Keep Left

A typical road in the West of Ireland.

The Irish - as a consequence of hundreds of years of political domination by their neighbors in Great Britain - drive on the left side of the road.  When you are planning your first trip to Ireland, you keep reading in guidebooks and seeing in pictures that the Irish drive on the left side of the road.  If you are a typical tourist on your first trip to the Emerald Isle, you fly into Shannon airport - located in the rural, West of Ireland - and pick up a rental car and drive through the scenic West and South of Eire and up into Dublin - where you dump the car as quickly as possible, preferably in a car park, and not in a ditch by the side of the road.

As you prepare for your departure before your trip and pack all your belongings, somewhere in the back of your head is floating around the notion that, "This time tomorrow I will be driving on the left side of the road in Ireland."  It's in the back of your head as you board your flight and try and get a couple of hours of sleep as you cross the Atlantic.  As you feel your plane descend and get your first glimpse of the forty shades of green coming into view on the island below, that notion of driving on the left side of the road starts to get a little more pronounced in your head.

You collect your bags, pass through customs and immigration and make your way to the rental car counter.  You show your proof of insurance, your American driver's license and pull out your credit card.  You sign and initial an endless stream of papers that state you promise to return your tiny, dented, manual shift rental car in Dublin within a week.  You are exhausted, jet-lagged, hungry and mostly just glad to finally be there at this point, but somewhere closer to the front of your brain is swirling around the notion that you are about to drive for the first time on the left - or "other" - side of the road.

Everything seems to be in order and the friendly Irish lass working at the car rental agency hands you the keys to the car, writes down the space number where it is parked and then asks you one final question: have you driven in Ireland before?  As you answer "no," you can sense an almost imperceptible flinch in her face, but she proceeds to give you a few more helpful tips for driving in Ireland (such as which direction to turn out of the rental car parking lot).

You walk away from the rental car counter with your rental agreement, car keys, baggage and, trust me, it still hasn't quite sunk in that you're about to drive on the left side of the road.

You find your car, undoubtedly while dodging a few particles of liquid sunshine as an Irish welcome.  Don't worry about the moisture because the forecast for later in the day is for "good sunny spells."  How do I know this?  Because there are only two possible options in the weather forecast in Ireland: "good sunny spells" or "a bit soft."  In the summer months, it's nearly always "good sunny spells."  The rest of the year, even in a driving snowstorm, the weather is still "a bit soft."

You put your keys in the lock, pop the hatch, place your bags in the back and then you make your first Yankee mistake.  You walk over to the left side of the car - what back home would be the driver's side - until you look into the window and realize the steering wheel is on the other side: the right side.  "Oh, yeah, that's right.  They drive on the other side of the road here," you remind yourself, even though you've been thinking about this fact in the back of your head for weeks.

Entering the car from the opposite side from what you've done all your adult life, you adjust your seat, check your mirrors and pull out a map of Ireland and explain to your travel partner which direction you are headed, and then, finally, put the key in the ignition.  Even though you are now seated on the right side of the car - the driver's side in Ireland - and you know you are about to drive on the left side of the road, you will probably reach down with your right hand, near the door, to move the stick shift.  No, that's not it.  You are about to shift with your left hand for a week because they drive on the other side of the road here.

Seat?  Check!  Mirrors?  Check!  Lights?  Check!  Map?  Check!  Ignition?  Check!  Parking brake?  Check!  Off you go! 

You will back out of the parking space, with your left hand on the stick shift and your right hand on the wheel, and then move forward to the guard shack at the exit to the rental car lot.  You pull up to the left of the shack - it feels a little weird to lower the window on your right to poke your head out the window - and another friendly Irish lass checks your rental agreement and wishes you a safe journey.

You move forward slowly, cautiously, a few feet and try and figure out which way to turn.  Left.  You watch the steady stream of cars going back and forth in both directions, and noticing a gap in the traffic, hit the gas and then proceed to turn left and finish your turn in the right hand lane on the road - the wrong lane! - and then as your travel partner screams in terror "LEFT SIDE!  MOVE TO THE LEFT!" a voice in your head will yell "HOLY SHIT!  OH, MY GOD!  WHAT THE ....!" and at that very moment, it will finally hit home that you will be driving on the left side - the wrong side - of the road for the next week.

