Around this date ten years ago, it was my ambition to become Irish. To most Americans I suppose, being Scottish would seem enough. But the whole capitalist thing is all about choice - right? So why not change my nationality and try out another Celtic nation for a while? Around the same time the year before I was on holiday. I had fallen madly in love with an girl from Cork who was at the time, working as a barmaid in a hotel that I knew, in the far north of Scotland. It seemed perfect at the time. To me, the far north of Scotland is the most beautiful place in the world. It reminds me of that joke that people tell about San Francisco. You know, the one where the guy dies, goes to heaven, looks around and says "well, it's OK, but it's not San Francisco". I tend to think of the North of Scotland that way. I find the north heatbreakingly beautiful and my whole experience of that time in my life was a dizzy making cocktail of romantic attraction (both to an area and a person). I was also living in Swindon in England then. At the time, the move seemed the only way to advance my career. It was both the best professional move I ever made and the worst personal move I ever made. Swindon is as far different from the north of Scotland as you can imagine. I remember that holiday, arriving in Durness, sitting on the beach and thinking, "I'm now as far away from Swindon as I can get". So I think it was, in part, the contrast between the drab newtownness of Swindon and the wonder of the North that made this time in my life very special.
The relationship didn't go anywhere, but I remember thinking, OK I like these Irish girls, where can I find another - yes, Ireland! These thoughts of Irish women also got terribly mixed up with my huge Scottish nationalism that I was going through at the time. My friend from Aberdeen, who had lived in London since 1990, said that moving to England would turn me into a huge nationalist, as it had done for him - he was right. There's a whole other piece that I'll maybe write one day about the relationship between the various parts of the horrible old anachronistic legal and political entity that is the UK. But suffice to say, that a few years in England convinced me that, for the good of all the nations in the UK, we had to break it up and go our own ways. So I became fascinated by the little nation to my left, who had managed that. I wanted to live there, be part of this brave little nation who had taken on the British establishment and (mostly) won, I wanted to find another woman like the red haired vision from Cork, and I wanted to get as far way from England as I could. At the time, my own home nation seemed a little pathetic alongside Ireland, grumbling away about England, but never really having the guts to make a go of it on their own. There is yet another revival of nationalism back home again at the moment, but I doubt if it will come to anything. So I had many short trips over to Ireland at the beginning of 1997, but failed to get a job. The strategy changed when I finally got a job back in Glasgow in 1998 and realised that I maybe was getting too fundamentalist about the whole nationalism thing. Moving back to Scotland seemed to give me a much needed reality check on that score.
So wind the clock forward 10 years, and it's St Patrick's day in the San Francisco Bay area. When I first came here in the late spring of 2005, I liked the Irish bars here. As a Celt, who felt pretty lost in this huge new country, I felt a little at home in them. There seems to be an Irish bar in every downtown here (OK not Santa Clara, as they misplaced their downtown in the '60's), but in almost every downtown, there are three within walking distance of each other in Sunnyvale! This is interesting on a number of levels. A nation of only 3.5 million (not counting the diaspora) seems to have a huge influence on the USA (particularly the bars of the USA). My secret view is that Americans still feel that alcohol is a slightly shameful thing, so they prefer the Irish to take the blame for alcohol and have outsourced the identity of the alcohol providing establishments to the Irish.
Most Irish bars here don't have much in common with bars in Ireland. The Irish bar here in San Jose has as much atmosphere as the inside of a refrigerator. When I first came here I was jealous of this Irish cultural domination, after all, the fellow Celtic nation of Scotland has a bigger population (even bigger if you count the Poles now!), so where are all the Scottish pubs? We have an even more dubious record than the Irish have, in terms of our national self destruction over the love of alcohol, the West of Scotland is the alcohol related disease capital of Europe - so how did the Irish get all their bars into the downtowns of America and where are all ours? The longer I live here though, the more grateful I am that the Irish have colonised this space here. One of the Irish bars in downtown mountain view has all these black and white pictures of poor starving peasant farmers (presumably from the late 19th century) and a big oil painting of a ship being loaded with peasants, off to the new world. I haven't a clue what your average American makes of these pictures. I find them pretty offensive. It seems like the Irish have prostituted their own troubled past, and now all sorts of atrocities they suffered seem somehow devalued as, 150 years on, they are turned into kitch to put on the wall of bars in America.
