Apologies and Such

It seems I haven't handled the move over to a new home as well as I should have - it looks like the feed is broken, which means it's possible that no-one is actually reading this. The blog can still be found at scrawledinwax.com, but it looks like Feedburner dislikes the move and won't work for the next few weeks.

Apologies folks. I hope to get things sorted out as soon as I can.

-Nav

SiW will be Disappearing For a Bit (But Back Soon!)

Moving things over to Wordpress as we speak, so the blog will be reverting to its original address at scrawledinwax.blogspot.com for the time being. I believe the RSS feed should still work, so hopefully things will be okay during the transition period.

Things should be up and running by Monday or Tuesday. This (scrawledinwax.com/feed/) should be the feed address for the new blog (but don't quote me on that ;) ), but it won't work until the new blog goes live.

Thanks so much for reading this Scrawled in Wax. I'll do my best to make it a better, more interesting and more attractive place to visit.

-Nav

A New Look, A New Focus...

Well folks - my travelling is done for now and it is high time for this blog to become something a little more serious and full -time. To that end, I have (I admit, a little half-heartedly) given the blog a little green makeover and hope to move this thing closer to what that little subtitle suggests - thoughts on the present from a homeless space.
What I mean is to simply speak about, discuss and point to the ever shifting landscape of modern life and popular culture without getting too rigidly bogged down in left and right politics.

Of Monkeys, Goats and Coffee Cups...

Now, there are those who might despair upon seeing the unending grey out the window. It was, after all, our day off, and it seems our days off have a precious knack of following days of glorious sunshine spent locked in the craftshop with soul-crushing, day-long deluges. This, it seemed, might be yet another spent watching a lot of TV.

But, since the rain was light and patchy and precious treasures awaited us, we thought why not brave the elements and get out and have a little fun? So, we donned our waterproofs and headed down the N59 to Letterfrack, the closest town to Kylemore. But a mere one-hour walk away, the ‘Frack (as we have named it) is a tiny village with one shop, two hostels and three pubs. And you might well ask what in such a place could be so illustrious and prized that it tempted us to trudge down a narrow highway for an hour through the soaking Irish drizzle? Simple. My Irish holy trinity: Fish, Chips and Guinness.

So off we trekked down the N59, cars whizzing by precariously close and the clouds threatening to burst at any moment. Yet despite the dreary weather, I was happy. And as I am wont to do in such times, I was singing and repeating the same snippets of a couple of songs over and over and, naturally, was driving poor Roxanne mad in the process. This particular instance, the tunes were supplied by the Arctic Monkeys, my infatuation with whom, I am afraid to report, is probably the onset of a very early midlife crisis. Nonetheless, the Monkeys rolled round and round my head and Roxanne’s exasperation grew and grew.

At about the moment she was to push me into the next oncoming car, we came upon an ominous stretch of road bordered by thick bushes and for some reason, we moved silently for a stretch. As we walked close to the shrubs, suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large black and beige blur. It was accompanied by a loud snort and, at least what at the time, seemed to be the thunder of hooves. Before we had even time to react, three animals, each the size of a deer, had moved very quickly and very loudly to a safe distance about twenty feet away – though whose safety was at stake is up for debate. These beasts each had horns a couple of inches in diameter and over a foot high. And while we later learned that they were merely surprisingly large billy goats, make no mistake: I was glad a barbed wire fence separated us. They were not happy we had invaded their space. There they stood, starting a mean, hard stare, chewing disapprovingly, obviously annoyed.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later that it dawned on me what was happening at that moment: more than twenty years after we first met, here again were Three Billy Goats, Gruff.

But, since they posed no threat, on we happily trudged. The goats having overcome the Monkeys, we returned to chatting as the light drizzle turned to a light rain. And it was then that the truly odd occurred. As we turned a sharp bend, I had an odd feeling, the sort you might get on seeing a crowd of people in which you know a face but just can’t pick out. Something very familiar had caught my eye. I looked down and to my right. And there it was. It was small and red with a brown top. At first, I couldn’t believe it. I mean, it just couldn’t be. Could it? But there it sat, as plain as day. On a Connemara roadside, there sat a Tim Hortons coffee cup.

