What if Ireland had never suffered the thirty years of indignity and pain that came with a strange war still known as the Troubles? I don’t know. Here’s how I think it would’ve gone.
Margaret Thatcher College
Thirteen years ago, just after the death of our college’s namesake, a then-obscure Arizonan geothermal energy executive named Donald Taylor decided to donate three billion dollars to my alma mater, Trinity College Dublin, on the condition that half of the sum be dedicated to a new constituent college named after his favorite British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
The Irish government was never going to pass up such a large donation just because of our people’s hatred of Prime Minister Thatcher. The painful factory closures, the ugly gentrification of East Belfast, and the space-age manors of Omagh and Strabane would not be reversed by saying No. Besides, three billion dollars was a life-changing amount of money, and no minister or department head worth his or her salt would jeopardize such material security for Irish academia.
However, there was a problem. Creating an entirely new constituent college required legislation, state land, and rather a lot of public infrastructure. This gave the government some leverage.
So, my boss, the Minister of Finance, decided to exercise some personal diplomacy and attempt to bargain with this obscenely rich Sedonan. After more than a few meetings at the New Royal Hibernian Hotel, it was clear Mr. Taylor was not going to budge. He wouldn’t accept a different namesake, a compromise name, or any form of tasteful minimization for Mrs. Thatcher. Quinlan Terry would design the campus, a bronze statue of Margaret Thatcher would stand in the quad, and a Japanese-Parisian couple would decorate the dormitories.
The Minister and I were left with a quandary. If the state declined Donald Taylor’s offer because of our nation’s utterly rational hatred of that woman, we would’ve shown the world how our sentiment got in the way of progress. If the state accepted the money, nothing bad would have happened, but I’d have started calling myself Jamaican.
Undeterred, the Minister played his last trick.
“Mr. Taylor, we accept your generous offer, but we want to have some skin in the game, so we don’t waste your money,” he said.
“Interesting.”
“We are willing to match up to 200 million dollars, provide the necessary land and infrastructure, and introduce the legislation required to establish the college, if the state is also allowed to construct a sister college beside it. We think that the serious and pragmatic spirit of Margaret Thatcher College can and must be complemented by Terry Cavanagh College, Europe’s first top-flight school of video game studies.”
Mr. Taylor, for reasons beyond me, shook on it.
And that is how Ireland’s most grossly overfunded university college came to be. If nothing else, it forced Dublin to build thousands of additional houses, extend half the transport network, and spruce up the Northside.
Dr. Anne McGrath, Co. Clare
Bonohauptbahnhof
If you’re a self-conscious Irish social democrat between the ages of 26 and 39, modern-day Ireland began on July 10th, 1998.
On that day, the Celtic Chunnel opened to both glorious fanfare and deep revulsion.
My father, a self-taught banker, was an evangelist for the project from the minute it was announced. Dublin would connect to Britain’s surprisingly passable high-speed rail network. My favorite cousin in Derry could get on a train near her home, ride through England, and get off in Amsterdam or Paris without changing trains.
My mother and I thought this was all nonsense.
Da, trusting person that he is, also thought Shannon would become a spaceport, and the clean-up of the Liffey would turn Dublin into a city of al fresco Italian restaurants. If Des O’Malley said it was necessary, Dad thought it couldn’t fail.
Unfortunately, Dad would turn out to be more than vindicated.
When I saw an old friend of mine, Declan, who had left school early to dig ditches in the middle of the city, I knew something was afoot. My old friend looked like he was getting a kick up the rear every day and was paid for the privilege.
By the autumn of 1999, Dublin Central Station was finally unveiled, along with the new tracks that would carry the fancy French trains connecting our wee country to England and the continent.
It was a surprisingly modest-looking through station, like a Japanese mall attached to a Finnish airport. The walls were covered with abstract public art meant to signify Anglo-Irish relations, European citizenship, and the unsung Irish engineer. Personally, I thought the whole thing risked looking a tad too ambitious for a city known for its unpretentiousness.
That night, the entire country was treated to performances by Bono, Kate Bush, and George Harrison.
It was pure shite, but it didn’t matter.
My little country was in the big leagues now.
Could the Irish nation finally pay out the nose for the privilege of being in London in no less than three and a half hours? Yes.
Was the service amazing? No.
Was the food tasty? Ehhh.
But for the first time in human history, the Irish nation could work in London and Manchester without really having left home.
And that was how great this fucking country was before the crash.
Adam Leahy, Camden
An Open Letter to My Son
My Beloved Son,
We should’ve known that raising you in California for twelve years and sending you to a New England boarding school was going to make you an Anglophile.
But neither your mother nor I expected our pride and joy to voluntarily attend Cranfield University when you had a decent scholarship to Embry-Riddle.
What’s become of you, boy?
Anyway, if you really are going to spend the best years of your life on a dreary, cake-filled, misery-laden island full of racists, thickos, and coke fiends, just know these facts.
The English are not like us Irish.
They are frankly the worst, you see.
And they’re most unbearable when they demand logical consistency.
Whenever your passionate argument fails to persuade them, they’ll say something like, “Actually, your argument is immaterial to the question you posed.”
And when you prove them wrong by humble Hibernian logic, they will say, “Actually, your interpretation of Chieftain Fitzgerald’s infamous social compact negates your previous argument about the necessity of industrial subsidies in 1965.”
You can never win, my son!
That truth you know you must see.
Otherwise, some posh fuck is going to think that you’re his friend.
I admit, the English aren’t all that bad. I know I love my Concorde flights.
But once you deal with them for more than a year, you’ll come back to us.
Because if your parents know anything, it’s freezing out there. Why do you think we left?
Seamus and Dr. Mary Dempsey, Santa Monica
Overheard at Some Derry Bar
Having been based in Derry/Londonderry as a Northern Ireland correspondent for the Boston Bulldog, I’ve been privy to more than a few excessively frank conversations at a college bar that shall not be named. Here are some choice quotes:
“I am British; look how British I am. I’ve got a well-diversified stock portfolio and own my own firm! If I suffer enough, a Tory lord might kiss me in the sauna.”
“I’m in the IRA; I have an IRA. My ISA’s filled with pounds. I’ve yet to accept the euro.”
“Every rich Brit in Belfast dates three types of women: a mammie who looks great in a bikini, a Waterside loyalist in pearls, and a Catholic computer scientist with a second home in Palermo.”
“I’m so Irish, I live in London half the week, send my boy to private school, secretly vote Tory, and wear 80-pound Japanese T-shirts.”
“Man, this town ain’t as cheap as it used to be. I’m pushin’ thirty and am expecting twins; I can’t live like this forever!”
Danielle Papadopoulos, now happily retired in Whidbey Island