Myles Away From Dublin

by Flann O'Brien

  My interest was motor traffic and road safety but that did not dilute my astonishment at the unbelievable awkwardness of that body’s title. The Society is still very much alive.

  Its congress has to be seen to be believed. It is held in an enormous hall in the Westminster area and the delegates attending, nearly all representing some local authority, amounted to about 4,000. Not one of them was in the least bit shy in standing up and haranguing the multitude for five minutes, not infrequently on some irrelevant pet theme of his own. It was a startling spectacle of democracy in action.

  Of course the Society takes cognisance of road accidents but I was moderately surprised to note that it did not permit this branch of disaster to be an obsession: far from it, indeed, for its records and experience showed that the great bulk of the accidents awaiting mankind lay elsewhere. And in the most surprising places.

  Know where is the most dangerous place to be? At home! That is not a facetious sally like saying that since 90 per cent of the people die in their beds, being in bed is very dangerous. That being at home is danger – is a fact, statistically established beyond argument.

  And the most accident-prone are the very young or those past middle age, with most of the accidents arising from the carelessness of people in the age-groups between.

  By the hundred annually are measured the number of youngsters burnt to death from falling into unprotected open fires. A somewhat similar mortality arises from youngsters pulling down on top of themselves open saucepans of boiling water from the top of cookers or ranges.

  The word ‘accident’ does not necessarily mean death, and thousands of domestic accidents merely leave the victim crippled or mutilated for life. Apart from the youngsters drowned in baths, a great number of others are severely scalded.

  We all acknowledge the perils of the highway but it is fair enough to call the stairs a highway and, next to the kitchen, it is the most perilous part of an average small house. The young and the old are insecure of foot (the old often further endangered by failing sight) and the cases of people falling downstairs are nearly uncountable.

  Even if one fall or several in the same house can be traced directly to a tear in the carpet or an ill-fitting stair-rod, the defect is hardly ever put right; this is probably on the same baseless principle that lightning cannot strike twice in the same place. Stairs have another hazard, and I confess I have personally had more than one painful encounter with it.

  I mean falling upstairs; in this case it is your head which is bound to have the worst of things, and a fractured knee-cap is a commonplace.

  A shockingly large number of deaths occur in the home due to electrocution, with a somewhat lower number in towns due to gas poisoning. Poisoning in many other forms abounds, such as sheer carelessness in mistaking a bottle of some lethal cleaning fluid for medicine the doctor ordered, or unthinkingly using some genuine foodstuff which has been so long in the house that it has become putrid. Nor are you safe in bed; hundreds are roasted annually through falling asleep with a cigarette alight, and occasionally the whole house becomes a flaming tomb for everybody in it.

  I mentioned electrocution. Apart from defective appliances, this often arises from wiring being carried out by the man-of-the-house himself, either to save money or to show he knows as much about the subject as any damn electrician. And that pinpoints my main point – that homes are ever becoming more dangerous by reason of the modern Do It Yourself mania.

  Nothing easier than to build a concrete wall in your garden, of course, but when a gust of wind blows it down on top of your little daughter, I suppose doubt begins to creep in.

  Any man who is rational and has a decent pair of hands can himself instal a heavy chandelier in the living-room, but there is always a good chance that it will fall down and kill somebody. Which of us is not smart enough to make his own shoes, radio and even TV sets?

  From advertisements I notice that this lunacy is taking a new direction. Several firms (but mostly Japanese) are offering such articles as bicycles, scooters and even small cars in the ordinary intact form cheaply, but far more cheaply in what they call Kit form.

  The theory is that anybody but an imbecile can assemble such things himself – ‘at home, in his spare time’. One American firm is offering a tiny aeroplane on this basis. Soon we’ll all be assembling our own rockets, possibly with nuclear warheads.

  It would be better for most of us to assemble our thoughts, and stop this dangerous fooling.

  Moore of the Melodies

  Strange thing that with all the opportunities offered by TV, no decent hack has given us a piece on Tom Moore. I will probably have to do it myself. Moore, man of intellect, superb at adulation, prince of leg pullers, had the strangest of careers.

