Myles Away From Dublin Part 12

What's our address?.

I am sure the reader has noticed the slow but inexorable change by common usage of the name of this unkingly territory from Eire to Republic of Ireland. I am not very clear why the handier Irish Republic is so studiously avoided but it is clear that 'Eire' is pretty universally disliked.

I heard through my grapevine that there was a devil of a row between a Government department and the designers of the Irish stand at the New York World Fair about what the country's name was; only after a bitter battle did the designers succeed in establis.h.i.+ng the fact that where we live is IRELAND.

The Eire label is set forth in the Const.i.tution. Is it the best name? I doubt it, mind you. We had others in the old days, of course, when the old crowd were around. Banba, for instance, now hyphenated Ban-ba in honour of their Excellencies, the Censors.h.i.+p Board.

Then we had Scotia. This t.i.tle has been lifted by British Railways for one of their mailboats, so we can hardly use it again. In any case there is now a Nova Scotia and, if anything, we would have to be Antica Scotia. (Not, hasty reader, Antiqua; for that word refers to time, the other to s.p.a.ce. Antica Scotia means the foremost Scotia.) Another name we had was Fodhla, which sounds like a baby food. I'm no longer interested in baby foods though I'm told that some people named Power do very well out of them. 'Hibernia' is notable only for the fact that the well-known quotation means that the visiting team became more wintry than the Irish themselves, not more Irish.

'Saorstt eireann' was still another pseudonym adopted by this most honourable Irish nation. 'Saor', of course, means 'mason' and I have always held that the SE t.i.tle attributed undue influence to the Masons in our national affairs. The only other t.i.tle that occurs to me at the moment is the one used among ourselves, in privacy of family or public house circle: I mean 'this b- country'.

What about rethinking the thing, and having the name properly changed? It would mean a referendum, of course, but unless we have more frequent appeals to the people, I fear the traditional science of personation will be a thing of the past, like 'patterns', homespuns, rinnkeh faudas, potheen and efficient public transport.

'Eire' is over-full of vowels (75 per cent in fact) which means that the word is open to crazy misp.r.o.nunciations on the part of foreigners. Could we not call this country ... Cork? (Go on, laugh. What is wrong with my suggestion, anyway?) Cork is a simple word that is known the world over for cuteness, alcoholism and literary posturing. The crowd down there have got a bad name for the whole lot of us and I hold that our national ignominy should be geographically located and acknowledged. A town such as Cork, which holds that the rest of Ireland is provincial, deserves to be freed from a name that means 'swamp' if only to utilise, for national purposes, the paranoia, the secret studying, the shrewd marriage, the innumerable small forethoughts that have made our higher executive officers the finest in the world.

Call the country Cork and the other place Eire. Think of the distinction for your children unborn they will be Corkmen one and all! And therefore they will write 'novels'! Even we who are now alive could become naturalised Corkmen!

I had a vision, or nightmare, the other night. Dreamt I went up to the Patents Office in Dublin Castle to try to patent being Irish. I had drawn up a very detailed specification. You see, I want this unique affectation protected by world right. I am afraid of my life that other people will find out that being Irish pays and start invading our monopoly.

I am not sure that certain sections of the population in America have not already infringed our immemorial rights in this regard. I did not get very far with the stupid officials I saw.

They held that copyright did not subsist in being Irish and more or less suggested that it was open to any man to be Irish if he chose, and to behave in an Irish way. I pointed to the Cork colony, who were regarded by the rest of Ireland merely as Corkmen. No use.

The officials made the dastardly suggestion that even Corkmen could be regarded as Irishmen ... of a kind. It was only on my way out that I realised the reason for this extraordinary att.i.tude. Funny how the Coal Quay breaks out through the whitest official s.h.i.+rt.

Marching schoolboys.

As I write, we have the ironic spectacle of young fellows on the march in Dublin demanding the safeguarding of schoolboys' rights and their ancient ent.i.tlement to undergo examinations. Perhaps by the time this is printed somebody will have climbed down. But perhaps what one might call the pathology of literacy and literature is worth looking at.

