A-Dangle in Dingle, still

My round-Ireland sea-kayak job has been temporarily out-sourced to the other circum-navigating paddlers, all of whom seem to be battling on against strong head winds and other climatic injustices with unfailing resolutions. I on the other hand am still in Dingle where I go to the ‘office’ each day to do a bit of writing, before heading up to Dick Mack’s for my second job as a session musician. I’ve ended up playing the last three nights until the early hours.

I’m sanguine - pleased even - about lack of progress. I have plenty of time, and my intention was always to spend time ashore gathering stories and getting an idea of Ireland from the outside in this time of flux. Dingle is as good a place as any to get a feel for Ireland in a time of change. It’s heavily dependent on tourism, and thus embodies the paradox of some kind of tradition being preserved (or recreated) to feed the desire for an ‘authentic’ traditional experience which then becomes that actual ‘authentic tradition.’ If you can keep up with that twisted logic then you’re qualified to work in the Irish tourism industry. If you can’t follow it, then you’re the average tourist who can’t quite work out where they are, but tends to enjoy the weirdness of it all

Dingle – as a microcosm of Ireland - is full of paradoxes (parodoxii? Parodeaux?); most are delightful, but some downright annoying or plain insane.

So, Dingle is a traditional and remote community,, (if you’re Irish and reading this far you’ll probably want to skip this history-lite and populist social observation lesson, as you’ll know what I’m saying just as well as me. Or better), that is serviced to a great extent by the new influx of economic migrants predominantly from Eastern Europe. A place where the traditional music sessions are as likely to be played by Cornish, French, German, English, American and Australian musicians (that was last night’s count, alone), whilst Irish musicians (and me of late) are as likely to be playing ragtime and swing and country and blues.

It's also where the tourists probably outnumbers the locals in any pub by four or five to one, but the pictures the former take of the crowds and the music and the singing will be shown back home to illustrate stories of pubs full of Dinglers and how traditional everything is. Oh, this is a place where the predominance of American tourists is probably higher than anywhere else outside of Disney Land, Florida.

There has been huge amounts of building here, as everywhere in Ireland, with holiday cottages springing up on the edge of town; most of which are empty for a great part of the year. Some people have made good money from this kind of development but others will end up losing. It would be a fair guess that like much of Ireland there is a glut of property, that selling prices are too high and rental prices are too low, and that negative equity is the elephant in the room.

The prices for restaurant meals, bar drinks and the other tourism staples are throat-dryingly high. And I say that as someone who’s spent many of the past months in Sweden and Norway. But after a few days incomers just seem to adjust; even tourists from other euro nations decouple the Irish euro from their own worth-something-euro, and take to thinking of it as something like the zlowty-euro, or CFA-euro, or plain old Monopoly-euro and pay up ‘happily.’ If one interprets ‘happily’ as the kind of mental breakdown that sees people gambling away their last cents on hedonism and craziness at the end of economic civilisation. Of course, with Ireland’s climate and especially the past week’s incessant rain, heading indoors to eat and drink is the only dry activity, so holidaying here is a trifle pricey.

A typical night in Dick Mack’s? Well the ‘night’ will probably start around five in the afternoon. Yesterday i popped my head in about that time for a cup of coffee but couldn’t have one as the whole of the Dingle Peninsula has lost electricity. ‘That’s God’s way of telling me to have a – just the one, mind – Murphys.’ So I read the paper in silence and solitude. Dick Mack’s is one of Dingle’s three shop/pubs. There’s John Curran’s which amongst other things sells hats and caps. Foxy John’s is a bicycle and hardware shop. And Dick Mack’s used to sell leather work, and probably could do again if anyone could be arsed to do some cutting and stamping and stitching and the rest. Anyway just as I was going to head out, after just the one, and do a bit of writing I realised that all the internet cafes would be power-less, too and so I mentally shrugged and wrote the evening off from a work point of view.

So, luckily, painter George popped in and we got talking about the great Ruskin-Whistler libel case, and then about his students who I’d seen doggedly painting landscapes in the drizzle (if they didn’t start off doing water-colours….). Then he tried to sell me a piece of land complete with deer and bears – sidetracked into working out the difference between elk, moose and wapiti which drew a few more people into the conversation - in upstate New York for a suspiciously low price. Which was the point when two French sailors arrived and a mixed bunch of American tourists, including one couple who apparently already owned all of upstate NY, or at least thought they did. And who were here taking the wife’s Irish-born and 80 year old father around his boyhood haunts, “so we can see which of his stories are lies,” as they charmingly put it. So it was open season on them, though I doubt they noticed the baiting. And then there was some good natured banter from a couple of Irish fishermen who’d come in. Before a quiet, young American got outed as a Gulf soldier on R&R who’d picked Ireland to relax in; and of course one would expect a bar full of rednecks and arty liberals to turn Joshua into the subject of a faction fight; but there was an inherent respect for a man who’d come back from the frontline. Especially a man as full of paradox as a political science graduate who’d joined the Home Guard for education money and got jumped into a war he didn’t believe in, and was working with Iraqi troops and police on the streets.