  For a quarter of a century he had £500 a year for writing words to supplied music. When Longman’s thought they would like a long poem ‘on an Eastern subject’ they paid Moore 3,000 guineas in advance, and eventually he came up with Lalla Rookh. I too have had dealings with Longman’s and can testify that their treatment of me was similarly generous.

  The beauty of the old airs which form his ‘Melodies’ tends to mask the fact that his verse was shocking doggerel.

  The minstrel boy to the wars has gone,

  In the ranks of death you’ll find him.

  His father’s sword he has girded on,

  And his wild harp slung behind him.

  All right. Let’s look at that.

  The scene is the austere office of the Commanding Officer. The Minstrel Boy has been frogmarched in by two guards.

  C.O.: Ah, Private Rafferty. I noticed you particularly on parade this morning. What is that damned weepan you have there?

  M.B.: A sword, sor.

  C.O.: How dare you call that weepan a sword! Where in hell did you get it?

  M.B.: It’s me father’s, sor, yer honour.

  C.O.: I should have you court-martialled for disgracing your uniform with such a weepan. Your father’s? I suppose he used it at the battle of Clontarf?

  M.B.: No sor. Th’oul fella lives at Booterstown, not Clontarf.

  C.O.: Hand that weepan to the quarter-master, get a real one, and then do a term of fourteen days C.B. Dismiss!

  C.O. (as detachment reaches door): Halt! About turn! Rafferty!

  M.B.: Yessor.

  C.O.: What’s that damned thing on your back?

  M.B.: My wild harp, sor.

  C.O.: Your what?

  M.B.: It’s me wild harp slung behind me.

  C.O.: Well it’s the first time I ever heard of a harp as an item of combat equipment. Can you play it?

  M.B.: Yes, sor. I can play ‘Kitty of Coleraine’ and ‘The Lanty Girl.’

  C.O.: Ah, an interest in the fair sex, Rafferty? How many strings are on it?

  M.B.: Thirty five, sor.

  C.O.: Very well. Hand that apparatus in to the quarter-master. In addition to fourteen days C.B. I sentence you to thirty five lashes. Dismiss!

  The comers and goers

  Let me set out one word which is new, mysterious, fully understood by nobody, very important, possibly disreputable, by many thought fraudulent and detestable and sometimes defined as the name of this country’s second most important industry – TOURISM.

  It is, as I have said, new, and the multiple façades of its meaning may be gleaned from the French word tour, which my dictionary says has the following meanings in English:

  Turn, going round, winding; revolution; turn; circumference; circuit; trick; feat; order; manner; twist; strain; lathe; turning box; tour, trip; valance (of bed); turn (act); front, foretop (of hair) …

  Now it is not good enough to say that tourism is just a fancy new name for ‘taking holidays’. Obviously it is much more than that because it entails a populational upheaval, a considerable social mix-up and also financial transactions which in sum are formidable.

  In this country most of us doubt the volume of the tourist trade as given annually by Bord Fáilte because many of
the figures are estimates and anyway it is impossible to segregate in the total of visitors which are properly called tourists (or foreigners visiting this country) and which are Irish people, mostly from Britain, coming home for a few weeks to visit relatives. But given that the figures are roughly right, is it a desirable business?

  One objection to it is that it is sharply seasonal. The off/on nature of the employment it affords in hotel and catering establishments must cause hardship and disruption to those who work in the business, and proprietors are pressed to carry out capital investment which will yield a very uncertain return when one considers the many imponderable and unpredictable factors which govern tourist traffic, from Irish weather to the varying industrial and financial conditions abroad.

  One does not have to exaggerate the close and considerable ties which exist between this country and the USA (where there is usually no shortage of money) but it is a fact that, Shannon notwithstanding, the numbers of holiday-makers here from the US is disappointingly small; the majority of such people regard Paris as the ideal jumping-off point for an exploration of the Old World, and direct jet flights to that city are nearly as short and convenient as is the stop at Shannon.

