Bordering on the ridiculous

Things I’m fascinated by:

* Black Irish people

* Countries that switched from driving on the left to the right (Sweden, Gibraltar)

* How fast a company can rebrand these days. Does anyone even remember Eircell, Telecom Eireann or Quinnsworth?

* How my Dad can not only beat traffic, but pummel the living shit out of it.

But the number one thing that fascinates me more than anything (apart from lesbians of course) is a border. I have this extremely strange fixation with borders and how one side differs from the other. Now some Yanks may read this and say “of course, sure doesn’t he live on an island separated by one border. But to be honest, while it may have reinforced this thing in my head, the border wit the North didn’t really have a lot to do with it until recent years. I think it comes from growing up on an even smaller border.

Again, I’m walking straight into the good ol’ OD dilemma of “how can I describe this without telling you all where I live but I think it’s safe to assume a lot of people reading this know exactly where I’m from. So to the rest of you, I’ll just say I live on the border with Dublin county, just outside it. And while I may on paper be from one county, I feel more like I’m from Dublin. It’s because I live so close to Dublin I can see the mountains. So close the kids here speak in Dublin accents. So close we’re still in the Dublin phone area. So close I used to go to school in Dublin. So close I could walk across the border. And yet I’m not from Dublin. I find myself referring to the stupidity of “Dubs” and yet I was born there. I once (while drunk) found myself cheering on the local team, instead of my usual stance of Not Giving A Shit About Those Inbred Fecks. And yet for the most part I regard myself as a Dub. A librarian in Coolock once tried to tell me that I couldn’t join the library because I wasn’t from Dublin. I ate his liver with fava beans and a nice chianti.

Borders are daft, I know. A bee can go from one flower to another taking pollen and not realise he’s crossed an international boundary 17 times. You can pee across a border, which means you could be charged in the juristriction where you took out your gentleman-sword for lewd conduct and also be charged in the adjoining juristriction (on which your pee falls) for…..well……peeing in public. You could then argue that you meant to only pee just shy of the border and the unexpected strength of the stream caused your relief-taking to become an international incident. I’m as ready as the next guy to embrace the fundamental silliness of borders. But I’m still fascinated.

The border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland wasn’t meant to be what it is now. A boundary commission was set up to tidy it up, since the border was in essence just the borders between Irish counties and Irish county borders are notoriously odd. The end of a road, the gable end of a house, a stream that’s run dry since, past that tree over there, anything but straight lines constitute an Irish border. The boundary commission saw how silly this could become, so they made a report of their findings, which recommended transferring several chunks of land south in Armagh and Down. But it also recommended that a bit of east Donegal, with it’s unionist population, be given to the North. The government here went a little nuts and said no way, the border stays as it is. So it did, to this day.

This, combined with the reluctance of either government to actually put down a sign to say “You are now in Northern Ireland – God Save The Queen and all that, chaps!”, means that the border is more a case of noticing when your phone suddenly says “UK” on it than anything. You simply can’t tell unless you notice tiny things like “Yield” signs suddenly say “Give Way”, you see a British Telecom phonebox instead of an Eircom one, the road has white lines along the edge or the police suddenly look a good deal more……well, like the British army. For there are many soldiers along the border with the Republic, apparently there’s more since the ceasefires due to the emergence of frankly bonkers splinter republican groups. So while you cross into the North, there’s a good chance that your conversation is being monitored by a British army lookout post, where soldiers are brought to by helicopters because it’s too dangerous to drive. I once heard they’re able to look into IRA leaders kitchens and read their newspapers.

See, I’m getting carried away. I just love the border. I know some of a more republican persuasion might shriek with alarm at this, but I think it’s just so interesting. Around 1994, I was in this little village in Donegal called Pettigo. Pettigo is on the border, not near – actually split in two by the border. In the 1920’s, the Donegal UVF were based in the area. That’s how close it came to being all sent north. But like many Irish towns (Charlestown in Mayo and Waterford City come to mind), Pettigo was half in one county and half in another. When the border came into existence, half of the town was in one state, the other half in another state. That meant a street was sealed off with yellow barrels full of concrete (so that those crossing the border at the one point could be watched). It meant that only a few yards from an Irish phonebox was a British Telecom phonebox. It meant……..nothing really but still it was the first time I got to see what the border actually meant.

I’m going somewhere with this. I think.

j