The truth we choose to ignore!

Fab artwork by Allan Cavanagh of Caricatures-Ireland.com

Forget about speaking truth to power. It’s time for power to speak truth to people.

The simple truth we all know.

The truth an ever-increasing number of us choose to ignore.
The truth we trade for fear and hate, because for some that’s easier.

When will a political party refuse to seek votes through fear?
When will a political party refuse to slander and libel strangers?
When will a political party speak the truth to us?

Where is the party of hope?
Where is the party of compassion?
Where is the party which created the welfare state?
Where is the party that protected workers within Trade Unions? Where is the party which created our magnificent National Health Service?

Void of vision and courage, so-called ‘Left of Centre’ political parties appease the Far Right rather than oppose it.

Starmer’s Labour Party panders to the Right because it feels the only way to defeat hatred and bigotry is to swallow and spit some. It has lost its soul, lost itself, lost direction and Keir’s cowardice breaks my heart.

When will a political leader explain that what is happening is a massive human migration, driven by climate change?

When will a political leader explain that this is not going to go away; it is not going to get smaller; it’s only going to expand?

When will a political leader explain that these people are fleeing famine? They are fleeing war zones and they need help.

Show me one country in the world which has not sent people abroad to earn money and send it back home: such a place does not exist, and yet we turn our back on refugees, both economic and those seeking life-saving asylum.

When will a political leader speak out and declare what we already know: that no western democracy can succeed without the help of an underpaid, unprotected and often unwelcome migrant labour force?

When will a political leader speak out and say we need these people to do the disgusting jobs that our people will not do? We need these people to pick our crops, to harvest our yields, to wash our cars and dishes, to babysit our children and wipe our grandmothers’ backsides.

We need these people as much as they need us, because we are these people. We need to stop demonising immigrants, because who the hell are we? We are nothing but a bunch of immigrants as well.

Yes we are. Originally we all came from somewhere else. I am certainly an immigrant, because my great grandfather came to England from Germany, and I myself have lived in England, Australia, USA and Ireland, but I was born in London. This is the way of the world. This is the way we are, and it is a good way.

This way we mix our flavours, our art, our languages, our music and songs. We share our sadness and our stories. This is the truth of the melting pot. It does not mean that a country will lose its core culture. Italians will always be Italian. The French will be fantastically French, and you Irish will stay Irish.

Yet our culture can grow. Immigrants are not going to inhibit that, but they will contribute riches to it.

People say Ireland is full. As an Englishman who’s lived here almost 35 years, I say to them: “Slag me off by telling me there used to be over eight million people living here, before the English created your horrific famine, or you can tell me that Ireland is full, but you cannot do both."

Not both. No no you can’t, because if there used to be over 8 million here until the famine, how can the country possibly be full at five and a half million, especially when so many are now focused around the cities?

I have been to densely populated countries. I have travelled through Java. Let me tell you, emphatically and categorically: Ireland is absolutely blatantly not full. What’s missing is sufficient resources applied to social and public services, that can support an expanding population.

We do not need to hate other people simply because we don’t have enough GPs, nurses, teachers, surgeons and dentists. Instead of wasting money and energy making everybody terrified of immigrants, we should be demanding taxation and military spending be diverted so that we can pay GPs, nurses, teachers, surgeons and dentists.

We need to aspire to a nation in which every family can feel safe; where every individual, every child, every Elder can feel safe in their homes, regardless of where they were born.

That’s what we need.
That’s what we need right now.

We need politicians with vision, with courage, who do not appeal to fear, but choose to strive for hope and friendship; politicians who are driven by compassion and an understanding that the best way to get elected is to promise a brighter future, not a future where peoples’ fears are aflame, where hope is diluted by ignorant immigration hype.

We need a brave visionary of a politician. Every country does, right now, to speak out and tell the truth, the huge truth that we are witnessing a human migration the like of which we have seen repeated over and over again, throughout our human history.

No immigration policy will stop what is happening, as the Sahara moves north into Southern Europe, as sea levels rise, as fossil fuels run out, more and more people will be forced to share a smaller and smaller area that is safe to live in, a tiny area that is able to produce food, and we will all need to respect each other in that area.

It must be safe for us all to survive in.

We must appreciate each other.
We must understand that we are all equal in our right to be alive and live in a safe home.

