Bertie, Keano and mad craic in Ballina - it's 2002!

       Thanks to caricatures-ireland.com

(More from the DV archive never before seen online - these clips are from 2002.)

October 2002.
Switch off your Irish blame reflex - sometimes life just go wrong! 

In their ability to find blame, the Irish are united: in all 32 counties, you blame as one.

When colonised, the Irish naturally blamed the English for all ills.
Ireland still does, and probably forever will blame the English for anything and everything that doesn’t have a visible blame label on it from somewhere else.

In the Irish Dark Ages between Independence and joining the EEC, when it seemed like everyone else had what the Irish wanted. Ireland became the land of begrudgery.

Then, after 1973, Ireland behaved like a petulant teenager, pleading

“Leave me alone!” to the world, all the while enjoying substantial handouts from EuroMum on the side.

Now EuroMum has cut the allowance, and worse, those Bureaucratic Belgo-Bastards say they want Irish contributions. 

Broke? Blame the EU.
Blame a loss of sovereignty.
Blame electronic voting.

So the boom didn’t last forever? Oh really? You poor sweet nation, that’s such a shame, because look, everybody else’s booms last forever.

Get real.

Rich becomes poor like life becomes death.
It’s nobody’s fault, it just happens.

Lost your job? Hey look, there’s a Romanian.
Bloody Romanian. Lost me my job.

I was in Ballina the other day, cold and hungry, in search of a small portion of chips. In my pocket sat the grand sum of €1.50. That must be good for a small chips in North Mayo, I said to myself.
But no, small chips were €1.85. I asked yer wan what was the story with the price?

“Oh I know, terrible isn’t it! Everything’s gone mad since the Euro came in!”

Want to put up your prices?
Blame the Euro.

Pissed of with inflation?
Blame the Government.

It was England and the Empire.
Then it became Europe and the Euro.
Now, it’s Mick McCarthy.

Never mind the fact that Mick took you out of a World Cup qualifying group including Portugal and Holland.

Blame Mick.
Love Keano.
Irish good.
English bad.

As if to prove it, there’s Dunphy on RTE’s ‘The Premiership’, claiming the English press are racist against Keane.

Give me a break. It wasn’t England that screwed up your World Cup. 

It was your very own beloved captain, forsaking his team mates in their hour of need.

Roy Keane: diva and blamer supreme.
Eamon Dunphy: blame on the end of a glass.

Make like the Nazarene: check out your faults before you point your national blaming fingers elsewhere.

Sometimes life just dumps pooh on your parquet, and there’s simply no point in blaming anyone.

October 2002.
At least I wasn’t wearing a hat. 

Arriving in Galway from my home in North Mayo, I say “Howya!” to the Guru at his market stall, and stray into the middle of Shop Street, my jaw dropping at the sight of the Saturday afternoon crowds.

Evidently, my transformation from cynical streetwise urban guerrilla to wide-eyed clueless culchie is more complete than I realised.

When I lived in Galway City, I never went out at the weekend: that was when the country folk came in, with mud on their boots and eager smiles on their ruddy faces, bursting to drink pints of ‘Special’ and enjoy the mad craic.

And now I am one of them.

           Gone but not forgotten: Paddy Jordans in Ballina 

December 2002.
Ballina: No better place to wait for a bus! 

Opposite the bus station is a pub, red carpet brass rails, with a coal fire and a cluster of auld fellas.

I have an hour to kill, so I order a Jamie, approach the Observer crossword, and sigh with contentment.

The lads down the far end of the bar have had a fine day, are well oiled and good humoured, ripping the proverbial out of each other with the cruel sharpness of men who have drunk together for years.

The young barmaid hums happily, well able to handle her regulars.

“I love you Aoife!” exclaims bald rakey-thin oldie, as she hands him his ‘pointa spesh.' 

“I’m glad somebody does!” she returns, leaving himself with a gaping toothless smile, mumbling “Ahh, but I do! I do, I really do do do...” as his mouth sinks towards his beer.

Chunky beetroot-faced flat-hat boy turns to his mates.

“Here’s one! Here’s one, I tellya! Tink of a number. Go on!”

“Oh, hmm, yesh, I have one.”

“Double it!”

“Ohhhh, jusht a second now. Hmm. Okay.”

“Now, times it boy ... boy ... boy shix!”

“Ohhh jeezze Mikey, what’re ye feckin’ at?”

“Just do it man. For feck’s sake, it’s not dat hard izzit? And now ... now add ten ... divoide by two, and take away the .. cof cof cof wheeze oh feckin’ jeezus mary and jo jo jo ... cof cof ... take away shix, and you have da nomber ye firsht tort of!”

“No ... no, I don’t. I have terteen, and I shtarted wid sheven!”

“No you don’t!”

“Yes oy do, ye old bollox!”

“Well, ye got it wrong den, dincha? Can ye not add and shubtract? I feckin’ said double it and add 22!”

“Ye never shed nuttin’ like dat, not a bit of it, oh no not a bit of it!”

“Ah well, try it again!”

“I will not. ‘Tis borin’ and you got it wrong anywayze. Here, I have one for you now. Listen to dis one. Hey, Aoife, c’mere and lissen to dis one! Now, if it takes me a week to walk a fortnight, how long will I walk in a day?”

“Eh? What da cof cof wheeze cof what da fock was that?”

“Oh, maybe I got him wrong, now ... lemme tink ... or is it a fortnight to walk a week?”

“I love you Aoife!”

“Like I said, thanks, I’m glad someone does!”

“I do I love you Aoife.”