I cannot exaggerate how strange and terrifying those first few moments driving on the left side of the road truly are.  It goes against everything you've done on a daily basis for years.  You quickly gain some speed and confidence and move north on the main road from Shannon up to County Clare.  Your partner's heartbeat has now dropped below 150 and you feel more comfortable every minute - "Hey! this is kind of fun!  I'm getting the hang of this!" - and you think everything's going to be just fine when you spot a sign in Gaelic, and please let that be English, that looks just like this:

This road sign indicates you are approaching a roundabout.

You are still jet-lagged and completely disoriented from a full day and night of traveling, when you notice the above sign that indicates you are quickly approaching a roundabout - the Irish version of an intersection - that varies from an American intersection in that there aren't any stop signs (cars entering the roundabout yield to cars already inside the roundabout) and that you can get trapped inside it for the REST OF YOU LIFE.  The other quirk about roundabouts is that the signs never tell you which direction - west, east, north or south - to take, but just prominent cities in each direction, and as in our example above, only one of which is anywhere near Shannon (Limerick).

This is why the first time you drive in Ireland it is very helpful to have a navigator - someone capable of holding and reading a map - in the car with you.  No matter how confused and panicked you may be approaching or driving through a roundabout, do not yell at the navigator, even if they seem more confused about which direction to go than you, although they are holding the map of Ireland.  It's a small island, so there's only so far you can travel in any direction.

It's a couple of hours later, and you and your travel partner/navigator have now adroitly maneuvered numerous roundabouts, swerved to the left to avoid several passing trucks, and as you drive out to the most remote part of Ireland, and draw nearer to your final destination for the day, you may come across a situation similar to this:

Rush hour in the West of Ireland.

My advice for those of you who have never read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is: Don't Panic.  You may be restricted to the left side, but livestock in Ireland have the run of the entire road.  It's time to just stop, grab the camera, eat a Cadbury bar and smile.  Isn't this why you left home and traveled to this charming island in the first place?

After a week of driving through some of the most scenic, narrow and decayed roads in Europe, you will arrive in Dublin and return the car, hopefully without any additional nicks or scratches. 

The next day you will find yourself staying up for almost 24 hours to return to your home in the States, collect your bags, hop on the shuttle bus to long term parking and then you will breathe a sign of relief at the familiarity of your good, ol' American (but made in Japan) car that you can drive on the right side of the road.  Just don't be surprised if after you put your bags in the back of the car and finally find your car keys, you catch yourself walking around to the right side to drive the car.

Don't Panic.  There shouldn't be any roundabouts or sheep in the middle of the road on the way home.

The Statues of Dublin

Dublin native Oscar Wilde, author of The Importance of Being Ernest and The Picture of Dorian Gray, lounges comfortably in Merrion Square.  This is my personal favorite of the statues of Dublin.  Dubliners have nicknamed it "The Fag on the Crag," "The Quare in the Square," and "The Queer with the Leer."

Ireland is an island of only five million people, and in the past hundred years has produced four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature - only two less than the United States.

These two women on Liffey Street are known as "The Hags with the Bags."

There's a tourist trap castle in the Southwest - Blarney Castle - that draws millions of tourists a year to pay a few quid to lie upside down and kiss an old rock that has been kissed by millions of other people - all in the name of acquiring the Irish "gift of gab."

Irish literary legend James Joyce still stands just off O'Connell Street in Dublin, but if you're meeting a Dubliner by "The Prick with the Stick," you're in the right place.

The Irish love to talk and many of them love to write.  Ireland produces acclaimed writers and playwrights at a pace that far outweighs its population.  Words and language are a vital part of Irish life.

Sweet Molly Malone, subject of a famous Irish folk song, now plies her trade selling "cockles and mussels" at the bottom of Grafton Street.  Dubliners have dubbed her "The Flirt in the Skirt," "The Trollop with the Scallop," "The Bitch with the Hitch," "The Dolly With the Trolley", and my personal favorite: "The Tart with the Cart."

