Well I returned to Dublin this Saturday and to my continuing sessions as a weekend sketch artist at the IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art).Gone was the Hurley burly that was Christmas, the Ryanair plane was like an abandoned cathedral, I suppose all the Christmas shopping trips and family reunions were now over, time for folks to back to their daily grind.
During my last excursion to the IMMA, I had the pleasure of interviewing a Roisin Ingles, a reporter for the Irish Times (like the English Times but without the doom and gloom) describing her first love. On my arrival to Dublin airport on Saturday, I picked up a copy of the aforementioned newspaper and decided to read it on the bus journey from the airport to Heuston Station. The double decker bus is aptly numbered 747! The journey takes about 50 minutes, long enough for me to get intellectually keyed up into the heart of Irish life. I thought it best to go upstairs and sit at the front, behind the large panoramic top windows, which gives you a grand old view of the grand old city of Dublin, plus there is bags of rooms for my long wrinkly old long elephant legs (it’s the little things in life that really make a difference, isn’t it?).As the bus/coach modified 747 left Dublin airport towards Heuston Station, I unfurled the main mizzen sail that was the Irish Times Newspaper and began to read through it (it is really nice to pick up a paper in another country and be able to read it effortlessly! – see it’s all about the small things again, isn’t it!).
Then the onward board intercom and TV screen came to life, advertising all that is good and must be seen visited during your stay in Dublin, this looked really impressive, OK, there were no stewardesses standing ten foot apart down the centre aisle showing me where the emergency exit were, but still, it was impressive, until that is until the audio commentary in each of buses speakers kicked in, was that Gaelic I was hearing, Ireland has two languages everywhere, Gaelic and English, even the road signs and street names have both versions shown. No, this definitely wasn’t Gaelic, a few seconds for my jet lagged synapses to kick, I realised what I was listening to, it wasn’t Irelands beautiful and native dialect, it was infact English, but was out of sync with the speakers of the TV so it was two or three echos of every spoken word, a few milliseconds behind the first! Most of the passengers on board giggled amongst themselves, you could tell the frequent flyers and regulars, they didn’t bat an eyelid. The funny novelty of it soon wore off and soon became irritating.
To try and take my mind of this infernal chatter, I continued reading the newspaper I purchased. Quickly skipping through the pages (looking at all the pictures really) I soon finished the large format wallpaper roll size of Ireland’s finest periodical and decided to look look at he pictures in the The Irish Times Magazine and upon opening up the first page, I was pleasently surprised (well more gob smacked, truth be told), the first story in the supplement magazine was written by no other than that same reporter I had interviewed on my last tour of Dublin, Roisin Ingle! And it was all bout her first love and our interview together, wicked! (I was famous again in Dublin!) and to top it off she gave a link to my book Pencil and Paint Oh, yes 2012 is looking to be sooo much better than the anis horriblis of 2011.
Then the onward board intercom and TV screen came to life, advertising all that is good and must be seen visited during your stay in Dublin, this looked really impressive, OK, there were no stewardesses standing ten foot apart down the centre aisle showing me where the emergency exit were, but still, it was impressive, until that is until the audio commentary in each of buses speakers kicked in, was that Gaelic I was hearing, Ireland has two languages everywhere, Gaelic and English, even the road signs and street names have both versions shown. No, this definitely wasn’t Gaelic, a few seconds for my jet lagged synapses to kick, I realised what I was listening to, it wasn’t Irelands beautiful and native dialect, it was infact English, but was out of sync with the speakers of the TV so it was two or three echos of every spoken word, a few milliseconds behind the first! Most of the passengers on board giggled amongst themselves, you could tell the frequent flyers and regulars, they didn’t bat an eyelid. The funny novelty of it soon wore off and soon became irritating.To try and take my mind of this infernal chatter, I continued reading the newspaper I purchased. Quickly skipping through the pages (looking at all the pictures really) I soon finished the large format wallpaper roll size of Ireland’s finest periodical and decided to look look at he pictures in the The Irish Times Magazine and upon opening up the first page, I was pleasently surprised (well more gob smacked, truth be told), the first story in the supplement magazine was written by no other than that same reporter I had interviewed on my last tour of Dublin, Roisin Ingle! And it was all bout her first love and our interview together, wicked! (I was famous again in Dublin!) and to top it off she gave a link to my book Pencil and Paint Oh, yes 2012 is looking to be sooo much better than the anis horriblis of 2011.
