A quick trip to Dublin
Alison Prince
From Arran, it’s quicker to get to Dublin than it is to London. Once you’ve reached Glasgow Airport, it’s a short whizz across the Irish Sea and you’re there. Friendly and cheerful Aer Lingus charges no more than the unthinkable Ryanair, and would not dream of making you push your handbag into your single permitted piece of cabin baggage. People were happily drinking pints of lager in the departure lounge (or rather, corridor) and we trouped up the steps into the modest turbo-jet clutching a handy muddle of sandwiches and newspapers. All very amiable and civilised.
Dublin was as always, a delight. It lives in an easy state of gentle chaos, but the friendliness reaches out like an arm round the shoulders. I was there to meet cousins from Canada who had paused in Ireland on the way back from Portugal, and wherever we went, there was a ready welcome and instant conversation. Despite the economic downturn – or perhaps because of it – people seem close and mutually supportive. Sandwich-board men make a small living as walking adverts for pubs with good music, and shops are closed in the city outskirts, but it’s obvious that the Irish government has not caned its local authorities in the name of austerity. Pavement-sweeping machines are everywhere, and the city is fantastically clean – a far cry from the gum-blotched and litter-strewn streets of Glasgow. It had the flags out for the football international match and the whole place was fluttering with orange, white and green. A man in a thriving bookshop said, ‘The owner took a bit less profit and put the change into more stock.’
We stayed in what claimed to be a hotel, in rooms above a bar heaving with live music. Bags had to be lugged along narrow corridors and up countless stairs, past a lift so long out of order that it looked like a museum piece – but no matter. ‘Black Velvet Band’ boomed out across the quay and the river, and everyone was having a thoroughly good time. Downstream towards the ‘harp’ bridge that swivels to let ships through, life-sized sculptures of people wrecked by the famine stand as a silent reminder of inhuman policies. A little further along is the replica sailing ship, Jeanie Johnston, where visitors can see how emigrants survived six-week voyages to Canada. The legacy of that bad time lives on. There’s a strong sense that being thrown into debt by the greed and stupidity of banks (and by governments that encouraged them) is a minor blip compared with what Ireland has known. Sing on, brave boys, sing on. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”