Dublin, Ireland is a city of statues.  You can't turn a corner in the City Centre without encountering another statue or piece of sculpture commemorating something or someone.  And as quickly as the Irish government can plan and erect these statues, the Irish people can come up with witty and hilarious nicknames for them.  Many of these statues have multiple nicknames that are known by every Dubliner. 

The statue of Anna Livia (from Joyce's Finnegan's Wake) in its original location on O'Connell Street in Dublin's City Centre.  Dubliners nicknamed her "The Floozie in the Jacuzzi."

Dublin went a little overboard for the new Millennium, erecting new statues and landmarks around the city.  A digital clock counting off the time until the new Millennium was placed in the dark waters of the Liffey, the river that runs through the centre of Dublin.  Dubliners were ready and doled out several nicknames for the odd clock that lay in the murky Liffey.

Dubliners quickly dubbed the Millennial Clock "The Clock in the Dock" and "The Time in the Slime."

The largest piece for the Millennium celebration was a few years late to the party.  The "Spire of Dublin" is now located in the space vacated by "The Floozie in the Jacuzzi" in the middle of O'Connell Street - the main street that runs through the centre of Dublin.  Before the cement was dry, Dubliners had a series of nicknames ready including "The Binge Syringe," "The Stiletto in the Ghetto," "The Nail in the Pale," "The Pin in the Bin," "The Erection in the Intersection," and "The Rod to God."

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The World's largest sculpture is officially known as The Spire of Dublin, but many locals refer to it as "The Stiffy by the Liffey."

I have no clue which notable Irishman or what landmark event will next be commemorated by a statue or monument in some open space or square in Dublin.  But I'm quite confident that in a pub in Dublin, around a few pints of Guinness stout,  several Dubliners will brainstorm up multiple nicknames before it passes the planning commission.  And I'll drink to that.  Sláinte.

Walking the Long Miles Home

The last 19A bus of the night leaves Dublin's City Centre, north towards Glasnevin.

Oh, the last bus has gone
Or maybe I'm wrong
It just doesn't exist
And the words that flew
Between me and you
I must be crossed off your list
So I'm walking the long miles home
I don't mind losing you
In fact I feel better each step of the way
In the dark I rehearse all the right things to say
I'll be home, I'll be sober by break of day
Walking the long miles home 

- The opening lyrics of Richard Thompson's song Walking the Long Miles Home

In the Fall of 1986, I lived with an Irish family and studied for a semester at the National Institute for Higher Education (now known as Dublin City University) in Glasnevin, a suburb just 5 kilometres north of Dublin's City Centre (downtown).   

The cost of car ownership was prohibitively expensive in Dublin 25 years ago; I didn't know a single student at my college who owned or drove a car.  A gallon (3.8 liters) of petrol  alone would set you back 3 quid (Irish slang for their "pound," which was then equivalent to approx. $1.35 U.S.) or $4 U.S.  The cars the Irish drove were tiny by American standards, and even those rarely had automatic transmissions.

Fortunately, Dublin had an excellent public transportation system.  All of us at the college had a student bus pass, and I used mine frequently to get back and forth between my house and Dublin's City Centre (An Lar in Irish).  The shock for an American accustomed to late night, or even all night, public transportation was that the last bus of the night left Dublin's City Centre at 11:30 p.m, even on Saturday nights.  Not very late for young people having a night on the town.

I attended several concerts that drifted past 11:00 p.m., and you could sense the audience getting restless, apprehensive about missing the last bus home.  A stagehand would sheepishly walk out to the performer about 11:05 p.m., whisper in their ear, and then the performer would say to the crowd, "I understand you all need to catch the last bus of the night, so this will be the final song of the evening."

Taxi service did exist in Dublin, although they tended to cluster around large hotels that served Americans and business people, rather than just cruising around the streets, like in New York.  They were prohibitively expensive.  A short 2-3 mile ride from the City Centre out to a house in the suburbs could easily cost $15-20 U.S.  Quite dear for college students on a budget.  I believe I only got in a taxi 2-3 times during my entire four months in Dublin.

