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- Herausgeber: The O'Brien Press
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
Ever lose the head when the country grinds to a halt after two centimetres of snow? Do the parish-pump politicians, perennially pathetic health services and practically useless road signs drive you to drink? Are all these and a million other maddening quirks of Irish society sapping your will to live? In the Name of Jaysus is a hilarious rant about all things exasperating, irritating and downright infuriating in Ireland today. If you're Irish – or if you just live here and have to endure our traditional manner of doing things arseways – then, in the name of Jaysus, this is the book for you!
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THISBOOK IS DEDICATED TO ALL THE PEOPLE WHO REFUSE TO ACCEPT THE BULLSHIT WE HAVE TO PUT UP WITH IN IRELAND.
Contents
1 Shop chains that charge more in Ireland than in Britain
You know the score. You’ve been there. We all have. You pick up a shirt or a pair of knickers in a shop and, like most people, the first thing you look at is the price tag. In Ireland, price tags often have two prices marked on them, one in euro and the other in sterling. You can see that the item is, say, €20. So far so good. But then you notice that the sterling price is £12. Of course, at the moment, if you exchange €20 you should expect roughly £16, so why, in the name of Jaysus, do our British friends pay £4 less than us miserable eejits?
And it doesn’t stop at clothes. Supermarkets are masters at the art of separating us Irish from our spondulicks – for them, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Almost every item here is dearer than in its British equivalent. A survey in 2014 revealed that lots of items were up to 50% dearer here and one veggie – broccoli – was 200% dearer than across the water! Surely the broccoli here is some special variety that will turn you into a sexual titan or an Irish Einstein? No, ’fraid not. It’s plain old common or garden broccoli.
Then there are little things like cars, which also cost more here, naturally. And TV services. Books. DVDs. Magazines. Picture frames. Toys (including the adult ones). Carpets. Electrical goods. Computers. Cameras. The list is endless.
And the reason for the price differences between Ireland and the UK? Often when you ask, retailers are suddenly as scarce as shite from a rocking horse. But, when one of them does come up with an explanation, it’s usually some oul’ guff about ‘overheads being higher here’. What a load of oul’ bollix! Is that really why it costs, say, 30% more for a pair of socks in Drogheda than in Newry, a stone’s throw away? Or why it costs 20% more to send a satellite signal into your house than to one in Bristol? Go and ask me arse!
The real reason is known to retailers as ‘The Paddy Premium’. They charge what they think the market will bear. In other words, they know they can make a gansey-load of free extra cash simply by charging us poor eejits more, as they also know that our legislators aren’t going to do anything about it because they’re about as useful a concrete currach. Water and property taxes are bad enough, but effectively being taxed for being Irish is enough to drive you to drink. Oh, hang on – that’s dearer here as well!
2 Brutal motorway/roadside sculptures
You’ve probably driven past them a thousand times. But every time you pass one at 120km/hour, this thought briefly flicks through your head: What thef*** is that wojus yoke? You then continue on your journey, the lump of twisted metal you just passed already fading from memory. Until that is you pass it again going in the other direction, when the thought once again occurs: No, really, what the f*** is that wojus yoke?
What it is, is a piece of public art funded from the Percentage Arts Scheme, which means that a small fraction of any publicly funded project must be allocated to the commissioning of a work of art. That all sounds very admirable, as we’re all keen on supporting the arts and struggling artists and so on. The problem arises when it comes to the question of what local country councillors believe constitutes a work of art, as opposed to a big lump of ganky shite. Very often they seem unable to distinguish between the two.
Of course all of art is subjective – one man’s masterpiece is another’s piece of codology. So with that in mind, let’s explore a few examples of the art works that have so illuminated commuters’ lives.
Let’s start with the yokes on the M7 Kildare town bypass, which resemble a bunch of ginormous plastic children’s windmills. Officially, ‘the configuration recreates the feel of the rails around the nearby racecourse’. Well, of course, you knew that, didn’t you?
Hopping across to the N2 near Ashbourne in Meath, we meet the giant rusty origami rabbit. Well, that makes perfect sense, origami being such a traditional art form in Ireland.
Very appropriately, Mayo County Council chose some humongous bent metal pipes to represent hot air rising (most of it presumably in the council chamber), for their art installation on the Station Road in Castlebar.
Gorey Bypass in Wexford has been graced by what the locals call the ‘rusty stegosaurus’. Actually it’s a giant hedgehog. Glad that’s cleared up because, with the country broke, you’ll appreciate that a giant rusty hedgehog is exactly the sort of thing we desperately need.
Carlow County Council has chosen to enhance our humdrum lives by putting an immense sculpture of a pair of concrete welly boots near Leighlinbridge. Oops, sorry, they actually depict the thrones of the ancient kings of Leinster. Obvious when you think about it.
Rust seems to be the ‘in’ thing these days. The N21 in Kerry boasts a giant rusty head-the-ball with his arms outstretched, upon which are perched six birds. This is inspired by the Songs of Amergin, a mythical Celtic poet, we’re told officially, just in case we couldn’t have worked that out for ourselves.
You may have spotted the six wonky telegraph poles sticking out of the ground near the M4/M6 junction. Each has a sort of disc stuck on top. No, they’re not some banjaxed communications experiment, but represent figures from our ancient past on a journey towards awareness, collecting knowledge as they travel. Just the way you’re travelling, and you’re being enlightened by art. Geddit?
