25 / 10 / 2019
Our first time in Dublin was in 1991, back before most of the world really geared up for today’s mass travel mania, and also just before Ireland was consumed, and changed, by the Euro Windfall and the manic roar of the Celtic Tiger that came with it.
In 1991 the place was still hanging on to a simpler time. On top of that, with just one trip under our belt, we were only apprentice travellers, and everything that happens for the first time overseas is usually memorable. For one reason or another.
Our first Irish cabbie was one of those things...
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We’re into Dublin airport from Heathrow by mid afternoon, slip through the entry formalities like it’s just a domestic flight - as it pretty much is ex the UK - and in no time we’re outside waiting in the cab queue. Several peel off the rank in sequence, all quite ordinary, look like normal late model cars mainly, but then finally it’s ours.
It’s a fairly tired looking late ’70s Toyota Cressida, with a big fella behind the wheel, looks like he might’ve once been a truck-driver or a bricklayer or a prizefighter, mid-50’s, country accent you could cut into building blocks, suit that doesn’t look quite right on his big shambly frame, biggest pair of hands this side of Mike Tyson.
He greets us breezily and throws open the car’s boot. It has a few bits of what looks like scrap iron in it, and our bags go in with the junk. Then we open the back door and the seats have a loose cover over them that could have once been curtains at a picture theatre, and our bums disappear down into some very tired seat springs. A sign says wearing of seatbelts is compulsory, but he doesn’t put his on - and we don’t have any! Lordy Lordy we sure know how to pick ‘em.
But he turns out to be a great bloke, with that quick Irish response to genuine informality and friendliness, and suddenly we’re zipping along and he’s chatting away, a natural talker, immediately starts pointing things out to us as he dodges the traffic, accentuates each point with an odd little lift of one shoulder, or it could just be his easy-going reaction to each near miss.
He bundles us down the highway, half turned towards us and driving one hand, drawing our attention to anything and everything as he goes, and continually punctuating his comments with that easy shrug of the shoulder.
Then he gets into telling us about his early working days in London, and how ‘some’ of his sons are over there still, like he isn’t sure how many. And he confides to us that he nearly emigrated himself as a young man, to New Zealand, but when he was due to finalise it he found he had a JP’s signature missing, and he put the papers on the mantle-shelf till he could get it fixed. And here he smiles a big one, at Luck and at Life.
“Me moother t’rew dem pairpers in t’ foire! ‘Ah,son...’, she says, ‘...but Oi dadn’t t’ink it wus anyt’ing you wus needin’!’ she says. She dadn’t wunt me t’be goin’ a’course. Not a’tall. An’ so oi nivver went t’ Nyoo Zayland. A’nt it fonny how it worrks out now!”, and he laughs a big throaty laugh.
And THAT’S when you know it’s just so good to be back in Ireland!
He finally shoves his way through the O’Connell St traffic and U-ies up to the Royal Dublin Hotel as the meter clicks up 9.80 Punt – and stuff me we’ve only got tenners in Irish money, and a bit of leftover English change. And me and 95% of Aussies are hopeless with tipping at the best of times. Our hearts are always in the right place but we just don’t know how it works.
He heaves the bags out from amongst his scrap iron and then he’s looking at the Irish tenner I’m holding and he’s clearly thinking ‘no fecken tip here’ and I’m feeling like a totally ungrateful turd. So I ask him in desperation –
“Is a couple a Pommie quids any good to ya mate?”
His face breaks open.
“Well now, an’ t’at’s nor trubble a’tall - an’ t’ank ya.”
Ah, now why would you choose to arrive in Dublin any other way?
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A postscript to this came in 2011, when we decided we’d like to spend time in Dublin again, and immediately went for the totally grand Royal Dublin Hotel – one of THE best hotel experiences we ever had (not that we’ve had many!) – only to read that it’d been demolished in 2008, to make way for “redevelopment”. Geez, we could’ve cried. Caused us to give the idea away entirely. O’Connell St just wouldn’t be the same.
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