  Furthermore, the spread of tourist traffic here is very uneven, some places getting an absurdly large and undeserved share of the spoils.

  No visitor to Ireland would dare be going away without having seen the lakes of Killarney, Galway Bay and maybe the Glens of Antrim, and also loafing around historic Dublin, but I would personally say that Wicklow, for its astonishing variety of mountain, strand, woodland and river, is the most attractive and beautiful country in Ireland, but little visited by foreigners.

  I suppose in tourist traffic terms the word ‘unspoilt’ is one of praise but I doubt if publicans or hoteliers would agree: they would probably substitute ‘neglected’.

  These thoughts were provoked by a curious personal experience. When the present writer had the honour to be a very young fellow, his parents used to take a house for the months of July and August in Skerries. This is a pleasant little seaside town about 18 miles north of Dublin and has long been that city’s resort for holidays of the ‘family’ kind as distinct from Bray, which is a shrill gaudy place full of noise, honky-tonks and neon.

  I revisited Skerries on the 31st of last month to check on something and noted many changes, mostly for the worse, though strange to say several of the old thatched houses in the town survive.

  It was my first sight of Red Island, which calls itself a holiday camp but which looked to me at least from the outside as the nearest thing imaginable to a Nazi extermination camp (but I don’t mean that it is necessarily not a nice place to stay). It may be that the date of my visit was unfortunate but I must report that so far as visitors were concerned, the place was almost deserted and the few I did encounter all seemed to be English.

  Here was apparently another aspect of tourism. In recent years it seems that all Irish people who can afford to take a real holiday away from home make sure to spend it anywhere except in Ireland, and for many years now a favourable exchange rate of currency has induced thousands of Irish people to go to Spain. And France, Germany and Italy have long had their own attractions for our people.

  I personally know the Rhineland better than I know the valley of the Liffey or sweet vale of Avoca, but somehow I don’t feel an unpatriotic renegade.

  I’ll finish with a true story about the late R.M. Smyllie, famed Editor of the Irish Times. He was on holiday in Germany at the outbreak of the 1914 war and was immediately arrested. He protested that he was an Irishman, not British, and demanded that he be sent back to Ireland.

  ‘Irland?’ the fat, puzzled sergeant said incredulously. He took down an enormous atlas in the police station, laboriously turned over the pages and finally slammed it shut.

  ‘Existiert nicht!’ he roared, and Smyllie was locked up for the duration.

  Time for the holliers again!

  Readers will remember that I recently wrote some notes here on TOURISM, questioning certain aspects of this industry, particularly the results of its essentially seasonal nature and the distortion and disequilibrium arising from the marked unevenness of its impact on Ireland, both territorially and as to people.

  Certain highly publicised spots get the bulk of the trade and the money while other places, just as admirable, get next to nothing. Well, there seems no easy answer to such problems – except, perhaps, to tell foreign visitors on arrival that they will damn well go wherever the big buses bring them! What an opportunity for lone Mountmellick!

  Today I would like to attempt some remarks on a subject cognate to tourism, namely, an ordinary Irishman’s attitude to taking his annual summer holidays. I will set the matter out in the form of a dialogue between two old pals who casually meet.

  ‘Ah, Tom, the bould man. Right well you’re looking.’

  ‘And why shouldn’t I? You’re not looking too bad yersalf aither.’

  ‘Any holidays yet?’

  ‘The what was that?’

  ‘Holidays. Did you take any yet?’

  ‘Course I did. Three weeks, and I never enjoyed meself so much. Made a new man of me.’

  ‘Where did you go? I mean, was it Madrid or just Lahinch?’

  ‘Are you sarious?’

  ‘I’m always sarious. If it was Vienna, can’t you just say so? Or is it a top secret?’

  ‘Listen here. If you want to suggest I’m some sort of a mad willy-the-wisp at my time of life, I suppose I’ll have to pretend to laugh at your poor idea of a joke. For yer information, I didn’t traipse across to Moscow aither. No sir!’