A wise man once told me that if you go to bed with a full belly in a warm house, and nobody that you love will be taken in the night, you have nothing to fear.

If we set our sights as low as that then surely we can offer a welcome and safety for all.



©Charlie Adley
09.11.2025

Are the English becoming more Irish?

thanks to chiffandfipple.com

“So what is it that you write about?”

“I write about my life as an Englishman living in the West of Ireland.”

“And why would the Irish enjoy reading the opinions of an Englishman?”

In her straw hat and Laura Ashley dress, she couldn’t look more perfectly English. I’m in Gerard's Cross, an affluent outer-London suburb, where large houses have remote-controlled entrance gates and oaks have great girth.

My uncle’s funeral finished a couple of hours ago and we’re now back at my aunt’s house, where the strong summer sun is baking the back garden terrace.

The hot afternoon air is heavy with sadness and nostalgia. Tea is drunk from bone china cups. There are strawberries and cream. Looking down the steep slope of the long green lawn to the other side of the valley, I watch horses lackadaisically munch lush pasture in the distance.

Whoops! While I’d lost myself in the utter Englishness of the scene, the lady was patiently awating an answer to her question.

“I’m not sure if they enjoy it, exactly, but I think it engages them.”

She smiles with a manner well-practiced by affluent society types, suggesting equal measures of boredom and fascination.

A little later I seek shade, sitting inside on the sofa, taking a breather from making smalltalk, giving myself a moment to appreciate the emotion of the occasion.

Just beyond the French Windows, around a shaded table on the terrace, sit a group of my late uncle’s friends. Most of them are over 80. All of them have lived through the war, worked hard and become financially successful. Even though I have diddly squat in common with these people, I completely understand why they think the way that they do, and smile as I listen to their banter.

“Oh, so you went to the air show did you? Were the Red Arrows there?”

“They were indeed, and most splendid they were! They had a Spitfire and a Hurricane too!”

“Should’ve had a Messerschmitt going down in flames!”

Much laughter.

“I don’t suppose that would have helped relations with our neighbours in the Eurozone.”

Pause.

“Who cares!”

Much laughter and general loud guffawing.

My political views are a world away from theirs, yet I can’t help but respect them. They’ve come through times of hardship that make our present predicament look like the Teddy Bear’s Picnic. Each of them has already regaled me with tales of visits to Ireland in times gone by, just as each retains an affection for the country that mirrors my own.

There’s a reason this colyoom is called Double Vision, and it has nothing to do with alcohol: having lived in other English-speaking countries, I fell in love with the one next door, where everything which looks familiar proves to be slightly yet intriguingly different. These days the political borders and cultural barriers between England and Ireland have become ill-defined in ways that never applied when I lived in Australia or the USA.

On my previous visit to London, my mother and I ate fish and chips as we sat together watching the Eurovision Song Contest. I was surprised when she said she liked Graham Norton, who replaced another Anglophile Irishman, Terry Wogan, as the BBC’s commentator on the show.

It wasn’t so long ago that she found him loud and irritating, but now his show is series-linked on her Sky+ box. At one point Norton says “We” referring to a score allocated to Englebert Humperdinck’s British entry, and I turn to my mum.

“Don’t think they’ll appreciate that pronoun in his native Cork.”

“Oh yes, I keep forgetting he’s Irish.”

Well done Graham. You’ve replaced Jonathan Ross in the hearts of the nation.

The next evening we watch Dara O’Briain hosting the BAFTAs. My mother is upset. As a fan of The Apprentice, she preferred Adrian Chiles as the host of its follow-up show, You’re Fired!, complaining to me regularly on the phone how

“That Irishman is so hard to understand. He mumbles, he talks so fast and he seems to think the show’s all about him.”

I sit and marvel at how blurry the lines between the country of my birth and my adopted home have become. Two potentially very patriotic English TV shows are now fronted by two Irishmen, while Dara is also actually nominated for a BAFTA.

Mind you, these days there’s a Bafta award for a category called ‘Reality and Constructed Factual’, so perchance the award has lost some of its cachet of old.

Have the Irish have become more English, or the English more Irish, or are we all simply homogenising into a lesser European beast?

