Norn Iron

Some stuff about Northern Ireland that doesn’t mention politics once. *Awaits “wows”*

Last Thursday, I got a bus up to north west Donegal, a place so wild and remote it had…..two ATMs within spitting distance of each other. Always the way in Ireland; the really really remote places always have better facilities than less remote places. Mam said there’s a net cafe on Achill Island, which is very remote. Remote. Said too often already. Damn you WordPad with your lack of synomyns!! I can’t even check if I spelt that right!!!!

Anyway, so I arrive up in Donegal after six hours travelling. The bus to Donegal is often how I’ve imagined the bus from the West Bank to Gaza is. Oh, I can see the frowns on you all already! No, seriously, it’s moving from one part of your state to the other through another state. And to get from Dublin to Donegal, you drive through Northern Ireland, our “neighbours to the north” as Americans would say of the Canadians. Only I get freaked out by the North. I’m sorry, it’s very narrow-minded of me but surely I’m entitled to an opinion! I mean, it’s ugly. Northern Ireland is industrial. The Republic was always used by the British as a kind of back garden to grow vegetables in. But the North was the place they tried to make work like Britain. And it does, right down to the “Give Way” signs, intricately-swept pathways, inner link roads (a bizarre practice where a narrow bypass is put through the town instead of the traditional Irish method of cutting a huge, environmentally-responsible swathe of motorway through fields miles outside the town) and, oh yes, the culture. Do Northern nationalists realise just how entrenched Britishness is within their daily lives? How everything in the North, from the way children are taught from the age of 4 to the way the traffic lights work, is that little bit different to the Republic? Buildings in the North are simply plonked in the most logical place, with no consideration for how damn ugly it looks. Not to demean the way the North works at the end of the day. After all, it’s got so many people employed by the state it’s virtually recession-proof. Northern Ireland has so much administration. Have you ever noticed how any town in the Republic with a local authority, like a UDC, is impeccably tidy and well-run? Well that’s the way all of Northern Ireland is. Only thing is, it’s overkill and by the time you reach the bridge from Strabane to Lifford and reach the Republic you’re so glad to see a Bus Eireann sign. Even if the bastards run a national bus service like it’s a hobby as opposed to an occupation.

Donegal is huge. Not only that, but the roads wind a lot, which means more driving than there should really be. Now if Donegal was in Northern Ireland (geographically of course, it is, but……oh……don’t get me started), there’d have been a feasibility study which would have identified fifteen centres of commerce. From that study, they’d have concluded that Donegal needed a greater degree of internal infrastructure. And so hundreds of proper, permanent-looking road works signs would have been sunk into concrete and an army of council workers would construct a huge network of motorways across the county, all followed by an army of the mysterious, unseen cleaners who vacuum up any dust created during the process. Does anyone else think Northern building sites are freakishly clean? Anyway, Killybegs would have been transformed from a fishing port to an industrial centre of excellence, building Korean televisions and German electronic components for use in the automotive industry. Donegal Town would become a mass producer of cheaply-made Irish Aran tracksuits. Ballyshannon would become a crass, commercialised inland version of Portrush. Moville would build nuclear subamarines for the fight against Saddam and Letterkenny would be lost underneath a maze of inner link roads on stilts. Bunbeg would have two Pizza Huts and Tory Island would gain a Burger King, opened by it’s very own King. Shortly before his suicide.

And while an “Northernized” Donegal would undoubtedly be a far more viable place to work in, there’d be no love. Donegal is this spellbindingly wide, green, rocky expanse of rain-sodden hills and mist; it’s unspoilt. Whether this is a good or bad thing is up for debate, but I like it the way it is. It’s far out, so far out that it still has little pieces of the old Ireland we never see any more. The one where an island community has a genuine leader, who’s voice makes them hush. The Ireland that speaks Irish so much more clearer and comfortable than English.

But…….