Joshua had a crazy montage of video of American troops in full Darth Vader street patrol gear, local kids, Iraqi police and the like break dancing and shaking their thing, all set to ‘Electric Avenue.’ It was surreal. It also conveyed the full realisation that being there as the occupying force or the occupied people would - above all - be mainly surreal. The resonances with the fiasco in Vietnam were also made stunningly apparent – though I guess this conflict around there will be a lot less GI-local parented children. Or am I wrong.

If you want a scam for getting free drinks, by the way, get yourself a buzz haircut, beef up your arms a little, head to a bar in some part of Europe where there are a lot of American tourists, talk quietly in a southern states accent and let people draw out of you slowly that you’re mid term of duty in Iraq and watch those pints arrive each with a ‘You’re doing a good job, son,’ or ‘I’m against the whole war, and Bush is a moron, but you’re still out there and I respect that,’ tag line.

Then Mike got his guitar out, and out of devilment or irony or by coincidence or whatever played this and that and then John Prine’s ‘Sam Stone,’ which – check the lyrics on google – is about a returning Vietnam Vet going down as a junkie. Which Joshua took like a man. By which time the couple had left to be cruel to their father again by testing his memory and his stories against reality, (and I’m with the granddad on this one, because – obviously – I’d never want anyone doing that to me, ever). So, I got a harmonica out to play a few blues with Mike, and then took the guitar over whilst three charming local women sang Ain’t Misbehaving, and next (I might be conflating a couple of nights here…or maybe not), Rob and Andy arrived with accordion and banjo and a guitar and a bemused looking Italian family came in shaking rain of their hastily bought rainwear, and a mini-bus full of elderly Americans squeezed in, too. There were ballads and rock and roll and jigs and reels.

And if you didn’t like our session, then there was another one in the room next door with uillean pipes and piano and bouzouki. Oh and did I forget the Welsh fishermen who must have been I the bar earlier arguing with Con the poacher/fisherman who was f-ing and blinding and between the curses setting up anyone who was listening with all the information they’d need to catch big bass on the next low tide off the point; get a German sprat lure, and take off one of the three-hooks of the trident-hook formation and use an eight pound weight and run down as the waves are retreating and feck the weight out as far as you can – ‘you’ll need a f******* strong line, boy’ – and then run back before the waves come back in. Yeah, they were there earlier, because by now the electricity has come back – not that there’s much difference between that and the night lights along the counter, because its almost the shortest night of the year and the clouds are clearing a little outside and its ten-ish and beginning to get dark, and must be raining again now that it’s eleven because a whole bundle of damp people are pushing in. There’s a smell of malt, and wet coats, and old leather, and Tayto crisps and smoke – every quarter of an hour or so the bar loses a third of its population as the smokers duck out into the yard with rollies and Carrols red packet and Polish ‘duty-free’ cigarettes.

Now Fionnula is singing something by John Martyn. And she’s with Noel Shine’s sister. And Alison sings something by the Grateful Dead, or was that me? And Hesitation Blues. But Andy is in full storm – his speciality is drinking and yet remembering fast, complexly lyrical songs; and the more of the former the more of the latter, apparently. Dylan’s It’s Alright Ma, I’m only Bleeding. And a bunch of tongue-twisting ballads and verbally challenging patter songs. Oh, and Rob sings as well, carefully putting down his Fantoni, dimante-studded accordion which for a big man he plays with a rare and relaxed delicacy, (most accordion players are charged with driving their instruments as if they were JCB heavy plant machinery), and calling on the Cornish song book to confuse the American tourists who have lost track of which country they’re in, though the Italian family seem less confused now, maybe helped by the sight of their nation’s contribution to the musical instruments of the world. I ask the pretty mother and daughter combination to sing. But they won’t.

People are sitting on the leather work counter to fit in at this point. This might be last orders time. Or maybe not. But other places around the town seem to be closing as there’s an influx of restaurant and bar workers. So in come Tríona and Mila who are keen to dance. I’m playing again – John Prine? Or swing? No, hang on, it’s coming back, it’s Route 66 because I’ve borrowed Andy’s guitar and his harmonica rack and I want to see the girls dance. It’s definitely past last orders. It’s dark and drizzly outside. But, whatever, Mike and Andy are duelling on guitar and banjo. And somebody has got the broken skinned ‘Dick Mack’s’ bodhran down from the hook and is getting a slack thudding percussive beat out of it. And there’s some guy who does a lot of whistling with his hands. Now it really is closing time. But right next door there’s the Blue Zone or the ‘Wine Bar’ which has a late licence and an open music night – except it doesn’t, or not this late. But it does have wine still and, hell, everybody’s played out anyway, and there’s talking to do in the dark and the gloom.

