Archives for March 2010

I sometimes cycle home past a row of very mean little houses which sit permanently in the shadow of a large apartment complex. There are no signs of incipient yuppification on this terrace. No bay trees clipped into circles, no plain white blinds and repointed brickwork. No, there are sad little bits of grass with terrifyingly ugly garden ornaments overlooked by elaborately patterned net curtains. One day, I saw a young woman sitting on a bench in a front garden. She looked dreadful. Skinny, sickly white, dirty, listless and trembling. She was clearly coming off something and she wasn’t enjoying it. She personified in her skinny person the misery associated with drug addiction in the poorer parts of Dublin and there was something scary about her.

How did I feel when I saw her waiting to pick up her child outside my children’s shool? Not very happy at all.

I was at a residents’ dinner recently and I was sitting beside a charming elderly lady. She had an Italian surname and I asked her about it. Her mother had emigrated from Italy when she, the mother, was a little girl (about 100 years ago) and her father had emigrated from Italy to Ireland when he was 17 and married her mother. Then she herself had married an Italian boy and brought him home with her. What’s more, she has four children and three of them have married Italians. The fourth married a Quebecois, for variety I suppose. All of her grandchildren have Italian names and are busy, like proper ambitious migrants, climbing the social ladder working as lawyers, doctors and accountants.

All of her generation were in what she referred to as “the business”. On closer investigation, this turned out to be chip shops. There is a very odd phenomenon whereby the majority of chip shops in Dublin are run by Italians from Frosinone. They have an association: the Irish Traditional Italian Chipper Association. Not you will appreciate, adjectives that you expect to see running together. One of our other neighbours commented that she had been to Italy and it was impossible to get chips. Given her Dublin background, she had expected the Italians to be chip specialists. All Dubliners recognise the names: Cafolla, Morelli, Fusciardi Borza, Macari (though my neighbour doesn’t think much of the last two families – Johnny come latelys apparently).

She spoke about working in the shop with her husband while bringing up her family in the flat upstairs. She speaks Italian as do her children and grandchildren. I was a little curious about whether they spoke dialect and Italian or just the former but lacked the nerve to ask.

She was the most charming person and I wished she lived on our road. However, she has assured me that several of the residents on her road are very elderly and a house should come on the market just as we are able to afford to move. She will be watching like a hawk on our behalf.

The Princess has been singing “Ireland’s Call” around the house. This is the song which is played when the Irish rugby team takes to the field. As our rugby team is an all-island affair, both the Irish national anthem and God Save the Queen were not allowed for fear of offence. “Ireland’s Call” is an unhappy compromise. Herself learnt it at school – ours is not a rugby household. So, with St. Patrick’s Day approaching and in the middle of seachtain na Gaeilge (technically caicís na Gaeilge but inflation is everywhere) there was the anodyne “Ireland’s Call” ringing in my ears. “Do you not know the Irish national anthem?” I asked her. No, apparently not. “But it’s in Irish, you go to an Irish language school and they teach you a poppy meaningless rugby song in ENGLISH and they don’t teach you our national anthem in Irish?” I squeaked. She was gone before I’d finished, singing happily to herself “Come the day. And come the hour. Come the power and the glory. We have come to answer. Our country’s call..” I trust that that Amhrán na bhFiann’s days aren’t numbered.