Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts

Sunday, August 23, 2026

VIDEO (BANNED in Ireland) exposé of Ireland's immigrant invasion

Folks who knew me in the daze of my youth might have described me as "Black Irish". That's an informal term used mainly outside of Eire to describe people of Irish descent who have dark hair, dark eyes, and complexions that tan easily, differing from the stereotypical image of red hair and pale skin. It is not a recognized genetic or official ethnic category.

Today, in the auld sod, liberal politicians are trying to create a different kind of "Black Irish", as they welcome dusky-hued "refugees" and asylum-seekers, who are taking advantage of Ireland's lax EU-dictated immigration laws. Suddenly the streets of Dublin are full of immigrant invaders, mostly from Africa, enjoying all the benefits (many of them unavailable to native Irish) conferred by a woke socialist government. 

In this video,Tyler Oliveira, an American journalist who specializes in man-on-the-street interviews, visits Ireland to talk with these "refugees" and asylum-seekers, and with the real Irish people who think they should go back to whence they came. 

Monday, March 16, 2026

VIDEO: To our Irish readers and friends...

...and those who wish they were Irish


to yez all!
from Walt, Poor Len [and Ed.! Ed.]

But wait (as Vince Offer used to say), there's more! As a special Saint Paddy's day treat we give you "The Irish Ballad", written and sung by Tom Lehrer to a bemused audience of Danes at Copenhagen in 1967.

Saturday, October 11, 2025

The failure of multiculturalism: the British and Irish examples

For decades now the liberal democratic governments of the AABC countries (America, Australia, Britain, and Canada) as well as western Europe, notably France and (above all) Germany, have forced on their people the premise of the Great Replacement, i.e. that multiculturalism is a Good Thing.

It is not. Enter "multiculturalism" in the search window above and you will find numerous articles on the subject proving that the premise is wrong and reporting the results of the disastrous experiment in One-Worldism and the attempt to force human persons to love one another. You'll also find links to a number of videos which have been scrubbed from YouTube by the wokesters who refuse, like the Three Wise Monkeys, to see the truth which is there to be seen.

Today we present yet another article on the failure of multiculturalism, this one by London-based journalist Michael Murphy. Mr Murphy created a fine documentary entitled "Ireland is full! Anti-immigration backlash in Ireland", which we suggest you watch ASAP, before it too disappears. Mr Murphy writes:

Now we know what globalizing the intifada looks like. In Manchester last week, a rabbi addressed his congregation in a robe stained with blood. Hours earlier, on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day, a jihadi terrorist rammed a car into worshippers at the gates of a synagogue before going on a stabbing spree. By the time officers shot the attacker, two were dead and four more injured, some from accidental police fire.

To show they would not be cowed by violence, the congregation resumed their prayers as Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS) forces patrolled outside. Underneath the defiant posture, though, many of them will likely have wondered whether Britain remains a safe home for Jews. For the first time in centuries, the answer is not straightforward. Neither are the solutions to this predicament. 

Britain’s multicultural project rested on assumptions that have not survived contact with reality. We told ourselves immigrants would assimilate, or at least bring only harmless aspects of their cultures with them. Diversity was held up as our greatest strength. It has been apparent for some time that this was a monumental act of self-delusion. While many immigrants do share our values and become productive members of society, the people who don’t are more numerous than we have long cared to admit, and are wreaking havoc.


Consider the Manchester killer. Jihad al-Shamie was born in Syria and brought to the United Kindgom as a child, attaining citizenship in the mid-2000s. With that passport he was thenceforth regarded by our institutions as British. The problem is that when a bearded man in a suicide vest begins murdering Jews “in the name of the Islamic State,” as he put it, what once seemed like a harmless accommodation becomes an affront to the British people themselves. 

Al-Shamie was less an example of diversity being our strength than a life-long liability. He dropped out of university, spent his life unemployed and housed at public expense, and was earlier this year arrested for rape. His online footprint is limited to a 2012 death threat against a parliamentarian who had defended Israel.

