#3. Ancestral Homeland
Top o' de mornin' to ya
Brexit happened - so, I used my heritage to apply for Irish citizenship and access the essentials of being a European citizen: imperceptibly shorter queues at the airport, a smug sense of superiority, and, I assume, a lifetime subscription to The Guardian.
There is an unedited, better version of this article (if you can believe that!), available here. It also has a special bonus photograph. What could it be?
I was proud when my passport arrived, adorned with a photo of my potato-headed face and sporting my surname so common it literally means ‘peasant’. I’ve always cherished being Irish.
It’s where I get my rebelliousness, my love of rolling green fields, and my big fat head. It adds a certain spice to living amongst Brits, with their history of oppressing my people, like sending us in ships to America as indentured servants.
Being Irish gives me something familiar to cling to – a sense of belonging. It’s a feeling I want to ensure my own son, Sonny, doesn’t miss. He’s off to a good start (he likes potatoes and Seven Drunken Nights), but how could I pass on my Irishness when I’d never even been to Ireland?
So, I went to Ireland.
And Galway certainly had its charm. At the heart of the city was a thunderous river beating into the sea, the salty air taking me back to some forgotten ancestral memory deep in my bones. There were genial people with hearty accents and heartier laughs. A bearded Irish band sang jovially on the cobbled streets outside pubs with tiny doors.
Yet it felt a little contrived. The high street was like one you might find in Disneyland, with Potemkin pubs like Murphy’s and O’Malley’s. The exteriors were bright and shiny – plastic almost – and the interiors were cheap and bare. Souvenir shops sold license plates reading ‘feckit’ and ‘eejit’. I went to a pub for dinner, where my companion ordered a Guinness. They’d run out.
During my trip, locals were celebrating because an Irish movie had just become the first Irish language film to be nominated for an Oscar. In the souvenir shops and Hollywood movies, an image of Ireland was being packaged up and sold to the world – but did it even exist?
Beyond the theme park pubs of the main stretch, I had a Swedish massage from a Spanish masseuse at my hotel. I went for a walk and passed Thai massage shops. Then a poke bowl restaurant. I popped into a supermarket, where American superstar Katy Perry was humming over the stereo and the shelves were stocked with international brands and processed foods. A kid with a Latin accent sold me a Kellogg’s bar. I grabbed one of the many identical rectangles and opened it for the cardboardy oats and sticky red goo, just like at home. On the way out, I passed a magazine called Woman; it had a man in drag on the front.
Everything is nothing and nothing is anything.
If Ireland still exists, it’s certainly not here. The heritage I was so desperately seeking was uprooted, gone. Existence, I realised, is tumultuous, as tumultuous as the Corrib River churning ceaselessly into Galway Bay.
Walking home, one of the artificial Irish pubs caught my eye. It was called Sonny’s.