Sunday 27 May 2012

Concerning country folk

As I imagine it, a plume of grey exhaust splutters noisily from the back of an old Opal Corsa. On a quiet country road, the roaring of the ancient car pierces the balmy silence of late night. Not too many exciting things happen in Borris An Ossery, a countryman would be the first person to admit that, but like most other anti-urban field slickers, they have a swelled sense of civic pride for the backwater that they live in.

Although it may seem like an arrogant statement, and also one predictable of a Dubliner, fuck-all happens outside of the pale. The hate towards us Dubs is very deep-rooted and vehement, but we can hardly contain our laughter with mouths full of caviar and chai latte. Sure enough we rimmed England and became a powerful Primate City, but is there not more to admire in prosperity than there is in having a threatening amount of Brown Sauce pumped around your body and going out on a Friday night with the high hopes of fingering someone under the age of 40?

I'm sure all of my pseudo-British assumptions are incorrect and unfounded, but trying to get a rise out of a Bog Bitch or a Turf Eating Grass Daddy is one of the finer things in life.

I'm sure my country friends and acquaintences have never really crept into a barn on a cold and dreary November morning to bump uglies with various barnyard critters, but its a hell of a better mental image than the idyllic and almost Americanized Irish farmer lifestyle.

I'm fairly sure that using science and surveys it was found that every woman on the West Coast of Ireland is named Mary. They are very fond of the name. I would imagine this is because it does not have many letters and thus avoids confusion. I'm sure Hedge Schools are brilliant in their own right and I'm sure the teachers are experts in their own field (Geddit?) but that form of education is not going to compare to a lovely good protestant schooling in Trinity.

I recall the first time I went to Galway with a friend to go to a punk show. We sat on a bus with no toilet for nigh on 5 hours. The first half of the journey had me terrified. I thought that once I left the civilized order and safety of Dublin, my world would become a Deliverance-esque nightmare. I shivered nervously in my seat, pondering important issues such as "How many Traveller's dicks can I take before they leave me alone?" and "Do they have the internet once you get past Meath?".

When I find myself thinking of Dublin, I don't exactly think of a shimmering jewel of a capital city where people have monocles, cars that run on vegan food and bees on strings to sting the lower classes, but I do think of a colourful accent, a certain simple eloquence and a tacky neon night-life. Although at heart I would like to imagine my city as a place where I wake up to the smell of cooking bacon, followed promptly by fellatio from a machine with customizable settings (patent pending). I can be content with a hangover and those Cadbury diabetes bars. Also water. Water is fucking golden when you're hungover. I will speak more of this in a moment...

Just to veer off for a second... the golden Cadbury heart bypass squares are the best thing on Earth. If you told me that for ever one bar that was consumed, a host of starlings would fly into power lines, it would not slow down my intake of sugar saturated dream puffs. Not even for a second. At this stage of unhealthy consumption, I must be their best customer.

I'm sure country mornings are awful. This is how I picture them anyway...

Picture the scene. You wake up crazy hungover after a night of Stella pounding, Jager chugging and a holocaust of cheap Chinese food to finish the night. Although you only went to bed in the early hours of the morning, you have woken up around the time that an elderly person rises for Mass. Within seconds the pain has begun. You ask yourself questions. "At what stage in the night did a rat or rats crawl down my throat, become lodged and die?". You sit up hurriedly, thus dizzying yourself. The posters of the GAA superstars and page 3 girls adorning the walls seem to fuse together in the haze. This gives you a great idea for a sitcom. Being the entrepenurial countryman/woman that you are, you reach for some paper on your bedside locker. You realize that you are sharing your bed with a middle aged woman. Nothing new. Average country weekend, but you wonder at what stage she lobbed the gob and where? Most likely Supermacs. The horrific site of this portrait of midlife causes you to forget the sitcom idea. What you need now more than anything is water. Water. So simple. Everything will be ok once you have obtained H2O. Well, TOUGH FUCKING TITS. YOU'RE IN THE COUNTRYSIDE SO YOU CAN'T DRINK THE FUCKING WATER. One/several cow(s) have died in the water recently. An apathetic farmer drank silage and pumped harmful chemicals into the water. Excuses excuses.

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