What prompts a sane inoffensive man to write? a.s.suming that to 'write' is mechanically to multiply communication (though that is sometimes a strong a.s.sumption), what vast yeasty eructation of egotism drives a man to address simultaneously a ma.s.s of people he has never met, people who may resent being pestered with his 'thoughts'? They don't have to read what he writes, you say? But they do. That is, indeed, the more vicious neurosis that calls for inquiry. The blind urge to read, the craving for print that is an infirmity so deeply seated in the mind today as to be almost ineradicable. People blame compulsory education and Lord Northcliffe. The writer can be systematically discouraged, his 'work' can be derided and, if all else fails, in a military society the creative intellectuals can be liquidated. But what can you do with the pa.s.sive print addict? Very little.

Average Day.

Consider the average day of the average man who is averagedly educated. The moment he opens his eyes he reads that extremely distasteful and tragic story that is to be found morning after morning on the face of his watch. Late again. He is barely downstairs when he has thrown open (with what is surely the pathetic abandon of a person who knows he is lost) that white tablet of lies, his newspaper. He a.s.similates his literary narcotic in silence, giving only 5 per cent of his attention to the business of eating. His wife has ruined her sight from trying for years to read the same paper upside-down from the other side of the table, and he must therefore leave it behind him when he rushes out to his work. Our subject is nervous on his way, his movements are undecided; he is temporarily parted from his drug. Notice how advertis.e.m.e.nts he has been looking at for twenty years are frenziedly scrutinised, the books and papers of neighbours on the bus carefully scanned, even the bus ticket meticulously perused. Clocks are read and resented.

At last the office is reached. Hurrah! Thousands of doc.u.ments books, papers, letters, calendars, memos, diaries, threats to sue, bailiffs' writs! Writing, typescript, PRINT! Heaven at last an orgy of myopic indulgence! Consider the countless millions who sit in offices all day throughout the world endlessly writing to each other, endlessly reading each other's writings! Inkwells falling and falling in level as words are extracted from them by the hundred thousand! Tape-machines, dictaphones, typewriters and printing presses wearing out their metal hearts to feed this monstrous l.u.s.t for unspoken words!

And now consider that rare and delightful soul (admittedly he lives mostly in the Balkans) the illiterate. Think of his quiet personal world, so untroubled by catastrophes, threats of war, cures for heart disease, the fact that it is high water at Galway at 2.47 p.m., or even the death at an advanced age of a distinguished prelate who had reflected the light of heaven on his flock for 53 years. Recall the paragraph of a brother-scribe of mine who saw a poor countryman 'reading' the morning paper upside-down and remarking that there was another big one sunk as he gazed at the picture of an inverted liner. Think of the illiterate's acute observation of the real world as distinct from the pale, print-interpreted thing that means life for most of us.

If you know such a person, leave him to his happiness. Do not pity him or patronise him, for he is suffering from nothing more terrible than innocence. Of all the things you read yourself, you know the great majority are unpleasant, sad or worrying. And if you can read, reflect that your accomplishment is irreversible. You cannot discard it as you would an old jacket that is a bit tattered and no longer fits properly. Those marching schoolboys will have many a chance later on to reflect soundly on those exams that they once got so excited about. ABC is the beginning of pain and boredom.

Some are 'out of line'

I am sure many people were amused at the suggestion made in the Dil last week by Mr 'Pa' O'Donnell (FG) that a book on etiquette should be compiled for use in our schools and for circulation to adults through the libraries.

It would be troublesome and tedious to decide which one of all the legislative a.s.semblies in the world merits a gold-plated cup for being in its proceedings the most unmannerly, scurrilous and reeking with insults and contumely but it is a sure thing that Dil eireann would be very high up on the list.

I speak as one who had to frequent Leinster House for many years, and my memories are grim. Language apart, it is a fundamental of politeness in a man joining a company or exhibiting himself in public that he should be presentable in his person and recently washed.

It is only their familiarity with them on the part of the ushers and Guards that prevents the arrest of many shabby, unshaven, often tieless characters who may be seen in the corridors and bar, and even occasionally getting up to speak in the chamber.

