A glass of wine with your food? Isn't that what Jesus would do?

(Back in 2009 we thought pubs closing for one day was an issue!)

                                  

Thanks as always to Allan Cavanagh of Caricatures-ireland.com

 

Easter, and Ireland is about once again to be gripped by Good Friday fever. 

The pubs will be closed for one day, and there will be only one topic of conversation: where is the booze, how do I get there and how much might I consume? 

It’s ridiculous to assume that this is the behaviour of a nation of alcoholics doing their darndest to live up to their stereotypes. 

Ridiculous, yes, but then again, the frenzy that accompanies this one single publess day is absurd in the extreme. 

In truth, it’s only the Irish showing how wonderfully fallibly magically human they are. God and the Law combine to take away a favourite toy, and all hell lets loose. 

Back when I was an idiotic imbiber, there was more than pure hedonism in the Easter Galway air. 

The young Irish I was then befriending had had enough of being told what they could and could not believe in and wear on their genitals, so when informed there would be no drink taken, they all went teenage mental and drank as if there was no Judgement Day. 

Thankfully, Ireland has come a heck of a long way since then. 

Last September, Judge Mary Fahy refused to fine several Galway City restaurateurs for serving wine to customers on Good Friday. 

Acknowledging that technically they had broken the law, she understood how ludicrous it would be to criminalise tourists and families who wanted a glass of wine with their meals in a modern city centre. 

How refreshing was it to read a news story about a Judge who was actually in touch with what’s going on in the country, instead of the usual horror stories about Judges who think Peter Stringer owns a nightclub and Girls Aloud is a permission slip? 

Most people probably believe Christmas to be the holiest Christian festival, but as a Jewish lad at a Protestant school, I became very quickly aware that Easter was Number One. 

A hot time for a Jew, at Easter some of the other kids used to have a go at the ‘Christ killer’, but I managed to avoid violence by using my Jewish skills, and talking them around. 

“What are you on about?” I yelled at them, as they made ready to do unspeakable things to my terrified schoolboy self. 

“He was a Jew, just like me. Don’t you see, if you hit me it’d be like hitting Jesus? No no no, I’m not saying I’m as good as Jesus, but when they put him on the cross he was Jewish, and all you Christians came later. So back off!” 

To this day I’m still a bit confused about whether Jesus might at any point of his life be considered a Christian, or whether, by definition, the followers of the Christ came after his death. 

Whatever, whoever, I understand that Easter is the holiest time of year for Christians, and I’m sure to those of true faith it matters not one minuscule drop whether in a different place, others of varied credes, orthodoxies and appetites are able to swig a glass of Cabernet with their carpaccio. 

It’s not a matter of disrespecting the Christian Church, its traditions and the people that believe in them. Nothing can shake a strong true faith, and Ireland’s restaurateurs are not in the business of killing religion. 

They just want to make a living while offering a service and let’s face it, running a restaurant is a thankless task. 

80% of new Irish restaurants fail within their first year, and to succeed you not only have to be open all the hours God gave you (apt and not intentionally offensive!) but also you have to maximise your income during those brief periods when the punters pack in. 

In this 21st century you simply cannot tell a couple of tourists from Manchester that even though they’ve wisely decided to visit Ireland over the long Easter weekend, they’ll not be able to have a drink. 

For weeks, nay months I watched the eager contestants on BBC’s Masterchef turn out new dishes, work under pressure in top-class kitchens and uniformly, as one, declare their dream was to open a little restaurant where they could do what they loved for a living. 

It broke my heart every time I heard it. 

Why is it that, having found the one thing we most love to do, we assume that we can make a living out of it? 

Cooking good food and running a successful business are two totally different and very specialised skills, and unless you have excessive lashings of the latter you dare not dream of opening up a restaurant. 

Once you know the business, you might proceed to create a special place, in a great building; of cultivating a unique atmosphere, employing talented chefs and building up a regular faithful clientele. 

For all of the above, we in Galway City were very lucky a few years back to have Harriet Leander’s Nimmo’s. 

An exceptional place, marrying a genial almost clubbish ambience to the cosy woods, eclectic art and soft tones of the building, Nimmo’s chefs were excellent, the staff all true individuals, eccentric to the last, offering service as glorious as the fresh local ingredients in her cuisine. 

Harriet’s Nimmo’s offered a true alternative to the formulaic menus on Quay Street. Along with much of the art and style that made Nimmos so great, it carried Harriet’s ethos of making eating out and drinking wine a real and special pleasure, for which we are truly grateful. 

So whether you are contemplating your faith in God, and marvelling at the sacrifice Jesus made so that you might be saved, or simply enjoying a bite to eat and a drink with your loved-ones in a restaurant, enjoy your Good Friday and this Easter weekend.

Will Ireland survive the loss of the rural pub?