“Thanks, and by the way, I’m Deirdre!”

Much roaring laughter from all, followed by some reassuring backslapping, and finally, from somewhere deep in the huddle:

“Ahh, a bit of auld craic, dats wha’ ye want! A drop of liquid in yer glass, and a bit of auld craic!”

Time for me to head off. I wish them well, and leave them to their lives. Outside the weather has cleared, stars peaking out of the night sky.

If there is a finer country in which to wait for a bus, I’m in no need of it!

May 2002.
Free ice cream anyone? 

Of course Bertie will win, and lead his Fianna Fail into another long government, escaping the voter’s natural urge to go with the swing of the pendulum.

His main opponent, Fine Gael’s Michael Noonan, graduated with honours from the University of Bland Slaphead Opposition Leaders, in the class that gave us William Hague and Ian Duncan Smith.

Noonan’s dull droning monotone radio voice actually became life-threatening the other day, forcing me to wind down my car window, so that I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel.

Away from Treaty politics, Mary Harney’s boat race peers down at me from a million posters on the N17. On each is posed the question of what her PD’s might do with 8 seats in the Daíl.

God knows, and god help us if we have to find out.

Meanwhile Ruari Quinn and his Labour Party are offering more Bank Holidays and free ice cream for Senior Citizens and schoolchildren on the third Thursday of each month.

People don’t vote for holidays. They vote for ideology or money.

With no attractive political ideologies kicking about these days, those lucky winners with more money will vote for the status quo.

Bertie will win for just the same reason that Maggie Thatcher and John Major kept on winning: to borrow James Carville’s well-worn political maxim: it’s the economy, stupid.

But what of us, the bottom feeders who live west of the Shannon?

What of us poor folk who have only read and heard of this ‘boom’, yet never seen a penny of it?

We will do what the English did back in those Thatcher years.

We’ll vote for the dream too, in the hope that wealth might spread west, where so far the Celtic Tiger has looked more like a paper moon.

June 2002.
Come on ye boys in Green, stop reminding me of the English!

There’s a part of me that’s happy Ireland is out of the World Cup.

Whassdat?
Sacrilege!
Treachery!
Treason and unbelievable effrontery, from an Englishman of all things!

It would be impossible for the English to see any England defeat as a reason to celebrate. In Ireland, the celebration of brave (perennially losing) heroes is reason to party through the night, set fire to tyres, down gallons of Buckfast, inflate giant plastic hammers and most of all, feel oh so very proud to be Irish.

Well, that’s how it used to be.

Nowadays that Ireland only exists on postcards showing redheaded girls, donkeys and baskets of cut turf.

Above all I am an England fan, but I know that what you get out of a country is directly related to what you put in.

I cheer for the boys in green, the girls in green, and however scandalous it may be, I cheer for both Galway and Mayo GAA teams.

Last Summer, while the late afternoon sun shone bright, the locals in my village paid no heed to the efforts of their national team.

I though was to be found skulking in pubs, watching the Irish team play qualifying group games against Andorra and equally obscure opposition. I didn’t miss one Ireland game in the last couple of years; friendlies, the lot.

Without turning my back on my Englishness and Jewishness, I am totally committed to this country and its people.

Over the past few weeks, I have huffed, puffed, supped and screamed for the Irish lads, happy to watch the team that Mick built evolve from Saint Jack’s block and hoof into a mature modern outfit that likes to go forward.

As the national World Cup hysteria built up, a predictable ABE (Anyone But England) element grew in Ireland’s pubs. That in itself was no big deal. I’d never be happy in Ireland if I couldn’t take shtick.

I love the cut and thrust of Irish repartee. Each time a local gives me a hard time over being English, I in turn take the opportunity to offload back and everybody’s happy.

Recently however there’s been precious little wit in these exchanges.

It’s perfectly reasonable and even desirable that the successful 21st century Irish should see themselves and their country on a level playing field with other countries, but alongside their new affluence and confidence there has come an aggression that reminds me why I left England in 1992.

Being a mensch among men, I braved my local village pub to watch the England v Argentina game. Naturally, I was expecting and easily handled the hard time I got from the villagers.

Indeed, in some kind of weird masochistic way, I went down there so that they could have their go at me, and I was not disappointed.

However nothing could ready me for the reception I received when I turned up to shout for Ireland in the big game against Spain last Sunday.

I’d been looking forward to it; as excited and nervous as a native all week, but as I walked into the packed village pub I was greeted by a local lad pointing his finger at me, yelling

“Fuck off you!”

Over the long wet Mayo winter this lad and I had on many occasions sat watching Old Firm games at this very bar, himself clad in his Hoops jersey.

We had shared pints and a bit of craic, but now he’s infected with ABE, and I’m just not up to it. If he’d said something rude that made me laugh, I’d have been encouraged to enter.

“Fuck off you and go away!” he persists.

Don’t need it.
Fed up with it.
Not up to it; not today.

“Fuck you too!” comes my equally lucid intellectual retort, and I turn dejected and forlorn, heading home to watch the game alone.

If you’re going to slag, do it well. ‘Fuck off and go away’ hardly makes it to the group stage of the Wit Cup.

For the first time in my sojourn in this country I feel truly deeply weary of this Irish attitude. Now that Ireland is doing well, good old-fashioned patriotism could so easily have become internationalism, but no, instead they turn to wretched nationalism.

Such hostility is pathetic, especially given the level of goodwill and support that the English offered the Irish team.

The BBC, in the shape of Gary Lineker, described the Irish participation thus:

“It was a brave and bold effort by Mick McCarthy’s men. The World Cup will miss them, and so will we!”