But as usual I can come to the rescue. I have a book called Etiquette for Men by G.R.M. Devereux and published in the last century. Today I will give readers some of the pithy maxims at the end of the book; some of them may seem a wee bit dated but no true Nationalist reader can fail to benefit.

Don't wear a low hat or a straw with a frock, or tail coat.

Don't clean or pare your nails anywhere but in your own room.

Don't caress your moustache incessantly, however delicate or robust its growth; nothing is more annoying or unpleasant to those who have to witness it, or makes the owner of the appendage look more silly.

Don't take down a whole gla.s.s of wine at one gulp.

Don't mash your food all up together on your plate.

Don't turn your meat over continually on your plate, as though examining it. Avoid all appearance of wrestling with your food.

Don't produce your own cigar or cigarettes at a dinner party, and smoke them in preference to those of your host.

Don't make noises with your mouth when eating or drinking.

Don't keep your mouth open while eating or listening or at any time.

Don't refrain from offering your seat for fear of your offer being accepted.

Don't use a toothpick in public; it is a disgusting habit.

Don't break your bread and drop pieces in the soup.

Don't turn an egg out into a gla.s.s or cup to eat it; an egg should be eaten with the utmost daintiness.

Don't say 'good-afternoon' or 'good day' when taking leave of your host, a friend, or anyone who is your equal. 'Good-bye' is the correct term.

Don't turn your trousers up at the bottom, unless there is real mud about.

Don't stir the fire with your foot, or put coal on with your fingers.

I am leaving two of the most striking admonitions to the end, but meantime, dear reader, have you noticed anything peculiar about the foregoing prohibitions? They have one quality, explicit in some and implicit in them all. Look over them again, if you like.

Got it? They are addressed exclusively to men! I suppose it would be risky to a.s.sume that all ladies were so well brought up in those days that they were in no need of advice. Victoria, if I am correctly informed, was a very grumpy old lady, and indeed she used to sit, very brazenly, outside Leinster House. But here are the last two ma.s.sive don'ts: Don't speak of an umbrella as an umber-ella, nor of a brougham as a broo-ham; never sound the H.

Don't sound the L in golf; speak of it as goff, not gauff.

You could set the last one to music, recording it in tonic soffa!.

Ah, barefoot days!.

It is not because my hands are full but this week I would like to talk, if I may, about my feet. I am wondering if what I have to say will awake an echo in some reader's mind?

When the world was trying to recover from the Great War I was a young fellow in Dublin, a bold strap of a chisler, on the brink of being sent to school, and I would say that my people what I wouldn't have dared to have said then were lower middle cla.s.s. That connotes, of course, ultra respectability, carefulness amounting to perhaps contempt for the real poor. Yes, a lot of us were like that!

Such families were subject to all kinds of fads. Many fathers believed that sugar, for instance, was very bad for a growing youngster; he was not allowed to have it at any meal, and would get a hiding if caught eating sweets. Other fathers thought that tea was poison for a youngster and totally prohibited it. b.u.t.ter, white baker's bread, pork, ice cream, chocolate and goodness knows what other everyday item was also on somebody's forbidden list. It all looks very silly now in retrospect, particularly when the tiny citizens feel deprived without a supply of purple hearts or marijuana cigarettes.

But I remember one fad that simultaneously struck my own parents as well as those of practically all my hoity-toity companions. And I hesitate to call this a 'fad' because, to this day, I believe the idea was very sound, and is still very sound. Perhaps the thing started innocently and quietly enough in a newspaper article but I know it spread through our people like wildfire. The theory was that boots or shoes (and shoes were a rarity in those days) should never be worn by young growing children because they distorted and deformed the little feet then in process of being shaped, and could leave a youngster permanently gammy footed for life.

So we were all ordered to go about barefoot, like dogs or cats or the birds of the air. At this remove it may sound barbarous, particularly in the case of youngsters whose neatness in dress was a matter of family pride. But I do remember that after the first few days we thought nothing of it and even the grown-ups in the street soon stopped taking notice of respectable barefoot boys, there were so many of us.

Without attempting a pun I may say that Mother Nature took this sort of thing in her stride. After quite a short time something approximating to a natural sole, thick and nerveless, began forming on the nether surface of the feet, and soon the roughest or sharpest ground did not cause the slightest pain or inconvenience; even an odd bit of broken gla.s.s could be negotiated without injury. In fact we got TOUGH.

