John Waters on queues, Ireland, Rome, whatever… July 3, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
An odd piece, but no more than all the rest as The Three Johns used to sing, but still odd, from John Waters in the Irish Times. Our scribe has decided that…
INVITED TO appear on the last Questions and Answers , with a brief to review the 23 years of Irish life since the programme first aired, I went around last week looking for signs of the deeper human trends that emerged in that period. Most changes are obvious: immigration, the fact that murder reports on the news are more likely to be from Dublin than Belfast, mobile phones and so on.
But unless you happen to be married to a Lithuanian, which thus far I am not, immigration is something you encounter in the streets rather than the soul. If I lived in Belfast, it is likely that my soul would be in better shape than it used to be; but, since I live in Dublin, the reverse must be the case.
The mobile phone has seemed to make me less lonely, but also rendered me more pathetic in my visible need for human contact. Having railed against it once with a Luddite fury, I carry it in my fist like a charm and gaze at it in the hope that it will erupt into light.
But the change that has struck me most in the past week or so is only occasionally visible: the rage and jealousy that have emerged on the surface of our society, constantly seeking a target.
Hmmm… this is a curious line, if not entirely, from Waters whose pieces seem to swing between a corrosive bitterness at certain institutions and a near ecstatic appraisal of one facet or another of Irish life with remarkably little space between.
Anyhow, he ‘treats’ us to an anecdote of being in Dublin airport…
Early last Saturday morning, I was in the departures queue at Dublin airport en route to Sicily. The queue, as usual, snaked around the departures hall, seeming to begin in Drumcondra.
In an aeon or two we were in the middle of it. Then, in front of us, a man ducked under the barrier and made for the gates, sliding into the throng. As he did so, a steward shouted at him, but he waved his hand in dismissal and kept going.
The steward went to follow him and then had second thoughts. Instead, he went briefly away and returned with a man in a white shirt, probably his supervisor. They were talking earnestly and the steward gestured and pointed towards the queue in front of us.
Then the white-shirted man ducked into the queue, and soon emerged with his quarry, looking sheepish and wan. Lecturing as they went, the arresting officer – for that is what he was – marched the queue-jumper back to the start of the line, by now at the top of Gardiner Street.
Very good. And by way of contrast…
A few days later, the same thing might have happened to me, except I was in Rome, where queue-jumping is a way of life. I was looking for the queue for the Aer Lingus check-in, just one of a number of queues all seemingly tangled up together in a small hall.
I walked about trying to figure things out, and suddenly, paying attention to the faces all around me, realized that I was surrounded by extremely white-skinned people all glaring angrily at me.
The immediate, instinctive sense I had was that I had died and gone to Purgatory, and faced 30 billion years justifying myself to dead Liveline callers. I wasn’t far out. Quite quickly I realised that I had discovered the middle of the Aer Lingus queue. I slunk back to the end of the line as people tut-tutted and harrumphed around me.
A few minutes later, a second desk was opened and the queue split into two – quite arbitrarily, it seemed – and for some reason our line ended up slightly shorter than the other. A young woman came along and, after a brief assessment, joined our queue. Immediately she was set upon by a woman who was ahead of all of us and tremblingly informed her that the end of the line was “over there”. The young woman stared at her shoes and went obediently over.
Then she realised she was in a queue for the wrong flight, that she was not going to Dublin. I have never seen such relief on a human face.
I doubt that. I really do. But anyhow, those set the scene, so to speak, on his great insight… which is that…
We used not to be like this. We had lives. We did not guard every single bureaucratic regulation with a jealous fury. Once, we might have seen someone jumping a queue and smiled at his brass neck or just thought that perhaps he faced some urgent circumstance.
And he continues…
Once, Ireland was world famous for being a place where everything was not reduced to “ethics” and “equality” and rules.
And the reason for this?
At the heart of this fundamental change in us, I believe, is the way, over the past decade in particular, the State has begun to bear down on citizens in previously inconceivable ways and dip deeper into our pockets to pay for its incompetent attentions. Gradually, this is driving us mad.
It’s cruel, it really is, to suggest that in this matter he should speak for himself. But… perhaps he should… since…
One example: in 1984, when I arrived in Dublin, you could drive your car into the city and encounter nothing more sinister than a “lockhard” who would, in return for a consideration, offer you a parking space as though he had the deeds of it in his pocket, which really contained nothing but a bottle of Asti Spumante.