Thanks to our county councillors being so in touch with their inner artistic muses, we have been gifted with gazillions of inspirational pieces all over the country. But pride of place has to go to the giant piece of sh…sculpture near Ballindine, County Mayo. This 10m-high multi-coloured masterpiece represents an accordion, and celebrates the work of a local musician, Martin O’Donoghue. For the benefit of those yet to feast their eyes on the work, it essentially resembles a gargantuan steel jaw-trap stood on its side, the teeth being bright red and yellow and the rest bright blue. To get a sense of its scale, the hole in the middle could easily accommodate a zeppelin.
Jaysus, they must have really hated that poor oul’ fecker Martin’s guts.
3 Foreigners who think we are part of Britain
You’re sure to have met one or two of these saps. Despite decades of global TV coverage about the North, and despite virtually every westernised country having a ginormous Irish population, you still get the occasional eejit who thinks we’re Brits. And the sad fact is, that there is still a sizeable number of Brits who think we’re Brits!
There you are on holiday in Disneyland, queuing up to get into Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters, when this guy next to you hears your accent and asks in a friendly way where you hail from. ‘Ireland’, you reply proudly, only to get a response something like, ‘Oh yeah, my wife loves your Queen Elizabeth.’ Before he’s even finished his sentence, you’re looking around for a large Mickey Mouse statue to insert into his arse. But unfortunately, our American friends aren’t the only guilty parties. The French, Germans, Italians, Spanish etc. can display equal levels of pig ignorance.
To be fair, it can be a bit confusing for the foreign lads. See, we’re an independent republic, but a bit of the island is part of the UK, but not part of Britain. Also, we’re part of ‘the British Isles’, which is a purely geographical term meaning the two islands of Britain and Ireland. And then our rugby team represents the whole island, yet we have two soccer teams. Add to that, in the Olympics it’s Britain, but in the World Cup, it’s England, Scotland, Wales, N. Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Yet all we want is for foreign feckers to remember that, politically, we have zilch, zero, nada to do with Britain!
A few years ago an Aussie commentator called Russel Barwick made the error of saying it was an Irish joke that Ireland wasn’t part of the British Olympic team, especially as we were part of the ‘British Lions’ rugby team. Actually we play as part of the ‘British and Irish Lions’ rugby team, but the gobshite was too dense to even know that. He then went on to say: ‘I understand the history of Irish politics. Well… I don’t understand the history of Irish politics.’ Well, duh. After about 20 million outraged Irish called him everything from a wojus gouger to an ignorant Aussie bollix, poor Russell got the message.
The Irish don’t mind a bit of slagging, and you can pretty much call us anything without offending us. Just don’t call us Brits.
4 The ban on alcohol sales on Good Friday
You know, it’s amazing the number of Irish people who suddenly develop an interest in Irish theatre on Good Friday and take themselves off to see Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler or Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows. Why this annual upsurge in interest in our great literary tradition? Simple, a licensed theatre is one of the only places you can enjoy a few scoops on Good Friday. So all over the country you have semi-pissed eejits looking at actors on stage and muttering, ‘What de f**k’s dis bleedin’ ting about?’
Yes, we are quite unique in our almost-ban on alcohol sales on Good Friday, which dates from a 1927 law that also prohibited getting rat-arsed on Christmas Day and St Patrick’s Day. Yes, you read that right. Now known as the world’s biggest booze-fest, the law banning alcohol on Paddy’s Day was only rescinded in 1960 as it was decided this was not good for tourism, and nobody kicked up a fuss. Of course, Good Friday was different, it having such special significance in the global Catholic Church. The imbibing of alcohol on Good Friday was deemed by our local clerical hierarchy as a fierce bad mortal sin.
One of the gas side-effects of the ban is known as the Holy Thursday Stampede. You can observe this in any supermarket where you’ll see queues of head-the-balls with trolleys crammed with trays of beer, multi-packs of wine and litres of spirits. Of course, the amount purchased far exceeds the amount of alcohol that anyone could safely consume in a day, but the thought of the next-day’s drought seems to induce a form of mass neurosis that can only be alleviated by the knowledge that there’s enough booze in the house to kill a herd of elephants.
Then there’s the famous Last Orders Ritual on Holy Thursday. No sooner do the pub lights flicker than there are hundreds of people screaming orders for eight pints – and that’s just for the missus.
Despite the fact that the church has lost most of its influence in government circles, the ban remains. It’s like all those TDs are still secretly scared to bejaysus that if they suggest rescinding it, they’ll be burnt at the stake or something.
Luckily there are numerous ways of getting around the ban.
The first, already mentioned, is to attend the theatre or another national cultural institution.
Then there’s the train, plane or boat journey. Just buy a ticket to somewhere over 40km away and you can get happily fluthered on the vehicle, or if you can’t be arsed travelling, simply stay in the station/terminal bar. It’s like a holy ticket really – it’s as though it buys a special dispensation from sin.
Another way is at a horse or greyhound race meeting. You see, gambling on this most special holy day is not deemed sinful and, within the confines of the racetrack, neither is getting gee-eyed.
