St Patrick's Day in the rare ould times

When I was a young fella growing up in the dreary smoked smothered streets of Ireland, St Patrick’s Day was an island in the stormy shark filled seas of Lent. Whatever penance you had imposed on yourself, giving up sweets or sugar in your tea or back chat to your parents, could be relaxed for that single day. This was an allowance given by my Mother so that she could also indulge in a few glasses of wine, having set herself an abstinence target until Easter.

Apart from the chocolate and sugary tea, my only other memories of March 17^th in my youth were dreary parades in the rain, dressed only in a polyester scout uniform. There was nothing particularly Irish about these processions. The army dominated events, so it had the air of a May day parade in a small and impoverished Communist state.

We wore fresh shamrock and school reinforced that it was a religious rather than a Nationalist holiday. Mind you, at that time, flag waving was dominated by Irish Republicans who were blowing people up and generally being a menace.

That seemed to change by the time I left Ireland in 1988. Ireland qualified for Euro 88 and it became normal to feel proud of your country. The World Cup in 1990 accelerated this and the very act of me leaving the country seemed to release it from years of backwardness.

I do remember my first St Patrick’s Day outside Ireland. I was in London and desperate to get into a pub in Covent Garden to celebrate the great man’s day. Luckily the bouncer was from Kerry and let us skip past the English people in the queue. He wasn’t just being patriotic. Experience had thought him that Irish people go out to have a good time and if they get drunk it’s a bonus. For English people, it’s the other way around.

Once I’d moved away, celebrating my Irishness became important to me. I remember festivals in Finsbury Park, all night sessions in the Black Stuff in Luxembourg and cramming into a field in Melbourne with hundreds of back packers.

But I’m older now and less able to keep up with the young ones. This year I went with a more sedate approach. Auckland prides itself in having the first St Patrick’s Day parade in the world, as the rest of the world is still in bed by the time festivities kick off here. They ask for 32 volunteers to carry their counties banner and for the second time, I had the honour of walking down the city’s main thoroughfare with Louth’s name and crest held proudly aloft.

The street was thronged by girls in GAA tops, boys in Irish Rugby tops and people from Asia, Africa and everywhere else, who came along for the colour and craic. It made me think of our little island of 7 million souls. No other country gets to shut down the main street of capital cities across the globe. No other country has a guaranteed annual audience with the American president and no other country is honoured by famous buildings and rivers being decked in their national colour.

Ireland certainly punches above its weight around the world and makes you wonder why it took the Irish government so long to harness this soft power. While many foreign companies set up in Ireland for tax reasons, there is a lot of old time sentimentality involved as well.

St Patrick’s Day fell on a Sunday this year and the bars in Auckland were full of people wearing green hats or jumpers who would happily admit that they have no Irish heritage but love to join in when a party is going on. We are known as a fun bunch of people and most of the best pubs here (and in most of the world) are Irish pubs.

It seems a long way from the 1970s when we saw the world through our narrow internal prism, with the only portal to the wider world being provided through British TV. This regularly portrayed Ireland as stupid or backward. Irish jokes were popular, and every Irish character on British TV was either an idiot or a terrorist. Once I moved to England, I found a warmer reception. I noticed that many English people have Irish relatives and while there was gentle ribbing about my inability to pronounce my ‘th’s’ I was generally treated well and the English envied our easy ability to have fun.

It would be hard to find a country that engenders as much good will as Ireland. I guess the fact that we have never invaded another country or gone to war with one, if you excuse our on-going struggle with perfidious Albion, helps in this regard. So, we’ve never really annoyed anyone and we’ve sent out 70 million ambassadors to the world to spread the good word.

I work for a company where 50% of the staff are kiwi born and the rest of us come from about thirty different companies. Lots of them passed my desk in March and wished me a Happy St Patrick’s Day. I don’t remember that happening for any other country. Not even New Zealand, which treats its national day with a large amount of embarrassment and shame. Celebrating a treaty that essentially stole the land from the people who were here first is not a smart move.

Most New Zealanders just take the day off and try not to think about it too much. Which is pretty much how I felt about St Patrick’s Day when I lived in Ireland. There is a paradox that you become more patriotic the further you live from your homeland. I live as far away as is geographically possible. So, I’ll raise a toast to old St Pat again this year and feel a flutter of pride when do we well at sport or culture. It’s a great wee country except when you have to live in it.