This was followed by a montage of Irish goals and hysterical fans set to a soundtrack of Have I told you lately that I love you?




©Charlie Adley
01.05.2026.

The Winter of Burning Cars.

Photo courtesy of LA Fire Department.

 More from the DV archive never before seen online. This is from September 2002.

The Winter of Burning Cars. 

As that Autumn of 2002 came around, we had no idea what lay ahead. 

No idea that the war would be over without a shot fired. No idea that we would lose.

September came and went in a blaze of sunshine.

October gales plucked leaves from the trees, scattering them over the earth.

Talk of war seemed almost safe, remote.

‘Everything’s going to be alright’ I told myself.

We’d heard it all before. Same old macho politicians posturing and pratting around the planet, desperate to try out some strategic nuclear weapons in the field of battle.

Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice droned on and on, just like Daddy Bush back in ‘92.

“Blah blah U.N. resolutions, blah blah weapons inspectors, blah blah Saddam must go.”

Same-old same-old.

With the coming of a cold November, my first coal fire of the season was lit. More talk on the news about the protection of freedoms, limited strikes, and somehow, there’d been so many far-off wars I’d grown immune.

Of course it was a terrible thing and all that, but rain was still going to fall on Ireland’s fields. Still does.

Now I know how complacent I was.

This is the Winter of Burning Cars.

It happened so quickly. That was what shocked everyone.

We all felt so deep-down secure in our western civilisation. Whatever atrocities were visited upon distant villagers in crumbling stone desert huts, it wouldn’t really stop us living our day-to-day lives.

How could it?

One interview, that was what did it in the end.

The US and UK forces were building up on the Iraqi borders, trying their best to provoke Saddam into attacking first. They desperately wanted war, but all they got was entrenched defiance, and then Condoleeza Rice gave ‘that’ interview to CNN.

“So Condie, can I call you Condie? So, Condie, how is this war on Iraq going to help the USA’s war on terrorism?”

“Well, I see this chapter as part of a greater book. George Bush is a great man, a good man, and his policies will make the world a safer place. After the Taliban and Saddam’s regime have been replaced by democracies, the US can turn its attention to Iran, and then Saudi Arabia.”

“But the Saudis are our allies. Does this mean a shift in policy toward the Saudis?”

“Well, it has to be said that theirs is not a very attractive society.”

“So is it now US policy to gradually replace all Middle-Eastern regimes with the American-Israeli democratic model?”

“If you put it like that, yes, that’s a dream I hold dear. What’s so bad about a world where elections give everyone the leaders they want?”

“But what if they elect leaders who are anti-American?”

I missed Condie’s answer. My spuds had to come to the boil.

As I ate my dinner, reports were coming in about the beginning of the end. Condoleeza’s interview had provoked an immediate and massive response from a belt of countries from Libya to Pakistan. Sunni and Shia together for the first time: a consensus of outrage and direction.

No more oil. That’s what they decided.

Rather than sit and watch their own civilisations fall foul of the infidel predator, the western war machine was going to be starved of oil.

Middle-Eastern populations were already living with the threat of a costly deadly war with the US, which would leave their countries destroyed, the survivors condemned to slow deaths from depleted uranium.

The prospect of abject poverty was not too hard a sacrifice.

The US had stockpiled their Texan oil, and started to intercept (pirate) any tankers that sailed the Atlantic from the Venezuelan oil-fields.

The Russians managed to secure supplies from Azerbaijan, but for Western Europe, the brakes came on unbelievably quickly.

By the time European governments realised what was going on, it was too late.

The Americans shut up shop, becoming instantly uncooperative. They were plain doolally terrified that their combustion-engined world was going to dry up, and when your back’s up against the wall, you don’t look out for your mates.

Well, they didn’t, anyway.

Petrol stations and civil liberties are, naturally, the first to go.

All Ireland’s manufacturing industries are shut down in the first two weeks, but it doesn’t matter. People can’t get to work even if their jobs still exist, because their cars don’t run on air.

They turn our electricity off at 22:00 each night, while the military convoys escort road tankers from the docks to oil depots. 

Riots swarm over Europe’s capitals as mould on an old loaf.

After a month, income as we know it is a thing of the past. We cycle, walk, beg, borrow and steal to get through this fierce cold winter.

And finally, as an expression of our pain, We The People push our cars out into the city streets. We build huge towers of our wrecked, impotent, pointless cars.

Tens of thousands of angry Celtic Tiger Cubs, who'd seen their brand new 99 and 00 reg cars as shiny proud membership badges of the club of new-found affluence: now nothing more than pathetic lumps of metal, as cheap as the 'high-flying economy' in which they were built.

We pile them high, and they burn beautifully; massive bonfires all over the land.

Drifting into the freedom of anarchy, the people of Europe finally grasp our chance to stand as one.

We stand together as we watch the flames of our burning cars.




©Charlie Adley 24.04.2026

Stolen Galway memories, Celtic Tiger madness, filth and debauchery. It's 2001!

 

January 2001.
Galway isn’t a dream - it just seems that way! 

It is the week of the Great Return. Whatever ‘normal life’ in Galway City may be, we now return to it after the double whammy of the festive season.

Herself returns from her European tour. The Guru returns to his life of contemplation, having made a rare excursion into the world of work for the month of December.

We raise and clink glasses in Tigh Neachtain with the furious happiness of reunion.

The Guru raises his pint of Murphy’s aloft and declares:

“We have all died and gone to heaven!”

and in a peculiar way I think I know what he means. Coming back to Galway is always a sincere pleasure.