What kind of society not only tolerates but subsidizes such a man? The same country that, when the Islamist refugee Salman Abedi murdered 22 people at a Manchester concert in 2017, consoled itself with the pop lyric “don’t look back in anger.” The same country that for decades ignored the rape of thousands of white girls by mostly Pakistani grooming gangs to avoid accusations of racism. A country that insisted Islam is simply a “religion of peace,” even as Islamism continued to inspire atrocities on its soil.

This posture is clearly self-destructive. It breeds resentment among the native population, and cynicism among immigrants, including those who have fully embraced British society, culture and norms, and who now see Britain as unwilling to defend itself. It has now also made life unsafe for other minorities. 

Britain spent centuries dissolving its own tribal rivalries to unite under the banner of one nation. But it has since managed within two generations to begin to re-tribalize. Its melting pot has proved too lukewarm. Take al-Shamie’s father, Faraj, a trauma surgeon who publicly denounced his son’s killings. He seemed at first to be the model immigrant, until his own views were unearthed: he had called on social media for Israel’s destruction, also praising Hamas and even Hitler. The rot in this case, as with many others, was inter-generational. 

The authorities may have missed a window in 2012 to flag al-Shamie. But they arguably missed a greater opportunity to prevent his family coming to the U.K. in the first place. It has long been a matter of liberal etiquette to pretend that all immigrants arrive with only superficial differences and are, in the round, a net bonus to Britain. 

This mantra has helped the establishment dismiss calls for a more selective admissions system. Yet, too many migrants arrive with the prejudices and ideological baggage one might expect. Polling by the Henry Jackson Society, for instance, found that 53% of British Muslim men believe Jews have too much power, while fewer than a quarter think enforcing Sharia law would be undesirable. 

Al-Shamie senior’s admiration for Hamas is also far from unusual. While most British Muslims would no doubt abhor the murder of Jews, there is a dissonance in the fact that many of them are supportive of Hamas, which is dedicated to killing Jews. Clearly, immigrants need to be more thoroughly screened before they are admitted. 

This reality undermines a central pillar of Britain’s immigration mythology. We convinced ourselves that the great danger was native prejudice against newcomers, despite the country’s exemplary tolerance. The far greater threat has been importing hatreds we had long tamed within our own society. 

At core, Britain’s multicultural experiment is failing because we insisted on seeing the world in our own image. Rather than admit it, our leaders have constructed an alternative reality in which failures are repackaged as opportunities for cohesion, with the leaders of otherwise siloed communities uniting briefly to denounce extremists. But the problem is far more daunting, and possibly intractable, than our politicians are willing to admit.

This post is a shortened version of "British multiculturalism has failed", which appeared in Canada's National Post, 11/10/25.

Monday, April 28, 2025

Meanwhile, back in the auld sod


In Eire, Easter Week is traditionally marked by Republicans with parades and marches commemorating the 1916 Rising against British rule. The tradition has now been adopted by Ireland's fast-growing anti-immigration movement/

Outside Dublin's Gardens of Remembrance, tens of thousands of anti-immigration marchers gathered for their largest protest yet. Speaking of the Irish government, an older woman carrying a commenorative wreath ranted, "They need to be dragged out by their balls!"

In the Republic, though very much not in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin voters are by far the strongest anti-immigration constituency. Scattered across a broad spectrum of microparties, Ireland's anti-immigration movement achieved electoral success last year only in winning council seats in working-class areas of Dublin. 

Judging by the fiery speeches, the protest's organisers have decided to lean strongly into capturing Sinn Féin’s disaffected urban voter base. "We don’t need big posh people to come on and represent the working class," independent candidate Gavin Pepper roared at the vast crowd outside the grand neoclassical Custom House. “"We are the working class."

Myles naGopaleen, God rest him, always referred to them as "the plain people of Ireland". Speaking for them, he would surely have used a richer epithetn that "big posh people". He might well have called them "that ignorant, self-opinionated, sod-minded, suet-brained, ham-faced, mealy-mouthed, streptococcus-ridden gang of naatural gobdaws!" Myles was never one to sugar-coat things.

