Dublin - a Grouch on St Patrick’s Day by Anthony Healy

Don’t get me wrong, I love Dublin. I love the way one can walk around the city. I love the fact that people still talk to one as if one is a human being. Dublin has its attractions. The National Museum is a must-see; it has more gold in it than any other museum in Europe, mostly Bronze Age artifacts. You should have a drink in the bar of the Shelbourne Hotel in St. Stephen’s Green. The bar is a little gem of art nouveau decor and writers such as Brendan Behan got sick in several of the actual plant pots that are still there today.

Unfortunately Dublin hasn’t got an underground rail system. It hasn’t got much of an overground system either. There is the DART railway line that goes down the coast as far as Bray, and they have buses. Everybody else is in a car. The number of cars in Ireland has increased four-fold in as many years, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Dublin. Getting in and out of Dublin can take over two hours, if you pick the wrong time, the wrong day, and the wrong time of year.

The worst of the worst is St. Patrick’s Day, the 17th March. In Ireland St. Patrick’s Day lasts a week. Last year 1.2 million people turned out on the streets. There were seven hundred performances by five thousand people, with another fifteen thousand people working behind the scenes. It’s one big Celtic ‘Mardi Gras’. They have music, street theatre, comedy, dance, firework displays, pageants and parades.

Of course, if you didn’t know that St. Patrick’s Day would start two days early and you were hoping to be somewhere else on Ireland’s national day, it’s too late for you. I once sat in a car for six hours on O’Connell Bridge on the 16th March. In the end, I thanked the taxi driver for his life story, said I hoped everything worked out with his wife, got out of the car and just walked back to the hotel with my luggage.

“Yes, it’s me again. No, I know I just checked out. I’d like to check back in again.”