If there comes a time when you can barely tell the difference between the two peoples, I’ll be out of a job. I need you to be different from me, because for every glaring gash of obvious difference between us there are the millions of subtly similar yet quintessentially Irish quirks that I love, which end up here on the pages of this noble rag.

As he’s wrapping up the BAFTA show, Dara refers to the fact that Graham Norton can’t attend tonight’s ceremony, as he’s still in Azerbaijan, where

“… poor Graham has spent the last 24 hours consoling Englebert Humperdinck. Ah well, that’s his cross to bear.”

Oh thank goodness and vive la différence!

Only an Irish TV presenter would ever use that expression.

***

On Thursday next, 26th July, your ‘umble scribbler has the honour of performing alongside Tuam’s very own and most excellent songwriter and wordsmith Seamus Ruttledge.

‘A Night For Celia’ is a fundraiser for the Galway Famine Ship Memorial and the Celia Griffin Children’s Park, taking place upstairs at the Roisin Dubh at 9.00 pm. I’ll be reading three short pieces, and then the musicians take over, led by Seamus and special guest Don Stiffe.

Hope to see you there!

My London cocktail: Love, fun and fear, shaken and stirred!

The driver of the shuttle bus that runs between Luton Airport and the car rental centre smiles at me and says “How’re ya doing?”

The bloke behind the Hertz car rental desk also smiles and wishes me a good weekend as I walk away.

‘Blimey!’ I think to myself. ‘Maybe I’ve been too hasty in the past to condemn England. Maybe it isn’t that violent place I’ve so often written about.’

Hurtling down the M1, I turn off at Edgware and head towards my Mum’s place. Just before you drive through Stanmore there’s a crossroads with traffic lights, and as I slide into the left-hand lane, the car on my right suddenly moves across to change lanes. He’s coming straight for me, so I slam on the brakes, and thinking he hasn’t seen my car, I give a short ‘pip’ on the car’s horn to let him know I’m there.

As the old Renault moves into the space in front of me I can see its driver looking at me in his rear view mirror. His neck is as thick as mine, his hair cropped short and both he and his missis are resting their arms on the car’s open window sills, flicking fag ash.

He knows that I know he’s looking at me in his rear view mirror, so I shrug my shoulders in an attempt to say ‘Sorry, I just rented this car and didn’t want to prang it!’

He shrugs his shoulders too, but stays staring at me in his rear view mirror, his hand still agitatedly flicking fag ash, even though there is no ash on his fag to flick.

I try to ignore him, and look out of the window, but I can see him in front of me, mimicking my every move. I scratch an itch on the back of my neck, and he does the same. I gesture with my hands towards my windscreen, trying to let him know that I got it, ha ha, now grow up and leave me be.

He gestures towards his windscreen just as I did, and I can no longer pretend that this is an amicable routine. He’s winding me up, or at least he’s trying to, but I have a really busy schedule, and being beaten up before I get to my Mum’s isn’t really on my agenda.

I don’t need this. I don’t bloody need this right now, not from him, not from anybody. I’m starting to feel a little bit scared. The traffic lights turn green, but as all the cars move off, he rolls his towards the light at a snail’s pace and then stops, right in front of the green light, with me stuck behind him. 

Oh shit. Oh fuck. He’s looking for trouble, and I’m starting to feel real fear. While the alpha male in me wants to get out and tell him to grow up, I know I’m a lover not a fighter. What kind of pathetic sad character is he? What pale imitation of a life must he have if his idea of fun is to pick a fight with an absolute stranger because somebody pipped a car horn in his direction?

His missis has not moved an inch. She sits slumped in her chair, relaxed and evidently well used to this type of behaviour.

As the rest of the cars go past us he sits staring at me, challenging me, wanting me to do something that’ll let him vent his fury. 

Maybe he can’t get it up. 

Maybe he’s had a terrible childhood and cannot be held responsible for his actions. 

Yeh, and maybe I couldn’t give a bleeding heart liberal damn about him and his pathetic existence. 

Slowly my fear is turning to anger. My England buds are awaking, losing their veneer of Galway chilldom, and starting to pump with adrenaline. He’s a big bloke, and clearly no stranger to fighting. If you go around behaving like this, you don’t only know how to fight, you enjoy it too.