So I was supposed to be at a party in San Francisco last night - but at my age, I sometimes run out of energy, so I decided to stay in the South Bay and have a quiet pint and go to my favourite Chinese restaurant. I forgot it was St. Patrick's day. I was at the St. Patrick's day parade in Dublin in 2001, which was the year that they had to have it on a different day because of the chaos that the outbreak of foot and mouth disease caused that year. I had a great time. OK most of the floats at the parade were pretty boring, but the atmosphere in the pubs was terrific and I have fond memories of standing outside the pub on the banks of the Liffey with a southern comfort in my hand, watching the fireworks. So I have some nice memories of St Patrick's day and last year (which was my first in the US), I kinda looked forward to it.
However, I'm now developing a number of problems with St Patricks Day , American style. Strangely enough, this is the only day of the year where you can walk into a bar here on a Saturday night and the bar is busy. That may seem strange to people outside of this country (especially those in Scotland and Ireland), but most of the bars here in the Bay Area are empty on a Saturday night. But on St Patrick's Day, for once a year, the bars here seem more like a regular Saturday night in Scotland. Where do all these American drinkers suddenly come from? It's maybe just another part of the outsourcing alcohol from America to Ireland. Just more so, on St Patrick's day.
America's relationship to terrorism changed forever on 911, rightly so. However, as someone who grew up with daily news stories of innocent people getting blown to pieces by the provisional IRA, it seems astounding that American's think it's OK to play Irish folk music containing lyrics glorifying the IRA. Hearing this last night made me feel physically sick. Come on Mountain View, have a bit more sense. The IRA used to bomb bars in Birmingham, do you think you should be promoting them in your bar? I wanted to go up and ask the bar staff if we could have a song next about Al-Queda, maybe one about the Basque Separatists, maybe even a whole terrorist party mix, but I think that would have gone over their heads. St Patrick's day here seems a whole cultural muddle, as much of the American interpretation of European culture seems.
So being unable to handle any more songs about the glorious freedom fighters who used to leave bombs in bars and litter bins in railway stations, I went to the other Irish bar, which is only two doors down. As I sat looking at a young guy with a green hat on with lights that flashed on and off, I wondered what that great figure of the Irish struggle, Michael Collins, would have made of all this, or if there is life after assassination, makes of this. Before I'm accused of muddled thinking here, I have to state that I make a huge distinction between the Irish Republican War in the early 20th century and the Provisional IRA campaign on of the 70's and '80's. I think, back in Collins's time, that his tactics were justified as the Irish were backed into a corner and had to fight. I think the partition of Ireland was a horrible, but maybe inevitable, mistake. The campaigns of the provisional IRA had their justifications in the massive discrimination that the Catholic population suffered, post partition. However, the Provisionals dragged on with a terrorist campaign when they could have made much more progress through the ballot box, and they degenerated into gangsterism. Many innocent people were killed needlessly before the provos arrived at the conclusion that the political process was best - if they had arrived at this conclusion a lot earlier it would have been better for all of us.
So having cleared that up, I have to say that (controversial though may be) Collins has always been a kind of hero to me. So whatever would Michael have said of St Patrick's day in the Bay Area? I think he would be pleased that Ireland is now (mostly) free and that there is celebration of his country every year, that people around the world can enjoy. I think he would be bemused by the strange cultural muddle of plastic shamrocks everywhere and those green hats with the lights on. But I really think I he'd want to switch off the pro-terrorism songs and move on. Though he caused a lot of violence, he died trying to make peace. The original IRA was a means to an end. Once the end was achieved, there was no need to glorify the violence.
So let's raise a glass for Ireland, remember beautiful Irish girls (especially those from Cork), and be glad Americans seem to have an excuse to fill the bars for one day of the year. But lets remember that there was a lot of lives wasted In Ireland and the UK and that it's maybe not tasteful to listen to songs that glorify that, whilst you are drinking your Guinness under the black and white pictures of the poor peasants, and wearing your green flashy light hat.
Christy Moore and Bono wrote a beautiful song about the Irish troubles. I used to listen to it a lot when I was in love with my red haired barmaid from Cork. There is a line in it - "... there's some high ground that's not worth taking and some connections are not worth making, there's an old church bell no longer ringing and some old songs are simply not worth singing". I'll drink to that.
