Guinness = yuk

Someone else obviously agrees with me about the horrible stuff. :)

Sláinte!

It's St Patrick's Day, the commemoration of a proto-Welshman who spent most of his life arguing and fighting with everyone he knew, probably in reaction to having been abducted by pirates as a child. He got so mad at said pirates that he went back to their home island and Christianised the lot of them - as brutal a vengeance as I can think of, even today. ;)

I don't actually know any technically 100% Irish people at the moment, although I did meet two nice Irish people in Spain, of all places. One was a priest from somewhere in County Dublin, who for some reason was studying Spanish at the residency course in Jaca in 1989, a gentle and good-natured soul who had the kind of quietly wise air which one expects (and rarely finds) in the religious. The other was a bloke from Cork who I worked with in Sabadell in 1991-2, who had earned his scars teaching in an inner-London comprehensive school, and also worked as a hotel barman, having had the, er, unforgettable experience of delivering room-service to an unclad Alison Moyet.

I've never been surprised at the fact that many Poles have gone to Ireland and felt at home, often much more so than in Britain. As historical nations Poland and Ireland, after all, have plenty of things in common: a devoted attachment to Catholicism, especially some of its more pagan manifestations (blessing newly-purchased cars or newly-opened football pitches, churches full of Mary(=Gaia) with Jesus off to one side looking vaguely out of place, big on the saints, images and rituals); a joyous attitude to drink, food and a good time (none of your imperial self-restraint here); a history of being oppressed by very un-neighbourly neighbours, who frequently attempted to obliterate the indigenous cultures; a history of emigration in search of a better life, which led to extensive and culturally important diasporae all over the world; a very mixed reception in those host countries (witness 'Polack' jokes and Irish jokes); an ability to transform those host cultures into something unique (think of the great Irish writers in English, then consider writers & scholars like Joseph Conrad, Jerzy Kosiński, Lewis Namier and plenty more); now free and independent states making their way in the European Union and the 21st century.

So raise a glass of Żubrówka or Porter, Smithwick's or Harp (but not Guinness, which is fit only for exterminating vermin), and wish both great nations all the best!