Monthly Archives: April 2008

Old Paddy at the bar was talking last night:

Oh lordy, I remember the good old days. Yes sir. Times were better then. No doubt about it.

What a country we had. Full of poets, writers, artists, wits and wags. And I don’t mean peroxide slappers that go out with footballers. Everywhere you went there was somebody with a great story, a fantastic fable, a splendid song.

And everybody was your friend. You could leave your door unlocked and people would just pop in, have a cup of tea, a piece of the freshly baked brack every household had made of a morning and you’d just talk. About life, politics, sport, your cousin who went to school with a fella who knew one of your cousins. It was a simple life, a creative life, a life so idyllic and tranquil that Ireland was perhaps the best country on earth to live in.

That all changed though. Oh God how it changed. People will never forget the date. April 24th 1999, the year that alcohol came to Ireland. At first we didn’t quite know what to make of it, we’d never seen anything like it before. A drink that made your head all woozy. We thought it was great stuff to begin with. The poems became more raucous, the songs more thigh slapping, the stories and fables more incredible and hilarious but soon it became obvious there was a real problem. It was shocking and something we didn’t know how to cope with, you couldn’t imagine great men like Brendan Behan getting drunk so this new development had a huge impact on society.

Youngsters would get their hands on this alcohol and I’ll tell you this and tell you no more, they went mad for the booze, so they did. Teenagers would get flaggins of cider and sit in fields and drink and then stagger to the chipper, once a meeting place for great minds, get a battered sausage and large single of chips, eat it up, vomit it up and sometimes get into fights.

Then they started with the breaking of stuff. Randomly smashing bus shelters or shop windows or the wing mirrors off cars. The worst was the traffic cone absuse. Previously the traffic cone was a well respected part of society, it served a great purpose, a cordoning off of a particular area but with the advent of hooch these fine, upstanding cones were taken and moved and worn as hats and then nobody knew where was to be cordoned off at all. It was chaos, I tell you.

You knew society was gone to the dogs when things like that started happening. I can’t even begin to mention the other terrible effects it had, like singing and dancing. We’d never had that before and to see once great minds lepping about the place like electrocuted retards was hard to take. Public urination, something so abhorrent to us in the past was common place and while it’s true that everybody was friendly now people were picking favourites. ‘Yer me besht friend, so y’are’, you’d hear people slur and all the other friends would feel rejected and then pick a best friend themselves and so it was that lines were drawn and divisions were made. Is it any wonder things are so violent now? That’s how gangs started, you know.

When I think back on it now I can feel a tear come to my eye. Such a great nation, a wonderful land, spoiled by the introduction of alcohol less than 10 years ago. I shudder to think where we’ll be in another 10. Me, I won’t be around to see it but you lot will.

Now, give the lads a drink on me, Ron. Pints of Jaegerbombers all round.