Nowadays you go in fear of clampers with neither hearts nor souls, automatons of the State moralism intent upon punishment.
This is just one of the subtle and barely comprehended tyrannies that replaced the old kinds – turning us into moralistic bloodhounds who sniff the air for the scent of sinners.
Now, I hate the rare aul’ time stuff. I really do. I’m sure they seem great, but I suspect that may be a function of your age and social status rather than anything intrinsically different about today.
So, this idea that Dublin in 1984 was some sort of paradise is rubbish. Not least because I remember in the late 1970s my parents bemusement at the idea that hardly a decade before people could leave a car unlocked and parked on Grafton Street. Any time. Any time at all.
As for the dear old lockhards. Well frankly if John cared to stroll down to my neck of the woods around match days at Croke Park he’d find them plying their trade, although God knows what is now in their pockets.
But it’s even to counterpose the two, clampers/lockhards… queues in Dublin Airport, our wonderful past when queue jumpers could be admired… that one sees the essential misreading of what are actually fairly obvious phenomena and the oddness is that he glancingly refers to it earlier in his piece with his joke about marriage to a Lithuanian. One sort of wishes he was, it might unleash a sense of fun and less stuff about rage…
This country has had a significant population surge in the past decade and a half, in part made up of returning emigrants, in part made up of new immigrants and in part made up of an increasing birthrate. I don’t recall being in line at Dublin Airport in the late 80s or early 90s with a cheery smile on my lips at someone jumping a queue, instead I remember being there seeing off friends on their way to New York or London, and joining them some years later.
That, inevitably in a public sphere which is underfunded and under-resourced, and when I use the term public sphere I’m quite literally including the public shared communal spaces we transit from home to work or school or play, is going to generate tensions. Anyone who has lived in larger cities such as London or New York will know that simple proximity of masses of people has strikingly obvious outcomes in terms of behaviours. Indeed I was very struck talking to a friend who lives in New York by his observation how post 9/11 a weird (at least in the context of New York) politeness was evident in day to day communication. It didn’t last.
Speaking of 9/11 he does realise how fraught international travel has become, bags checked, bottles discarded, trying to fish keys and coins out of difficult to reach pockets when scanners unhelpfully discover them, and how people tend – for some bizarre reason, no doubt – to dislike any activities outside the norm at airports. I mean even at the best of times many people find just being in an airport waiting for a plane stressful.
And even if none of that were an issue there’s the small issue that jumping queues is discourteous and selfish behaviour. Which makes it puzzling that Waters would have such a laissez faire attitude to it.
The odd thing is that a decade ago, in another column again, he was arguing, having noticed the word ‘please’ excised from signs in the public space, that…
It’s a very subtle thing, but gradually and inexorably, some delicate and under appreciated quality has been eroding in Irish life. And this, I believe, is the root of the missing “please”. I’m not talking about “good manners”, politeness, or even what we call “niceness”. For too long we Irish were far too nice, tugging our forelocks and smiling till our hair fell out and our faces cracked. But this is something both more and less than mere courtesy.
Yeah, but presumably it included courtesy.
Walking around Dublin can be confusing, because sometimes if you smile at or speak to people they look at you like you’re an escaped mental patient, and sometimes if you don’t they speak to you and make you feel bad. This syndrome is causing the disease to spread even to those most disposed towards resisting it.
People in public offices can’t wait to get you off the line. People in shops don’t respond any more to smiles or friendly words. Some people remain warm and friendly in spite of all but these are rapidly becoming a minority.
But that’s entirely different behaviour to the sort of behaviour he now lauds.
And oddly as it happens, overheated as they are, I think his thoughts then are more convincing than his thoughts now.
“Walking around Dublin can be confusing, because sometimes if you smile at or speak to people they look at you like you’re an escaped mental patient”
The Waters might wish to be aware that this can be avoided by the simple measure of not speaking, acting and looking like an escaped mental patient.
Waters admiring “queue-jumpers”.