Neither is newly-elected councillor Patrick Quinlan of the National Party, an identitarian movement standing on a platform of mass deportations and re-Gaelicising Ireland. He gave a speech railing against "the den of rats inside Dáil Éireann" (the Irish parliament). It was the sort of political speech that would be recognisable to historians of Ireland’s 19th-century mass movement nationalism. :They fear not chaos but our awakening," Quinlan roared, "The holy fire that blazed in our patriot dead…lives on here today. The heroes of 1916 triumphed, and so shall we."


Source (excepting the paragraph of remarks by Myles na Gopaleen): UnHerd 27/4/2025. Thanks to BCF for pointing us in the right direction. If you want to read more of Myles' tales of the plain people of Ireland, try to find a copy of The Best of Myles, Picador Books, 1968.

Also recommended: The Rising: Ireland: Easter 1916, by Fearghal McGarry, Oxford University Press, 2010, and of course the excellent (except for Julia Roberts' performance) movie, Michael Collins (1996).

Monday, March 17, 2025

Thursday, March 16, 2023

Ireland ain't what it used to be

Walt is sad to report tha' the Auld Sod doesn't feel very Irish any more. A few years back the plain people o' Ireland (pace Myles na gCopaleen), overwhelmed perhaps by immigrants from the rest of the European Union, elected a prime minister who was not only not Irish but not white, and as gay as 18 balloons to boot.

The Church did not preach against him, because the Church has itself become a nest of homosexuals and male feminists, just like the Church in America. And the plain people have reacted accordingly, turning away from the Church of Francis in a reversal not seen since Québec's "quiet revolution" of 1960.

In a word, the Ireland of today is not the Ireland you see portrayed in the Family Guy episode where Peter Griffin goes to Eire to find his father. It's nuttin' like that, nuttin' at all. It's a shame, so it is. All the same, those of us with a pint or so of Irish blood in us can still celebrate the land of our ancestors.

 

Walt, Ed. and Poor Len -- all of us Irish today -- wish all of yez
 Happy Saint Paddy's Day!

Further reading: "Ireland’s Gay St. Patrick’s Day: A State’s Quest for Transgenderism", by Peter Caddle, Breitbart News, 17/3/23. Lede: For Ireland’s progressive government, transgenderism and other “LGBTQ+” talking points have become central elements within modern St Patrick’s day celebrations.

Saturday, August 27, 2022

100 years ago: eyewitness describes the death of Michael Collins

In the rush to go on a short holiday, I missed posting this first-hand account of the death of Michael Collins, the hero of the fight for the freedom of Ireland. During the War of Independence he was Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and a government minister of the self-declared Irish Republic. 

He was then Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State from January 1922 and commander-in-chief of the National Army from July until his death in an ambush in August 1922, during the Civil War.

John O’Connell, the interviewee in this video, was a private in the Free State army, travelling in the convoy that was ambushed on 22 August 1922, when Michael Collins was killed. He was travelling in the Crossley Tender which was one of the three vehicles ambushed when the convoy met a road block at Béal na Bláth.
 

Michael Collins died without seeing the realization of his dream of a united Eire, free of the hated British oppressors. Indeed, the day has not yet come. Ireland remains divided. But the fight continues, albeit at the ballot box rather than in the streets. 
Up the IRA! Sinn Féin!

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Walt, Poor Len [and Ed.! Ed.] wish all of yez...


and may the wind at yer back always be yer own!

And, lest we forget, the Ukrainians are not the only people who have had to fight long and hard for their freedom from an imperial oppressor. Walt recommends this movie most highly.


Sinn Féin Amháin!

Sunday, May 9, 2021

VIDEO: Michael Matt: The Great Reset is failing, and other good news

Just when you thought the world was going to hell in the proverbial bucket, Michael Matt, editor of The Remnant newspaper, weighs in with a compedium of good news. "With mask mandates collapsing all over the country, and Blue state governors losing in court, there's an opportunity to push back against the COVID Stupid."

Mr Matt explains how even France is slowly loosening restrictions, while little Ireland brings up the rear. In fact, post-Catholic Ireland is almost as tyrannical as post-Catholic Canada -- two countries run by little men as maniacal as Joe Stalin but now with the technology to make the Orwell happen.

