And it’s a racing cert that an English market town is awash with Guinness mid-March but what of down the road and a history of London‘s Paddy’s Day?
We’re all recovering from the last few days when half the population of Ireland got jinglier of pocket through four days at the Cheltenham Festival.
When their favourite, in this case Gallopin des Champs, comes romping home.
Norah’s story: Norah Casey in Trafalgar Square in 2002
Of course Paddy‘s Day has become something of a misnomer over the years.
What started out as a one-day break from Lenten sacrifices when us youngsters got to eat sweets has grown.
A weekend bender
The craic: The Irish rule in Cheltenham
And in these more heathen days it’s a bevvy-up that stretches out over a whole week.
Which is why Cheltenham designated March 16 as their Paddy’s Day which, of course, extended into the real day.
While March 18 at the start of Paddy’s Weekend, has become a recurring celebration of Irish rugby excellence.
Or whenever it lands.
When Ireland win the Grand Slam and in the best possible style with victory over the Old Enemy, England.
Of course, you don’t have to be sporty to indulge in Paddy’s Day revelry.
And Daddy’s Little Girl has been living it up in the Dublin of her youth (insert your own city in here).
Paddy’s Day, of course, has been celebrated around the world by ex-pats for hundreds of years.
The London Irish
Green for go: Ireland regularly win around St Paddy’s Day
But London’s St Paddy’s Day celebration is oddly and shamefully no long-held tradition.
And only within this Fiftysomething’s lifetime.
Its history too is tied up with an old travel companion and Irish businesswoman par excellence, Norah Casey.
For those of you lucky enough to still live in Ireland.
Norah is instantly recognisable from Dragon’s Den.
But she also more than made her mark in 22 years in Britain and at the helm of the Irish Post.
Not least in leaving her legacy with the first St Patrick’s Day Festival in London in Trafalgar Square in 2002 and which you can pencil in your diary for next year.
Livingston, we presume
Greening it up: Global Paddy’s Weekend celebrations
Which she organised with the-then Mayor of London Ken Livingston.
Norah informs us that it had been written into the bye laws of Trafalgar Square that no Irish gathering was to be held there.
Nor was an Irish flag permitted to fly in the square where Nelson looks down on us all.
Maybe the Admiral’s revenge for blown to smithereens on O’Connell Street, Dublin.
It had been written into the byelaws of Trafalgar Square that no Irish gathering was to be held there, nor was an Irish flag permitted to fly.
And so back in 2002 tens of thousands of Irish packed the square to hear The Dubliners and Mary Coughlan sing to the crowds.
As Norah so poignantly put it: “I don’t mind admitting that I cried.. but so did Ken and the whole team.
“Along with everyone else there, I felt so proud that finally we could celebrate being Irish in London.”
So if you’re in Trafalgar Square today as I was last week, and celebrating Ireland’s victory over England and their Grand Slam just remember.
What Norah and Ken and countless others did to ensure you enjoyed your London’s Paddy’s Day.
And we all know what we’ll be drinking on March 17 but what about the St Paddy’s dish of the day.
It’s fair to say that our eating and drinking habits have changed since his day back in the 4th century.
When we’re reliably informed that Paddy would have ate meat and venison and drunk wine imported from the continent.
Before he was captured from the then-Wales, probably more Cumbria in the north-west of modern-day England.
And transported to Ireland where oatmeal gruel (think the cereal Ready Brek) and a mixture of fruit, nuts and oaks (think muesli).
Paddy himself helps us with mentions of two foodstuffs he did eat…
Wild honey (he was after all a beekeeper) and deer.
While the drink of the day for the regular Irish native would have been a light barley ale.
Jar of porter
Paddy Shamrocks: On his Saint’s Day
Whisper it but the fashion for stout or porter began in London and was transported by Arthur Guinness to Dublin where he took a lease for a thousand years and tapped into the waters of the Liffey.
Guinness has of course gone on to become the world’s most famous stout and anyone who visits the Irish capital should avail themselves of the Guinness Stew, in any of the fine hostelries there.
