Week Three in the School Holiday House

So I have just returned to Belgy after five days in Ireland on my own because that's what all the cool kids do these days - you know, go on holiday by themselves and get lost on buses and end up in Tesco Extra buying a nectarine because they need an excuse to speak to the checkout girl to ask directions. 

It was kind of an experiment because, I suppose, if in future I'm going to have two months holiday in the summer (WOE IS ME), I kind of need to sort out what I can do with all that time (DOUBLE WOE IS ME. My brain hurts from all of the mental sorting out). 

So I came to Ireland, on account of it being a bit safe and easy. I've grown up going to Ireland (though not this bit) so I sort of know the score on all the important stuff, like which flavour of Tayto crisps is the best (salt and vinegar, duh) and that Fir and Mna on toilet doors are the other way around to what you'd think. Be warned. 

Wicklow is a bit of a funny place, really; funny in that it's kind of like Cornwall or the Isle of Wight or somewhere else beautiful but not really Irish. Don't get me wrong, it's stunning. Over the last week I've walked the Bray's Head to Greystones coastal path and back and marvelled at its Riviera-esque beauty (the 30+ degree temperatures aided that comparison, admittedly). Hmm. Maybe it's the accent, which is often quite Dublin-y and perhaps to my English-attuned ears sounds a bit standoffish. Maybe I'm just feeling bitter because an American guide to Ireland that I found in the B&B doesn't even MENTION Sligo. Not a word. Gah. Dunno, it just feels different. Jeff, the B&B owner, was telling me (completely unverified fact coming up) that two thirds of Ireland's population live in Dublin and the three counties around it - so Meath, Kildare and Wicklow. So if that's true, I suppose it's not that surprising that they feel a bit different. It's all a bit less personal, more savvy, more attuned to the tourists. 

Ireland in loads-of-blue-skies-and-green-stuff-shocker.

I visited two Ancestral Homes, too - beautiful big old estate mansions and their grounds owned by influential English landowners whose titles were created for them by Queen Elizabeth I or King James. I was ready for a big Irish history geekathon; I was fully expecting lots of colour displays about the Famine and Fenian uprisings and maybe a box of dressing-up clothes where kids could don the garb of Irish peasants. So many former estate houses were destroyed in the Irish Civil War, but what was the craic here? Why did these survive? I paid my 8 euros and I wanted ANSWERS - and mebbes a cup of tea. 

But there wasn't a sign or an exhibition to be found. Not even a sniff of a leaflet. There ARE tour guide booklets with photos of Earls with non-Irish surnames smiling benevolently in open collar and tweed, but they advertise events like falconry and farmers' markets and berry-foraging and bee-keeping days. The tea rooms are painted in sherbert shades from Farrow and Ball. Given the amount of coaches that were tipping old ladies out before midday, I'd say the pensioner pound is pretty strong; the gift shops were piled with packets of flower seed and tasteful mugs and natty stationery. Beyond the carefully pruned formal gardens, the wildness looks in. The whole thing is all very lovely, but also a little...curious. They've got ultra-modern refits and wifi and wedding packages and suddenly they've been neutered. What history? Oh, this little old country pile? 

So that was a bit strange.

But then it's still Irish in lots of regards. I was staying at a delightful B&B about 2 miles from the nearest village, and the owner dropped a group of us down in the village one evening for a meal. There was an American lady and her German partner in the back (now there was an interesting pair - there must have been twenty years difference between their ages minimum, perhaps more like thirty, and she was all yoga-taut with scary Madonna arms and intense eyes and lots of very high-tech walking equipment and the first time I came across them in the communal room they were dancing - like, 'we're-oblivious-to-everyone' twirling each other around and around - and yet they were in separate bedrooms. What was this? A marriage of mutual convenience? A meeting of pen-friends? The mind boggles). American Lady was asking about food options.

'WHERE WOULD WE GET SOME FISH? I WANT FISH. AND, LIKE, LOTS OF RAW VEGETABLES.'

Good luck with that Gwyneth Paltrow, I thought to myself, you're about as likely to get some weird LA-inspired low-carb nonsense here as you are a gilded unicorn horn. You're in IRELAND pet. There's a pub and two takeaways. It's something deep-fried or nothing. I can recommend some good Tayto crisps if you like.  

And at that I felt smug and quite at home. 