By the way, he says, "Justin Trudeau est un petit homme extrêmement ennuyeux." Walt knows, personally, scores of Canucks who agree that Mr Socks is a "little snivelling brown-noser" and are much more than annoyed.

The really good news -- "Covid's massive silver lining" -- is that modernist, liberal, progressive Christianity -- especially in the Catholic Church -- has been exposed for the sham that it is, and "is now on life support", while traditionalists are gaining strength and numbers all over the world. 

Mr Matt closes with a truly amazing sign of hope out of Poland, where the Sign the Cross transforms one of the children of darkness into a child of light... all caught on video. Check it out.

   

The Cross of Christ will save the world. 
The Cross of Christ will save you. 
The Cross of Christ will save me. 
The Cross of Christ is the Answer.

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

VIDEO: Happy Saint Patrick's Day... again!

Apparently some readers were not impressed with the Saint Patrick's Day greeting which we posted yesterday (a day ahead of schedule, but it was already the 17th in east Asia). Here's a video with a somewhat stronger message.

   

Happy Saint Paddy's Day to all of yez, then, from Walt, Poor Len [and Ed.! Ed.]

Monday, March 16, 2020

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

Never ye mind about the corona virus and all that!
Walt, Ed. and Poor Len -- all of us Irish today -- wish all of yez
 Happy Saint Paddy's Day.



Erin go bragh!


Sunday, February 9, 2020

UPDATED: Ireland wakes up! Sinn Fein wins big in weekend elections

UPDATE ADDED 22/2/20: For a good in-depth analysis of what the success of Sinn Féin could mean in terms of the long-awaited unification of Ireland, Walt recommends "Is some revelation at hand? Brexit and Sinn Fein's success boost talk of Irish unification", in The Economist, 13/2/20.

Walt is almsot always happy to report on a nationalist political party doing well at the polls, because nationalism (IMHO) is natural to human beings. Globalism is unnatural. People prefer being with other people like themselves, in their own country, on their own land.

The Irish, after an inexplicable interlude in which they flirted with internationalism, diversity, inclusivity and all that rubbish, appear to have woken up, and I don't mean that in the liberal way! Since June of 2017, the government of the Irish Republic has been headed by Leo Varadkar, who has served as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and Minister for Defence.

Mr Varadkar is ethnically Indian, and openly as gay as 18 balloons. It was therefore a bit of a surprise that when former Taoiseach Enda Kenny decided to quit in May of 2017, Mr Varadkar stood in the election to replace him as leader of the governing Fine Gael party. Although more party members voted for his opponent, Mr Varadkar prevalied, and was elected leader, thus becoming, at age 38, the youngest- (and gayest-) ever Taoiseach.

This weekend the plain people of Ireland (Hello Myles na Gopaleen!) had a chance to express their opinion of Mr Varadkar and his government, and surprised the pundits by (apparently) voting in roughly equal numbers for Gael, the opposition Fianna Fáil, and... wait for it... Sinn Féin, a left-wing party committed to reunification of the island. Sinn Féin is regarded, unofficially at least, as being the political arm of the Irish Republican Army.

Its many critics accuse Sinn Féin of having failed to repudiate the role of the IRA in the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. The plain people of Ireland apparently don't have a problem with that, as exit polls show the party in a virtual dead heat with the two parties that have governed since the country won independence (for all but the northern part of the island) almost a century ago.

Ballot counting is still under way as I write, but with 96% of first-preference votes tallied, Sinn Féin had 24.1%, Fianna Fáil 22.1%, Fine Gael also 22.1%, the Greens at 7.4%, and small left-wing parties and independents comprising the rest. The Grauniad calls the result "stunning".

Preliminary vote tallies suggested Sinn Féin could win around 36 seats, up from 22 in the outgoing Dáil, far exceeding its own expectations. It appealed to young voters in particular, who felt left behind by a booming economy and chafed at soaring rents, homelessness, insurance costs and hospital waiting lists.

The predicted outcome means some type of coalition government is almost inevitable, with Sinn Féin likely to be a central player in the negotiations to form one. Until now, both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have refused to work with Sinn Féin because of its links to the IRA. Now, though, the centrist parties' resolve may weaken as politicians reckon with the reality of Sinn Fein's strong showing.