I can't remember now, alas, when the pressure of convention forced me to resume wearing boots, or how footwear can be justified at all in view of how happily and healthily one can carry on without it. I suppose somebody will mutter something about fas.h.i.+on. If you look at a pair of boots or shoes coldly in the face, you will find they are awkward, cheap-looking and vulgar certainly far from elegant. More than likely you will find they are dirty, neglected, uns.h.i.+ned for days, possibly broken and leaking. No matter how smart and new your suit is, your whole appearance is utterly betrayed by a bad pair of shoes. And as I have said above, they are utterly unnecessary.

Some unthinking people may be horrified at the idea of adults going about their everyday business in bare feet, but that is merely the force of irrational convention, possibly allied to the secret knowledge that a lot of poor feet are not much to look at with their bunions, corns, twisted toes and broken nails. All that sort of wreckage comes from wearing shoes, for it is more than likely that the shoe that fits properly has not yet been made. Many of the fleetest runners who have run away with world records have done so in their bare feet, and all swimmers have found that it is better to leave their shoes on the sh.o.r.e.

Next time you have a chance, have a good look at the bare foot of a healthy, young, well-developed man: you will see that it is a thing of beauty, style, complexity and elegance, a tool of movement and power, something certainly not to be hidden away in shame. For if the human feet are ugly and shameful, why are we not also self-conscious about our hands, and blush to think of holding it out naked, to be grasped possibly by a total stranger? Our faces, too is there not something to be said for carefully hiding some of them, as some eastern women do under their system of purdah?

It is too much to hope, I suppose, for the liberation of human feet and the pa.s.sage of a statute declaring the wearing of footwear illegal. But it would be a great day for Ireland, and maybe an example to the world, if such a measure were pa.s.sed by Dil eireann, with every man-jack of a TD sitting there with his bare spawgs outstretched, for all to see and admire.

The b.u.t.t of my gut.

All readers of this newspaper (well, some of them) will be delighted to see me back here and at action stations, a bigger divil than I was before.

The cause of my absence was illness, which befell me through no fault of my own.

A person who insists on telling you at great length and with enormity of repet.i.tion all about his operation is regarded the world over as a bore, but I insist on doing that because, one, my account may be of great value and warning to the reader and, two, I had TWO operations.

Grapes and Paperbacks.

Think what that means. It means two sessions of preoperative scrutiny, two trips to the table, two prolonged sessions of convalescence punctuated with presents of unripe grapes, detestable marzipan sweets, cigarettes (for me, a non-smoker!), tattered paperback books I had already read these were all unwelcome presents from friends plus, for 12 hours a day, the roars from two radios in my small ward, each going full blast on different stations.

I don't suppose I need add anything about being pulled out of my drugged sleep at 6 in the morning and being invited by the sweet nurse to try and wash in a basin of tepid water.

I don't think Purgatory could be worse than a term in certain hospitals, though wild horses would not drag from me the name of this particular hospital nor the names of the distinguished doctors and surgeons. But I may say it did not happen in the Counties Carlow, Kildare, Laois or Wicklow, where the people seem to be very self-conscious about hospitals.

How It Began.

For some weeks I hadn't been feeling too well in myself and one night got a frightful pain in the pit of my stomach, a bit to the right-hand side. I called in the nearest local doctor, and after humming and hawing, taking my temperature and tapping me here and there, he said I was a very bad case of appendicitis, and would have to go to hospital immediately and have the appendix out.

Well, what could I say or do? Nothing but comply.

In I went and, after a day or so, the job was done. There was hardly any pain until I found myself back in bed again and woefully awake. Pain is hardly the word for that feeling in my side, and it was just awful when I happened to cough or sneeze.

The other pain (I mean the two-radio one) was almost unendurable. But in the evening time they gave me the needle morphine, I suppose.

A Naggin.

I was there 'recovering' for over a week, but, in truth, I was fading away. As the days pa.s.sed I was being given more and more build-up food but continuing to look more and more like a scarecrow. Moreover, I would get terrible pains after a meal. A friend smuggled in a naggin of whiskey, but this was the price of me, for I nearly pa.s.sed out.

