Am I on Candid Camera, or just living in Ireland?

Sometimes ye lads completely confuse and flummox me.
After 16 years, there are moments when a long-term blow-in such as myself, who loves Ireland and the Irish, can feel very definitely a part of it all. Then there are times when none of it makes sense at all, and I couldn't feel more foreign if I tried.
A couple of weeks ago I sat watching RTE TV news, my jaw dropping in disbelief at the attitudes of the general public, industrialists and politicians as they added to the kerfuffle and general national disgruntification over the change in the Provisional Driving Licence law.
Did somebody slip a tab of Acid into my tea? They must have, because all these so-called responsible law-abiding people were protesting in the strongest terms about how it was downright criminal that people who had not yet passed their Driving Tests would no longer be allowed to drive alone on Irish roads.
Paranoia, my old friend, crept into my brain. This was all so nuts that maybe it really was all nuts. Perchance I was an Adley-type Truman in a secret Reality Show, and the Director was cranking up the boundaries of perceived reality, to see how much bizarre behaviour I could swallow.
Maybe I was on Candid Camera, and they were just about to knock on my front door and tell me it had all been part of a big jovial wind-up, aha aha.
No, I just live in Ireland.
This is not a complex issue. It is simple and cold-bloodedly correct.
No matter how many exhausted and beleaguered mothers of ten from the sink estates of Cork you get on the tele news giving out about 'how isn't this change in the law going to 'make her life impossible, like, and sure isn't it brutal, like, and terrible, like, and cruel, terrible and cruel'.
Er, duh. Like like like I think you'll find that in the majority of other nations, the sole and singularly most vital reason to pass your Driving Test is that you are then able, for the first time, to drive alone.
Point is, it's all very well for me to come on all Mister High and Mighty about stuff like this, but it serves no useful purpose. If I wanted everything the same here as in other places, I wouldn't choose to live in Ireland.
The effect of all my bluster would be no greater than that of a fart in a colander. What might seem blindingly and even bleeding obvious to me clearly does not appear that way to you: the collective psyche of my adopted country; and, to be honest, that makes me rather happy.
You see, despite Colyoomistic appearances to the contrary, I'm not a fan of pompous outrage. Over the last 3 decades I've found that it's not smart to move to a place and then stick out your finger and shout:
"But look you eedjits, can't you see how stupid and wrong you are!"
If I wasn't Jewish, I might well call my indignation and shock a Protestant feeling; but we'll settle for English, which I most certainly am. England is a country where the letter of the law is sacrosanct, and the laws themselves are all pervading and ever more intrusive
The looser, generally more humane and user-friendly attitude the Irish have to the letter of the law suits me well.
Indeed, it was one of the very first discoveries I made when, 16 years ago next week, I walked off the boat from Roscoff and into Cork City.
Arriving in Ireland was my long journey's end. I had been around the world twice but never visited the country next door, and I somehow knew that it would be perfect.
It was a wet Saturday morning, and I dived into a big shop called Dunnes, and purchased a set of cheap waterproofs, all the time brazenly looking into the faces of the women in my new home, curious to see if they might be a bevy of beauties.
Next, I made for the pub, and sitting at a bar with my first pint of Irish Guinness, I immediately became engaged in conversation with the giant of a man on the barstool next to me. He shook my hand, with fingers the size of redwood trees gripping me like a boa constrictor, and announced his name was Con.
Having neither met nor ever heard of anybody called Con, I wondered whether the man might be taking the piss, but no. He was genuinely concerned I find a Bed & Breakfast that night, and while buying me another pint, he instructed the bar maid to make phone calls.
By the time our second pints were drained, the barmaid told me I had a room in a nice wee place up by the station.
"Now, you can relax, and have another drink!" smiled Con, as I started to think I might like Ireland.
Several hours later I dragged my drunken shabby arse over the river and up a long steep hill to the B &B, where sweaty and dishevelled I flopped onto the bed, and shook out a Marlboro Light from the packet in my pocket.
But hang on, was I allowed to smoke in here?
Oh man, not now. I really needed to chill and just have a quiet fag.
And then I noticed it, on the shelf by the bed. A great bit chunky glass ashtray.
Hoorah. Yippetty dippetty zip zip.
As I sat up to reach the ashtray, I noticed that behind it there was a sign stuck onto the wall.
'No Smoking' it declared, in bold white letters on a red background.
Ashtray. Sign.
Sign. Ashtray.
And then in my first display of what I now know might reasonably be considered Irish behaviour and thought, I spluttered aloud:
"Ahhsurefuckit.!" and lit up.
If I tried to reason rationally whether the sign negated the ashtray or the ashtray negated the sign, my brain might have blown up, like a confused Star Trek computer, shooting sparks into the room out of my eye sockets.
But the simpler reaction, the Irish one, was just to relax, do what suited me, and appreciate the ashtray.
Refusing the tyranny of stupid laws whilst obeying at least the spirit of others is admirable, and I have grown to love the Irish attitude. But passing your Driving Test is a pretty damn good idea too.

