DON'T get me wrong, I love living in London. I love the city, I love the people, but anyone who lives away from home is allowed a little rant every now and again. So here goes, in no particular order, the most annoying things about being Irish in London...
1. References to potatoes
Contrary to popular belief, shouting ‘POTATO' at an Irish person is neither a guaranteed LOL, an excellent icebreaker at a party, nor is it the ideal chat up line. And while we’re on the topic, we actually consume fewer potatoes per capita than Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Rwanda, Lithuania, Latvia, Kazakhstan and the UK. So, there, you eat more spuds than us…WAY MORE.
Cease and desist with the potato chat and maybe we’ll ease up on the threadbare ‘800 years of oppression’ line. Deal?
2. London Bus drivers
I’m guilty of a huge generalisation here because I’m SURE there are hundreds of delightfully friendly, perennially-pleasant bus divers, but TFL where have you hidden them? The ones I’ve encountered tend to be scary, aggressive, misanthropic and tourist-phobic. Yes their job is stressful but holy mother of God there’s no need to look at me like I’m the spawn of Satan and order me off the bus if my Oyster card is out of money.
The only way I can illustrate the difference between Irish and London bus drivers is that I have never seen an Irish bus driver (at the wheel of a half empty bus) drive away from the bus stop with a quiet look of contentment while leaving a gang of bewildered passengers behind in the p***ing rain.
3. Being asked if you got the boat here
HAAAAAAAAAAA! (*sounds of sides splitting with laughter*) Sorry, I’m just drying my eyes here after that PRICELESS joke that I’ve never heard before. Yes, some people still travel by ferry, the same way you went to France last summer…but in general Irish people stopped mass emigration by boat a century ago. Now if we want to be treated inhumanely and herded like cattle we travel Ryanair
4. General confusion about what Ireland is and isn’t
Hello! I’m Ireland, the teddy bear shaped island next door to you! And also an independent sovereign state with my own government and a shared currency (the euro). I’m sure you’ve seen me on the weather forecast, but 'hey', I hear you ask…'why do British meteorologists only tell you what the weather on the top of my teddy bear head is like?' That’s because my head is made up of six counties known as The North or Ireland, which is part of the UK.
This I'll grant you - the Ireland/North of Ireland thing is a little bit confusing (but nothing as bad as particle physics) and a little bit politically sensitive (nothing as bad as Gaza) but still, probably worth brushing up on. And just to be fair, if you ever meet an Irish person who looks at you gobsmacked when you mention something called ‘Wales’ or ‘Scotland’ and says, ‘but aren’t you all the same thing?’ then it is your absolute right and duty to give them a similarly patronising lecture on political geography.
5. Bar service
Don’t get me wrong, having ‘bantz’ with your colleague or chatting about what you are both up to later delights my heart but to paraphrase Julia Roberts ‘I’m just a girl, standing in front of a barman, asking him to serve her'.
I don’t know if they inject Irish bartenders with something that drives them to manically dole out pints until no one at the bar is left, but London bartenders just aren't infused with the same need to tend to the seven-deep queue of thirsty punters they see before them. While on one hand, this laissez-faire approach to bar keeping is admirable, I know that London barmen and women are capable of memorising and processing more than one drink order at a a time. If not, may I suggest an intensive course of Dr Kawashima's Brain Training on Nintendo DS.
6. Mistaking us all for alcoholics
Ireland has a bit of a bad reputation when it comes to the demon drink, and thus we are pretty used to being depicted as blathering but well-meaning alcoholics on screen. In some regards, Ireland is itself to blame for these lazy cultural stereotypes (see St Patrick's Day) but actually the most recent figures released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) show that Ireland is way down the list of Europe's (and the world's) heaviest drinkers. Belarus, Hungry, Romania, Republic of Moldova, Russia, Lithuania...and even the UK, all drink more that the Irish per capita per year. Cheers!
7. Pants/pants confusion
As a nation of emigrants, the Irish abroad have no deeper combined wish than to hold fast and preserve our right to the usage of the word 'pants' as we intend it. If an Irish person says, 'nice pants', they are not being a cheeky little rapscallion, rather they are complimenting you on your choice of trousers. 'Pants' does not mean knickers, boxers or undergarments of any nature. You have been warned.
8. Getting our names wrong
Guess what? We have our own language – Irish, or if you want to say Irish in Irish 'Gaeilge'. Lots of our names are either Irish or derived from Irish, hence they are spelt a little differently, and some of them may sound strange to you (for example Aoife, Ciara, Maeve, Cian, Oisín etc). Some of these names have a fada like this ´ over a vowel, but then the French have the cedilla and the Swedes have the umlat so it's no biggie really. Also, maybe saying Siobhan (Shiv-awn) or Sinead (Shin-aid) is hilarious but you call your kids things like Barnaby and Poppy, so fair’s fair.
9. Pesky political stuff
Hmmm...how can I put this delicately? After the English empire colonised us all that time ago, there was rebellion, then all out war, followed by years of trying (and failing) to clean up the violence and destruction committed by both sides. Thankfully, Ireland and Britain now enjoy the best relationship in our long and complex history, and we'd all like to keep it that way so a bit of political correctness is needed on both sides from time to time. Generally, we don't like it when you ask us if we know how to make a pipe bomb...and for the love of God, please don't get us started on Cromwell.
10. The brown bread dilemma
How we can all live in a bustling metropolis where you have "modern fusion Bangladeshi" food delivered to your door at 4am, have wedges served to you on a ping ping bat in a pub and cocktails made with ACTUAL GOLD...and yet still not find a decent loaf of brown bread in any shop is beyond me. Apparently, the lack of delicious 'real' brown bread (not sliced pan) is due to a scarcity of buttermilk. Well if that's the problem, I happen to know a little teddy bear country right next door that has plenty to spare. Bakers of Britain - sort it out!