My soul exhales a breath of relief as I see the raging beast that is January’s River Corrib.

As I look along the empty evening streets of the town centre, my brain always has a little trouble acknowledging that it is real.

No, this is not Toytown: it’s where I live and, more than that, where I belong.

Despite all this sentient knowledge, for the 24 hours following my return, Galway always seems somehow surreal compared the seething megatropolis that is the city of my birth.

June 2001.
The sun is out at night... 

As I guide my wee blue car out of the car park at Knock International Airport, I punch the air out of my (open!) window, and let out a triumphal scream of return.

All the way down the slip roads of this little airport in the beautiful middle of absolutely bleedin’ nowhere, I join myself in an exuberant chorus of ‘Home on the Range’, adapting the American lyric to 

“ ... where we drink beer watching culchie-lopes playy-aaayyy ...”

Back in the gentle buzz of early June’s Galway City, I’m delighted to find the Guru has once again signed away his soul to work alongside Grumpy Chef, the Snapper and Snarly Artist, down at Nimmo’s.

Within a couple of hours ingesting grape and digesting gossip, me poor auld ears are frothin’ wid a torrent of news about the utter filt’ and deborcheree that have filled the weeks of my absence.

Ah me, the midsummer sun is out at night, people are drinking like sponges, shagging like rabbits, and of course they’re digging up the city centre again.

All is well with Galway, I tell myself.

July 2001.
Hey, you, leave my memory alone! 

‘Everyone deserves a Galway memory!’ claims the latest radio ad. 

Explains a lot.

How many of you Galwegians have sat in the bright harsh light of the Morning After and complained that you’ve lost your memory?

There are hordes of ye out there, drinking coffee in the kitchens of Shantalla, lying sprawled on the sofas of Knocknacarra, straining your necks down the toilets of Newcastle, desperately trying to remember what the hell you did last night.

You sad memory-theft victims suffer the embarrassment of having to ask

“Was I bad?”, as well as the legendary “Who was she?” and that old classic, “How on earth did I get home in that state?”

This colyoom can now reveal where your memories have gone:

The tourists are robbing them. It said so on the radio: 

‘Everyone deserves a Galway memory!’

I'm sure they do, but there’s only so many memories to go around. What could possibly be more private and personal than the process of recall, so give us back our experiences, ye shifty holidaying bunch of tea leaves.

We’ve all heard the stories.

“Well, I met this gorgeous French geezer, and then it all goes a bit blurry!”

“I can’t remember a thing after I started chatting to that Yank bird.”

Hmm, methinks another Galway memory nicked by a passing Dub; purloined by a touring pack of Americans; lifted by Franz from Mainz; all taken without permission, back whence they came.

Our only consolation for such vile robbery is the knowledge that at some point down the road, they are going to awake with a Galwegian’s memory kicking around their mind.

Let’s spare a moment for the ultra-swish Parisian accountant, staring out of the window of her minimalist Montmartre loft, wondering what hon hearth can means ziss bizarre memory of ‘... sheefting Donal in Central Park?’

Pity the poor 53 year-old Christian fundamentalist from Cookieville, Ohio, who came to Ireland to find her roots and buy Aran sweaters for all 15 of her nieces.

Now back home at a PTA cookout she suddenly ‘remembers’ taking Ecstasy, dancing in Salthill Park through the night and making love to a 20 year-old aerobics instructor in Bearna Woods at dawn.

Maybe everyone does deserve a Galway memory. But you can’t go nicking ours.

July 2001.
Diary of a dribbling fool. 

Come with me, dear reader, all the way back to the timeless wastes of last week. Journey with this Jewish Gobshite into the long dark light of a Co. Mayo Monday: 

Monday: Grey cloud. Write. Walk. Two movements. 

Tuesday: Grey cloud. Rain. Write. Walk and get wet. One movement. 

Wednesday: Rain. No writing. No walking. Just rain. Lashing rain. Think I might eat the cat. 

Thursday: Rain. Lashing rain lash lash ha ha ha rain oh rain of my toes, rain of my athlete’s foot, rain on me. Hahahaha. Oh comforting warm wet showers of the goddess fly-producin’ rain.

Play the Ramones ‘It’s Alive’ with volume at ‘11’, and hoover like a sad basstid.

Win £8.00 on a scratchcard. Go straight to pub. Drink Guinness, eat cod and chips. Drive to Galway.

Arrive in Quay Street, and my legs stop moving. The Arts Festival hordes make me feel I’m in the middle of the river that flows past my house, but instead of water and sea trout, this is a torrent of Culture Wannabes.

The sight of all this bourgeois humanity gushing and splurting down Quay Street makes my legs refuse, like a horse in front of a jump.

Into Taylor’s Bar. Seamus Mulligan jabs me in the ribs and tells me a joke, which is in itself, quite a memorable event.
No idea of movements. 

Friday: Morning sunshine in the city, so I grab a pew outside Neactain's, and drink coffee while thoroughly enjoying watching Galway doing its festival thang.

Hours later, gently off my head, I float off into Friday night Galway. A night now lost to me, you will doubtless be delighted to hear. 

Saturday: Out of bed with the lark. I want to be a tourist. Jumping onto the first brightly-painted double decker Tour Bus that passes me in Eyre Square, I am entertained for the next hour, being driven past houses I used to call home. 

As we pass the Atlantaquaria, our guide bursts into a slightly croaky but brave early morning rendition of ‘Galway Bay’, and fair play to her.