When hitcher becomes driver, there are new rules for the road!

What goes around comes around, but the way this idea is manifested in reality is often complex.
Most of the time the karmic cycle works not in any straightforward, but rather a most mysterious way.
If Johnny steals your cake, it's very unlikely that somebody out there will steal Johnny's cake. More likely, that particularly fateful roundabout will spin for thirty three years after you lost your cake to Johnny, until just when he needs it most, he will lose his mobile phone down a toilet.
Karma is not a linear phenomenon. As water passing through concrete, fate balances through æons of random and apparently inconsequential event.
But sometimes, just sometimes, it all comes together in a simple and poetic way.
A few weeks ago, I was driving from Galway City to visit a friend in Clifden.
The strains of the pre-Christmas rush had already created golf balls of lumpy tension in my back muscles.
My own needs and those of others were whirling around my tiny brain like a load in a tumble dryer, rising and falling, swirling incessantly.
All I needed was time to sort out my head, and no finer opportunity to do that than whilst driving through Connemara .
That's what I love about my hills. As soon as I am among the Pins and the Maamturks, everything somehow makes more sense.
The wind was blowing hard, driving the cold winter rain sideways. Flashes of blue sky disappeared and revealed themselves, as black white and grey clouds shot past each other on three separate levels of sky.
Just past Ballynahinch Lake I passed two farmers hitching at the roadside.
'Twas a dirty old day to be outside, and clearly the lads wanted a ride to Clifden for a bit of shopping, and a nip of festive cheer.
As I waited for them to walk up to the car, my mind imploded on itself.
Oh no, what have I done?
Why did I stop, when I needed this time and space to myself?
Why did I stop? Perchance because between the ages of 15 and 35, I hitched no fewer than a quarter of a million miles. I hitched to school and back; to countless pubs, clubs and many many jobs. I hitched all over the motorways of England, until there was barely a mile I had not covered. I hitched half of each year as a teenager, all over western Europe, and then in my 20's I hitched the east and west coasts of America; the Hulme and Princes Highways of Australia.
Over two visits and nine months, I lost myself and my inhibitions in New Zealand, for weeks on end achieving a rare and blissful 'On The Road' state of hitching nirvana: just 'going with the lifts'; that is to say, when they ask you where you are going, you just say:
'Wherever you are going, if you don't mind'.
Once they understood that I was merely suffering from an overdose of freedom, and neither a psychotic killer nor an obsessive weirdo stalker in search of rare satanic walnuts from the bad witch's mud bath, many people took me along with them.
During those weeks, I developed a trust in humanity alongside a faith in the process of 'journey' that has influenced me more than any other single phenomenon, person or place in my life.
So that's why I stopped for these two lads, and as they clambered into my car I sensed their massive physical presence.
Inside their sodden Day-Glo oilskins, I saw flashes of human hewn from granite; burly creased yet comfortable bodies packed with years of bacon and pints of da Harpic; faces mottled with clumps of white hair sprouting from inside ears, outside noses, even some on top of their heads.
Himself in the back tried to climb on top of a box filled with cassettes, and while I was waving my arms around trying to explain that he might want to slide across and sit on the other side, I saw out of the corner of my eye himself in the front about to settle his massive bulk onto the full plastic bottle of water that was just waiting to be squashed on the passenger seat.
Having sorted out safe landings for them both, and made sure they were safely belted in, I was showered with friendly and effusive greetings:
"Sh-cholar and Gentleman so ye are!" "Fair play to ye sir, Gentleman and a Sh-cholar!" "Not from around here then? Where are ye from?"
After 14 years in Ireland, I have been asked that question 83,459,869,803,929 times, and wanted to answer and engage in another such conversation as much as I wanted to choke to death on my own ligaments and entrails.
At that moment, all I wanted was to give these lads a ride, help them out, but also I desperately needed another 20 minutes of space, time and awareness of the beauty of the countryside.
Maybe it's because I am all grown up, or maybe it was goes-around comes-around karmic payback for all those decades of being a lift, but I decided that I could be successful if strong, tactful and assertive.
Surely there was a way to achieve all I needed, give them what they wanted, and still remain polite?
Speaking slowly, calmly and pleasantly, I felt a strong deep voice rise within me:
"Gentlemen, you are very welcome in my car. I am delighted to drive us into Clifden, but I'm not really up to chatting. No offence at all, but I have a lot of things on my mind, and I need a few minutes to sort myself out before I arrive in Clifden!"
"Sure! Not a bother! Fine, fine, go ahead, so!"
And so we drove on in silence. It was a good silence. A respectful silence.
I had managed to be fairly rude without causing offence.
Once again, the spirit of the road was working for me. For once, the karmic comes-around goes-around was working in a straight line of exchange through hitching.
As I dropped off the gentlemen - for that is what they were - I wished them a happy Christmas.
Himself in the front seat turned to me, and offered as enigmatic a chunk of Connemara wisdom as I could ever hope for:
"Ah well now, ye said ye have a lot on your mind. Sure, and isn't there a lot of that about!"