Resisting the strong desire that is rising within me to sink to his level, to get out of my car and face him and beat four shades of crap out of him, I sit instead calmly and wait for him to drive off. We sit in our cars and watch another full traffic light cycle, during which time I restrain myself, somehow managing not to give him the finger or any other reason he might grab to get out of his car and have a go at me. 

Then he sloooowly drives away, with me behind him keeping a good distance, in case he slams on his brakes and causes me to rear end his car.

Five minutes later I’m at my mum’s, and back in the green and pleasant land of my birth. There is tea in bone china cups, Wimbers on the tele and a great weekend ahead of me. 

But despite an hour earlier wondering whether I’d been unfair to write all those features about the latent violence inherent in English society, I now feel justified. Shaken and stirred, happy and sad, excited and fearful, the cocktail of emotion that runs through me every time I return to London is as powerful as ever. 

“England? Is that some little island somewhere?”

When I was a young boy I used to be dead proud of the British Empire. Oh yes, this drippy-dippy do-goody drenched liberal anti-racist politically-correct socialist used to sit and stare in awe and admiration at his atlas.
I just couldn't help myself. Aged six in 1966, no notions of social justice, political ideology or moral relativism existed in my head. England had just won the World Cup, beating those pesky Germans yet again.
Sometimes my brother and I played Cowboys and Indians, but mostly we just re-enacted what we thought were great moments from the war our parents had just lived through. Mostly these battles were spawned from the pages of Commando comics, where ingenious Tommy never failed to come up with a cunning ruse to foil evil Fritz.
So England was the best country in the world in my infantile mind, and upon being given my first ever atlas at school, I gazed upon the world map with disbelief.
England was tiny, absolutely minuscule, but huge swathes of the world map were coloured red, which meant they were ‘Ours’. The whole of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, India and quite a few sizeable chunks of just about everywhere else all showed that little boy that they had been beaten by ‘Us’.
There was no doubt at all that we were the best, and blissfully happy in my prepubescent ignorance, it never occurred to me that any part of it might be a bad thing.
Everything I read seemed to back me up, and oh boy, did I read! Under the covers late at night, Ladybird books were devoured by the dozen, reinforcing my youthful prejudices. It didn’t matter who the book was about, each and every one laid more foundation to the notion that the English seriously kicked evil-doer’s arses, whenever and wherever they appeared.
Sir Francis Drake was a brave explorer and a supreme tactician, seemingly defeating the Spanish Armada single-handedly; Sir Walter Raleigh was fearless explorer and a great scientist, as well as the perfect gentleman. Charles the First was a good lad, and Oliver Cromwell was also a good lad. Even when they hated each other and started civil wars, all the English lads were good lads.
Nobody told me anything different, because victory over the Nazis was only 20 years past, and what’s more, Geoff Hurst scored a hat trick against the Hun in the final at Wembley, in front of her Majesty the Queen, and if that didn’t put God on our side, well, God must just be a very silly billy indeed.
Two World Wars and One World Cup, Doo Daah, Dooo Daah.
That was as far as my historical knowledge and political awareness went before my age hit double figures.
Burdened as I am now with all the boring detritus of a social conscience and half an education, there lurks still a tiny but eternal part of me that is extremely proud of England for giving the Luftwaffe such a hammering back in 1939, and for keeping out the Nazis against all the odds, alone for years before America entered the fray.
It would be a rare Irishman who agrees with me, but I’m sure that had the English lost the Battle of Britain, allowing Hitler to launch his ground invasion, Ireland would have come under German occupation.
So in a revision of history that would make Ladybird books and Holocaust denier David Irving proud, there’s an argument to say that the British saved the Irish from being colonised by a brutal foreign power.
Funny old world, innit.
Anyway, as regular colyoomistas know, my opinions are no longer quite so right wing. My brother introduced me to socialism when I was 13, and I embraced the chance to rebel against my Tory parents. Quite possibly, part of me still does. Mind you, after travelling the globe as an Englishman for many decades, you don’t half get browned off bearing the cross of times long gone.
Wasn't me mate! I wasn’t there!
Thankfully, my inflated perception of what put the ‘Great’ into ‘Britain’ took a short sharp kick in the goolies when I first left Europe in 1984.
Lost in wonder and excitement upon arriving in New York, I felt I’d finally arrived in the modern world. Eager to play, I first needed money, so entering a branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank, I asked if I could change some Travellers Cheques.
The woman took my passport, looked at it and then showed it to her colleague, who shook his head. Several minutes later, having consulted half the staff in the bank, she came back to me, pointing to the words:
“The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”.
“Yeh, that’s it! Great Britain! United Kingdom! You know, Queenie and Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard and all that? Err, let’s see, erm, Winston Churchill? Bobby Charlton?”
Oh good god, I was starting to sound like a Spanish tourist lost in Piccadilly. But this was New York, and surely here, just the other side of the pond, they knew about England, didn’t they?
Most probably they did, but ‘England’, the one word missing from my passport, was quite possibly the cause of the confusion.
Resisting the temptation to point to the old-fashioned writing on my passport’s inside cover page, that arrogantly stated how ‘Her Britannic Majesty requests and requires Johnny Foreigner and Donny Dago to do whatever this wonderful English person might want of them...” I smiled and pleaded until she nodded, gave me the money and handed me back my passport, asking:
“Is this some little island somewhere?”
At this I paused, thought for a little bit, then laughed out loud, agreeing with her, my patriotism finally laid to rest.
“Yes, yes, that is exactly what it is. A little island somewhere!”
“Have a nice day now.”
My rehabilitation to a reasonable global perspective came many years later, in a pub near Timoleague, Co. Cork. As an Englishman travelling with his German girlfriend, we made an odd couple, and received many raised eyebrows, but none so brilliantly minimalist and wholly damning as the one delivered by the pub’s landlord.
As he lopped the tops off our pints of Guinness, he looked over at us and calmly quietly slowly stated:
“So you are German ... and he is English ... hmmmm ... (long pause) ... well, I don’t have any particular problem with Germans.”