Why am I remindered of the Calvin and Hobbes strip where
Calvin boasts there’s no such thing as morality? Then Hobbes
pushes him over,saying “You were in my way. Now you’re
not. No Morality”
“I didn’t mean it for everybody, you jerk! JUST ME!”
‘there’s the small issue that jumping queues is discourteous and selfish behaviour. Which makes it puzzling that Waters would have such a laissez faire attitude to it.’
Not puzzling at all. Remember the classic Waters column about how all the ordinary people loved Charlie Haughey, well dealt with on this very site? What was Haughey but the arch queue-jumper?
Lockhards have pretty much died out of my particular near-Croker stomping ground. They used to ply their trade, but the past few years there’s just the local kids plying the ‘mind your car for you, mister?’ intimidation racket. (with bonus break-ins if anyone’s stupid enough to leave a bag visible).
But ordinary people did love Charlie, like it or lump it.
‘But ordinary people did love Charlie, like it or lump it.’
Some did; I always thought he was a cunt.
You know, if Waters actually made an effort he’d be dangerous. Seriously.
Got to echo your thoughts FF. Certainly some ordinary people did, but then lots hated him, and they weren’t all FG voters either.
That’s interesting about your neck of the woods alastair. No chance the Garda presence on match days there has shut it down? Down the east wall side of North Strand up towards the converted cineman/largely unsold apartments blocks you’ll see the kids too, but a few older ones. I’ve always been fond of the guy on East Wall Road furiously trying and failing to get residents to park a way or so from their own houses.
Crocodile, that’s a pretty neat characterisation… but remember, the sainted Charlie never did anything for the money!
And Calvin and Hobbes too!
Of course some people hated Charlie. But to read what a lot of people say now, you would think he was overwhelmingly despised. That doesn’t hold up when you look at the electoral results. Unfortunately.
And oddly as it happens, overheated as they are, I think his thoughts then are more convincing than his thoughts now.
You mean you remember Johnny Waters in the rare oul’ times?
“That doesn’t hold up when you look at the electoral results.”
Well, he never got a majority government, he split the party in 1985, and had to rely on FG to stay in power in 1987. So, in terms of electoral results, the majority didn’t like him, and certainly didn’t want him as Taoiseach.
The media loved him, though, ‘cos in their eyes the man was “sophisticated” and “dazzling.” I shit you not.
I have a full copy of “Charlie Haughey’s Ireland” and I must post it on YouTube. It’s fucking hilarious. There’s a great scene where he corners Larry Hagman at the races, and Charlie insists on cracking jokes with him and all Hagman wants to do is fucking run away. The opening scene has Charlie on his boat sailing around his private fucking island off Kerry, and then telling us that he decided to sail to Dublin but the boat sank and they had to be rescued. Now THERE’S a fucking analogy for Charlie’s life, no?
The man was a ponce for the money men. He was the local TD around our area until the boundaries were changed for the 1977 election, and my father, a postman with nine kids in a corpo house, hated the c**t. People knew what he was alright.
Er… That was in response to sonofstan!
To echo WBS’ comment about not all Charlie haters being FGers, my father voted Labour. He always gave Sean Kenny – the Ralph Nader of Dublin North East – his no.1.
True he never got a majority, but it now looks as though that was because the era of majority governments was gone for good. He was often the head of the largest party, and it seems to me the main thing to take from the PD split is how small it was. I am not disputing a lot of people hated him. But he didn’t get where he was by accident. I also suspect that he was a lot more popular in rural and small town Ireland than he was in Dublin, and especially than among lefties and their families(and I know not everyone here is a Dub).
It’s true that he didn’t get to where he was by accident, but it’s also true that Haughey polarized opinion, in a way that someone like Fitzgerald, or Dukes, or Lynch, or Reynolds certainly didn’t. So, whereas someone mightn’t vote for Fitzgerald or Lynch, it doesn’t hold that they didn’t like the man. With Haughey, that type of shoulder-shrugging feeling didn’t exist. The majority didn’t like him, but a majority within FF did.
As for the end of majority government, it’s hardly coincidental that it seemingly ends with Haughey’s very first election.
And why would you suspect that he was more popular in rural ireland than in Dublin? Did FF lose Dublin under his leadership?