When I lived in Connemara, I used to frequent (the old) Keogh's pub in Ballyconneely.
I was green back then, and by that I don't mean pure unadulterated paddy: I mean that, as an Englishman new to an Irish village, I smiled a lot, kept my head down, myself to myself (with the notable exception of the local Chelsea posse) and pretty much did what I was told.
Soon I learned the hierarchy inherent in the place. Older people scored much respect, but if you managed to be old, cantankerous and loud, you stole the show.
"EeenglishmMAN! EeeeenglishmMAN!"
There I was, sitting at the bar, minding my own business, when a fella who fitted all the above criteria suddenly pointed his finger at me, and sat there yelling.
"EeeenglishMAN! You will be my TAXI!!! You will be my TAXI tonight! You will drive me HOME!"
Right then. So that's me driving him home then. Hmm, got that. Wonder when he's going to want to leave. Ah well. Better just wait... tum te tummm...
Over the following months, I got to know the older gentleman in question, alongside all his peers, a dark-clad club of septua- and octogenarians, who appeared to be in the pub all day every day.
To me they became the Manly Brethren of the Bar. I had no idea how they drank so much; where the money came from; when they ate, washed or saw daylight.
But I knew how himself was getting home. I was his taxi, and after an interminable wait on that first night, I quickly learned to suppress my humility and earn some respect by tapping him on the shoulder and informing him that his taxi was ready and it was now or never.
Every rural Irish pub had its Manly Brethren of the Bar, and now, as we know, they are gone, victims (depending on how you look at it) of either the smoking ban and the clampdown on drinking and driving, or of smoking and drinking and driving.
Whatever the reason, Ireland faces a real problem. A very Irish problem.
As an ancient nation and a young country, Ireland is born out of paradox, and presently faces a serious and essentially Irish dilemma:
Is it wrong to drink and drive? Yes.
Will the rural Irish pub survive in the wake of the smoking ban and the introduction of random breathalysing? No.
You really have to live in the country to fully understand the significance of the loss of a local pub. In a lonely geography, where depression and isolation stalk the cloud and rain, the rural pub has always been the sole source of social sanctuary.
Indeed, your colyoomist would have lost his sanity, gone doolally fifty times over in Co. Mayo, chewing the wall and up the ceiling, way beyond this twittery nutsoid state you endure each week, had I not been able to nip up Sweeney's, Golden's, Declan's, Lynn's, Gilvarry's, Danno's, McHale's.
Now only a few of those remain.
But even when the craic was mighty, when the bar was filled with friends and everyone was getting plastered into the bargain, I would suffer the slagging of my drinking buddies and drive home after a couple of pints.
Can't help it. Maybe it's just inbuilt if you're English. Believe me, I'm no goody-goody. There are rakes of laws I break every day, along with the rest of ye, but I just don't want to lose my licence. Or kill anyone.
Of course I knew I wasn't going to get stopped by the Gardai. The two availiable were patrolling an area the size of Texas, and they only set up checkpoints on Bank Holidays and Christmas. And even then it was always just over the bridge from my house, so I wasn't going to get nicked.
On a couple of occasions I stayed and got lathered, thinking I would risk it, only to find myself being driven to my door by the landlord of the pub.
He insisted drily that he was only investing in his future custom
I knew better. Vot a Mensch.
But what is to be done? The auld fellas and their forty pints of stout are gone from the daytime bar. People are buying beer in bulk down Lidl and Aldi, living it up in their living rooms and avoiding the taxi queue.
Out in the wilds, pubs are disappearing like melting snow, and nobody seems to be facing the problem head-on.
It seems to me there are only two routes available, and one target in mind.
There are millions of houses at the end of long bohreens, and if people are to leave their cars at home, they need to be picked up and dropped home by a network of small people carriers, MPV's and minibuses.
Either the government officially recognises the threat to rural communities, isolated households and local economies, and subsidises an extensive network of publicly-owned vehicles (somewhat unlikely, methinks), or the breweries themselves will have to supply the means with which to deliver their customers to the point of consumption, and perchance be offered excise relief as financial compensation.
Such a service could be useful to some people who should never be on the roads at all, sober or drunk. Include hundreds of suicidal cyclists who insist on being lightless and invisible at night, as well as the auld fella who drove a white Escort van all the way to the village at 4 mph.
I drove behind him going apoplectic. On the pavement in the village was an 80Something friend of mine who told me she hadn't had such a good laugh for ages.
"Whoooh-hooo-hooh! I was watching you stuck behind yer man. He's blind!"
"Bloody right!"
"No, I mean he is blind! Lost his sight altogether! Says he has driven that road all his life, knows it off by heart, so he does!"
According to the United Nations, the world's population is neatly cleft in two, between rural and urban dwellers. 3.2 billion of us live in rural areas; 3.2 billion in cities.
In Ireland it would be a cultural disaster and national disgrace if good people stayed silent while rural pubs became extinct.
Gandhi once said that the real India was 'in the villages'.
Well, the real Irish still live in the Townlands, but they are no longer in the pub.
cadley1@eircom.net
http://doubledoublevision.blogspot.com