However, the highlight of the tour was not her singing, but her explanation of the route:

“For those of you following our journey on the leaflets we gave you, well, if you’re confused, that's because today we are doing the tour backwards!”

The Arts Festival crowd are not yet gone, and with the hot weather, the Race Week hordes have arrived early. 

Galway City is building to a whirling frenzy of consumption, and I’m drinking Red Bull like a madman as I plot my escape.

February 2001. (From Irish Post UK)
The Celtic Tiger is a fragile, imaginary beast. 

Mary from Ballycaloony is on a radio phone-in, giving out to poor Georgio, an Italian official from the European Union.

“Oh yes, Georgio, we hed some verra verra haird toimes in this conchee, so we did, back in da Aytiz, but do you know what we did, Georgio, do ya, do ya?”

Poor Georgio doesn’t quite grasp the rhetoric inherent in Mary’s question.

“Way-all, Mary, I donna hexackerlee-”

“Well, Georgio, oil tellya what we did. We pulled in our belts, and we pulled up our shocksh, and we ate bread and water, and we worked like divills, and we went without holidays to Shpain and da like, and gradjally … gradjally we made it to where we are today, the most succeshful conchee in da world, which we are, I think you’ll find. And now, soon as we have got ourshelves out of the gutta, and made some money so’s we can go on holidays to Shpain and da like, you lot in Europe come along and tell us that we are doing it wrong. Do ya know what I says to dat? Do ya? Do Ya?”

By now, poor Georgio is just the slightest bit wary of Mary and her rantings.

“Er, yes, I mean no, so, we are hall very ‘appy for hireland’s success and-”

“Do you know what I says to dat, Georgio? I says you have no right, dat’s what I say. Joss because your Euro is so patettic and all that, and you haven’t done as well as we have at making a go of it, you can’t shtand seeing the little cunchee doing well, can you? Dat’s da trobble widjall your brossels broorocrats.”

At this juncture, the radio show host jumps in, but sadly fails to bring any sense to proceedings.

“So, Georgio, you can see the feeling in the country is running pretty high. Answer me this, Georgio, on a scale of one to ten, how does Ireland score for unemployment?”

Naturally, poor Georgio evades a direct response to such a crass line of questioning, but our host continues unabashed.

“Okay, so Georgio, on a scale of one to ten, how does Ireland rate for old age pensions? How do we rate for education spending?”

Poor Georgio states the obvious, that it is pointless to score points in this manner, but our host, (and Mary, whose continued presence on the line is heralded by her 40-a day wheezy breathing) are in the mood for a scrap, and any European foreigner will do.

“So Georgio, tell me, would you like to take back the tax cuts? Would you like to stop the old people getting a rise? Tell me, Georgio, which bit of our success would you like to put a stop to?”

I can’t take any more and turn the radio off.

What on earth is it that possess the Irish when they talk about their economic progress?

Everyone, from Mary out on the bog, to Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy, chooses to behave like four year-old children, if that’s not being completely unfair to toddlers.

Personally no, Mary, I don’t get what you’re saying to be honest, because, to use the vernacular, you’re talking absolute bollocks.

As a child I was taught that when one friend tells me I’m wrong, I’m right, but when five friends tell me I’m wrong, I am wrong.

Charlie McCreevy came out of a meeting where all 14 European Finance Ministers admonished him for his inflationary budget, and just like Mary, Charlie stuck his tongue out and shouted:

“I’m the King of the castle, you’re the dirty old rascals!” Then he ate some mud and was sick on the carpet. Well, no, he didn’t, but he might as well have. Instead he adopted the same infantile argument as the radio host.

“Is anyone suggesting we take £500 million from health? Is anyone suggesting that we don’t go ahead with the very necessary roads infrastructure?”

No, Charlie, I’m not. I’m just taking a look at all those new roads, and Ireland’s improving infrastructure, and appreciating the billions of pounds that Europe have invested here over the last few years.

Everywhere you go in this country, huge signs proudly fly the European flag, informing us that European funds have helped build this hospital, that road, this causeway and that airport extension.

What planet is Charlie McCreevy on? Given the billions of pounds of Structural Adjustment Funds that pour into Ireland from Europe every year, how can he have the gall to say:

“Over the last five years we have not received any particular favours from the EU. Anything we got, we got on its merits.”

Right, and I’m Napoleon Bonaparte.

Why do Charlie and Mary both fail to realise that far from wanting to spoil the party, the European Commission is trying save the Irish from rampant inflation, a misery that affects the poor worst of all?

For god’s sake, grow up and smell the coffee.

You can’t expect kazillions of pounds in investment without some notional rules of control. You can’t sign up to a single currency, and expect everyone else to follow your lead.

Do the Irish really imagine that the Celtic Tiger economy has been built on Irish sweat and Irish money?

The Celtic Tiger is a fragile, imaginary beast, more of a chameleon really, fed by American investment, protected by the camouflage of European subsidy.

Until the Irish see that their success is very far from homegrown, they will have to mature quickly and answer to those who make their good lives possible.

 

©Charlie Adley

21.04.2026

Macnas parades, Non-Nationals, LGBT fears, Millennium night, Galway pubs and Wanderley Luxemburgo!

(More from the DV archive never before seen online. Here comes 2000!)

Sixty thousand people lined the streets to see the Macnas parade 'Listening Wind', involving more than five hundred performers.

 

February 2000.
‘Non-National’ - Is that the Irish for ‘Ni**er’? 

If you can control your hate for just one moment, you’ll discover that not everyone eats bacon and laughs at D’Unbelievables, but everyone eats and laughs.

