Never wrestle
with pigs. You get dirty and the pig likes it. George Bernard Shaw said this
about the Irish.
Or something
like it.
He was Irish
himself.
There are
quite a few Irish in my life and I like them all. They are gobby, loud and cocky.
They enjoy good banter. They have a great sense of humor and don't mind self
deprecation. I thoroughly enjoy their company. My very good mate James has told
me on a number of occasions that if it were not for alcohol the Irish would
dominate the world. I believe him. I think this is true. The Irish I know and
have known are all hard core drinkers. They love it.
They really
love it.
I was out for
a while with Jimbo tonight. He was ordering buckets of beer just for himself.
The company we were with were all drinking wine. It was good company too. It
was nice to see you Ingrid, Cehra and Alana. I was sipping a coke. There are 6
beers in a bucket. I was only there for an hour or so and Jimbo was well into
his second bucket when I left. I only stopped by because there was carnage on
the MRT tonight. I was tired and wanted to go home.
It has been a
long week.
It has been a
long year.
The MRT is the
Singaporean train system. I think it stands for Mass Rapid Transit. There was
certainly Mass tonight. No Rapid. No Transit. It is the first time I have seen
such chaos. The Singaporean train system is usually as smooth as silk and it
runs like a Swiss clock. Like most things in this country. There was a rare
signal fault or some technical glitch this evening and all the trains had
stopped. It was a shocker and it was a mess. I had to wield my umbrella and
beat a path through the stunned Singaporeans just to get out of the station. I
battered them to clear the way.
I showed no
mercy.
I rarely do.
I was at the
Raffles station when the chaos commenced. The Raffles station is named after
the dude who set up modern Singapore. He was English. Not Irish. The train problem
was the reason I went for a drink with Jimbo rather than head straight home. I
was delayed.
Some of the
great writers of the world are Irish. They have penned incredible works of
pain, love and misery. Their numbers are disproportionate to the population of
the country. When I think of Ireland my first thought is of their magnificent
writers. This Irish literature often moans and whinges but it is done in a very
beautiful and poetic way.
James Joyce,
Oscar Wilde, Jonathon Swift, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, W.B. Yeats
and Bram Stoker are classic and renowned novelists. Their modern day
equivalents include Roddy Doyle, The McCourt brothers, and Medbh McGukian. I
have read them all. They make words sing.
They really
do.
The Irish
mostly write of tragedy and misery and pain. They are a passionate and vibrant
race. They don't like the English very much. Either do I actually.
We have that
and more in common.
Many of we
Australians have Irish roots. They put the larrikin in the Australian gene
pool. They are part of the Australian character. I have some Irish blood - on
my father's side. My Irish kinfolk came from county Wicklow. There are still
quite a few Irish Hepenstalls. I know this because I have looked them up. Two of
the brothers Hepenstall drank and gambled away the family fortune in Wicklow in
the early 1800's and they made their way to Australia with the last of their
funds. They came to seek their fortune. They failed miserably but they bred
prolifically. They spread the Hepenstall seed.
I am a direct
descendant.
Both were
jailed in the colony. One supposedly for fucking a sheep. This event is a stain
on our otherwise noble family tree.
The great
father of psychiatry Sigmund Freud described the Irish as "a race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use
whatsoever.”
Well
said Sigmund. I think you nailed it with that observation.
Yeats
himself said, "being Irish we have an abiding sense of tragedy which
sustain us through temporary periods of joy".
The
Irish love their misery. They wallow in it. It is the source of their happiness
- that and alcohol.
The
sad but brilliant Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that “to be Irish is to
know that in the end the world will break your heart.”.
The
poignant Edna O'Brien wrote, “When anyone asks me about the Irish
character I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously
tenacious.”
Her novel "A
House of Splendid Isolation" is one of the best books I have ever
read.
Edna
is Irish through and through.
My
favorite quote of all about the Irish is by a South American named Maria
Araoz.
She
wrote, “If there were only three Irishmen in the world you'd find two of
them in a corner talking about the other.”
The Irish.
I like them a lot.
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