These are my memories of St Patrick’s Day when I was a kid ;
My Dad (and possibly my Mum but I mostly remember my Dad) would take me into the parade. We would park somewhere near the quays but it wasn’t too much of a problem as there wouldn’t be all that many people in town anyway.
It would always (but always) be freezing cold. Normally a freezing wind would sweep up the Liffey and scour you to the bone. Your fingers would turn slowly blue as you clutched your little Irish flag.
And then the parade. First would come the Irish Army band – which for a young boy was exciting enough – some of the soldiers had real guns! – with the big drums whose sound would reverberate in your belly in a satisfying way.
Then the American majorettes, – girls in swimming costume types outfits twirling batons and, like your fingers, turning blue in the cold and then some other Irish-Americans, who having made the pilgrimage to the old sod, would actually just be walking along slapping each others backs in congratulation. I remember feeling vaguely pitying towards them all.
But what really sticks in my mind about those Dublin St Patrick’s days of the 1980s and 90s was not the above. No what I really remember was the essential dullness of the parade. This was summed up in roughly every fourth float, which was a plain truck with a loudspeaker. ‘A.D.A (pause) SECURITY’ it would drone on a loop. Over and over. ‘A.D.A – SECURITY’. This wasn’t just one year, this was every year. For several years.
What was ADA security? I have no idea. Why was it in the St Patrick’s Day parade? Don’t know.
Just to check I didn’t hallucinate this, I asked my sister, who remembers the same thing. And my Dad who tells me it was intended as an exposition of Irish industry (stop that laughing).
It seems symptomatic of the half-assed way we did things in Ireland at that time. We used to secretly snigger at the few tourists (usually Irish American) who were suckers enough to fall for it. We used to also marvel at the St Patrick’s Day parades they apparently had in America itself. With rivers turned green, green beer and assorted other random green bullshit. I remember gazing in wonder at the film The Fugitive in around 1993 and wondering at the massive St Patrick’s Day parade in Chicago that takes place in the background of several scenes.
Anyway at some point people worked out that what St Patrick’s day needed in Dublin was to be ‘festival’. As Rio had the Carnival we would St Patrick’s Day. So some time in the late 1990s – I’m tempted to say 1998 but I’m too lazy to look it up – Paddy’s Day became a kind of extravaganza with fireworks, dancers and bongo drums. ADA Security whoever they were, were sent packing to whence they came.
For me this marks an important cultural shift in Ireland. From really not caring and going through the motions regarding our culture to making it all up from scratch to make extra money out of tourists.
Now in or around the same time, whether connected or not, St Patrick’s Day in Dublin became an absolute orgy of drink fuelled mayhem. Maybe it was always like this and I didn’t realise. But from about 2000 onwards, St Patrick’s Day grew to be an annual hunting season for gangs of feral drunk teenagers. I remember one such day around 2009 I was cycling around the Royal Canal, somewhere near Finglas when I encountered a friendly Garda. Was this, I innocently asked him a busy day for him? He merely looked at me sagely. That night the news reported the riot squad had been called out in Finglas.
On another occasion in or around the same period I happened to be drinking in a pub in Phibsborough on the day. It was the one and only occasion when, like the western saloons of the movies, the entire pub became embroiled in a drunken fist fight after a disagreement between two men. This was at about 4 pm.
The modern St Patricks’ Day in Dublin is a strange hybrid, the odd moment whereby thousands and thousands of young people come to the city from across the world for what they think it is the beer-fueled party to end all beer fueled parties. Unaware that the sensible citizen stays at home for the day and they share the city streets with that portion of the population that has been gagging all year for a spot of drunken mayhem.
The following is my facebook entry from March 18, 2012.
Went into the city centre for a while yesterday but it’s all just too mental. Garda riot squad pursuing a mob down O’Connell Street, your shoes sticking to the ground because of all the spilt drink, broken glass everywhere, packs of drunk teenagers. All the pubs and streets absolutely rammed with people. And half the people at least seemed to be Brazilian or Spanish. I like Brazilians and Spaniards but it’s just weird to hear so many people wrapped in tricolours talking away in Portuguese and Spanish, especially on Paddy’s day. Decided I was getting too old for this and needed a good strong cup of tea. The police are virtually under siege all day. However I also want to report seeing a garda bringing a case full of beer bottles into a certain station yesterday evening, just so they wouldn’t feel left out I suppose.
In the end all the participants get something out of it after all…
dorneythoughts 