A shiver runs through me every time I hear the adjective ‘Non-National.’ My mind sees a sign pinned to Irish doors of the future:

No Dogs.
No Travellers.
No Non-Nationals.

Until you Irish stop constantly using the term ‘Non-National’ in a derogatory fashion, I will not tolerate any more hard-luck stories about us ‘evil’ Brits. I don’t want to hear about the famine, or songs sung of prison ships waiting in the bay.

April 2000.
Patriotic Pricing?

Full marks to the video outfit that was offering the Dublin gangster movie The General at £14.99, with the biopic Michael Collins ‘thrown in’ for an extra £3.99.

It’s good to know how the Irish prioritise their historical heroes.
 

March 2000.
Galway’s not glad that you’re gay.

Let’s get something straight here: Galway is not a good place to be gay.

Ireland is not a good place to be gay.

I know several gay men living and working in Galway today, yet I’m sworn to secrecy by all of them.

In a recent article about ‘gaybashing’ in Sligo, the couple who run Galway’s nascent Gay and Lesbian Centre declined to give their real names, for fear of reprisals.

Our society simply does not accept lesbian and gay people. To come out in Ireland today is not just a decision to be open and honest about your sexuality. It’s a painful and massive choice that will completely define you.

You will be seen as some kind of zealot, making a stand. It will be difficult for you to live your life the way you choose, but at least you’ll live as yourself.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life writing false names for my friends. I will never get used to hiding people who are guilty of nothing but their own sexuality.

July 2000
In love with Galway City again!

Right now I’m head over kerblonkers in love with Galway City.

I love all the water in Galway: there’s water everywhere.

The bay and the river Corrib are only part of the story. A few yards off city centre streets I stand and watch trout jumping by the stillness of the myriad canals.

Shortcuts slip me away from racing shoppers to meandering currents, and past the University my feet ease alongside the river in rich wild pasture.

I love the Prom and the walk to Black Rock. I love to watch the Galwegians for whom this walk is a sacred ritual. Everyone, humble or proud, all of us, we walk up there, kick the wall, spin around and walk back to town.

I love the bats that swoop over Wolfe Tone bridge in the dusk of July nights.

The bats?

Sure, let’s not forget the bats.

Of course, I love Galway’s pubs. A quiet get-away-from-it-all pint in Garavan's is as close as you’ll ever get to a city centre country pub.

A gentle afternoon coffee in a plastic chair outside Neactain’s, where I can mingle, catch some rays and breath in time with the rhythm of the Kangos and JCBs.

I love the front bar of the Quays, where Biddy Ward’s ghost sits and sups her Satzenbrau in the corner, scowling at how the rest of the place has become a Paddywood theme pub. Somehow the tiny old front bar retains its integrity, despite the efforts of its owners.

I love Harriet Leander’s Nimmo’s, the ‘Great Escape’ - the weird, the wood, and the wonderfully eccentric.

Onwards to the Blue Note, where Cian and Whispering Blue are flying behind the bar, legends in their own long-limbed lunchtimes.

Watch those lads serve alcohol to da eager yoof-full punters or, even better, watch them drink out of hours - it’s like standing by Niagara Falls. You never thought so much liquid could go down so quickly and still look natural.

Love it? I do, I will and I have, on many occasions.

I love breakfast at Spud Murphy’s, where the tea comes strong, the service smooth and unobtrusive. I love a ciabatta roll from McCambridge’s, where fresh warm wafty bread is filled with deli-counter goodies for around two quid.

I love lunch in River God Café, looking down to the Quay Street hordes while snarfing excellent gastronomic gobfuls, in gentle wooden surroundings, for under a fiver.

I love a late one downstairs at the Crane. Upstairs I get depressed watching the earnest faces of Euro Hosteleroes, as they discuss and ‘deconstruct’ traditional music.

I feel music is meant to be enjoyed. Downstairs, offering a neat and tender dividing line between what was and what is Galway, the local community survives and thrives.

July 2000.
Makes me feeeel gooood....

The Brazilian national soccer coach is called Wanderley Luxemburgo.

Just saying it makes me feel good. 

Wanderley Luxemburgo......
Wanderley Luxemburgo........

Ahhh.......

July 2000.
The sun shone and Galway smiled.

It was impossible not to be infected with the happiness all around. Standing on a balcony at Jury’s Meridian I had a marvellous view of the parade as it emerged from Merchant’s Road, and the Londoner in me was impressed by the whole occasion.

Those Macnites hide away in Fisheries Field and work all year as acid-drunken elves on this explosion of vitality and colour, and then it emerges along our streets as the words of a secret finally being revealed.

Oh, so that’s what they’ve been up to! Wow, and fair play to ‘em! Here comes the excellent and much-loved local hero, Little John Nee, working the crowd, getting us all giggling and excited.

John is a performer with star quality and integrity, but who’s the guy in the marathon outfit, and the fat fella with the suitcases? What’s the story with the bride with the beard, and who cares?

The floats drift by, wonderful gigantic cycloptic Phil Lynotts and inexplicable wobbly inflated heads. Drums kerthrummping, brass bands pachowing, and children dressed in shimmering blue silk, dancing on stilts.

What was that one?
Dunno, but it’s pretty innit?
Yeeeeah!

More towering vacillating forty-foot people stamping immigration papers that spray water, and why?

What was the theme again?

Hey Macnas, if you’re trying to be political, share it with the group!

It looks utterly beautiful, even if I’m almost completely in the dark about who was what, and why, but that dancing caterpillar wiggles its arse as well as any Chinese Dragon I ever saw in San Francisco.

