St. Patricks Day

 

The more I write these blogs, the more I sound like a kill joy dry shite. The more I think about it the more I feel I am a sad boring old git, who just can’t cut it with the young kids anymore. It’s coming up in just over a week is Paddy’s day, and I just don’t feel like celebrating. What is wrong with me? How has everything changed so much? Who has given the fun a cull and put in the dull? All I want is a nice cup of coffee, some grub and maybe a shag wearing a leprechaun suit.

There was a time when I would have been first to the Guinness tap, the vodka and the rest of it. Just twelve months ago I spent almost two weeks on the sauce to “celebrate” the day of our patron saint. I drank a monstrous amount of whiskey on the 10^th to numb the pain of my Dad’s anniversary and pretty much carried on from there. I had nights out, nights in, went to fleadh ceoils and outdoor festivals. I was in pubs, beer gardens, dancing and carrying on like there was no tomorrow. On Paddy’s Day I drank for three days (if you can follow the logic) and the liver took a beating. Not to mention the wallet. Never mention the wallet. Although now that I do mention it, I think I have spent somewhere in the region of $250k on the rip over the years. But that’s a story for another day.

Back to St. Paddys day. I suppose the reality of it is that it is a great day to be Irish. It’s a celebration of being who we are – the music, the dancing, the language, the story telling and laughter. Let us not forget the drink. The gargle. The drop. The juice. The porter. The scoop. The jar. The lash. The session. The stout. The nectar. The poitin. The drink. It is synonymous with Patrick’s day. To go out and get blotto. To get into the pub nice and early, covered in big green curly wigs with a smile on your dial and a hep in your step. And drink yourself silly. What, I hear you ask, is the problem with that?

Where I’m coming from there’s not a bejaysusin thing wrong with it. I just don’t want to be drunk anymore, so I won’t be doing it. I’ll be going for a swim and playing poker instead. I’ll ring home to the mother country and speak a couple of focail gaeilge with the mother. I’ll find myself a quiet moment and maybe have a couple of Jameson in the evening with my wife, but that will be it. No binging. No madness. No curling wheely bins into the path of taxis, both filled with drunken revellers. No jabbering love talk and smarmy wise crackery. No Micheal Flatley on speed impressions. No yippin and hoopin and hoochy coochin.  No polluted hubris.

And what of Saint Patrick anyway? Isn’t he the man who symbolises all that is wrong with our beloved Island, the rampaging Catholic church? The ‘not so secret sect’ laden with paedophiles and queers. A gang of uberhypocitcs. The “business” which has subjugated and ruled by instilling fear into its peoples. The religion which came and pillaged our ancient beliefs and ways of being. The people who gave us rules and regulations which have crippled our very spirit to live. What is there to celebrate?

The myth of St. Patrick is so entwined in our lives that subconsciously by celebrating the day itself, we are accepting certain beliefs which keep us under the thumb so to speak. We proclaim that all is well in the garden, and that Catholicism should be rewarded with our apparent happiness. Our drunken stupors extend the belief that we are carefree simple drunken Paddies, beholden to God of the Roman Catholic variety. We feed the propaganda machine with our listless shenanigans, at a deep subliminal level.

Be Gad, I hear you thinking, what sort of an Irishman is this? Can’t a person go to the pub and celebrate being Irish? You can of course I say. But just be aware of the nature of your actions, and what they say about you. Fuck St. Patrick. Fuck the gargle. Fuck dancing to ‘diddly i di diddily i’ for the sake of something you don’t believe in. How many of us can speak Irish fluently? How many of us covet the materialism of capitalism and even worse, how many of us have been turned through the propaganda of American and English media into listless bunions waiting to be scraped off a toe, watching our sky sports, sky news and sit coms? Whatever happened to the old men and women who valued fight and principle? Whatever happened to their children and their children’s children?

We are dancing in a cesspit of new world effluence. We are a shower of pithy begrudgerers, masking national pride with obsequious supplicancy. Rise up and smell the coffee young peoples. It’s burning, and it’s not going to taste good in the morning. You may think I am over the top in my thinking here. You may think I am overreacting, but the future of our identity is reaching a vital turning point. We need to focus our attention on being self sufficient, self reliant and fecund. We need to produce confidant, strong leaders, with morals and principles which represent the new Ireland. The catholic church is dead. St. Patrick is dead. The day of me, the blind drunk paddy, is dead. The king is dead. Long live the king.