turns out to be seriously horrendous, you can get the fock out of there, no questions asked.

  If it's lunch you're after, take the Lexus for a spin down to Cavistons Seafood Restaurant, one of the

  slickest little restaurants in town, where the chef is so skilled that even the cod in curry sauce tastes sophisticated.

  If prawn and basil salad with gazpacho sauce is your thing, then you could do a lot worse than Tribes. The things these people can do with simple, standard ingredients, like ham hock risotto and osso bucco with lemon foam, make the mind boggle. Whether it's a cannon of pork, a shoulder of lamb or a gaggle of geese, you'll be so excited, you'll be chewing the menu before you've even ordered.

  Entertainment

  Every July, Sandycove and Glenageary have their own version of the marching season – the Parish Fête Season. While their Ulster cousins are dressing up in sashes and bowler hats to remind Catholics of the result in 1690, the Protestants in this quiet corner of the world have their own show of strength – organizing tray bakes and marrow-growing competitions (below) and selling old junk from their attics to each other.

  Bloomsday is also celebrated with great gusto, with devotees of Joyce's famous book of nonsense dressing up as characters from it and mincing around at the Martello Tower, which is the setting for the first scene of Ulysses. Since 1962 the tower has operated as the Joyce Museum, containing his death mask, letters, first and rare editions of his books, as well as unpaid bills and final notices from the gas, electricity and phone companies that he didn't take with him when he left in a hurry.

  The Forty Foot Christmas Swim takes place on the morning of 25 December each year, when locals celebrate the birth of the Son of God and saviour of mankind by jumping into the Irish Sea. Volunteers hand out flasks of whiskey, and there are competitions for the silliest bathing costume and the most fingers and toes lost to frostbite.

  A WORD FROM CHRISTIAN

  I always, like, crack up laughing when I think about Sandycove because I always call the people who come from there Sand People, as in, like, Sand People? I suppose what's even funnier about that is that I call the real Sand People, Tusken Raiders, which is, like, the proper name for them. They're, like, total nutters those things. I mean they actually hunt, like, krayt dragons, which is just, like, whoa! One of them hits you a belt with his gaffi stick and you'd know all about it…

  Pubs and Clubs

  Fitzgerald's was always the pub for hip twenty-somethings with money. In fact, it was often said that people went to The Eagle House to drink and to Fitzgerald's to be seen. But in 2005 that all changed when The Eagle House got an oak and smoked-glass make-over, ‘out-Café-en-Seineing’ its nearby rival and making a pitch for the local tennis and hockey club euro. The pub also underwent a fiendishly clever name change, with the unnecessary and time-consuming ‘The’ dropped and an ‘s’ added, to becom
e Eagles House. It's appropriate, too, as this is where, on a Friday or Saturday night, you'll find many of Sandycove's young eagles – beautiful, powerful, majestic animals, with their eye always on the main chance. A response from Fitzgerald's is awaited.

  Suggested Itinerary in Sandycove & Glenageary

  Get out of bed ridiculously early and take an invigorating plunge into the icy waters of the Forty Foot. Shake off the hypothermia with a mug of cappuccino in a local coffee shop and read some pages from Ulysses, especially the zany opening scene set just a couple of hundred yards from where you are sitting.

  Visit Cavistons and pick up a fresh poppy-seed loaf, a wedge of Pecorino with black pepper, a jar of Mostarda d’Uva and perhaps some pure acacia honey with cut comb, and enjoy brunch on the spectacular seafront. Visit the Joyce Tower and become engaged in a conversation with a fellow Joycean about your love for the gobbledygook bestseller. Enjoy a late lunch in Cavistons Seafood Restaurant, making sure to try the tian of crab and grilled swordfish. Spend the afternoon shopping – either ‘doing a Britney’ by visiting Rococo and the other posh boutiques on Glasthule Road, or picking up fine wines in Mitchell & Son's, or furniture in Eminence. Then kick back for an hour or two. Enjoy a gin and tonic in the newly refurbished Eagles House and maybe some more laughs from Joyce.

  Still hungry? Good, it's dinnertime. Don't leave Sandycove without enjoying the Lobster Thermidor with chopped onion and mustard cream sauce in Daniel's, or the roast guinea fowl with spiced apples in Odells. Then it's back to Eagles House or Fitzgerald's, or even The Deerhunter in nearby Sallynoggin, for a nightcap. Have one too many and get involved in an argument with a fellow customer who doesn't care that you think James Joyce is the greatest genius in the history of letters. Say some things you later regret. Visit the A&E of St Michael's Hospital to have your copy of his mumbo-jumbo masterpiece removed from your arse.