Now, for those not from Canada, allow me to explain. Tim Hortons is an utterly ubiquitous Canadian coffee-and-doughnut chain and is perhaps the Canuck equivalent of the Irish pub: if there is a town then there is a Tim Hortons, and everyone, young and old, rich and poor, gather there for generally unhealthy snacks and generally good coffee. And, apart from some recent openings in American towns near the border, it is an almost exclusively Canadian thing, perhaps the only thing shared by Canadians from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Exactly how odd and disconcerting it was to find one, not only in Ireland, but in one of its least inhabited areas, is a little hard to explain. This was akin to finding a Denny’s menu on your way up Kilimanjaro or a Gregg’s sandwich wrapper in the Grand Canyon.

Theories raced through our minds. First the obvious: perhaps they had opened a chain here, started EU franchises to take advantage of the Irish economic boom? But wait, no. There was the classic ‘English on one side and French on the other’, a dead giveaway of a Canadian product – and also the same reason I know how to say ‘honey’, ‘less fat’ and ‘free!’ in French (miel, moins gras et gratuit!, d’accord?). Other ideas formed. Perhaps someone had a car from Canada shipped over and was cleaning out while driving down a highway in Connemara and, despite having gone to the trouble of shipping and then waiting for an automobile to the cross the ocean, couldn’t wait the few minutes for the next spot with a rubbish bin and threw the cup out the window. Or not.

Still. An explanation was necessary. I mean, the theme from The Twilight Zone was playing in my head. I was scared. If a Timmy’s cup could show up in a remote area of Ireland, then everything I knew might be wrong. Maybe the moon landing was a hoax. Maybe they are hiding something at Roswell. Maybe right-wingers aren’t wrong about absolutely everything. I mean, if this was possible, anything was. A terrifying, enormous world opened up before me.

Sadly, it was a lot of worry and speculation for nothing, all our mind-expanding conspiracy theories for nought. As it turns out, there is a Tim Hortons in Ireland, in Castlebar, a tiny town an hour north of here. They must just ship the cups over from Canada. So in the end, it was hardly a mystery at all. The cup wasn’t, as I had theorised, from a lost military plane, downed by UFOs while headed to Afghanistan. Our terrifying horned creatures, that at the time seemed like rare Irish gazelles, were simply goats. All in all, it was very ordinary stuff, merely something you’d find in a bin and an animal you’d find eating out of one.

Still, as we sat down for lunch, we knew none of this. At that point, staring at each other across a worn, wooden table, we were adventurers, intrepid survivors of a beastly encounter and discoverers of an arcane and cryptic bit of Canadiana. Meanwhile, the head on my Guinness was thick and creamy and the fish was lovely and fresh.

And it’s funny to think about. Before I left, I hoped for grand adventures, for incredible tales to recount on my grand and triumphant return. But there we sat in the glow of the simplest of things: good, plain food, a well-poured pint and the warm feeling that a piece of home had secretly followed us, as if to show us, to help us remember .

Staring into the fire, I sipped on my stout. A young lad on holiday made a lot of noise as his parents enjoyed their meal and lavished attention on him. Outside, cars whizzed by on the N59 as they always do, and out the window the drizzle hadn’t let up. It just kept coming down, in soft, fine sheets of grey. A simple day, really. A simple, beautiful, ordinary day.

Just 'Nav' is Fine...

A couple weeks ago, as a precious day-off rolled around, I found myself a little happier than usual. And while it’s possible I was just eager to relax or spend my time as I wished, I think another reason lay behind my good mood: for one full day, I wouldn’t have to hear someone mangle my name.

Now, it’s not that I think my name is particularly special. In certain parts of India, it is a rather common one. It’s not quite a Mike or Chris in its ubiquity, but it’s up there, sort of a Colin or a Brad. Still, I am rather fond of my name. It is, after all, the one my parents chose for me and, particularly when we are separated by the Atlantic, they’re pretty alright. I even like it after learning that its original Sanskrit meaning is, no lie, fresh butter; turns out that being compared to the luxurious creaminess of butter is quite the compliment in Panjabi. So, perhaps you can see why I get a little defensive of the seven letters that form my moniker.