The next best thing, of course, if you can’t get over for Paddy’s Day, and it is rammers around Dublin City Centre is to make your own.
And we have Beanies Irish Cream coffee (sounds delicious) to thank for giving us some ‘St Patrick’s Day: Delicious Recipes to Help You Celebrate’.
And they, of course, advise that we should add Beanies to any coffee cake we make.
The creamiest cream though is what settles at the top of you Guinness and your lip.
And Beanies have done the hard work for us with this recipe rundown.
Guinness stew
Somewhere over… the pot of stew
Traditionally made with lamb, this meal can also be prepared with beef.
And while it doesn’t traditionally involve alcohol, it can include Guinness to help deepen the flavour of the beef.
Ingredients: 1 pound of Beef 1 cup of Guinness 4 cups of broth, beef or vegetable 1 tbsp tomato paste 6 cloves of garlic 1 large onion, chopped 4 carrots, chopped 2 celery sticks, chopped 3 bay leaves 1 tbsp flour, to thicken Thyme
For a thicker stew, you can reduce the amount of liquids, increase the flour or add corn starch, or increase the meat and vegetable volume.
For a thinner stew, increase the liquid contents. And depending on your personal tastes, you can play around with the levels of broth to alcohol, with some recipes also including red wine alongside the Guinness.
Simply brown off your meat and leave all the ingredients in the slow cooker, with a perfect stew ready in a few hours.
And that in a nutshell is your St Paddy’s dish of the day.
When you’ve spent whole days on the train going in and out to Dublin then you learn to appreciate the art of the Dublin DART.
It’s there outside the window, of course, Greystones in County Wicklow with its new pier and brightly-coloured houses that acted as beacons for fishermen.
The tunnel under Bray Head, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, which brings you out parallel to the promenade.
Dun Laoghaire, with its pier where locals and holidaymakers still perambulate and the Forty Foot sea swimming area which Leopold Bloom visits in James Joyce‘s Ulysses.
The millionaires playground that is Killiney and Dalkey which doubles for the Bay of Naples in movie sets and where the likes of Bono and Enya live.
And into Sandymount and Ballsbridge and Lansdowne Road in D4, the South Dublin postcode where movers and shakers going back to WB Yeats live.
Touch down at Lansdowne Road
Ireland’s call: Against Scotland at the Aviva
Now go and play and watch rugby at the stadium on the aforementioned street, now corporatised as the Aviva.
And there I would stop and make my way to Embassy House, on the verge of Embassy Park where you would often see Dublin’s high society walk their dogs.
On the occasions I would hop the DART to get into Dublin city centre (I preferred to walk) I would take in the Grand Canal Dock, home to the Bord Gais Energy Theatre, among the modern office buildings.
Pearse de resistance
Picture gallery: But go to the National Gallery instead
And either stop off at Pearse Station, a spit away from Trinity College and the Irish government buildings and the National Gallery…
The home to Titians, Rembrandts, Brueghel (Younger and Elder), Vermeer, Picasso et Monet, among others.
And naturally the best of Irish – John Lavery, Paul Henry, Louis le Brocquy and William Orpen.
And a separate wing to Jack B Yeats, WB’s brother (see it all comes around).
Thrill of Tara
Green machine: The DART
You’ll know you’re in the centre of the centre of the city when you alight at Tara Street where cousins’ pub The Workshop still has the Kennedys livery on it and now a wonderful squirrel mural.
Take in the bridges across the Liffey and amble along one of the finest statued streets anywhere, O’Connell Street, with the Great Liberator Daniel O’Connell at the head.
And ‘King’ Charles Stewart Parnell at the foot. With the likes of a fist-pumping ‘man of the people’ Jim Larkin and other Irish heroes along the way.
By which time you will be venturing into North Dublin territory… and any self-respecting South Dubliner or someone who works there doesn’t venture further than that.