But their sudden grudging acceptance of Sinn Féin may come too late. Sinn Féin says it's ready to talk about forming a government... to everyone but the two major parties! "I want us to have a government for the people," said Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald. "I want us to have, ideally, a government with no Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael in it. I have started the contact with other parties to explore over the next days whether that is a possibility." Stay tuned.

Recommended viewing: Michael Collins, starring Liam Neeson, a mostly-true story about the struggle for the Irish Republic. Here's the trailer.



You can just fast forward past the love story part, with Julia Roberts in as horrible example of miscasting as I've ever seen. That aside, Michael Collins is a great movie about a great Irishman.

Saturday, March 16, 2019

Saint Patrick's Day - Up the Irish!

30 January 1972 is known now and forever in Derry as Bloody Sunday, the day when 13 innocent Irish people were killed while participating in a civil rights march. They were killed by British soldiers. Or maybe just one (1) British soldier, according to the UK Public Prosecution Service. For that's the total number charged with murder. ONE.


The charge against the murderer, known only as "Soldier F", was laid just this week, more than 47 years after the fact. The former paratrooper was not named because all military witnesses were granted anonymity by the Saville Inquiry into the circumstances around the killings. The PPS said there was enough evidence to prosecute Soldier F for the murders of James Wray and William McKinney... only those two, out of 13 dead. He also faces charges for the attempted murders of Patrick O'Donnell, Joseph Friel, Joe Mahon and Michael Quinn. There was "insufficient evidence", PPS said, to prosecute 16 other soldiers. Hardly surprising, after nearly half a century.

The sole prosecution is seen as a terrible disappointment by some of the families of the 13 people killed. James Wray's brother Liam told the BBC he was "very saddened for the other families" of those killed on Bloody Sunday. "Their hearts must be broken," he said. "It has been a sad day but the Wray family are relieved." But, he added, "There are a lot of sad and heartbroken people today."

To all the Irish -- including those who identify as Irish, those who feel like they're Irish, and those who wish they were Irish [and who doesn't?! Ed.] -- wherever they are -- in Derry, Sligo, Coleraine, Tullamore, Adjala Township and/or south Boston -- HAPPY SAINT PATRICK'S DAY TO YEZ, and don't rest until Ireland is united for the Irish!

Recommended reading: na Gopaleen, Myles (pseudonym of Flann O'Brien): The Best of Myles, Picador 1977. In particular, Walt likes the chapters titled "The Brother" (how could yez not laugh?) and "The Plain People of Ireland".

Some will say that the Eire of today is not the Ireland of Mr O'Brien's time. Many denizens of the auld sod won't be able to read the parts written in Irish Gaelic. [Faith now, I can't read it meself! Ed.] But the Irish are still the Irish, even if they live in a part of Ireland separated from the rest by the foreign (read: English) oppressors. God bless all of them, and haste the day that the Six Counties will be reunited with the rest of the country.

Monday, May 25, 2015

No wonder the Church is losing respect and influence

The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, must be shedding rivers of tears in Heaven as she looks with profound sorrow on what has become of Her children in the last half-century. Two news stories this month confirm that the Church no longer has any significant influence on the morals and lives of the majority of people in two nominally Christian countries -- the United States of America and the once ultra-Catholic Republic of Ireland.

On 12 May 2015, a new study by the respected Pew Research Center revealed that in just seven years under Popes Benedict XVI and Francis, the number of self-identified Catholics in the USA has fallen from 23.9% (in 2007) to 20.8%. And now, for the first time, the "Catholics" are outnumbered by those claiming no church affiliation.

The study says that nearly a third of American adults (31.7%) reported being raised Catholic. The bad news, for the mainstream Church, is that fully 41% of that group no longer identify with Catholicism. This means that 12.9% of US adults are former Catholics, while only 2 (two) per cent of US adults have converted to the Church from another religion. No other religious group in the study had such a lopsided ratio of losses to gains.

Meanwhile... In Eire, what Patrick Buchanan called "the long retreat in the culture war" continued, as over 60% of Irish voters -- over 90% of whom would have been baptized Catholics -- voted in a binding referendum to legalize "gay marriage".

