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St Patrick's Night
by Dermot Glennon

Well what in bejaysus just look at yourself are you over from Dublin tonight
Sure I’m a wee bog-leaping bastard meself on me Grandmother’s Godmother’s side
Now why are you here on a night like tonight- sure isn’t Dublin the best place to have it
I’d like to go out there just one time myself to drink in the real craic and to
Drink twenty pints and fall flat on my back like the locals do every night over there
Sure don’t get me wrong like this place is alright but we’re overrun by these student
Gobshites with their leprechaun accents like Hollywood does and their stupid pretensions
To true Irishness- other than that though this place is alright but you can’t beat the
Auld Dairt for a Saint Paddy’s night
I like the real thing- the authentic Irish flavour you get in some backwater town like Killorglan
I went there on holiday once- I’m not born there- all the auld locals in the pubs getting wasted
And dancing like Flattley- on the best Guinness that I’ve ever tasted
What- you mean dancing like eegits
Exactly
You don’t perhaps think that it was tourist season and the locals were having a good laugh at you
No I expect they do this all times of the year but on Saint Paddy’s day they’d ALL be on the beer
And it would be authentic with none of this bollocks of English people putting on accents
And claiming that they have some kind of roots
That they might or might not have but the fact is they’re English and middle class
Not like in Erin where they’d all be out in the pubs getting pissed
No- I think you will find that they just go to mass
And in most places people are hardworking and sober and don’t touch a drop except
When they leave and come over here and they’re no more Irish than the ones living here
What with that being the point of a Diaspora and all- the authentic experience is leaving
The place in which you were born- harbouring dreams of returning once more
That become ever less likely as the years go on and you settle down in a place
That you start to call home and all dreams of Ireland are rose-tinted fragmented
Memories built on only seeing it in summer when everyone is out and about in the streets
If you saw it in winter you’d just see a bleak empty place swathed in the smoke from the peat