Just as that thought passes my mind, the local lass behind me shouts excitedly:

“Sure, who needs Rio de Janeiro when you have Galway City!?!”

Visions of months of rain and damp spores on my Claddagh bedroom walls rush through my mind, but they are hit head-on with the euphoria of this day.

Hell yeh, Galway is great at times like this, a town that hosts a three week party every year and invites sixteen times its own population to join in - we really do know how to have fun!

Most of the Arts Festival passes us everyday local types by. We don’t suddenly have fifty quid spare to take the kids and check out a show.

Sometimes it seems like the downside - the crowds, litter, madness and all the shite that succours the grouch - is all there is, but then Macnas come along, and give something back to the people who happen to live here.

Whether this year’s parade was better or worse than other years’ is not the point.

The sun shone and Galway smiled.
I felt proud to live here; to be a part of it.

August 2000.
Galway - a place with tourists, or just a tourist place?

It is with much relief that I welcome the end of summer - a good season weatherwise, and one in which I saw Galway city as something new.

No longer a real place visited by tourists, Galway is now a tourist place.

The regeneration of Quay Street, along with the Film Fleadh, Arts Festival, Race Week, and Salthill’s seaside season, has created an entirely new place.

We now live to serve the tourist. They dominate us in the Summer, and rather than the visitors getting a chance to see how we live, here in the West of Ireland, we live simply for them.

We now instinctively duck to avoid their pointing lenses, so as not to mess up their shot.

We are, of course, lucky to live in such a beautiful place, which attracts so many others.

Yet inasmuch as I will miss the swallows and the sunshine, I will not mourn the loss of feeling like a secondary citizen in my home town.
Bring on those autumn gales.


January 2000.
A Part Of It And Apart From It On Nimmo’s Pier!

I’ll always remember exactly where I was when we slipped into the 21st Century.

A few days before the big night I realised that as I was not going to be in the arms of my recently estranged wife, I didn’t want to be with anyone else.

A strange soul at the best of times, I’m often happiest in a state of reflective detachment.

The afternoon was passed in Neactain's, where friends from Ireland, Australia and America supped the black, and took surreptitious shots of absinthe which was being passed around in a bottle of Paddy’s.

Mixed with the Jamie’s a treat it did, hoh yes.

Life offers cruel and wonderful ironies. The only appropriate outfit for my personal night out seemed to be the linen suit in which I got married.

By 11:45, I was standing on top of the wall at the end of the Nimmo’s Pier in one swishy suit, Kenneth Cole shoes and a Jerry Garcia tie, listening to the shouts and sirens of the evening; only the hardest of misanthropes would fail to feel a thrill.

Directly overhead were Orion and Taurus, The Hunter and the Bull, still in conflict, just as they were a thousand years ago.

The swans were desperately trying to ignore us crazy humans. To them, and to the ink black sea sloshing on the beach behind me, it was just another night.

To us it was something special.

I took stock of the year just gone. I’d lost a marriage and gained a home. Matters that managed to pull a knot in my gut and water from my eyes.

Then the bells started chiming and the cheers rang out from Eyre Square; foghorns blasted cacophony from the ships in the docks.

All around Galway Bay there exploded an outpouring of noise, light and jubilation. Green showers of light from Oranmore, red fires in Kinvara, while scattered parties around the Swamp let off fireworks; families doing their own thing; children squealing.

I felt deliciously a part of it and apart from it.

A small crowd of people who’d emerged from a camper van at the other end of the pier were making their way towards me. With their backs to the van’s headlights they looked like the aliens in Close Encounters, but they were so very human.

“Happy New Year!” she said, appearing next to me on the wall, her eyes glowing with spirit, her skin beautiful in the light of the new millennium night.

“Isn’t it great to be alive!” she said.

I looked around me, knowing that good friends were awaiting my arrival, scanning the crazy beauty of the river Corrib, listening to the cheers of the people of the city of Galway, loving the power of the water behind me and the splendour of the sky above.

Not least, so aware that a total stranger was chatting to me as if she had known me from the womb.

The words stuck a little in my throat, but they did come out and they felt good.

“Yes. Yes it is. It’s good to be alive!”

©Charlie Adley
16.04.2026.

Curried Chips, Tribunals, Time and Neutrality - it's 1999!

 

 Your scribbler sitting at the bar in Terry's, Clifden, by Allan Cavanagh of caricatures-ireland.com

 

( More from the DV archive never before seen online. Here comes 1999, when we partied like … y’know!)

April 1999.
Not To Do List. 

Back in Ireland after 4 years in America. Time lingers heavy in the air, like the scent of jasmine at twilight.

Economic booms will come and go, but the essential qualities of Irish life do not change, because this young nation is populated by an ancient race, and at the core of the Irish heart is a need and respect for time.

Time with friends; time to be alone; time to walk the dog; time to play with the kids; time to wobble on your bicycle as you balance it on your neighbour’s gate and chat; time to live your life away from work, to say hello and have a few shcoops; time to appreciate those living alongside, to realise who you are and what you want to do about it.

The very thing that America could not offer became the coveted object of all this scribbler’s craving.

Squeezed into the narrow walkway by the roadworks on Shop Street, my hurried worried Americanised legs are just itching to get a move on.

The bodies in front of me are ambling. There is simply no other word for it. Ambling they are, past the workers on the other side of the wire who, for their part, appear to be shovelling sand and sliding cobblestones at a luxuriously relaxed pace.

‘Things to do things to do’ I mutter like a maniacal White Rabbit, picking up pace as I clear the roadworks, until I’m wrenched to a standstill.