So if you were out on the town with your mates, coming out of a movie, concert or a play, let's say, and you wanted to extend the evening by heading to a pub for a pint, and then over to Beshoff's chipper for some steaming, hot chips; around 11:15 p.m. you would have to make a decision: were you going to catch the last bus home or stay in town and walk home?  Was the craic - Irish for fun and good conversation - with your evening's companions in the the next two or three hours worth the 45 minute walk home in the dark at the end of the evening?  That was the question.

Dissolve to thirteen years later.  Richard Thompson, one of my favorite singer-songwriters, released a terrific album, entitled Mock Tudor, that included several great songs about what it was like to grow up in the suburbs of the United Kingdom.  During the 1950's for him, but it hadn't changed much since then.  Imagine my surprise to hear one of the songs entitled Walking the Long Miles Home.  It was about the experience I just described above.  Was your date or your companions worth missing the last bus and being forced to walk home?  It described an experience that any youngster growing up in the suburbs of Dublin or the U.K. had experienced.  I loved the song, of course, but I appreciated it so much more than the average American because I had lived it during my time in Dublin.

I did stay in Dublin past the last bus with my friends, or with a date, on several occasions, and then walked the long miles back home.  I must have possessed good judgement because I remember those walks home as some of the best and most revelatory times of my stay in Ireland.  I really got to know so many of my friends from college during those jaunts.  Dublin was so elegant and peaceful during those early morning rambles.  Sure, it occasionally rained.  But it was usually a "soft" rain, as the Irish would say, a mere light mist; and if that bothered you, well, then you were just in the wrong country.

Every time I hear the song Walking the Long Miles Home on the radio, or it comes up on my iPod, I am immediately conveyed back in time to those late nights and early mornings in Dublin, walking home with my friends.  And knowing there's a song out there that can transport you back to such a memorable moment and place can be a magical thing.  That's what great songwriters do.  Don't ever question Richard Thompson's credentials as a musical magician.

I'd love to order another pint and stay around and chat, but it's 11:20.  Gotta' run for my bus.  Ah, but the craic was grand.

If you are unfamiliar with the work of the brilliant singer-songwriter Richard Thompson, you may want to listen to a few of his songs below.

His version of the traditional folk song, Oops!...I Did It Again:

The sing-a-long audience favorite Tear-Stained Letter:

And if you've made it this far, here's one of my favorites, Vincent Black Lightning 1952, a chilling ballad that he has sung every time I have seen him live - and which never fails to silence the audience and send a shiver down your spine.  Also, his only song which contains my name in the title.

A Fairy Tree in Clare

Having flown all night in the darkness over the Atlantic, and now being rudely welcomed by the sunrise just as our bodies were telling us it was time to go to bed, we placed our bags for the driver next to the back of the jitney van, and wearily shuffled inside.  There was plenty of room inside the van, a minibus really, and each of the eight crew members – two pilots and six flight attendants – who had just worked the flight in from Philadelphia on a Boeing 767, had a row to themselves for the 30 minute ride to our overnight in the charming Irish town of Ennis

In my last year as a flight attendant, I finally had enough seniority, after seventeen years of flying, to hold some trips to Ireland.  I worked the flights to Shannon and Dublin as much as I could that final summer.  Dublin, a more cosmopolitan destination which featured a terrific hotel for our crews, went a little more senior and was tougher to get.  I could pick up Shannon as much as I wanted, and flew there a couple of times a month that summer.  And the West of Ireland is a far different place from Dublin.

A couple of the flight attendants had planned ahead and commandeered the remaining champagne and orange juice after the First Class breakfast service, and offered mimosas from plastic water bottles to everyone in the van.  I passed.  They celebrated the end of a long day and night by sipping on them during the ride.  I took out my iPod, selected my “Irish Mix” from the playlists, and sat back to enjoy the scenery as the sound of Van Morrison and the Chieftains played in my ears.