Irish bishops had urged them to vote "NO", but Pope Francis sat out the campaign, refusing to make any definitive pronouncement. Walt suggests Catholic voters read more into the Pope's silence -- "Who am I to judge?" -- than the appeals of their own church leaders.

Not that the Irish bishops were very strong in their condemnation of the abomination that is homosexuality. Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, pointedly refused to preach on this one of the Four Sins that Cry to Heaven for Vengeance, singled out in the Holy Bible (Genesis 18:20-21). Following the vote, Abp. Martin told the Irish state broadcaster RTE: "We [the Church] have to stop and have a reality check, not move into denial of the realities.... I appreciate how gay and lesbian men and women feel on this day. That they feel this is something that is enriching the way they live. I think it is a social revolution."

What Abp. Martin is really saying is: since the secular humanists and pushers of perversion disagree with God's commandments, God's Church must change the rules to follow the prevailing "morality". Here's a commentary from St. Peter's List on that astonishing proposition.

The “Sin of Sodom” is described as "carnal sin against nature, which is a voluntary shedding of the seed of nature, out of the due use of marriage, or lust with a different sex." Given modernity’s substitution of God and Nature with the will of the individual as an autonomous moral universe, sodomy – more specifically active homosexuality, not orientation – has become part of the new post-Christian norm. Neither Divine Law nor Natural Law form an external guide for the modern man; thus, the only boundary of autonomous individual is the autonomy of another. The boundary for what is and is not moral appears to be consent. Consequently, moral dialogue has been flattened to mere platitudes, e.g., this isn’t hurting anyone, it’s my body and my choice, love is love. Many often comment on the modern West’s apparent lack of morality, but few comment on the fact the West has lost the vocabulary to even discuss on morality.

Walt wonders if the Holy Father was properly instructed in the Catechism of the Church. "Who am I to judge?" he asks. And it seems he was a great fan of the notorious gay activist, radical priest, Michele de Paolis, with whom he is seen here concelebrating the Novus Ordo Mass.


Father di Paolis openly rejects Christian morality, pontificating: "Homosexual love is a gift from God no less than heterosexual." To claim that God is the author of evil is blasphemy, a damnable sin against the First Commandment. Moreover, Fr. De Paolis is a well-known promoter of the "anarcho-Catholicism" of the extreme left, which has been dominant since the 1970s in parts of Italy and South America, from whence comes Pope Bergoglio.

Getting back to the Irish vote... One could also interpret the vote in favour of "gay marriage" as a rejection by the Irish people of the Church that tolerated and covered up the perversions of sinful priests and religious who for decades assaulted Irish children in the most vile ways. So hostile had Eire become to the predations of the clergy that in 2010 its prime minister warned Benedict XVI not to include the Republic (or Northern Ireland) in a proposed tour of the "British Isles" because his safety could not be guaranteed.

But it's not just the paedophile priests who are to blame for the increasing rejection of the Church. Nor is it the lay gay Catholics or LGBT secular humanists outside the Church who are hell-bent (literally) on wiping out the Christian religion. No, dear Catholics, it is the Gay Mafia in the Vatican, and the Popes themselves! They are the stars pulled down from Heaven by Great Red Dragon, who stood before the "Woman clothed with the sun", when she was to be delivered, that he might devour Her son. (Apocalypse 12:1-4).

There is something seriously wrong -- dare we say immoral or even unChristian -- with the leadership of the mainstream Roman Catholic Church. It should come as no surprise, then, that people who once looked to the Church for guidance, direction and a moral code by which to live, are now deserting in droves.

Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady Help of Christians, Queen of the World, pray for us!

Further reading:
"Commentary on the 4 Sins that Cry to Heaven for Vengeance", St. Peter's List, 1 February 2014.
"Pope Francis’ meeting with homosexual activist Fr. De Paolis: the unanswered questions", LifeSiteNews, 28 May 2014.
"Papal Silence: The Most Decisive Factor in Ireland's Same-Sex 'Marriage' Victory" by Roberto Mauro, in Catholic Family News, 27 May 2015.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Snapshot of an American couple in Ireland*

OK, it's not a snapshot. It's a prose portrait. If you don't like reading, look at the Swazi girls.