A pair of hands grab my shoulders from behind. The Guru suggests a coffee, which turns into a pint.

By the time I finally get to the shopping centre I feel late. I have neither a schedule nor an appointment; merely the legacy of anxiety from the offices of California.

Sixty feet above the shopping centre, raised on top of a pole, a sign proudly declares 

NOW'S THE TIME FOR DIY!

Directly below, a giant quasi-digital clock reads 

10:56

I check my watch.

It’s 12:15.

‘Now’s the time to fix your clock!’ I say out loud to myself, taking the time to enjoy the irony of it all.

 

July 1999.
The Riddle of Galway? 

Ahh, the relief of finally lying down ... as that cruelly early Galway Summer dawn appears from behind the curtain ... ooohhhhh ... god, bed feels good.

Now, time to check the spin-ometer. Just close the eyes for a few seconds, see if the insides of my head are of a mood to start challenging the laws of centrifuge, physics, Copernicus and Pat Kenny.

Nope. Brain and senses feel calm and stationary.
Good.

Next see if the ooo ... aaahhh ... eee ... contents of my stomach are going behave themselves, or act out Newton’s laws of acton and reaction.

Nope. Lovely.
Smashed but safe and intact.

As I strain to lift my head, to see if the Scores on the Time Doors say 4:30 or 5:00am, she reaches across and soothes my partied brow.

“Ssshhhssshhh ... you’ve been feeding the Beast, babe, that’s all. You know how Galway City loves to be fed excess...”

So true, so very true, and the day being the Guru’s birthday, I drained it of every drop of celebration there was to be had.

A riddle for Galway occurs to me, worthy of the Sphinx herself: in which city can you step out in the morning on two legs, walk all day alongside many legs, and return to lie down, legless?

 

July 1999.
What next? Gardengate? 

At any given time there will be at least one pathetic political tribunal going on in this country. I’ve never lived anywhere like it.

The Tories set new parameters for sleaze in the early ‘90s with ministerial auto-erotic deaths and toe suckers abounding, and we know too well all about presidential cigars and the Oval Orifices of America, but you have to hand it to the Irish for their far-from magical ability to make a court case out of truly boring nonsense.

Beef, speeding tickets and supermarkets do not grab the public imagination in the same way as oral sex with interns and princesses crushed in cars.

There will always be some belligerent TD adamantly denying that he ever met, knew or spoke to the person who absolutely did not, at any time, ever give him a brown paper bag with £80,000 in it, and further, he didn’t even know what denomination the non-existent notes were of, because he didn't ever look in the imaginary paper bag.

What’s next? Dana found guilty of trimming her hedge a little too far over her neighbour’s fence? ‘GardenGate’ could run for three years, easy.

Anything will suffice, it seems, if it diverts the powers-that-be from the onerous task of helping ordinary people in their day-to-day lives.


September 1999.
No place like it? 

Vacating Taylor’s Bar at midnight I enter the chipper the proud possessor of £1.23, knowing full well that a small curried chips costs £1.30.

Engaging yer one with a smile and a joke about the big black dog that sits outside all day, I ask her for £1.23’s worth of small curried.

She smiles a little coquettishly and proceeds to cram the plastic tray with as many chips and as much sauce as the blighter will hold. Generous, warm, the Irish are ever-attracted to humans and humour.

Home.

She then carefully takes four paper napkins and slowly, ever-so carefully inserts them into the bag so that they are completely immersed in the sauce. The napkins instantly disintegrate into a papery curryfull mush.

Home.

October 1999.
Neutral? I Don’t Think So.

As an ideal, neutrality has always sounded safe, sage and civilised, but it’s not ideals that walk the streets.

Does ‘neutrality’ simply imply an avoidance of war, or does it aspire to purity of intent?

Ireland’s stance in World War Two lay rooted in the past, in resentment, the Empire and Partition. The nascent nation did not want to embrace Nazism, but had to turn its back on England, simply because it finally could.

‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’, whilst a little naive, is a wholly understandable reaction, but is it neutral?

I don’t think so.

Four years after the war, the Irish Minister for External Affairs, Mr. MacBride, was explaining his government’s position on membership of NATO to the Dáil.

“As long as Partition lasts, any military alliance or commitment involving joint military action with the State responsible for Partition must be quite out of the question as far as Ireland is concerned.”

Neutral?
I don’t think so.

Michael Collins, writing in the Manchester Guardian on December 7th, 1921, saw Irish membership of a League of Nations as:

“… necessary if the old world of internecine conflict is to emerge into the new world of co-operative harmony … Ireland’s inclusion as a free member of this league would have a powerful influence in consolidating the whole body, for Ireland is herself a Mother Country with world-wide influences.”

Neutral?
I don’t think so.

As a member of the European Union, Ireland has already aligned itself with two of the world’s nuclear superpowers and several members of NATO.

The notion that the EU is simply an economic arrangement between wholly independent nations went out of the window with the EU’s recent involvement in wars in former Yugoslavia.

As much as Ireland benefits from EU membership, it can no longer ignore the conflicts that influence the collective group.

During the Kosovo war, some members of the Irish football team made it clear that they were so appalled by Serbian activities, they did not want to play the Euro 2000 match against Yugoslavia at Lansdowne Road. The administration refused to permit entry visas to the visiting team.

This tiny act, so far from neutrality, was made by the same government that now tells us that membership of PFP will not affect Ireland’s neutrality.

What neutrality?

The Irish will hopefully never become international aggressors, but it is preposterous for them to pretend that they are, or ever have been, neutral.

©Charlie Adley

11.04.2026.