And lest I make myself seem the arrogant outsider, I realise that in this corner of the world my name is a little unusual. So it’s not as if I am entirely unsympathetic. Yet, despite my diligent correction of every spelling mistake (and there are many) and my frequent and humble reminders – “just Nav is fine” – my coworkers still have a knack for screwing it up like no others I have encountered.

Yes, in my days of fun sticking price-tags on things, Navneet has become Navette, Naveet or Nav-Net, which is either a great name for a future website or a new product designed to ensnare people who are just linguistically-challenged. It’s why I stick with simple three-letter ‘Nav’. How might one possibly screw that up? Unfortunately, good old Nav – which even ‘if-your-name-isn’t-John-I’m-baffled’ cockneys could grasp – becomes Naz, Nad, Nat, Raz, Rad or, my personal fave, Rat. I couldn’t afford a dentist when I was younger and I’m a little sensitive if you don’t mind…

I think I would be a lot more understanding if the Irish in general weren’t so accomplished at baffling spellings and pronunciations of their own. They do, after all, pronounce names spelt ‘Padraic’ like ‘Porrick’ (which sounds like it could be the scum left behind when you cook porridge) or, much worse, try and spell O’Sullivan “O’Shollibhian”. Okay fine, it’s about reclaiming a culture that had been systematically erased and oppressed for centuries, I get it. But I sorta’ figure that if you can pronounce things like that, then you should be able to handle three letters strung together phonetically. Unfortunately, no such luck.

But perhaps the most entertaining confusion is when, trying to catch my attention, a co-worker will sputter out a quick succession of names hoping to land on the right one, resulting in the Razrette-Navreep-Jazneet trio - to which I always wish to respond with a simple ‘bless you’.

These hopeless endeavours, however, are not without their benefits. I mean, at least it gives me something to work with if the time ever comes for baby names.

So, what do y’all think of Ratjeep for a girl?

New Photographs...

For those interested, new photographs are up on Flickr at http://flickr.com/photos/scrawledinwax or just here. My skills in photography are quite limited, but I hope you enjoy them.

My Route Home

The mountain that Kylemore Castle is cast against has a statue of Jesus on it about two-thirds of the way up. There’s a path that leads up to it. You hike up and, once in a while, you get a clear view through the trees and the ground has abandoned you. Once you’ve finally scrambled up the rocky path, all that is left to do is stand in the wind, let it fill you and suck in the picture-postcard view.

The only living things around are sheep who, ever so kindly, are just eager to stay out of your way. Other than that, it’s just rock and moss and grass. Sure, you know the craft shop is down there. You can see the buses pulling in to the carpark. But that’s not why we are here. Up here, this is the real stuff, what I was after – the green, the coast, the mountains, the country. Having only ever lived in cities, it is such an amazing, liberating thing to be enveloped by such a full emptiness, such a happy hollowness.

Far off, you might hear the tire-noise of an eighteen-wheeler. It’s a loud, harsh sound, the roar of big rubber on road. It’s the one sound that, no matter where you are in the world, reminds you that civilisation is never very far away. But surrounded by all that – the clouds kissing the tops of the peaks, the sunlight glinting off the lake’s deep grey-blue surface and the clean, windy silence – well, it may as well be a light-year away.

Why do we leave? Why do we run thousands of miles from home, only to then flee the city and perch ourselves atop mountains? What do you do when there is nowhere left to escape to, when you might as well be on the edge of the world? Why do we search out little bits of the real when, deep down, we knew it was a lie all along?

We leave because we love home. We leave so we can return.

So, here I live, among rocks and moss, mountain and sky. I've spoken of what my reasons were for working a tedious job, of what and why I sacrificed to find some peace and a little peace of mind.

So, here I live, among rocks and moss, mountain and sky, searching for something. I mean, I left didn’t I? I must be searching for something. For what other reason did I come here if not to find something?

So, among rocks and moss, mountain and sky, I seek, asking the questions I have asked for months now. But what was I hoping to find? Surely not that. I mean, what am I, sixteen? Jesus. All along, have I been looking for, christ, an answer? Have I really been that naïve? Dear God.