About 15 minutes after we had left Shannon Airport and headed north through County Clare, we came to an interchange on the N18 motorway, and the driver turned back to the crew and pointed out the window, to a motley looking large bush off to the side of the road, and proudly proclaimed, “see your bush, there, do ya’?  That’s our fairy tree.  Quite a fight over that tree when they built the bypass, there was.  But they moved the road and kept the tree."

Those of us who had flown this trip before knew the tale of the fairy tree, of course.  The fairy tree was pointed out on every ride to Ennis whenever there was a crew member aboard enjoying their first Shannon overnight.

The Fairy Tree that diverted the N18 motorway in County Clare.

"Whaaaaaattttt?,” came a female voice from the back of the van, after she had cleared her throat of her early morning mimosa, wondering if she had heard correctly.  

“A fairy tree?”

“Ah, sure, have you never seen a fairy tree before?  We’ve lots of them here in Ireland,” explained the driver.

I had lived in Dublin, Ireland many years prior, and I don’t know if I had ever seen a known fairy tree, let alone one that was saved from demolition as it sat in the path of inevitable modernization: the bypass of the N18 motorway through County Clare.

"The locals fought hard to keep the fairy tree.  It’s bad luck to destroy one, ya’ know.  They made a fuss when the bypass plans were first announced, but the government saw the error of their ways and eventually moved the bypass,” the van driver added.  

The plans for the N18 Fairy Tree bypass.

Sure enough, if you knew about the tree and looked carefully, you could discern that the motorway took a slight path out of its way around the small tree, which was more of a bush, really.

The Americans in the van laughed and talked in bewilderment about the absurdity of moving a huge, modern freeway around a tree or a bush.  That would be unthinkable in America, would it not?

I doubt they would even do it any more in Dublin; too modern and forward looking.  Dubliners today are more worried about interest rates, home values and cell phone reception than fairy trees.

The modern Irish can be a little touchy with Americans about some of the myths and stereotypes of old Ireland.  The leprechauns, jaunting carts, The Quiet Man; “top o’ the mornin’” Ireland, as some would refer to it.  Similar to the way I viewed Fisherman’s Wharf when I lived in San Francisco; I would stop by to drop off visitors playing tourist, but it was long past its life as an authentic part of The City. 

I didn’t laugh at the story of the fairy tree.  I just smiled.  I’ve never seen an Irish fairy – although one night on the Aran Island of Inishmore I had to walk home with a few friends from a ceili in Kilronan to our B&B about a mile away (“is that a real mile or an Irish mile?”) in the PITCH black night – where I could barely make out my hands right in front of my eyes – and I would have been a believer in just about anything that night.

Irish folklore, the mythologies, they may not mean as much to everyone today, but I figure they served a useful purpose.  There’s a reason they existed and a reason there are still believers.  And as a modern American, who am I to pass judgement on “fairy trees?"

Quite the contrary, I found great comfort in its existence.  Ireland has become so much more modern and fast-paced since I lived there; its economy was known as “The Celtic Tiger” during the go-go 1990’s, and even the infrastructure in the rural, isolated West has been vastly upgraded with money from the European Economic Community (E.E.C).

But no matter how affluent and modern a country it may become, and how many high tech factories and cell phone towers are built along its western shores, I wouldn’t want to live in a world where I didn’t know that somewhere in Ireland there was a modern motorway bypass that was moved, just a wee bit, at the insistence of its people, to make way for the “fairy tree."

Would you?

Céad Mile Fáilte

Arriving in Dublin from the West, looking East to the Irish Sea.

As the power pulled back on the four massive engines of the Aer Lingus Boeing 747, I was awakened from my overnight nap by the sensation of the aircraft making its descent. Flying over the Atlantic at such velocity, I realized the six hour flight would have been a harrowing 6 week journey by sea for my ancestors of 150 years ago.

Gazing out the window to the Emerald Island below, which indeed does glisten with forty shades of green, I couldn't help the overwhelming sensation that I had come home.

I am of Irish descent on both sides of my family.  My surname, Cleary, is descended from the Irish chleirich, meaning a clerk or cleric.