Roll up! Roll up! Anybody else want to hate the English?

I

It's not just you Irish who are upset about the whole Partition thing. 

There are English men such as myself who, when settled comfortably on the sofa in front of their tele, have been known to swear and curse and damn the Six Counties, their very existence and all they ever were, are or might very well be. 

But it's not really their existence that does my head in. It's the BBC and their dark evil mind games. 

There's Gary Lineker on Saturday night's Match Of The Day, building the hype for the big England game, which is live on BBC1 on Wednesday at 7.30. 

And well it might be, if you were living in England (see, I didn't even call it 'The Mainland'). 

At the consigned hour, with beer, whiskey, pizza aplenty and lads agog, we are cruelly transported to another game, involving a team from what appears, somehow magically, to be a different country to both the one I'm living in and the one I'm from. 

You could argue that I should be grateful; that going by recent form, Northern Ireland have become a more entertaining prospect than England, but that's missing the point. 

We don't belong to our sporting tribes because we really think our respective teams are the best. 

When the die-hard fans at Accrington Stanley sing: "We're Accrington Staaaanley! Accrington Stanley Efff Ceeeeee! We're by far the greatest tee-eeam ...the world has eeeever seen!" they know they're not really. 

Sporting tribes are like families: the most important thing is to belong. 

That's why we tend to choose the ones we grew up amongst. 

Certainly, speaking personally, where national sporting tribes are concerned, I don't give a monkeys on any deep or spiritual level. 

In my heart and head I wear the colours of so many different nations, cultures, creeds and tribes that I'd never be able to give too much of a damn for any one in particular. 

But that's no fun. 

So instead I proudly and somewhat loudly raise the White Ensign, and come on all blimey guv'nor how's your father, because that guarantees a reaction in the Republic of Ireland. 

Well, no, that's not true either. 

Yes it gets a reaction, but no, I do not go to pubs to court antagonistic wind-up lightly disguised as Irish wit. 

I go to watch the game, and hope to goodness it will be a good spectacle. 

So, a few months back, when England played Russia in a Euro qualifier, I toddled off to KRCMA, the Eastern European bar in Salthill. 

Surely there I might find myself at worst a neutral crowd, at best a friendly supportive bunch. 

After all, what had Russia ever done for them? Wouldn't it be another case of 'My enemy's enemy is my friend'? 

Not to mention the small matter of the English lads who died to kick the Nazis out of their countries. No, that doesn't work either. 

Not when you consider the 29 million Russians who died in the Second World War. 