Questions, questions, this is all there is now, the emptiness of no answers and the wrong questions. People ask me questions and I give people answers. This is my role in life. I had a tourist couple ask me which of two hats was more Irish. I asked someone else this question and passed on their answer. So what? The important questions were answered in the asking. These surface queries merely filled the gaps between the decisions already made. My real questions? They were answered in leaving. We leave so we can return. We escape to rocks and moss, mountains and sky because home is the warm and brittle grey of the city.

We leave because we love home. We leave because home loves us.

The search for an answer is a wild goose chase. But one more question remains: why go back? Why return?

My fingers tremble as they type. The clouds are hovering low, weighing on the mountains out the window. This - this is more than a kiss. This is a shove.

My Route to Work

It seems that in my cryptic efforts to steer people towards this blog, I have created a little confusion over what exactly I am up to these days. And while the general answer remains the same as ever – I have absolutely no bloody idea – the specific answer is that in my efforts to escape and renew myself, I am now living and working at Kylemore Abbey, a tourist attraction in Connemara, a rugged and rather remote area in Western Ireland.

Kylemore Abbey, as the name suggests, is an active convent housing a dwindling number of Benedictine nuns. It started out life in the nineteenth century as Kylemore Castle, the home of Mitchell Henry, a wealthy English doctor who built it as a wedding present for his wife. In the early twentieth century it was put up for sale to pay off the debts of its then owners and was purchased by an order of Benedictine nuns who had fled Belgium during the First World War.

Long story short, opulent castle becomes a killer pad for some nuns who, between meditating and praying, open up an exclusive convent school for girls .Unfortunately, due to a lack of new women willing to get hitched to Christ, they have now announced the school’s impending closure. All the while though, a thriving business emerges entertaining visitors with tours of the castle and Victorian walled garden and, maybe most importantly, allowing them to end their tours at a craft shop housing both some of Ireland’s nicest and schlockiest souvenirs, proving once and for all that it is not the Protestants who have sole claim on being Christianity’s capitalists.

The craft shop is where I work. The job, as was expected, is a little draining and boring. I have spent entire eight-hour days putting price stickers on things. The only upside to this is that, as someone on the way to his third degree in English, the position makes almost full use of my multifarious employable skills.

And though I do make fun of the tacky souvenirs, I can’t wait to take advantage of my staff discount. Despite the shop’s necessary stock of shamrocks, leprechauns that sing and products showcasing the world-famous Irish skill in producing stuffed toy sheep, it is nonetheless chock full of cool stuff: hand-made pottery created on-site, elegant but still with fingerprints on it; marble mined from quarries you’ve driven by; and preserves handmade by the nuns using fruit they grow right here in the garden.

But I also think my own uneasy relationship with modern consumerism is paralleled in my views on the abbey’s means of survival: this place of beauty, contemplation and altruism is sustained by a fascination with goods, ownership and authenticity, an unholy trio if ever there was one. But perhaps I’m being naïve. Perhaps, the sort of ‘uneasy taste’ such an idea leaves is a relic, the sort of thing that sounds great in a lefty newspaper sound-bite but has little real relevance. Who knows, maybe ‘hypocrisy’ is a dualist anachronism whose power is spent in the pluralist present.

Anyway, why did I come here? Well first, go here (go to the set labelled ‘Aran Islands' etc). A lot of that is my route to work. I know: it sounds like I’m being smug. But I think that keeping things in perspective is important. The nuns own a shop to keep up their way of life. The reason I agreed to such an unexciting job – other than the total lack of rent – is the fact that my walk to work and back consists of walking by a castle and a lake surrounded by mountains. Yes you’re right – sometimes, the eight or nine hours between these two short walk blows harder than an experienced hooker – but man is it ever worth it. Those sunsets you see? They happen a couple of times a week.

Watching them, I can finally feel a lot lift. A few years back when I was in Nova Scotia, I said I felt the roar of Toronto lifting from my ears. Now I’m starting to feel the roar of all the cities I know slowly dissipating. I am constantly surrounded by a silence, an emptiness, a chalice of deep nothing into which I can empty the contents of my mind and let it swish around. And one by one, the concrete and steel clamps around my head are starting to loosen.

