You Irish?
I met my old friend Gavin Forman for scrambled eggs this morning. A big savage, in he walks 6 foot 6 with long white dreads a big white beard a headband and a Dublin football jersey on. Half man half beast. It's a mighty thing to meet a fellow Irishman and twenty lights come on on the dashboard that other people from other places have no reference for. Some man for one man he's a mover and a shaker and the craic never left him. Big laughs. Big big laughs. He takes the piss wholesale is quick as as whip and never fails to make me feel glad I'm Irish.
I am Irish. Are you? I'm proud to be from that tiny Island. I know people that have great grandparents who were Irish and they still identify as Irish. One of the few countries that if your grandfather was Irish then you can get a passport and just to be clear that is a European passport too.
I get asked am I from the North or the South and I tell them I'm from right in the middle. Roscommon. One of thirty two counties on our tiny Island. Here's something for perspective. You can drive from Dublin, in the far East of Éire to Clifden, far West in three and a half hours. But between them is a universe of energy.
Irish people have a kindness to them wrapped in a madness. So that's all you need? Well that's 60% of it, ya. After that you need to be able to generate real fun from literally ANYTHING. The Craic. I reckon you also have to have a working knowledge of the country and have lived there. But you can be any ethnic flavour shape or form and yet be Irish and love Ireland. What's to love? The countryside, the birds, the animals, the quiet country roads in the dusk, the music, the literature, the fish, the worms ,the long summer nights, the sessions, the gentleness of its people. Yes we are gentle. The bogs, the cities, the hurling, the airport staff, the coastline to name only a few and the best thing? The best thing is the draoicht- Wiktionary has it as -witchcraft, magic, charm, or enchantment. Musicians speak in hushed voices of it being present in one player or another. He has the Draoicht. The spells. The magic. It comes from the unique setting that Ireland holds on this planet. The weather patterns, the magnetic lines that run through it and the millions upon millions of ghosts that walk through you every day especially on the famine roads, asking you to remember them, remember what happened. We are a very real and very potent culture and flavour of people.
So tell me then, why is this a thing; Happens SO OFTEN. So often that most times I brush it off. New person joins the workforce. Oh Sharon this is Joe. Hi Joe. Hi Sharon how are you? Oh! You're Irish! Well top of the morning to ya! Or....fiddle dee dee potato. Or.....they just do their version of an Irish accent. So what's your feelings around that? Would you say to me get over it their just having fun? Right! Right! I then say to them, hey you do accents so well how about you come over to the Chinese girl that works in the kitchen? Oh no!? Or the Nigerian in the warehouse? Oh no!? Or is it just my accent? See my point? How can it be not OK to do a faux Pakistani accent but it's OK to do mine? I honestly do not know why.
But I will say this. It does not make me feel good but I will turn it into Craic using the ancient and the sacred Alchemy of the Tuatha Dé Dannan and Liam Neeson. As my father would, and his father before him, and his father before him and as Liam said,
"I can tell you we don’t have money, but what we do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills we have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make us nightmare for people like you. If you stop it now that’ll be the end of it. We will not look for you, we will not pursue you, but if you don’t, we will look for you, we will find you and we will slag the feckin head off ya”
Consider yourself told.