Although my maternal grandparents would eat corn beef and cabbage each St. Patrick's Day, regularly play old Irish folk music albums, and have cute little Irish tchotchkes around the house, with pictures of shamrocks and leprechauns, and featuring Irish quotes such as "you're never drunk as long as you can hold on to one blade of grass, and not fall off the face of the earth," they had never been to Ireland.

They were Irish-American, which meant they wore their Irishness with a sense of pride that would exceed that of anyone back in the old country.  Still, it was quite a shock to my mother and her sisters when my grandfather, who had never set foot on the auld sod, would start to recite ancient Gaelic prayers that my family had never heard pass his lips before upon his deathbed.

An Aer Lingus Boeing 747 arrives in Dublin.

As Irish as he truly was, as Irish as my paternal grandparents had been, with the Irish surnames Cleary and Morrissey, they were all still a couple of generations removed from the old country.  And to my knowledge, I was the first of my family to return to Ireland.

It wasn't until I boarded the plane in Boston seven hours before, that it really started to hit me that Dublin would be my home for the next four months.

The gigantic plane with the distinctive, green Aer Lingus livery - the huge white shamrock on the tail - was my first reminder that I was indeed on my way to Ireland.  The flight attendants chatting with their Irish accents as they walked through the cabin, the Irish pilot making an announcement detailing our route and the expected weather in Dublin upon our arrival (the possibility of "some good sunny spells"), the safety instructions in the seat pocket written in English and Gaelic.  It was all unmistakably...Irish.

It seemed like such a short time had passed since my mother informed me that my younger brother was going to study abroad for his Junior year in Seville, Spain.  She wondered if there was some place in Europe where I would like to study for a semester.  Ireland.  Only Ireland.

The airborne behemoth continued its descent, lumbering left and right, straightening out, and then finally touched down at Dublin Airport.  Ireland.  I was now on Irish soil.

The flight attendant started her arrival announcement in Gaelic with "Céad Mile Fáilte," Gaelic, or Irish, for "a hundred thousand welcomes," a traditional Irish greeting.

Departing the aircraft and walking down a labyrinth of hallways until I came to two lines of passengers, I stopped, and then patiently stood in the shorter line to the left, labeled for Americans only,  and proceeded up to the Irish immigration officer.  I took my blue American passport from my pocket and placed it upon the counter.

"Good morning. Where are you from?," the officer asked, grabbing the document, not looking up.

"California.  Los Angeles, California," I replied.

"And what brings you to Ireland, Mr. Cleary?," he continued to query, now running my passport through a scanner next to the keyboard of his computer.

"I'm a student.  I'll be studying this semester at N.I.H.E. in Glasnevin."

N.I.H.E. in Dublin.  No expense spared on the sign.

He looked up for the first time, comparing the picture in the passport to my face.  I stared back.  Satisfied, he turned his attention back to my passport,  and reached for an instrument next to his right hand, which he raised and then brought down on my passport with a loud "thunk," placing the arrival stamp of the Dublin Airport on the first page.  He closed the passport and slid it across the counter.

"Welcome home, lad."

I was officially in Ireland.  Another subversive Yank successfully smuggled into the country.

In moments I would meet the Irish host family who had been prearranged to provide room and board during my stay in Dublin.  They would be MY Irish family, MY Dublin family, by the time I would return to America in four months.  They still are twenty-five years later.

Pinewood Crescent in Glasnevin, Dublin.

(Pinewood Crescent (LEFT) , Glasnevin North, Dublin 11.  Number 24, a "semi-detached" home - what Americans would call a duplex -  halfway down the street on the right, was my Dublin home for the Fall of 1986.)  

I stepped out of the Terminal and into the "soft" Irish morning, as they'd say in Dublin, exhausted, or "knackered," from the overnight flight; unaware that I was arriving as a young Yank, and would depart four months later as a lifelong Dubliner.

Yes, some tea and soda bread would be lovely.  Both.  That's grand.

Céad Mile Fáilte.  A hundred thousand welcomes.