Yeh, that's right: seven times the population of this country. It was neither the Stars and Stripes nor the Union Jack that defeated Hitler. 

Not getting too serious on you here now, but I've always felt that the enormity of the Communist Russian sacrifice was swept under history's carpet by the Capitalists who wrote our history books; the ones who printed in our school Atlas world maps with Mercator Projections, designed specifically to make Russia look vast and threatening to our little 1960's kiddy minds. 

Anyway, the game was a disaster for the English, and this Englishman. My footballers underestimated the Russians and I misjudged the locals. 

I was curious to find out why one young woman, who had earlier told me she was Latvian, had been shouting so energetically and vociferously for the Russians. 

What might a Latvian love about Russia, beyond the fact that ultimately they gave them their country back? 

"S'cuse me there. Didn't you tell me you were Latvian? I was just wondering. Were you shouting for Russia, or against England?" 

"Oh no. I am Latvian, yes? Russian from Latvia!" 

"Oh right, I see. Thanks!" said I, less than none the wiser. 

Seems to me there is almost an infinite number of ways to dislike the English, and being sadly human, that serves only to make me prouder of being English. 

Not because I am proud of being disliked or dislikable, but because I know better. Like duh. 

Some of us English are evil and some of us aren't. 

Just like you. 

Just like everybody, but again, that's no fun, so we construct illogical emotional sporting tribes, and have a larf, a shout, a swear, a wee tear and then jump around shout and cheer and yell louder and longer than we would were a child just born. 

We can let ourselves go because, at ve hend of va day, Brian, it doesn't matter either way. 

We avow and bestow an undying lifetime of loyalty unto our sporting tribes, and breathe deep the ecstasy when they are, for a brief exquisite moment, like Accrington Stanley, by far the greatest tee-eeam ...the world has ever seen. Girlfriends boyfriends pets and parents come and go, but your tribe is your tribe. 

Sure, the Irish know better than anyone, because your GAA parish teams are as hardcore as it gets anywhere in the world. 

Right now the hype is flying about the Six Nations Rugby, and even though I would love to sit and share verbal craic and quippy bon mots with the local Irish, I will stay at home to watch the England games, because it's not worth the hassle. 

When the Irish are playing anybody but the Auld Enemy, I shout for the boys in green, but what kind of sad pathetic man would I be to sit in the pub, as the barrage of anti-English artillery comes flying my way during the game, to negotiate like a wrung-out flaccid liberal flannel: 

"But but but I thupport your team too! Yeth I do, honetht. Come on you boyth in green!" 

So even though I do indeed yell for my host country, when the white rose of England is on the field of battle, I keep my support to myself. Grunt. 

Yes, hoh baby, even as I write that, an image builds in my minds' eye, and the Jingoist sporting bile rises in my throat.

Ireland's angriest man wants the Irish to apologise to the English!