Eventually, against the doctor's advice, I decided to get up and crawl home. If I was going to die, surely home was the proper place for that?

Last Throw.

Eventually friends advised me to see a specialist, a pract.i.tioner so-called because he specialises in high fees. This man examined me and sent me into another hospital to be X-rayed. He told me afterwards that the lower part of my main gut was in a terrible state because 'some a.s.s had cut out a perfectly healthy appendix.' Well, what could be done, I asked. He walked up and down beside the bed, pondering this.

'You see,' he said at last, 'you should have that appendix.

'Grafting on an appendix is almost unknown as a feat of surgery. It is almost certain that your body would reject somebody else's appendix. Still, if somebody very like you turned up genuinely requiring to have his appendix removed, we might risk the transplant.'

'Somebody very like me?' I queried. 'Well, I am youngish, dark, with lovely wavy hair, clean-cut features, strong, athletic figure, perfect teeth.'

b.u.t.t of My Gut.

He went away at this, frowning a bit, but rushed in two days later saying that the very man had arrived, and that the operation or rather the two operations would be performed that evening. And so it was done. The newly severed appendix of my unknown benefactor was sewn on to the b.u.t.t of my gut ... and the transplant worked! I began to eat every bit of food I got as well as apples, plums, sticks of raw rhubarb, chickory and celery I sent out for, and was never with less than half a dozen bottles of stout under the bed. I told the two radio maniacs that if they did not close down their stations for 7 hours a day, I would get up and thrash the life out of them So there you are I'm all right again. It's easy to sleep, Ernie O'Malley used to say, on another man's wound. It's even easier on another man's appendix.

Our own troubles.

Well, well, well things get tougher. Here we are in the second half of March, most of us perished with the cold or soaked to the skin (or both, maybe) and we already have the privilege of finding ourselves in Summer Time. But can we ignore watches, newspapers, schedules of TV shows and go quietly into hibernation? No, indeed! We also have a General Election on our hands. In a way, that laborious procedure could be regarded as one for the election of a General. But if now-unarmed political Generals are nowadays not so numerous as they used to be, here is a question: apart from outgoing deputies who have, or think they have, cast-iron safe seats, is there any large body of citizens in the country who actually welcome and enjoy a General Election? (I know that the question sounds like asking anybody in the hall at the large overflow meeting who is fond of whiskey, purple hearts or goof b.a.l.l.s to raise one hand ... but the question is serious. And the answer is YES.) Those citizens are schoolchildren of both s.e.xes, mostly those attending national schools. It may be very cynical but on the appointed day those lyceums of lower learning are turned into polling stations; the homes of innocence temporarily become part of the grim apparatus of politics and the scheming of sundry chancers.

Open Secrets.

One could write a lot about the oddities and anomalies of the Irish election. Bribery is illegal, for instance but only in the sense of giving a voter money or an expensive 'present'. But if a candidate swears that, if elected, he will get a job with the civil service or the local authority for the voter's son, that is just harmless electioneering blather and not seriously regarded by the law. The voter's choice on the ballot paper is strictly secret, with a special little caboose within which to mark the paper, but voters are whisked to the polling station free in cars plastered with party banners. True, such voters could cheat in the sense of voting for the other party, but in fact how many do ... and how many feel conscience-bound to repay the transportation kindness with a vote? n.o.body knows the answer to that. And if the ballot is secret by law, why do so many people afflict and bore all others around them saying and emphasising for whom they are going to vote, a procedure which in some situations could lead to blows?

Consider this other thing known as canva.s.sing. A total stranger knocks at your door and straightway begins to explain to you the nature of your public duty, and for whom you must vote. The implication is that you are a feeble-minded, pitiable person, and that you know nothing of politics. I confess that this has never happened to myself but maybe the possibility of it is one of the reasons why I keep a good dog. Election literature, as it is called, is no problem. Put it aside to help light the fire.

Does standing strong liquor to strangers in a pub const.i.tute bribery? I can't say, but the practice is quite common with candidates, their agents, relations and chief supporters.