Here are some more, less political thoughts/observations:
  - Five bus journeys, only one of which was completely in the wrong direction. That's good going for me. 
- SEVEN EUROS FIFTY FOR A JAMESON AND DIET COKE.
- Saw Christy Moore live in a tiny venue. My mum is totes jel.
- A Dublin chav (female, completely off her tits) on O'Connell street shouting at a girl wearing a headscarf: 'Tha's not roigh'! Bein' oll covered up!', then trying to stop random passersby to ask their opinion on aforementioned lady's clearly outrageous decision to wear a HEADSCARF ON HER OWN HEAD* in an aggressive manner. 'Whaddya think? Whadda YOU think?' *deep sarcasm, obviously. 
- Had 'the best coffee in Dublin' (so says the sign) served by The Bald Barista, who has that very phrase 'The Bald Barista' tattooed onto the back of his baldy heed*. *Geordie accent. Take note.  
- 'IT'S IRELAND'S BIGGEST WATERFALL I UNDERSTAND'* *a special prize if you get this reference. 

Anyway must dash, I have raging sunburn to attend to (sad face).

Have you been on holiday on your own? Was it weird?

Also, please let me know if your sunburn is worse than mine. It would make me feel less of a penis. 

Eire

When I think about where I'd like to live long-term, I think of skies and a sea like this. 

Enniscrone, County Sligo, Eire. T'is beautiful.

Eire

My favourite Hay-on-Wye purchase of the weekend.

The Irish, Sean O'Faolain.

On Gaelic:

"It has now gone underground; it is, so to speak, being forgotten consciously; it still beats like a great earth-throb in the subconsciousness of the race. The Irish language is thus becoming the runic language of modern Ireland. Only a dwindling few can think overtly in it; all of us can, through it, touch, however dimly, a buried part of ourselves of which we are normally unaware; through Gaelic we remember ancestrally, are again made very old and very young."

On Irish Nationalism:

"Ireland has learned, as Americans say, the hard way. She is like a brilliant but arrogant boy whose very brilliance acts as a dam against experience; who learns everything quickly, except experience. Our Nationalism has been our Egoism. It was our lovely shining youth. Like all the appurtenances of youth it was lovely in its day. After its day is passed to attempt to wear it is a form of 'Death in Venice', a middle-aged man raddling his cheeks to keep his youthful glow in times of plague. Ireland has clung to her youth, indeed to her childhood, longer and more tenaciously than any other country in Europe, resisting Change, Alteration, Reconstruction to the very last."

Eire. Christmas.

It is Christmas. Well, it’s Saturday 18th December, which is good enough for me. I have broken up from school. What’s even more shocking, though, is that I reached some semblance of a straight edge in my final week (i.e. shifted a sh*tpile of marking and sorted some administrative cack).

Don’t get me wrong. I still have tonnes to do (“To be a teacher, you have to be satisfied with having lots of loose ends, I think. Like, all the time...” – a slightly-less-world-weary McDonagh in 2005. She had her head screwed on, that girl). But it’s manageable.

We are off to Romantic Ireland (a fiver a pint! Woo!) for a few days post-Christmas-itself and I CANNOT BLOODY WAIT.

Things What I Think We Should Do:

Go to Kennedy’s (pub in the actual middle of nowhere. The sign is a 70s-era joy-to-behold-monstrosity complete with a martini avec olive on the sign. I doubt anyone’s drank a martini in there EVER) and have the craic with the locals. That’ll be Uncle John and Frank Spellman, then.)

Head to Nathy Brennan's in Tubbercurry for much of the same craic. It's a hardware store AND a pub. You can buy, err, nails and drink pints simultaneously.

Go to Yeats’ grave and swoon over the ‘Had I The Heavens’ Embroidered Cloths’ sculpture.

"But I, being poor, have only my dreams..."

Go swan-spotting in Sligo. There are real ones...

And bronze ones...

Take a seaweed bath in Enniscrone, complete with saltwater shower. Mm.

Enjoy feeling like a peach after aforementioned seaweed bath.

Visit Croagh Padraig. Attempt to climb it. Or at least think about attempting to climb it. Have a squiz at the Famine Memorial.

Go to the traditional music (ceol) session in Gurteen.

Go to Galway. Visit more family. Take the ferry to the Arran Islands and have a drink in Joe McDonagh’s pub. Look at the beautiful Gaelic inscriptions on the graves. Oh, I am a maudlin creature.

See the Davey girls in Clonmel, Tipperary. This may involve drinking and dancing. Less maudlin.

Visit a load of family. Have cheeks pinched by overzealous aunties. Drink several Irish coffees. Eat lots of sandwiches.

Bring. It. On.

Hurrah for Christmas!