But getting back to the point about Haughey not being popular among lefties – my father didn’t vote FF, but he didn’t despise Hillary, no more than Fitzgerald, etc. Haughey was hated because of what he was. what you get now is the media, who loved him, trying to justify their love of the man by throwing it back on the rest of us, that he was the people’s choice, when that wasn’t the case at all. The majority of Irish people didn’t like the man, and that’s a fact. Now, a minority did, but that’s what is was, a minority.
Why do I think he was more unpopular in Dublin? More people voting for parties openly opposed to his agenda. I’d agree that these people hated him in a way they didn’t hate others.
No politician gets the votes of the majority of the electorate, never mind the population. But that still doesn’t mean he wasn’t the most popular politician of the second half of the twentieth century, with the possibly exception of Bertie.
In 1977 FF under Lynch wins 57% of the seats. And Charlie was more popular than Jack Lynch? Sean Lemass? Patrick Hillary?
I’d say so on the basis of his amazing ability to come back time and again, to inspire immense loyality and to be seen as standing up for the country and representing it aggressively on a world stage, and to shape the agenda in a way that the others did not do (with the possible exception of Lemass and the special tax zones). I don’t think any of the others was seen as embodying something in the way Charlie was.
That’s a personal assessment of the man, and you’re entitled to it. But you were saying that he was the most popular irish politican of the second half of the twentieth century (possible exception, Bertie) and that the electoral evidence show this to be the case – but it doesn’t. In fact, the the evidence proves otherwise. Now, if you want to say that he was the most tenacious politician of his time, well, that’s different. But we always get these personal assessments of the man – John Waters is one for this all the time – where his electoral record and his “populism” are thrown in as evidence that the personal assessment is more than that – but when you actually look at that record, and when that record is placed within the context of his contemporaries, the objectiveness of it goes, because the facts aren’t there, and the personal assessment remains.
It is indeed a personal judgment, I wouldn’t say otherwise. It takes into account the changing nature of politics over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, changing nature of society and voting patterns etc. I haven’t been the only one here using personal opinion or anecdotal evidence. What I was saying was that the electoral evidence shows that he was not as overwhelmingly despised as some people today would like to suggest, quite the opposite.
I’d say also tenacious is the wrong word. We could award that title to Ó Brádaigh or Mac Giolla just as easily as Charlie, but clearly neither was the phenomenon he was. And nor were any of the other political leaders of that period the force in the imagination – both positive and negative – that he was.
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Well I don’t know who it is who argues that he was “overwhelmingly ” despised, but disliked and despised he was, and it’s hardly the case that you can use election results to somehow show that he was the most popular Irish politician of the second part of the twentieth century. He wasn’t. Now, he certainly dazzled some people, but, for those he dazzled, there were those he didn’t, and they saw him for what he was.
See what i mean about Haughey? He’s usurped a perfectly good Waters-slagging thread.
CJH made for good copy, which is why journos liked him. That bastion of the liberal agenda In Dublin had him on the cover with ‘down to our last hero’ as the strap-line.
Maybe not so much liked as seen as a ‘character’ and always worth watching maybe? (If only to make sure he didn’t have his hand in your pocket or on your missus.)
Also, he did have the cute-hoor vote locked down, if I remember rightly.
The CPI won’t thank me for mentioning this, but in the early
eighties they expressed support for Haughey on the grounds that
“he was sound on the national question”.
More fool them. Anyway, changing the subject, what do we make of the proposed electricians strike?
Is it really an exercise in mayhem and sabotage? Or is it down to the employers trying to avoid passing on pay due to electricians under agreements from the past?
Never knew that Starkadder. Hilarious. And really depressing at the same time.
This is a very interesting thread.
I couldn’t stand Haughey but he wasn’t actually to blame for the split within FF which produced the PDs and the era of coalition governments. The backbench heave which got rid of Lynch benefitted CJH but he didn’t engineer it, he just happened to be the focus for the dissent of the likes of McEllistrim, Fahey and Loughnane after Lynch and Colley had managed the tricky task of simultaneously alienating both farmers and PAYE workers thus giving FF probably their worst set of election of results, the 1979 Euros and Cork by-elections, since the locals just gone by. Immediately Haughey took power, Colley, O’Malley, O’Donoghue et al were trying to shift him.
