She offered me a chip
Getting to know Jim and hosting this podcast with him has afforded me many opportunities, but one that I treasure is getting to visit his home town, Dublin. Jim is at pains to tell me that I see Dublin through rose-tinted glasses and he may be right but I like to think that Dublin and its citizens are just as lovely as I remember.
The Dubliners that I met, be it a friend of Jims or a bus driver, seemed of a different era. It appeared as though they had held onto traditions and sayings that the U.K. had long since left behind, unfortunately. By no means do I mean that we as Brits are more advanced, nor am I trying to patronise them some sort of residual colonialism. I can feel myself digging a deep hole so I am just going to give some examples.
I was struck by the conversation I had with all of Jim’s friends. The way they listened eagerly and would hang off your every last word without trying to impose their opinion on you. This is something that I feel Britons discarded in 2007 with the release of the first generation iPhone. How often can we say that we actually listen to the people we are talking to. That’s just it, we no longer talk with people, we talk to them. I realised that most conversations I have are just relay races rather than a tennis match where we react to the previous shot. I am as guilty as anyone. I have found myself waiting for the other person to finish talking just so I can say the point I was always planning on making regardless of the point that had just been made. I am waiting to be passed that conversational baton and run with it. This was not what I found in Dublin. I found people who came to have a real conversation and would not be distracted by the mere vibration of their phone. They were here to talk, to listen, to be.
I found the playful insults that were thrown my way regarding my English heritage both hilarious and ironic in equal measure. It took all of three hours after landing before I was being blamed for the Irish famine of 1845, a topic which I have never thought of or studied before. I guess Jim and his friends would argue that confession speaks to my colonial upbringing living in my ivory tower. But what I found so funny and ironic was that whilst the banter or “craic” was flying around at my expense they were using phrases I hadn’t heard in years. They were active custodians of the much maligned colonial language, traditional English. They had passed on the richness of the English language through the generations and upheld its vintage charm, they are very charming people after-all. Examples include “Seb, tell Britt I asked after her”, “chap”, “grand” or my personal favourite “charlatan”.
However, the single moment that left a lasting impression on me was the offering of a chip at a bus stop. I was stood waiting to catch a bus into town to meet Jim after his shift at work. Right behind the bus stop was a chippy and it looked amazing and smelled even better. I had been eyeing it up for a while, trying to work out if I had enough time to get a chippy before the bus came but I thought better of it. Unbeknown to me, a kind Irish woman, who had herself bought a a tray of beautifully golden chips doused in copious amounts of salt and vinegar, saw me salivating and offered me one of her chips. Yes me. I was in a situation I never thought I would find myself in, and was in total shock. A complete stranger had just offered me one of her scrumptious chips on this cold damp evening. The “Englishness” in me told me to be polite so I turned down her offer. But that moment cemented what I already knew to be true. We could all learn a thing or two from our Irish neighbours and this would certainly not be my last visit to this sacred land. Maybe we can all pay less attention to our phone and engage in more conversation. Maybe we can all be so selfless that we offer a chip to a starving student at a bus stop.
In April I will once again touch down in Dublin town and I am counting down the days until my lips caress that creamy dark nectar they call Guinness, surrounded by good “craic” and willing conversationalists. Dublin I have missed you.
