Same fella again
That Dublin/knacker accent just kills me: I'm reminded of the last time I took a walk across the city centre (September 15th 2025) from the top of Grafton Street past Trinity and over the bridge into the badlands of the north-side: Talbot and Henry St nearby the GPO, and then up to Parnell where I flagged a taxi and headed to the airport for a beer instead of in the city. It was horrifying, I felt like I came from another fucking planet, not another EU member state.
The sense of dread and danger on the streets, the dirty looks from men congregating on street corners in large numbers, eyeballing everything and everyone, looking for weakness or distraction before moving in for the kill. The dirt, waste bins overflowing onto the pavements, all this spitting as a nasty habit/means of showing how 'hard' one is. The queues at the McDonald's and the piles of wrappers outside with the seagulls screeching and swooping, filthy pigeons with burned off talons from the electrical cables, and fuckers with huge vicious dogs on short leads, also giving dirty looks like they were dying to hoose the bull/staff raging canine at you.
The take-aways, dozens and dozens of them on the main street. The smells: chips, vinegar, horrible vape smells, burgers, piss, endless fucking piss-stinking lane-ways. Chewing gum embedded into the concrete. Dead rats in gutters, bellies swollen from rat poison. Fucking hell. I was born into THIS? Jesus fuck, how I endured Ireland for twenty years is still a mystery to me. Never felt so utterly bereft of national Irish identity as that day. Couldn't wait to get onto the plane and take a deep breath that didn't stink of Ireland. Fuck that.
Just watching those two in the shop doorway going at each other reminded me of the endless fucking divides in all sections of Irish life:
Northern Ireland v Republic uvv Urrland
Culchies v Jackeens
North-siders v South-siders
Catholic v Protestant
Working class v middle class
Knackers v estate heads
Homeless v themselves
Tents v Doorways
Jaze fucking help yiz all over there.
I couldn't endure that for more than a few days.
The sense of relief when I landed in Helsinki was enormous.
Like I just dodged a hail of bullets and a few grenades tossed in my direction.
Then it dawned on me: now I have NO family at all in Dublin: we all left.
That came as a bit of a shock mixed with deep relief and a sort of '
we all made it out.. ..thank fuck for that..'
The nearest family base I have to Dublin city now is in Kilmacanogue, at the foot of the Wicklow mountains, one of my favourite places in Ireland.
Then the brother's spread out in the quiet regions of Kildare: two and a half acres, thick bush surrounds with two old stone cottages rebuilt and joined together, ultra-modern everything indoors, peace, calm, that vague Irish country smell of slurry and cow-pats in the distance, gentle rain on soft grass, outdoor barbecue under a roof, sound system connected to every room bar the bedrooms. Lots of my paintings and other pieces on the hallway walls. The framed oil portrait of my Mam as a younger girl on the lounge wall, pride of place with tea-candles lit every evening beneath it. A great sense of comfort, of security, timelessness.
That, I miss.
Dublin - not so much.