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.
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.
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