Yeah. I guess I can work a crappy job for that.

Is this a Movie?

I was having trouble making the leap: that where I stood, three-thousand years ago, some Celtic warriors might have joked with each other, drinking mead as they stared out over the ocean, guarding the land they called their own. As I looked around all I could see were scads of French schoolchildren, loud and boisterous. There were tourists with cameras, old fellows sporting enormous lenses who obviously took their photography very seriously. And we sat there as well, me having a picnic of bread and cheese and apple. But surely this wasn’t a fort, not the sort you might see in a movie about Celtic battles – the type with scenes of hard, battering rain and the sky ominous and grey, where men in armour swagger around holding axes and, I dunno’, goblets and chalices, .. This couldn’t actually be one of those could it?

Well, yes it was one of those. But I never did manage to make the jump of imagination required. Not that I didn’t enjoy my time at Dun Aengus, a Celtic fort whose oldest areas are from three millennia ago. Its high stone walls (the ‘new’ part - only about 1500 years old) are perched on the edge of a cliff on the west side of Inishmore that literally looks out over the Atlantic, so it’s pretty damn impressive. But somehow I just couldn’t picture what it had been like, even though I was standing right there.

I don’t know for sure, but I’m gonna’ guess that part of the reason for my lack of imagination was a uniquely modern phenomenon: that we have seen copies so many times - in films, documentaries, in digital photos, computer games etc. – that it is hard to envision history as anything but fantasy or static document. I don’t mean this literally, but I found it hard to make the leap because the real thing wasn’t a movie. Know what I mean?

Walter Benjamin (link) wrote about an analogous situation in art, but found it quite positive. In “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, he suggested that the ability to make perfect, indistinguishable copies of art destroyed the idea of the ‘pure and sacred’ original. This he says, rather than being the travesty purists say it is, leads to the democratisation of Art – since there’s no longer an original, access to which is controlled by ‘those in charge’, we are all free to make our own political interpretations of Art, unbounded by the aesthetic and moral constraints of those who once determined what was ‘Art’. I’m oversimplifying, but you get the idea.

I like his argument. But in terms of history and its place in our lives, I still think it’s sad how hard it is for me and others to get all the pictures we’ve seen out of our heads – that I walk around an ancient Celtic structure and all I can think is “man, the weather sure is nice out today”. I’m not sure quite how to get out of the habit and I feel I would have gotten a lot more out of my trip to Dun Aengus had I been able to.

But we also, quite literally, took the road less travelled to a site called the Black Fort. It was a similar place: an ancient fort made of stone walls, perched on a cliff face looking out over the enormity of the Atlantic. But, with not a soul around, the bright sky turned dark just as we reached the cliff’s edge and, peering out over the unguarded three-hundred foot drop, I suddenly caught a glimpse of life two or three thousand years back.

Hm. A little solitude and, for a sec, allowing yourself be swallowed up by sky and time – and suddenly, history comes alive.

Photos posted when I can.

Photographs

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to upload the photos of the Aran Islands. But, as a substitute, here are some snaps of Edinburgh, the Isle of Skye, and some of Western Ireland (including Kylemore Abbey!)

Enjoy and comment away...

Link to Photos - Click Here

Aran Bliss...

The incessant hard rain; the never-ending canopy of grey, oppressive clouds that weigh on one’s mind and soul; the isolation upon the rough, stony landscape, endless fields and rock, the aching, barren solitude… Holy Crap! I’m home!

I am of course being a little silly. While it’s true that on stepping off the ferry onto Inishmore, we were met by strong winds and hard rain, only to arrive wet and tired at the hostel to find out the only place serving food was a twenty-five minute walk back into town, things quickly took a turn for the better. The next morning, the rain had disappeared and one could even see patches of blue in the sky, something one imagines is quite rare here. In fact, even a case of mild food poisoning – from the aforementioned dinner that, yes, did require a twenty-five minute walk back to the hostel in the incomprehensibly pitch black and resulted in a night of having a stomach strangely akin to a witches’ cauldron – couldn’t put a damper on things. Nope. Things are just that cool here. And what I said about being home? Well, there might be a little bit of truth to that.