Many of you might well consider me a grumpy old bastard. I do not deny it, but prefer to see my grump as but a single band of colour in my moody rainbow.
I'm willing to admit that, were I a horse, I'd fall at the first in the Societally Acceptable Challenge Hurdle.
And then I climbed into a taxi, and encountered the most abusive and angry person I have ever met in my life.
Just being in his seething presence made me feel oh-so very much better about myself.
Between 1975 and 1995, I knocked off around 200,000 miles hitching, and on those roads met humans of every type imaginable (except for the ones who didn't stop - I never met them!), but on a midweek afternoon in my home town, from the rank at O'Brien's Bridge to my home in Salthill, I was entertained by a World Champion, the undisputed King of Fury.
A local man of slight build, he started hissing and spitting as we turned around, temporarily blocking the traffic emerging from Cross Street.
At first I took his torrent of 'effs' and 'cees' to be nowt but a burst of road rage, the like of which I suffer from myself, but it continued, almost unabated, throughout the journey.
At the risk of sounding disgustingly vain, I did at first wonder whether his venom was spilling forth in such a torrent as a result of him recognising me.
One of the more bewildering side effects of scribbling this colyoom each week is that, on occasion, and especially when their pencils are leaded with booze, we males of the species feels driven to share our wisdom, spread our little knowledge a long way, and if there happens to be a fella from da papers around, like, so much the better, like.
"Hey Charlie, here's one for you! Happened this morning. Now you know me! I'm not a racist you understand, but these black fellas, they're completely out of control!"
So I wondered if this taxi driver was maybe venting his spleen because he had me in his cab, but after a while I dropped that one.
I'm pretty sure that every fare he brings becomes an instant lucky winner is his Lottery of Wrath.
"F**king bastards can't bloody drive. Stupid f**king f**kers. Look at the way he's parked, bastard. Who does that c**t think he is?"
For a moment, as we drove down Dominick Street, silence dwelt briefly and happily inside the cab.
And then I went and spoiled it all by thinking perchance a little light conversation might ease our journey.
"Well, at least it's stopped raining. Looks like we're going to have a lovely afternoon."
"Don't talk to me about the f**king weather. I am so fed up to the back teeth with this bollocks country and its f**king weather, God almighty.
And look at the state of those grass verges. That f**king council of ours, they make me sick. Lazy f**king pigs. Fat bloody pigs getting rich while we wallow in the muck they leave for us.
Look at those grass verges. All f**king weeds and bloody litter. Really, makes me sick. How dare they sit up there in their bloody council chamber talking bollocks and taking f**king bonuses while they leave the city to rot? C**ts. Pigs and c**ts the lot of 'em.
And look at this abomination. Tell me now, what bright f**king spark decided to paint the Prom yellow? And were we asked? Were we f**k! And did we even know until it was done? Did we f**k. Ruined Salthill they have, the pigs. And the city.
Lovely it was, and now it's gone to shit. Shitty f**king Galway run by a chamber of pigs, ignorant c**ts and filthy fu**king liars. I tell you. I f**king tell you.
And look at the state of the grass by the car park. Ignorant p**cks. What did they expect with 100,000 people watching the Air Show? Did not one of them think that might f**k up the grass? Makes me sick. I have had it with this f**king country.
And yes, we have the Big Wheel now, but only after they had to fight the f**king council for the right to power.
Yes, huh. I'll tell you one thing I know. There's not much I know for sure, but some things I do know, and this thing I know for f**king sure. Oh god yes, that I do. They wouldn't listen, but if they had, I can tell you, this f**king mess of a country wouldn't be in the f**king mess it's in.
One thing I know. Old Garrett was right. Oh yes, you might laugh, but let me tell you, old Garret was right with what he said back in the '80s. If only we'd have listened to Garret."
Clearly the man was fishing for a question. I was worried that if I didn't give him what he wanted, he might have a heart attack, or worse, I might be considered a filthy f**king ignorant c**t p**ck myself.
"So what did Garret FitzGerald say back in the '80s?"
"I'll tell you what he f**king said. He said that we should go cap in hand to the English, and apologise! Yes, that's what he said, and that's exactly what we should f**cking do. Go cap in hand to the English, apologise, and ask them if they wouldn't mind taking the country back, and maybe please make it better again."
Was I really going to take him on?
I was nearly home, exhausted by his tirade of abusive language and, as I said, feeling a better more wholesome human being with each disgusting phrase and tortured clause that hammered into my ears.
"Wow! Did old Garret FitzGerald really say that? He - I - wow! Well, bugger me!"
"Yes he did. And he said a lot more besides. F**king pigs. Lazy f**king pigs and stupid fucking c**ts. That's what we have become!"
"Keep the change!"
"Why, sir, you're a gentleman and a scholar!"

http://doubledoublevision.blogspot.com

We English are a polite bunch of pirates!