This word picture appears in McCarthy's Bar (Hodder and Stoughton, 2000), written by Pete McCarthy, by birth but fully Irish in spirit. His mission in life is to visit any and every pub named "McCarthy's",  hence his travels to the Auld Sod which this book describes. This scene is set in Killarney...

Outside the big hotels, pony and trap drivers with the faces of medieval assassins are touting for business among gaggles of befuddled recent arrivals who are wandering around in a collective trance, like Stepford tourists. "Will the horse expect extra oats?" enquires an admirably self-aware American, who, at a guess, has won a trip to Europe as first prize in the Fattest Arse in the Midwest competition.

Perched on top of the card in baseball cap, stripy stretch fabric polo shirt and vast architect-designed shorts, he looks like Tweedledum. It takes two of the assassins to hoist his wife up there to join him, like Tweedledee in drag. The horse craps ostentatiously in derision, and off they trundle, to provide a bit of comic relief for the people stuck in traffic jams....

I'm beginning to realise that the parts of the country I've been in so far have been deserted because every bugger's here. Suddenly the gridlocked traffic is overtaken by Tweedledum and Tweedledee, careering along in their souped-up tumbril as the assassin cracks his whip.

To show that they've been assimilated into Celtic society, they're both now draped in tartan picnic rugs. He's smoking a large cigar, while she's opted for a packet of fudge as big as Dobbin's nosebag, to tide her over till dinner in half an hour's time.

Irish hotels catering for Americans are aware of the need to serve American-sized portions, so she'll soon be tucking into a whole spit-roast pig, followed by a main course, all washed down with pints of Diet Coke to stop her from getting fat....

As I'm about to leave [the pub], the crowded room is suddenly filled to bursting point as the Tweedles come in with great commotion, accompanied by an even heavier couple....
"So how are you enjoying your holiday?" asks the barman, as he pours whiskey for the men, and something green for their partners.
"Oh, it's just gorgeous," says Tweedledee.
"Yeah, terrific," agrees Tweedledum. "So old-fashioned."
"And so unspoiled," says Dee. "Say, do you have a rest room?"
"Upstairs."
"Guess I'll wait then," says Dee. "We don't do stairs."

"So where are you folks from?" asks the barman.
"Oh, we live in Chicago," says Dum, "but my father was Irish."
There's a general murmur of approval and I feel ashamed. This man I've been mocking as a stereotype of mindless tourism turns out to be as authentically Irish as I am. I feel like apologising, though we've never even met.
"Sure, that's great," says the barman. "So where exactly was your daddy from?"
"He was from Texas."


McCarthy's Pub is a fine book, a rollicking good read. And let me reassure American readers that McCarthy  is not anti-American. He's just anti-tourist, skewering alike the English, the Germans, the Italians, the Scandinavians...and did I mention the English? Here's a trenchant quote:

Once somewhere has more tourists than local people, more knick-knack shops than newsagents or groceries, then equilibrium has been destroyed, the game is up, and the balance has irrevocably shifted in favour of revenue, occupancy and the forces of darkness. Real life may continue, but to the visitor it's all but invisible.

Agent 3, who lives in a tourist trap (and sent McCarthy's Pub to me) says this is all too true.

* Note from Ed.: Walt wrote "Eire", not "Ireland", but I changed it so Americans would understand.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Surfing up the proverbial creek... in Ireland?


Walt is pleased to welcome back -- from parts unknown -- Agent 46, who hasn't been heard from for a long time. She sends along this picture postcard, perhaps by way of letting us know where she's been.

Sadly, Walt has not been able to get confirmation of the exact longitude and latitude of Shit Creek. The best we've been able to do is this map, according to which Shit Creek would be somewhere on the Auld Sod.


According to a website for surfers, it's in County Clare, and is "an exposed reef break that has fairly consistent surf and can work at any time of the year. The best wind direction is from the east. Waves just as likely from local windswells as from distant groundswells and the best swell direction is from the west. Right and better left hand reef breaks. Best around mid tide."

The article says there are relatively few surfers there, even on good days. No kidding...