More from the DV archive never before seen online. Here comes 1994, Part Deux and 1995. Enjoy!
September 1994.
Alan Sugar? He’s nothing like me. Oh, except he is.
It’s Sunday afternoon and almost the entire population of my Connemara village is in the pub, either watching the Arsenal-Spurs game, or having a good auld chat, d'ya'know.
On TV, the camera pans the North London crowd, and finds the head of Alan Sugar, the Tottenham supremo.
A voice chirps from the far end of the pub. “Jaize but doesn’t that yoke look just like Charlie!”
The souls who have got to know me in the six months since my arrival all mutter in agreement.
“Sure, but he’s an awful bollox, that fella!”
“Hexackerlee!”
Much laughter.
It’s time to protest my innocence.
“I have absolutely nothing in common with that ‘orrible specimen,” I plead, pausing to consider if this is the time to reveal myself to them, “… except, of course, that we share a religion!”
Long silent pause.
“But but but isn’t he wonna dem Jewish fellas?”
I smile, savouring the moment. The Jewish Community in the West of Ireland is just about non-existent. Like, I know all five of them by name.
Looking at the faces of these farmers and their families, jaw-dropped staring towards me, I can be pretty sure I’m the first Jew that many of them have ever met, let alone had living among them.
As with our shared respect for oral history (talking shite for hours) humour is as important to the Celtic people as it is to us Jews.
The Irish use it as well and as often as we do. Just in completely different yet equally amusing ways.
“Sorry lads! All these years you waited for the dark hat, the raincoat and long floppy curls, and instead you got a Chelsea fan!”
Another long pause as they all reconstruct their horizons of ethnic stereotype.
“Well, that’d be why you’re always in the pub during Mass then!”
“Don’t take it personally Máirtín, I don’t go to Synagogue either. I’m an Atheist.”
“Whassat?” coughs 88 year-old Packie, never a day away from the pub in 37 years. “Whassat he says about his pancreas?”
January 1995.
Paranoia can be fun!
“All I’m saying is you want to watch your accent when you’re up in Dundalk, Charlie.”
Whispering Blue is trying to feed my natural inclination to paranoia. What he doesn’t realise is that sometimes I just plain enjoy feeling paranoid. As an Englishman living in Ireland it can be an exceedingly helpful attribute.
“Why? What’s so special about Dundalk?”
“Well, let’s just say that about 60% of all cross-border missions are planned there. What is it this lad wants you to do, anyway?”
“He’s a friend of mine from Connemara, and his poor old mum has to move into a ‘home’, so he wants me to drive my van up there, pick up a few family heirlooms and then bring them back to Connemara before the house is sold.”
“His poor old mum, eh? A likely story. Tell me, this mate of yours wouldn’t be into any of that Republican stuff at all, would he?”
I could just turn my brain off.
I could just say “No, he’s as straight as a die!”
But it’s more fun to build the paranoia.
“Well now, let’s see. Ooh yeh, now that I think of it, he used to write for an Phoblacht.”
“Jeeze Charlie!”
“Oh, and he has a photo of Gerry Adams and himself sitting together on a rostrum. It’s got pride of place on his mantelpiece in his house out in Connemara.”
“Oh lord, what have got yourself into this time? Look, it’s a traditional route, you know, when the Brits want the guns handed in, the RA run ‘em to the west and bury them in the Connemara bog ’til they’re needed. I’d take a good look at what he’s loading into your van, Charlie mate, really.”
“Well, now that I come to think of it he said he didn’t like the idea of stopping overnight in Galway City on the way back. Said he wanted to get the stuff back safe. Said he couldn’t risk losing the contents of the van.”
“I’ll bet he did! They’d have him up against a wall for that! No probs.”
Fear is now running around my brain like a naked hippy at a free festival, but my mate continues to stoke my madness.
“And wouldn’t the IRA Army Council just love it if a Brit got caught doing the gun run for them?”
A vision appears in front of my eyes. My mum back in London, watching the BBC News on her tele, and there’s my face up on the screen, arrested for IRA gun smuggling.
This was no laughing matter.
A cool clear head: that was what I would need on the day.
Stay sharp, cool and clear-headed.
My mate arrives on the Saturday and we’re due to drive up to Dundalk on the Sunday morning.
