Generic JayeL rant

I do complain about my job quite bit, how I must some day escape the headset and get a proper, life-affirming job. But without the headset, there’d be no Menorca.

I’m going to Menorca, a 30 mile-long island just off Spain, on the 21st for TWO weeks and paying my own way, which is something I couldn’t do without my job. I paid the entire holiday off in one fell swoop last Thursday by cashing a €100 cheque I got for my old computer and, well, the vast majority of my wages. So I’m living on €15 a day for everything (two buses and food) and it’s grand but it means none of the Munster-bound trips I promised myself. Oh well. I’m looking forward to Menorca. I was there 10 years ago as a yungflah and managed to get sunstroke with the amount of fun I had. And yet I remember, despite my childlike state, enjoying the unspoilt beaches and long treks to faraway barren supermarkets. How we discovered that UHT are the three most disgusting letters you’ll encounter when buying milk.

And then there’s the island thing. I’m fascinated by islands, along with borders, lesbians and black Irish people. I suppose I am from an island, but it once held 8 million people so it’s not exactly as small as Menorca, which might be lucky to have half a million. What I can’t get over with them is how they depend on a constant flow of supplies from the mainland to survive. How it’s essentially an overgrown rock on which people eke out a living. Ireland’s islands are small and were it not for their cultural siginificance they’d have been abandoned long ago. But Spain’s islands (the only other ones I’ve experienced) have cities on them. Menorca, for example, has the capital Mahón. Mahón has one of the biggest natural harbours in the world. And then the second city, Ciudadela, has a huge Gothic cathedral and dozens of long, windy streets. All on an island thirty miles long. They have federal police, local police, state schools, power stations, roads, an entire infrastructure. On thirty miles of rock in the Mediterranean. Maybe some day Inis Mór off Galway will have a multiplex, three Pizza Huts and a motorway. But right now, Irish islands are just lucky to still have people on them. In other countries, they’re places people can live in and expect the same standard of living as one would have on the mainland. There’s still a feeling in Ireland that if you live in the middle of nowhere, your standard of living simply can’t be the same as living in a city of large town.

This brings me to my biggest foible with the way this country goes on. Regionality. I think the word “region” should be abolished in the context that the government uses it. It implies that there’s one “proper” place to live (Dublin) and that everywhere else (“the regions”) is the bog, the sticks. It implies that they’re not properly Ireland because they live al the way out there. Honestly, it sounds silly, but it affects the national psyche. It’s hard to convey to those who don’t live here just how Dublin-centric Ireland is. I shouldn’t notice it really, coming from Dublin myself, but I hear it all around me. One of the girls I work with, a real “salt of the earth” Dub from Coolock, asked me the other day if Donegal was in the Republic of Ireland. Honestly, I’ve come across this before. Some Dublin people are completely oblivious to the rest of the country, they honestly don’t care. Why should they? Everything in this country is pointed towards Dublin, even a casual look at a road map will tell you this. Why is it acceptable for presenters to mutter the weather summary for the west and speak up when they read out the outlook for Dublin and the surrounding area? Why is it ok for anywhere outside Dublin to be referred to as “the country”? Why is it presumed that everyone lives in or near Dublin unless proven otherwise? Why is Dublin news national news? This country will never get anywhere until we move the capital to Athlone. It makes perfect sense, it’s central and half in one province, half in the other. Brazil and Turkey both moved their capitals to new, more central cities. All the best countries’ have a capital smaller than their other cities. America has Washington, which is smaller than New York or Los Angeles. In the same way, we should have Athlone, which is smaller than Ireland’s New York, Dublin (loudmouthed, dirty, arrogant, impersonal city) and Ireland’s Los Angeles, Cork (convinced of it’s own greatness, full of crap and proud of it). By this logic, we’d have Sligo as Chicago (windy, ends in “go”) and Galway as San Francisco (fun, colourful and ultimately gay).

Forgive me, for I’ve digressed so much I’ve lost my way and I’m too tired to go on. But at least I’m writing. It’s hard for an entry to come after so long.

j

p.s. I do hope Madame Kerouac liked the last line, I stuck it in for her.