A while later in the rain i’m out on the country road walking through the dark back to the Rainbow where I’m staying, humming contentedly to myself. The wind is still high. So I’ll just have to stay here in Dingle until the wind drops down. Sailors ashore, huh!

Despite the late nights I’m in the ‘office’ for hours each day catching up on writing and doing kayak trip stuff. Mailing people – anybody reading this, I guess, by definition – with my blog address. Writing up notes and typing up and printing them to mail back along with films and DVDs of pix and video taken so far. And I sent back a whole load of ordnance survey maps – these are poor value as at €8 a pop and large scale I can travel across one in a few days, and in some cases a day, but they have the topographical detail that can show a possible landing site, camp spot and village for resupplying that makes them handy.

All this typing and office stuff has been harder on my shoulders and back than the actual paddling. So I took pot luck on the numerous masseuses advertising around town and called the one with the best designed card. Good call. Thanks, Tríona, for putting my shoulders, legs and spine back into their rightful and relative positions, and identifying and tenderising those strings of ping-pong ball sized muscle knots. Future planning for long distance kayaking will include bringing along a retinue of musicians and massage professionals as well as – quite possibly – a chef and tent team, oh, and why not, some fit guys to do the actual paddling so I can replicate the joys of Dingle both on the ocean waves and when stopped on remote beaches.

In post-massage relaxation I went off to look at the Harry Clarke stained glass windows once again; amongst his best. Clarke was Ireland’s genius of the coloured shard. The 1920s was his most productive period, and he died tragically young of TB (or from the leads and chemicals used in the window making process, as some have suggested). Apart from his ecclesiastical work he was also an illustrator of note in the Rackham and Beardsley mode, much given to putting faces to Edgar Allen Poe stories, and skirting around the symbolism of laundnam induced visions, erotically driven faeries, gnomes and elves and the other vocabulary of the alternative arts world of the 1920s. Fantastically a lot of this creeps into his church windows. The Dingle ‘lights’ – in a convent, now with only two nuns left, one in her seventies and one in her nineties, apparently – are beauties from this point of view. His angels are beatific stoners and hippies, there are swirls of sea anenomies, seashells and barnacles turned into psychedelic patterns and plenty of symbolism in his interpretation of key points in Christ’s life. He had a bit of a foot fetish, did Clarke; last year I got to look at an awful lot of his work right across Ireland and noted how much loving detail went into his feet and his amazingly contemporary footwear – a smart cookie would just reproduce all his sandal, shoe and boot designs as a range and be feted by fashionistas.

Anyway as I was looking at the adoration of the Magi whilst an eloquent chap who knew Clarke’s family and seems to be a bit of a keeper of the flame was explaining to a charming couple one of whose mother used to be a model for Clarke’s very good artist wife that Clarke portrayed the Magi as being super-Kingly rather than three ragged demi-Kings straggling in from afar and hence no camels etc. Well, one of the kings is wearing the most amazing pair of multicoloured jockey boots, and I noticed that hidden in the folds of his robes and the intricacy of design that these boots bore a fine pair of Medieval spurs. This apparently hadn’t been noted before, and is proof – he cries excitedly – that Clarke saw his kings riding to the birth (set not in a stable or byre but in something a bit more palatial) on Persian chargers hung about with silks and with tooled leather saddles, even if he didn’t actually show them. Or that – he mutters less excitedly – Clarke had an art book to hand and had a look at one of those Utrillo piccies of knights heading off to war. It occurs to me that I may have been on land too long and in Dick Macks too much. Though on the other hand in that organic way that things have of coming together, especially in Dingle, Tríona’s father, Eoin Duignan who is a piper who I vaguely remember sitting in with on a few sessions many years ago when I was also castaway in Dingle, like now has written a suite of music based on the six windows called Lumina.

Attentive readers might recall that last Sunday I arrived after a twenty mile open sea crossing from Valentia. The kayak was emptied and left up on the quay in Ventry, the kayaking kit was left in the shed of a man living right next to the quay and I headed the seven miles or so into Dingle promising the shed man that I’d be back to reclaim kayak and gear on Tuesday. So it being Wednesday yesterday and the weather not having settled I thought I probably ought to head out and check that my precious bit of plastic was still where I left it and to bring shed-man up to date. I took a taxi which was an expensive way to spend ten seconds on the quay and note that the kayak was thus far safe and unmolested, and to take another thirty seconds to leave a post-it note on the absent shed-man’s door before heading back to Dingle.

Good lord, it’s nearly five o’clock. Time for the night job.