But perhaps a little background is in order. Inishmore is the largest of the three Aran Islands, a small but oft-visited trio off the west coast of Ireland. They are famous for a few reasons which, in no particular order are: their spectacular landscapes, with amazing, expansive views of the ocean; their criss-crossing patterns of ancient stone walls that make the island look like a patchwork quilt from the air, each one a testament to literally centuries of hard work removing rock from the ground to create farmland; the fact that they are an area in which Irish is the first language spoken and that the locals fiercely protect their culture and heritage; and that this hardy population of under a thousand lives side-by-side with Celtic forts that date back as far as four-thousand years, the whole place just steeped in continuous history at every corner.

So, you can see the appeal. Imagine passing a four-thousand year old stone structure as you biked to school every morning. Think about being able to stand in a stone circle built by hand millennia ago, you having your little picnic where people lived and fought and died thousands of years ago. Or being able to clamber up a cliff to listen to the Atlantic below you, its vista spread out in front of you like a visual buffet, the sky impossibly huge above you.

But the thing I like most about Inishmore so far? Its particular brand of deafening, desolate quiet. You can literally stop at any second and, casting your ear to the wind, hear almost nothing but it and your breathing, the macro and the micro hovering together in harmony for the most fleeting and intimate of moments. While the Atlantic breaths its enormous gusts of breath, you hold yours, puzzled and elated, and suddenly remember: there are ever so many reasons to smile.

This, my friends, is a holiday.

Goods...

Sony's Fancy New Cameraphone

Not just for techies, but possibly artists too. Have a look at this new Sony Ericsson K790 Camera Phone. Cameras have been in cell phones for a couple of years now, but to my mind what this changes is the quality and, consequently, the whole point. While initial camera phones produced blurry, pixelated, essentially useless images, this model, with a mechanical autofocus and 3.2 megapixels will produce something similar in quality to a decent if lower-end digital camera. Since people carry their cellphones almost everywhere these days, this means an owner of this unit could capture every odd slant of light, chance happening or random moment of beauty s/he might come across in their daily life, all at good enough quality to print out a 5x7 shot.

To some, the potential for such relentless mass cataloguing is troubling, reducing moments to mere fodder for documentation. But the manner in which this cold bit of technology could be used to share and inspire is also full of hope. Remember those evenings, say in the dead of winter, when you walked home as the sun set, with both sky and snow orange and perfect, your camera tucked away at home untouched since summer and you thinking “man I wish I could show this to someone”? Now you can.

Tea Forte

It’s tea that looks cool - what else do I need to say? Other than that you can order it online and that, besides the alluring aesthetics, I can personally vouch for the great taste - especially the blackcurrant.

Off to Kylemore

Hey kids... Well, I am off to work here.

Of course this means my experimentation in blogdom may come to an end as it's unlikely I will have consistent enough access to the internet.

But it also means that I'm off to work at a remote Abbey (albeit in the shop there) near the west coast of Ireland. It's not often I get to say this, so: go ahead, feel jealous of me... ;)

Nonetheless, do keep in touch as I will attempt to do the same.

-Nav

St. Patrick's Eve & Day

Hello all... Just to share, here are some pics of a real live Irish St. Patrick's Eve and Day. They may not show up as I'm new at this, so you may have to click on those little boxes. -Nav

The Irish Fella' On the Other Hand...

I arrived in Galway after dark, tired, sweeping in from Shannon airport on a ghostly, empty bus, ears still plugged from the flight. I was feeling disoriented and spun: yet again, here was another city and alien sights and sounds. Fear began to creep round the edges of my mind. Could it be that I was finally beginning to miss home? The bus pulled into a town square and off I got. Ears dead and eyes squinting, the first thing I notice is the smell – a sour, smoky odour, pungent but oddly familiar. It strikes me that it seems to be the same smell from roadside fires in India, small blazes fuelled by cow dung around which rickshaw drivers and hawkers huddled. Here, it turns out, it is the odour of bog peat fires, which some still use to heat their homes.