Would It Help?.

In some ballot arrangements (e.g. the universities and professional bodies) there is postal voting. Every person on the register receives by post a ballot paper, brief memo of instruction and a reply-paid envelope for the return of the paper, duly marked. Could a General Election be managed this way? It is very doubtful, I'm afraid. In a multi-vote household, old or blank-minded persons could be intimidated, or one rogue in the family could secretly snaffle all the papers and mark them to his own way of thinking. And even to this day there must be some illiterate voters.

I have not personally taken kindly to television but heretofore decent citizens who have forked out the 5 licence fee have had to endure the interruption of programmes by silly, shoddy advertising matter. For several coming weeks they will also have to face shabby all-too-familiar politicians letting out of them spiels about agriculture, tourism, the cost of living, the warble-fly menace, the Irish language, the Border, Ireland's destiny as a world force, the right price for malting barley, the suffering poor stuff that everybody has heard and read hundreds of times before.

I suggest that the main parties should be cla.s.sified as illegal organisations.

My own policy.

The reader must try to be forbearing and tolerant if I am seen to move with the times, and present this week a deluge of electioneering. True I am not standing (as the commercial traveller said during a fleeting visit to a pub in Tullow) but is that any reason why I should not give out a lot of nonsense at the top of my voice? Have I not got the same const.i.tutional right to talk rubbish publicly as (say) MacEntee? The fact is that anybody can play at this game, and indeed the game might be improved if everybody did.

Extravagance then might be kept within reasonable limits, and wild talk might perhaps be a little bit less wild. If a candidate swears that on election he will offer me 1,500 per acre for my 25 acre farm ( I haven't got any farm) I can't see why I must not myself offer everybody 3,000 an acre, even without being a candidate at all.

At times like this a few of us take a side-long, suspicious look at this thing we call democracy. Is it all a farce, a parlour game played for the benefit of those on the make? How many affirmations of eternal service, loyalty, sleepless days and nights of cruel work, would be forthcoming if a seat in the Dil did not carry with it a fat salary? I believe that the POSITIONS VACANT column in newspapers would have to be used to fill any position in parliament, and that the utmost inducement a candidate would offer the elector would be a promise to do his best to keep the sheriff off for 14 days. The truth is that life overtakes people even political people. In the bar in Leinster House it is possible to order a drink and pay for it yourself! (Honest! I've tried it.) My Promises.

Let us a.s.sume then, that I am not going up and that you are not going up but that we insist on exercising the Walter Mitty in us all to make silly promises to which n.o.body can hold us. What sort of a gaudy future would you paint? How glorious would the Ireland of tomorrow be? What costly baubles would you offer the lady next door? I am not sure that I would trust you, even in the matter of meaningless boasts. Probably you would undertake to have delivered to her a set of pots and pans made of solid gold, without stopping to consider that gold has a low melting point and would be useless for cooking a breakfast with.

Why not be BIG and offer a dwelling house made entirely of 18-carat gold (which contains a fair amount of strengthening copper), a stratoflight between Shannon and New York for two years non-stop, a knockdown to Danny Kaye and a ticket for two to the races at Leopardstown on New Year's Day, 1986? Now that basketful should pull in a few votes, for there is nothing illegal about daydreaming.

Yet somehow I feel that human cravings have little to do with gold, parades of opulence or fairy G.o.dmothers. The things that people REALLY want vary from day to day. Yesterday I asked a friend (while I had this article in mind) what above all else he would like at that moment, both of us being seated in a bus.

'Listen,' he said. 'If you have a magic wand, prepare to wave it now. The shoe on my right foot has been cutting the life out of me since I left home this morning. I sent it to be repaired and this is what I've got. I'm sure my sock is full of blood. I'm in a desperate condition. Have you any whiskey in your pocket?'

You see? Gold was far from his mind. He wanted (foolishly) to get away from pain. That seems to show that the aspirations of humanity are modest and that they have little use for the sun, moon and stars. To reduce humanity's yearnings to an ultimate low, I think it is adequate to say that humanity wants to be left alone, particularly by politicians. Since n.o.body takes their vapouring seriously, why have them?