As time goes by, my relationship with the land of my birth becomes ever more complicated.
I'm sitting in a service station car park, off England's M11 motorway, a couple of miles away from London's Stansted Airport.
In a little while I'll drive off to meet the Snapper, who is flying in from Knock, so that we can attend her brother's 40th birthday party.
All around me there wails howls and cries a cacophony of sirens from the many fire engines, police cars and ambulances making their way towards the petrol station forecourt not 200 metres away.
The English blithely go about their business. Having happily lived in Ireland for many years, I now twitch and react to the sound of sirens, but I never used to.
When you're born into a city that has more than double the population of Ireland, you can't afford to worry about strangers that much.
England is not so much a country of 70 million people, but a collection of a million villages of 70 people.
That's how you survive.
To be fair, I'm probably a little sensitive to the sound of sirens at the moment as my father is once more in hospital. Originally herself and I were due to take this flight together, but I've already been here for a week, and a hard week at that.
Aye, a hard week.
The sunshine is baking the interior of my rental car, and I'm having trouble staying awake, so as soon as I'm inside the aiport I head off to buy a bucket of coffee.
The guy on the coffee station is having a terrible time, As his colleague yells constant and complex orders, ("Double skinny latte no foam! Medium double house blend non fat choccomochacino! Blend with a shot, caramel. Cappuccino nutmeg no choc grande to go!) he struggles to keep up.
He spills an entire jug of foamed milk. He runs out of beans and has to abandon his post to grind a new pack. None of his orders are written down, and all of us in the ever-lengthening queue know he has lost the plot.
As he hands me the wrong drink I thank him profusely, aware that on another day I'd dedicate the whole colyoom to an angry tirade about the entire debacle, but right now, in the order of things, I couldn't give a damn.
Evidently Grumpy Charlie Bear is the creation of easier times.
Collapsing into a chair that feels far to small, I finally breathe out.
Opening my eyes, I realise that I am part of a world full of people. The life and death decisions we have collectively made this week sucked me out of your universe, down into a wormhole of family intensity, and now I've been spat out, into the seating area of Costa Coffee in Stansted's International Arrivals Hall on Friday at 5 o'clock on a Bank Holiday weekend.
I smile at the little boy sitting at the table in front of me. He smiles back and we launch into a happy exchange. I wiggle my eyebrows and he roars with laughter.
I do it again and he laughs again.
His mummy stares at me with cold hatred as she assertively says
"Face this way Charlie! Look this way!"
My young namesake turns his happy head away from me as I feel overwhelmed with more sadness.
Sorry.
Forgot that strangers aren't allowed to make children laugh any more, especially if they are men.
Even though the place is packed, it is quiet and calm.
This is another side of the English. Away from the violent abrasive multi-siren-inducing thugs, enslavers and criminals, we are an attractive and amazing bunch.
We ooze poise and patience, and when not off invading countries and massacring and enslaving entire populations, we're exceptionally polite people.
All of a sudden young Charlie falls off his seat, landing headfirst with a loud and nauseating 'clunk'.
Just a tad selfish, I immediately think 'All I need! Now there's gonna be a screaming child at the next table!' but his mummy calmly picks him up and puts him back on his seat, wonderfully embarrassed at how we must all think her the most terrible mother on the planet, her head twitching in peer pressure agony from side to side.
Charlie is smiling, bouncing with joy, his rosy cheeks, blond hair and blue eyes so very English; just as his mummy is also perfectly English, with her dark brown hair, pale skin and hazel eyes; just as his daddy is also perfectly English with his dark skin, green eyes and curly black hair.
Yes, all so English, and for a moment, already brittle with emotion and exhaustion, I worry I might cry with a collective love of the English.
As I fight back the tears, I hear a deep male South African voice behind me mutter
"Yeh, Britain sure does get the lot!"
'Yeh!' think I, 'that is what I love about it!'
Before you get the hump, I love Ireland and the Irish too, and even though English extremists wallow in fascism, I long for the day when the Irish learn to love all our differences as much as the English have.
A couple of days later I'm once again immersed into my little self-indulgent debate about what it is to be English. The Snapper's friends have brought us out into the Essex countryside, where the leaves of ancient oak and majestic poplar glisten fresh green and silver. We are ensconced in a sixteenth century pub, which famously serves a traditional steak and kidney pudding.
The romance of my surrounding is just about to get me feeling all gooey about being English again, when behind me there once more rings out a deep guttural male voice;this time unmistakably Essex-London English (think drunk Ray Winstone at 3 in the morning):
" 'E's a prick, 'e is! 'E's a prick, 'e's a criminalŠ and 'e's a Spaniard!"
I almost choke with laughter. A Spaniard? Did that bloke just call someone a Spaniard! Okay, that's good enough for me. Mr. Essex wins this week's Award for Quintessential English Behaviour.
Whoever yer man's subject was, to you and me he would be Spanish.
But to that Englishman he's a Spaniard, with enough Francis Drake historical piratical baggage to make any Englishman stand proud, or cringe wincing.

cadley1@eircom.net