Weeks later, I walk through Galway, unemployed, a little depressed and bored. I stroll down an area of what was once was called High Street, now very simply and obviously named Shop Street. As I was walk through the crowds, I am beset by a blonde Scandinavian charity volunteer who, trying to get me to stop, places a hand on my shoulder and suddenly spits some garbled Hindi at me – “Hello, teek hai, ik mint, teek hai?’. What the hell was going on?

I had gotten off the plane from Delhi stunned and dazed. My time in India had beaten me and left me sore, bewildered by difference, overwhelmed by life. And yet here, in this country so much closer to home, this romanticised corner of the English-speaking world, that trip chased me still, as if I still had lessons to learn about culture and difference, still had vestiges of my youth I needed to finally discard.

We live in the centre of Galway, our apartment flanked by at least three pubs and two clubs. At around twelve every night, shortly after last call, bar patrons spill out, stumbling onto the streets. I am often awoken by the sound of yelling, bottles smashing against the wall below our window, tear-filled arguments and fights breaking out. I often picture these moments in my head, the wild flailing limbs of a drunken fight, the loss of control and sense, the look on someone’s face when you know they have stopped caring about drawing a little blood; at this time of night they are out for something more. Each time, my heart races and my mind scrambles to make sense of this madness, this brutal reverie.

Under the covers in our dark room, the world outside becomes enormous and terrifying, a late-night drunken warzone, all of Ireland irrationally and suddenly becoming a violent, booze-fuelled free-for-all. It is silly of me to think this but I know that there is something to hold onto here: I know that tomorrow, in the peaceful light of morning, somehow these late-night meanderings will spill over into the day, unfairly colouring my thoughts, tipping them past rational objectivity.

At the library where I was a steward for a month or so, I can tell that there’s a long history of ‘the drink’. A couple of times, I think I smelled alcohol on the breath of those there, students and employees, at around noon. But perhaps it was mouthwash, I am not sure. Perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me. Sometimes it seems hard to reconcile the extremes – on one hand, the shelves full of Yeats and Joyce and Larkin and Synge and on the other, the broken glass I must step over each morning on my way out. I am sure there are those who might wish to bring prohibition to Ireland. It isn’t quite as ludicrous as you might think. A pre- St. Patrick’s Day newspaper editorial claimed that “drinking and fighting are in our blood. How can we be expected to control ourselves when the bars open in the afternoon?”. Still, I cannot in good conscience simply harp on the negative. The Irish pub is perhaps my fondest experience of Ireland yet. Their carpets, their deep, rich wood, the sense of community, permanence and history that flows through them – I spend as much time in them as I am able, making each round, creamy pint of Guinness or Murphy’s stout last as long as I can. There are few things as satisfyingly ‘Irish’ as sitting in a pub, clothes damp from the incessant drizzle, bones tired and achy from the damp, sipping on a good pint as trad flows through the speakers with animated discussion all around.

Sean, a witty, disarming fellow at work, is of this latter, more positive opinion. He wholeheartedly enjoys what some might call the finest Ireland has to offer: a few pints of the black stuff, well-told tales and some good craic. Once at work, we leaned on a couple of sorting shelves and chatted idly, as we were often wont to do. I listened enthralled – and, I must sheepishly admit, a touch jealous, for my own tolerance for alcohol is notoriously low – as he told of getting fifteen pints in him the night before and expounded on his approach to drink. He described how tourists, on hearing about the craic at an Irish pub, roll in at ten and throw back four, five or even six pints, staggering out of the pub at close, drunk past coherence, being sick in the streets. Going on, he described the Irish superiority to the foreign way, the slow steady pace of two to three pints an hour (which I must say, seemed to me not at all slow and would leave me far from steady) spread out over a full evening, all with the eventual result that, “while it’s true that he may have had ten or fifteen pints, the Irish fella’ on the other hand, is less drunk than your man who had five or six”.

After saying this he paused a bit to wait for my reaction, perhaps considered the surprised grin on my face, then, with an air of finality, said:
“But, well, it’s a cultural thing. It’s an Irish thing”.

A sour, smoky smell creeps round the edges of my mind. But no matter. The conversation ends here. We say our temporary goodbyes as gray rain falls outside the window. We each head off to our own, quiet corner of the library to sort piles of books – history, astronomy, literature, whatever – and place them, neatly, in straight rows upon the shelves.