FF under Haughey were particularly popular West of the Shannon. However this might have had less to do with Haughey than with the, admittedly mild, liberalism of FG under Garret. Connacht was the heartland of religious conservatism at the time, witness the votes in the divorce and pro-life referendums, and FF shamelessly chased down this vote. Michael Finneran, currently operating as a superfluous junior minister, described Labour as, “the party of living in sin,” and there were similar intellectually brilliant analyses from the likes of Reynolds, Flynn and others who these days would like to portray themselves as having been sophisticated politicians. Haughey’s posturing over the family planning bill in 1979 is slightly stomach churning to look at now, especially his paeans to natural family planning. To qoute the late great Doctor Patrick Leahy, “what’s natural about sticking a thermometer up your rectum.”
I think Haughey stirred strong emotions not just because of his inherent charisma, which I have to say I’m a bit agnostic about, but because it was a time of strong political emotions generally.
As regards the national question, Haughey talked a good game when he was out of power but differed little from FG in his approach. In 1979 Sile De Valera gave a speech at the Donegal by-election in Letterkenny when she condemned Thatcher’s insensitivity in dealing with the matter. What she said would be pretty much orthodoxy now. But back then Haughey rushed out a statement within the hour saying that her speech was against FF policy.
He was a terrible opportunist and responsible for the disastrous economic policies which led to so many of us seeing the insides of dole offices and the capitals of foreign countries in the eighties. Mind you Garret was even more incompetent and still has a column in which he sounds forth about the economic policies we should be pursuing today. Which is a bit like Haughey having a column bemoaning corruption.
As for his popularity, it’s a sad fact that you could put anyone in charge of FF and they’d win the biggest vote in a general election. Next time round will probably be no different.
And, seeing as I’m in generous mood, I drank a few times in the famous Keaneys Pub which was the focus of the whole row about Sean Doherty and Garda Tully. And I’ve honestly never worked out why this bit of cronyism on Doherty’s part was treated with such horror in a society where Nicky Kelly was locked up and the members of the Heavy Gang were getting promoted left right and centre. I suppose that counts as Whataboutery but what about it.
Sorry, I should have said that the matter Sile Dev was talking about was the British government’s handling of the H-Block crisis.
And she gave that speech in 1980. Interestingly enough her great ally at the time, and regarded as one of the party’s most staunch republicans, was Charlie McCreevy. Though he was still a marginal enough figure to be called Charlie McGreevy most of the time. Mind you, the same year the Times referred to a young TD in Dublin Central as Bertram Ahern.
Re: Connacht as Irish Conservatism’s Land of Mordor.
During the Abortion referendum in 1983, a priest in Castlebar was doing his political commisar bit one sunday morning. . . . one of the local doctors shouted at him that he had no right to talk about medical matters of which he was entirely ignorant, and got up and walked out of the church.
That’s interesting about your neck of the woods alastair. No chance the Garda presence on match days there has shut it down?
No. The guards don’t care one way or the other – as long as no-one is breaking into cars they keep their noses out of the whole process. The kids run their racket right under their noses. I suspect the kids ran the lockhards out.
I must confess I thought Waters’ item was the most incredible rubbish, but fitting for a dumbed-down Irish Times, sadly. Clearly we all complain too much and have too much moral concern – is he suggesting we should let those poor golf-mad bankers who ruined us get away with it? Hmm. It’s a short step . . . Any chance certain gentlemen will receive stiff sentences for ruining people, and the country, such as Mr Madoff received in the US? No chance at all – unless you wish to be described as overly-moral. Ethics and morals are clearly old-fashioned. In Watersworld, of course, it doesn’t quite have to make sense. It’s a newspaper column, after all.
I can believe that re the kids alastair…
or perhaps it should be 
I wonder if the west of the Shannon bit is what assists Waters in his thinking EamonnCork, and incidentally Fred Johnston I think – although I’m wary of slippery slope arguments you may be onto something as regards ’short steps’…
And as for Sile Dev, amazing isn’t it how either she changed or the world changed. Got to be one or the other, can’t work out which! McCreevy Republican? Dear God! He certainly modified his tone if he was regarded as fit for consumption by the PDs… didn’t he?
McCreevey was praising Thatcher a few years ago.
