ALL MY MIS-SPENT youth, along the groove of the 1990s – oh, I had the cosy, crazy, complete and cultural life.
My days were spent in a useful enough role, designing schools, banks, hotels, hospitals and other once-respectable institutions. Inevitably, deliciously, the day – however rewarding – would yield at last to inky, heady, joyous, chaotic, delightful, insightful night.
During weekday evenings, I attended cinema, theatre, cultural events; recorded music, played in groups and indulged in occasional jam sessions with big-name bands too humble for high notions. I played my cello while others went to the match. We found each other- always – after.
It was all pre-Tiger simplicity – we were children in a faltering nation, tentative: courageous and hopeful with confidence and unlimited potential. We had meagre, meagre means. But we were rich, rich rich.
We talked all night, every night. We changed the script, dissected the social stage, apple-carted the world. Then we would tear it all up again. There was never enough time, we were always sent home at the end of the night – always the last to leave.
The sturdy cornerstone of this wild and quintessentially Irish life? From Kerry to Kinnegad, Cork to Carlingford, Ballymun to Dalkey, Rosslare Strand to Ballybofey. The third place – the safe haven, the home fire, the free phone, a welcome hearth. The pub.
Irish pubs were – for me – imbued with a code I understood implicitly and instinctively despite never having frequented them – ever – as a child. My empathy with the ethos underwriting pub culture stirred as I attended college and experienced weakly counterfeit versions prevailing in the likes of student bars and suburban neighbourhood saloons or hotels. It came to life for me after I left home to prove (to myself) I could fend for myself. So much of life and intelligent – society – was thriving, spinning magic solidarity in kaleidoscope-colourful conversations within tobacco-stained halls. And there was the Dublin publican.
A typical weekend involved turning up to the Oak on Dame Street after work, staying out until four or five AM, hash browns and beans in Bewleys next morning on Westmoreland Street, before taking the papers to the Auld Dubliner in Temple Bar where we spent the day. And on we would go, into the night… The walls changed, so did the participants. But the thread ran through.
Yes, it was often ‘a feed of pints’. But bingeing? No – that ugly glass-eyed madness came in a later incarnation, when we apparently had ‘it all’, but were never satisfied.
The pub, wherever you went in this country, had structure, integrity and etiquette, a raw social form, and honour among conspirators.
It was to a pub I went on my first day in a new job when I found myself locked out with no money, no phone and no keys. I was offered a seat, a drink, a phone and any other hospitality you could imagine. The depth of respect and human treatment at that strange pub made me choose Dublin 8 as my home for the rest of my life to date. Thank you, Seamus: Fallon’s on the Coombe.
Other wonders were Mulligan’s of Poolbeg Street, John at Neary’s, McDaid’s, Matt at the Auld Dubliner, Handel’s on Capel Street, Ryan’s of Parkgate Street, the Palace, Brogan’s, the Old Stand, the Long Hall, Kehoe’s, Toner’s, gigging at the old Baggot Inn, An Beal Bocht, recording at Sun Studios in Temple Bar. And the lovely Jack O behind the Oak bar.
I am moved to write this wistful memoir – sounding a lot like Ronnie Drew, I know – as I read about recommendations of a report to government to introduce further policing of Ireland’s engagement with alcohol. The advice suggests intervention with vague and autocratic fragmented gestures, mainly around product availability and display, promotions, sponsored events, programmes and price point.
These proposals are well-intentioned and react to a clear need for change. But they are not considered in either the scope of their healing or the breadth of their impact. The summaries reported – banning sponsorship, locking down on young exposure, ‘closeting’ drinking culture – strike deep in the fabric of our social patterns and character.
At a time of deep darkness for our people, I sense such interference might have debilitating outcomes – as inhumane and uninspiring as the malady they seek to repair. This is a series of textbook appraisals and knee-jerk deprivations that may serve to drive a filleting knife hard into the core of social infrastructure and community solidarity.
Listen. If someone dies, or commits violence, is victim of injury or accident, and alcohol is involved, we must listen, we must react.
But acting as parent to remove the offending drug? This is not an effective relief or solution. This will not induce or inspire responsible, mature behaviours – if anything it continues a separation of substance and abuser, making them more blameless victim, yet stigmatised and desperate, driving behaviour underground. We need to ensure our attitudes toward alcohol change, and this means changing from a punitive approach to a platform of enlightened awareness.
For centuries in this country, alcohol cause problems because it was closeted, taboo – a dark art. In recent years it became a different beast – a freely available, unlicensed panacea to all ills where there was a lust and greed without tempering or stilling in an unlicensed world. It causes problems today as a choice to escape from pain. But these are mirrors to societal woes.
In appropriate levels of consumption, appropriately placed, alcohol is a vehicle for easing companionship, stitching community, stoking warmth, conviviality, creative outpourings and innovative flash. Don’t we need to reclaim the positive effects of this social asset – which are extensive – not dismiss all goodness because of some harm?
We were looking to emulate our Mediterranean cousins, at one point – to foster an open culture in which alcohol is a present, normal product in everyday life – sans fuss, sans fanfare. Are we really incapable of growing to that equilibrium?
This recent report fails to consider how their recommendations may jeopardise industries actively struggling forwards in our stumbling economy – and probably unintentionally hijack leisure, tourism and community outlets and interests for our embattled people. I don’t mean alcohol is so central in society – but that our pubs, festivals, national sports, street feasts are. Cutting sponsorship does not mean it will be easy to find from another source – it means many of these iconic events and places will deteriorate, some will disappear.
Where are the fitted solutions? Education on healthy behaviour, control, risk management? Learning about process, encouraging an understanding of product, integrating moderate alcohol participation in mainstream events – incentivising new products with high flavour, market appeal, but lower alcohol content? Supporting schemes where lower consumption or responsible drinking practices are developed and encouraged? Bringing banter, literacy, lore, music and magic back to the hearth?
There is a practice in equestrianism – when a rider is lost in the wilderness, he accepts his own instincts are now at best equal to those of his horse. He lets the reins go. In enough cases to enshrine myth, the horse finds a way home.
Our government could be that enlightened. With an intelligent people, an extraordinary demographic of educated thinkers caught on the thorns of circumstance, with time on their hands – the stewards of our nation should be letting controls out, not reining them in. Finding, fostering and propping fragile glistering hubs of hope. Instead we are strapped tighter, harsher, harnessed, hobbled. Taxes. Procurement rules. Copyright rules. Alcohol, information, privacy, we are not making progress upward towards the light.
Dickens wrote in Hard Times: “All repressed fires maim and burn.” It referred to the implosion of Louisa Gradgrind, a fettered soul, who spent her days staring into the fire as the authorities over her cut off her routes to creative fulfilment and free expression.
At Fumbally Exchange we want to recapture the national expansive, expressive spirit, collect people together, celebrate and cultivate our power to innovate. We want people to thrust sticks into the fire and turn them to torches, and dance.
If we don’t harness our energies and channel them toward positive, creative and stimulating action- the consequences of suppression may be terrible. The world is – all of it – staring into the fire. They should be watching us making work together.
George Boyle founded Fumbally Exchange in 2010 along with georgeboyledesigns, an architectural practice with a penchant for strategic planning and vision building. She was associate director with Murray O’Laoire Architects for 15 years, and plays cello, piano and Irish and pedal harp. For more, see fumballyexchange.com and georgeboyledesigns.com.
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