Magan's World: Manchán Magan'stales of a travel addict
I WAS ASKED to speak on BBC Radio 4 recently about Irishness, about where a tourist might best find it, and I racked my head in vain. Who are we now? What are we? A few days later I was in Eyre Square, in Galway, and a woman from Boston asked me where Pádraic Ó Conaire's statue had got to. I looked around, and, sure enough, there was no sign of it.
"Nothing is the same any more," she said with a sigh. "I know I'm in Ireland. I just don't feel it. What's happening here? Those stupid yellow landing craft in Dublin, and Temple Barf, with its vomiting gargoyles. Now I'm in Galway and there's no Ó Conaire. Go figure! Where's Ireland, that's what I want to know."
I was about to join in her despair when a boy with flashing eyes and long curly hair came along, dressed in the billowing white blouse of a Romantic poet, and said a literary tour was about to start. It was Cúirt festival week, so I thought, why not?
Two women were on the steps of the Town Hall Theatre, playing tour guides from hell, pointing out invisible fire exits and insisting there be no flash photography, as "although we are beautiful, neither of us is photogenic". The Bostonian's frown lifted just a little. "We won't be showing you the Claddagh or the Spanish Arch," the guides said, "so if you want them, you can feck off now." The American was smiling openly by this stage.
When we arrived at Eglinton Canal the guides, who grew increasingly ridiculous, brought us to a road that ended at the canal, explaining how for a long time after the canal was built people used to forget it was there and walk straight into the water. "Like this . . ." they said, and suddenly a man plunged into the canal and began to scream and shout. The guides shrugged and moved us briskly along. "Finally, I'm in Ireland!" the American said.
The tour continued to Walter Macken's house, and, as we turned the corner, who was sitting in an armchair outside but Macken's son, Ultan. He stood up and read an account by this father of a hurling match, and just as he was about to finish three young hurlers came tearing down the street, hacking at each other with their hurleys. Our guide said it would be safer if we moved along again.
The tour wound on in this manner for an anarchic three hours, occasionally stumbling on literary figures: Wolfe Tone fleeing from his mistress down Kirwan's Lane, someone being hung from a phone booth on Quay Street, a young writer having her belongings thrown out of the window of a garret.
This was an Ireland I wanted to be part of me, an Ireland I wanted to boast about on Radio 4.
The tour ended at Ó Conaire's birthplace, on Dock Road, with the actor Diarmuid de Faoite channelling the writer's ghost, talking about his life wandering the roads, sleeping rough and in poor health, and how, when he was offered a cheque for his work, he used it to light his pipe. It summed up the madness, genius and tragedy of Irishness.
I looked around, wondering who the hell could have pulled this whole thing off, and I saw the giant, besandalled figure of Páraic Breathnach, founder of Macnas and Killnaskully publican. What is all this, I asked him. "Era, just a bit of craic," he growled. "This is our city. We fought for these streets. We get to do what we want on them."
I thought back to the landing craft and gargoyles of Dublin and decided that Galway must be made the new capital of Ireland - and Breathnach its president. His first task must be to put Macnas in charge of the tourist board.