The Arms Trial aura always worked for Haughey; no matter what he said publicly people thought that deep down he was planning some big offensive against the Brits. A lot of Provos thought he would never extradite Dessie Elllis etc.
Garibaldy, I’m sure you know the WP propped up a minority FF government led by CJH?
I would have always thought he had plenty of support in Dublin; he certainly always played the Dub card- when he wasn’t pretending to be from south Derry; ‘my father’s people and my mother’s people’ etc, the father was a Free State officer of course, not that half of Haughey’s supporters in FF even knew- Aiken apparently never trusted him in the 60s because of this.
Anyway I’m rambling, I can honestly assure I always thought he was a c**t, (see, I’ve censored myself) and I did once meet him at a family funeral.
On the sparks strike- they are saying it’s more about the principle of how the talks should be conducted than the 11%, which sounds huge but is actually about 2 Euro.
Whatever happened to Sile Dev?
Fred,
I do know that thanks. But not because of his policy on the national question!
As regards Haughey’s popularity in Dublin, a couple of quick figures which may mean something, or might not but here they are anyway.
In the November 1982 election, FF won 38.3% of the vote in Dublin, second to FG which won 41.1%.
In 1987 FF won 40.5% (FG 23.7%, WP 7.5%, Lab 7.1%.).
A bit more impressive but still much less than the 49.7% they won in Connacht/Ulster or 45.7% in the rest of Leinster.
In 1981 the FF vote dropped by 5.4% in Dublin to 41.4%. Again it was their weakest region in the country.
So, while FF would kill for these percentages today, Haughey didn’t really have seem to have the same galvanising effect in Dublin that Lynch had in Munster. (though Dublin is usually a more crowded field).
Then again he also claimed to be a Mayoman, he was born there in fairness, so that gave him an advantage in Connacht/Ulster, given that he was simultaneously a Derryman.
Sile Dev’s career fizzled out a bit but by the time she was 24 she had the distinction of having put the frighteners on two Taoiseachs, Lynch and Haughey as well as being one of the, very few, mainstream politicians, to speak out on behalf of the H-Block prisoners.
Yeah, EamonnCork #38, it would make a fascinating exercise – well, okay, fascinating to me – to see a comparison with Ahern’s performance.
Getting back to John Waters, God be with the days when you could just push past the queues (including Mammy Waters) in Ye Olde Butcher’s Shoppe in idyllic Roscommon to get your bread and dripping and you could drive up to Dublin on whatever side of the road you liked and park your Mini Metro in the middle of a funeral in Glasnevin Cemetery without fear of the fascist wheel-clampers and other busy-bodies.
I used to think that Sinead O’Connor was the one in that relationship with less of a grasp on reality.
WBS,
Bertie figures. Under Ahern, FF won 36.7% in Dublin in 1997, 37.4% in 2002 and 38.9% in 2007. Given the changes in the political landscape I suppose comparisons with Haughey are invidious but they’re interesting figures all the same. One interesting figure is the comparison with FF under Albert in 1992. C and W really didn’t seem to play in Dublin as the party won 33.0% there.
The best FF performance in Dublin in this period was the 50.1% amassed by ivory tower intellectuals Sean Haughey and Ivor Callely in Dublin North Central in 2002. The worst was the 25.79% garnered in Dublin South East in 1997 when they took one seat out of four with a team of Eoin Ryan, who was elected, and a gent named Noel Whelan, who was not. (Whatever happened to him, perhaps he’s hanging out with David Vipond).
Incidentally, FF’s all-time high in Dublin is 51.8% in 1944. The 1992 result was their worst result in the capital since the elections in 1927 when in fairness they were just getting started.
That November 1982 was FG’s best ever, if we exclude 1927 again. Labour’s best showing ever was in 1969 when they won 28.3% of the vote, the people of the capital obviously being unmoved, or perhaps even encouraged, by the fact that, in the words of FF, the new socialist Labour stood for, “the flames of burning farmsteads in Meath.” Within two decades the vote was down to a quarter of that total.
What a great account of Roman chaos. Normally you have to have lived it to believe it, but well done!
following in Rome
Looks great! Lot of great thoughts.
[...] could ask though and I think quite reasonably given his thoughts the previous week, just how does queue jumping fit into [...]