Malahide of your life
The North Dublin crew: My Irish family
And nor did I, except to see my relatives who live out in the North Dublin suburbs of Portmarnock or Malahide, while the Howth peninsula too has its charms
Now should you be a fan of Adrian Dunbar, and if not, Jesus, Mary and Joseph and his Little Donkey why not?…
Then you will have seen him in my old Greystones stomping ground on the DART platform.
And, of course ,this is one trigger (as if I need one) to go off track with my erstwhile DART journey.
Take a LEAP
Adrian’s. Greystones: On the platform
That, and the fact that I will be fetching out my LEAP card to travel again on it in a whistlestop trip to Dublin in a week and a half.
And that Iarnrod Eireann, who still keep in touch (I must owe some money or have a violation pending) have sent some info on what you can see from the DART to out on the water.
With stickers to draw young and old celebrating Dublin Bay Biosphere.
And, yes, that’s the art of the Dublin DART… so get out and enjoy.
Clerys’ return to O’Connell Street removes an eyesore facade from the landscape.
And it breathes new life and a much-needed elegance into the capital’s thoroughfare.
Like many a main street around the world O’Connell Street has fallen prey.
To the tacky, tawdry and tasteless over the decades.
But this Clerys renovation will revive some of the street’s glitz in keeping with its statues down the spine of the street and we do love to put deserving people of pedestals.
The redevelopment has involved restoring the collonaded facade, internal staircases, columns and ceilings… and the clock.
Rare gold times
Streets ahead: The great Dublin street
We expect the Great and the Good who reside on O’Connell Street, the heroes of Irish history…
Daniel O’Connell, Jim Larkin, Charles Stewart Parnell will all look across at the new Clerys with pride.
And because the dial always moves forward.
Then we can celebrate Dublin in the rare gold times.
Nollaig na Mban (Women’s Christmas) is how the Irish celebrate Epiphany… or Mary Christmas Ireland’s women if you will.
When it’s more about two million women than three wise men.
And who can blame our womenfolk for reclaiming the day because Christmas, like everything else in the Church, has been hijacked by men?
With Mary’s part her labour, with her builder husband leaving it to the last minute, and asking her to deliver Babba in a cowshed.
And not even Broken Britain’s beleaguered National Health Service would put Mum in a barn.
Coming out of the kitchen
A meal in itself: Guinness
Nollaig na Mban then is the day when Irish women can come out of the kitchen.
And forget about the scullery or under the stairs because the chores are passed over to the man.
And the women head to each others’ houses and drink tea and finish off the rest of the Christmas cake.
Yeah, right, that’s fine for your grandma but these days it’s shopping and cocktails… with Grandma at the front!
Some mothers
Write on: Irish women
We doubt either if mothers still rub the tail of a herring across the eyes of their children to give immunity against disease for the rest of the year!
Most though still leave taking down the Christmas until after Twelfth Night, Epiphany.
It passed many by that the turn of 2023 marked half a century since Britain, Ireland and Denmark joined the EEC which prompts the response, fifty years on that EU have it wrong UK.
Not for joining the countries of the continent then and remember that the UK had twice tried unsuccessfully in the Sixties to get in, but for turning their back on Europe in 2016.
Brexit has, of course, impacted the whole of British society and industry, but at its more primal level, it has felt like a direct threat to those of us who work in tourism.
At least it did to my group of mostly English travel professionals in Interlaken in Switzerland.
I’m not suggesting that it should lead to sons not talking to their fathers as it did then.
Although I expect that they would have got over it and gone on to learn to live with each others’ different views.
Swiss days
The rail thing: Jungfraujoch in Switzerland
At heart, it probably comes as little surprise that my new English friends were so shell shocked and disheartened.
Because, at heart, everybody in our sector is instinctively an internationalist at heart.
My English friends were particularly keen too to pick the brains of our Swiss hosts about life outside the EU.
Scotland, incidentally, which had voted unanimously to stay under the blue, star-framed, flag.
The UK’s decision to leave the EU had the effect too of Britons rushing to re-engage with their Irish roots.
And trying to get Irish passports which Daddy’s Little Girl, a proud export of the Irish education system, is now doing.