  ‘Well where did you spend yer holidays?’

  ‘I spent them at home like a dacent man, where I’m properly fed, don’t have to sleep in a damp bed and put up with the bad indescribable language of Frenchies or Japanees. Nor Cockney bowsies naither.’

  ‘Well holy mackerel! You didn’t go away at all?’

  ‘Indeed and I did – and every day. A day-trip to Portmarnock wan day, maybe to Maynooth the next. And I took care to have a good lie-up in the mornings, too.’

  ‘Me dear man, did you never hear of the great benefits of a change of scene, a change of air and meeting complete strangers? You must be the only character alive today who never heard of the great benefits of a complete break. That has been acknowledged for centuries, man. The important thing is change.’

  ‘Is that so? Change? I prefer to keep me change in me own pocket.’

  ‘Living away is nearly as cheap as living at home.’

  ‘You talk of the benefits of a complete break, acknowledged for centuries. Is that so? What centuries? The idea of holidays at all, of any kind, is quite recent. In the day of Charles Dickens the way to clean a filthy chimney was to send a young boy up it. Slavery! Come across to this pub and I’ll stand you a pint. I’ve still a few bob of my holidays money left.

  ‘Tell you another thing – and stop slopping that pint about! As you probably know, I’m on a diet. Even in a decent hotel (if I could afford it) I would be regarded as a nuisance.’

  ‘Or a pest.’

  ‘And furthermore, if I could persuade them to attend to me special diet, I’ll go bail there would be an extra charge. Once you don’t fit into their plan for the mass-production of their dirty grub, you’re a special case. If yer stomach isn’t right, you’ll pay through the nose for it. And if you complain, out you go!’

  ‘Of course a good boarding house might look after you OK?’

  ‘And be ett alive be fleas in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Ah now I don’t know.’

  ‘Tell me this. What about yerself? Have you taken any holliers yet?’

  ‘No. I start in about eight days from now.’

  ‘And where are you going?’

  ‘Aw, Skerries for a fortnight. Go there every year with the wife and kids.’

  ‘Skerries?’

  ‘Yiss. You see, there’s bags of sand down there. Th
e very man for the kids.’

  ‘I’ll say no more. Next year I might change me own ideas and take a trip to Constanty Nopel.’

  Spending has problems

  An Irish firm recently offered a prize of £300 ‘to be spent in 24 hours’. I did not examine this strange offer very closely as, to be eligible, one had to buy a refrigerator.

  Frankly, I don’t need a refrigerator and cannot help regarding things that are kept in them with suspicion. I may mention in passing that there is something far more terrible than the commonplace fridge: it is called the Deep Freeze.

  I came into collision with the Deep Freeze last Christmas when an old friend whom I accidentally met in Dublin town invited me into an expensive restaurant ‘for a bite’. I was bitten all right. He suggested some salmon, and I thoughtlessly agreed to this.

  Only after several weeks’ appalling illness did I realise that it had come from the Deep Freeze and had possibly been caught in 1946. Archaeological treasures are fine, but not on the plate between your knife and fork.

  But this £300 to be spent in 24 hours? Let us suppose that the condition is exactly that, that the sum of £300, no more and no less, must be got rid of in that short space of time. I think it would be a most difficult thing to do – it might even be impossible. You could not, for instance, buy something worth considerably more than £300, adding your own money to make up the difference. Anything worth less than £300 would also be a rupture of the bargain.

  Can you think of any surefire way of getting rid of this sum by buying something?

  Let’s see (and discard) some of the obvious ideas.

  Walk into a bookie’s shop and put it all on a horse? No. That sounds simple but would fail, for any bookie in his senses would refuse the bet. Just try putting on a fiver and you’ll know what I mean. Irish bookmakers regard bets as money into the kitty. They don’t see anything funny about bets on horses which romp home. They suspect a ‘job’ has been pulled and pay only with enormous reluctance. The punter feels slightly ashamed of himself while he pockets the greasy reward of his courage.