A visit to Ireland leaves time for reflection

Maurice O'Brien • Published 21 Oct 2010 12:30 0 Comments

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ACCORDING to my grandfather’s weather forecasting rule of thumb, if you could see the Dublin Mountains then it was going to rain. And if you couldn’t then it already was.

Two Saturdays ago, Patrick J. O’Brien was very much in my thoughts when I took my seat at Tallaght Stadium, the home of Shamrock Rovers, in the shadow of those self-same Dublin Mountains, the greys, greens and purples of their slopes dappled with the warm sun of an Indian summer afternoon.

Little more than 90 minutes later, two late goals from visitors Sporting Fingal had dealt a potentially fatal blow to Rovers’ hopes of winning their first League of Ireland title for 16 years. It wasn’t raining, but the wind was bitterly cold and as I glanced to my right the Dublin Mountains were nowhere to be seen.

When you’re on holiday, you have time to ponder such phenomena, or indeed questions such as why my brown slip-on shoes are deemed potentially lethal weapons at Heathrow and Berlin’s Tegel, where airport security staff order their removal, but not in Dublin?

Or perhaps you’ve noticed how often the post-Miliband Labourites and trade unionists seemingly looking towards a brave new future persistently invoke the ‘evil spirit’ of Margaret Thatcher; an elderly lady bundled out of office 20 years ago next month.

One wonders whether recently-departed agony aunt Claire Rayner underwent a deathbed conversion with her reported famous last words: “Tell David Cameron that if he screws up my beloved NHS I’ll come back and bloody haunt him.” Bearing in mind that she always adopted a strenuously anti-religious stance, did her belated belief in the after-life signal that she knew something the rest of us don’t?

Notwithstanding its other economic maladies, Britain’s being steadily thrust into ever- deeper penury by the 2012 Olympics, so it’s great news that tickets for the men’s 100m final will cost from £50 to £725 each and even the synchronized swimming prices range from £30-£175 (you apparently have to pay them). Whatever happened to Sport for All?

And considering the hysterical nonsense being spouted in this country last month, it was heartening to note no such qualms in Dublin’s Talbot Street, where the neon lighting of Kebab 786 takeaway proclaims “Halal Irish Meat”.

Meanwhile, heaven help the nation’s children when an Ofsted inspector’s report on a West Berkshire primary contains such observations as: “This school requires significant improvement because it is performing significantly less well than in all the circumstances it could reasonably be expected to perform.”

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