Where, of course, it is most obvious is in the queues at airports where you are streamed separately.
And British exceptionalism comes to the fore.
Best of both worlds
Crowning moment: The British passport
The British passport I dare say has come in handy over the years particularly where it comes to the amount left on your document when travelling to certain countries.
And I was relieved to see that that worked in my favour the first time I went out to Barbados.
But I can’t guarantee that it will always be so.
The best solution, other than Britain going back into Europe.
Me returning full time to Ireland or Scotland becoming independent, would seem to be getting two passports.
Which, of course, would reflect my background, half-Scottish, half-Irish.
Getting the second passport would look to be the quickest option.
Cross to bear: Medjugorje
And this time I promise to look after the second one better.
After I took my old British passport with me (the one with my five-year US visa in it) on the bus from Medjugorje, Bosnia & Herzegovina.
To Dubrovnik, only to realise minutes into the journey that my current one was back in my hotel bedroom.
And I had to get off for fear of being stopped at the Croatia border and return to my Medjugorje base. Be warned!
And other countries too, my old stomping ground of Ireland in particular.
All of which draws the millions, probably more in truth in Pele’s case.
While the Vatican and Rome is always a throng of humankind.
And well, a Pope, even if he is an Emeritus, is still a Pope.
The Queen’s been
Life force: The Queen
Of course it is a big outlay to pay homage to those whose deeds and words in life earn them such homage in death.
But possibly one worth making if the spectacle is limited time only.
And plans are in place for their burial or cremation.
All of which a lot of Brits and royal lovers around the world were prepared to pay big.
And queue long for the privilege of seeing the prostate Queen last year.
Now, history watchers too would know that it is the last time any of us would be able to see her in person.
There are those dearly departed though who we are able to see any time of the year.
If we just happen to be passing by who are lying in state.
In from the cold
Bolshie belly laugh: Lenin
Lenin, Moscow: Imagine being able to see Lenin in his goatee beardie pomp.
Well, millions have long after he departed the commune on account of him being embalmed.
The mausoleum is open to visitors every day in Red Square except Monday, Friday and Sunday, from 10am to 1pm, and admission is free.
Toot and come in
Pharoah tale: Tut
Tutankamhun, Egypt: OK, the boy pharaoh looks as if he has seen better days.
But then he did die in 1323BC and his mummy was only rediscovered in 1922.
You can see him in his glass box in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile River, near Luxor.
Philosophy of life
Hat’s the boy: Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham, London: One way of preserving your legacy if you’re a mere philosopher and not one of those famous ones like Socrates.
Bentham, who formulated the theory of utilitarianism, basically the happiness of everyone, can be found in the University College London whom he championed.
While the skeletal remains and wax head of Bentham remain in the Student Centre.
His actual head remains out of public view elsewhere at UCL.
The head was once stolen in a prank by students from the rival King’s College, and has ever since been kept under lock and key.
Cat and mouse game
Got away: The cat and mouse
Dublin’s Tom and Jerry: And a curio of that most curious and fun city, my old stomping ground, Dublin, is the crypt of Christ Church Cathedral.
And best described by James Joyce in Finnegans Wake.
When he described the cat and the mouse who were mummified in the church organ.
‘As stuck as that cat to that mouse in that tube of that Christchurch organ.’.
A delightful time tunnel and a great place to watch classical concerts and corporate and travel events.
It’s €6.00 for the rest of you adults and €4.00 for kiddies.
Cats and mice go free.
Mao-ser
Wave power: Mao
Mao Zedong, Beijing: There were few, if any, who would go against the Chinese leader’s wishes when he ruled the Communist country with a rod of iron.
But when he was dead they mummified him against his wishes when he wanted to be cremated.
Chilling, well he is well cold by now, Mao lies draped in a crystal coffin.
In a red flag at the southern end of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Me, I wouldn’t be so vain as to be lying in state around the world…
Just a statue will do, in my alma mater Aberdeen and instead of yon Millennium Spire on O’Connell Street in Dublin.
And anywhere else you want to remember your Bandanaman… come my time.