Cool. Clear. Sharp.
We drive to Galway City, where a few shcoops are downed. By 4 in the morning the poker game back at the lads’ house has been going for hours. Blitz appears out of the kitchen carrying plates heaving with rashers, eggs and chips.
So, no sleep on the agenda here then.
Cool clear head.
The Body keeps us alert by calling the new game as only The Body can.
“Seven card stud, two in the hole, last card down, red threes, black sevens, queen of diamonds and nine of hearts are wild.”
“What??”
“You heard me, and don’t ask me to repeat it, ‘cos I can’t remember either!”
Around 8 in the morning we set off on our cross-country jaunt. Cool sharp and alert are not the terms that best describe my state of mind. The road dances in front of me and the signposts look like they’ve been written in Klingon.
I’m so worried about keeping on the tarmac that any fear of of terrorist activities seems secondary.
The sun shines, and gradually I relax and start to enjoy the trip. My friend turns to me.
“Oh yeh, I forgot to tell you. There’s something I think you ought to know about this stuff we’re picking up, Charlie.”
“No! No there isn’t! Please don’t tell me! I don’t want to know! I’m just a lowly innocent scribbler. You can’t make me do it! I wasn’t there! I know nothing!”
“I was only going to say that some of it needs to be put in boxes when we arrive at my mum’s. That’s all. Why? What did you think I was going to say?”
“Who me? Nothing. Nada. De rien. Zilch. Zip. Hey listen, I’ve been practising my Ulster accent. Tell me what you think...”
January 1995
The nightmare is over... or is it?
We can open our eyes now. The nightmare is over. We have a new government, and it looks pretty much like the one we voted for two years ago.
When Dick Spring climbed into bed with Albert Reynolds he gave a raised finger to all those who’d voted for him. A stamp in the face for all those who voted against Fianna Faíl. If the ensuing coalition works, just call me Raoul.
Is this set-up what we want?
Who knows?
There was no General Election.
But did we want another General Election?
Not really.
This was the politicians’ mess, and they had to clean it up.
Free from the tyranny of the ballot box, the politicians came together and produced a Rainbow.
Sounds pretty, doesn’t it?
What chance a crock of gold?
Ha.
The Russian Doll that is Fianna Fail continues to shed its skin, reappearing in a form identical to the last, just a little smaller. Maire Geoghegan-Quinn was just the wrong shape. She didn’t fit the mould.
Over on the left, the Labour Party has become a bizarre vulture, lying on the ground as a rotting corpse, occasionally raising its head to tear chunks from its own stomach, rip flesh off its own body, feasting and gorging on itself until it rises again, stronger and larger than before it was dead.
John Bruton looks more like a turkey than a mythical phoenix. Pulled one way by his Tanaiste and another by his Treasury, he tries to regurgitate financial fodder straight into the left-wing beak of Social Welfare.
Our entire government sorted, and all without the stroke of a voter’s pencil.
Democracy is great, isn’t it?
February 1995.
Know your enemy!
If I hear one more Irish person wondering how the violent scenes at the Ireland v England match at Lansdowne Road might have been avoided, I think I might scream.
Take it from someone who knows:
It wasn’t anything to do with the fact that the England ‘fans’ were on the upper tier.
It was nothing to do with the Garda presence.
It mattered not whether the first goal was scored by Ireland or England.
Indeed, if there hadn’t been all this domestic browbeating, I’d have been happy to leave the matter well alone and starve the thugs of the oxygen of publicity. And when this colyoom starts to sound like Margaret Thatcher, you know there’s something rotten in the air!
What we saw that sad night was nothing more than a Party Political Broadcast made by a well-organised alliance of three right-wing English groups. They crossed the water solely to do what they did, and sadly, they succeeded with gusto.
But truly, I love this country. On the night of the game I was sat in what can only be described as a Republican pub in Belfast, chatting with a lad from the Falls Road.
As we watched the riot develop on the TV, I hang my head in shame, weary of the burden of Englishness once more.
Far from acrimony, the wit flies fast and furious.
“So that’ll be the headlines in the Sun tomorrow, eh?” shouts long-haired beardy across the bar. “ ‘IRA thugs dress up as England fans!’ Eh? Eh? Whaddyasay?”
©Charlie Adley
05.04.2026
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