Dolphin Address 14 2003
July 16, 2003
Today is my half-time and by way of interim report I had planned a morality sketch, but also to give the good around me a sharper profile. I intended to draw up a list of irritating Irish habits. But when I had found five I called it a day, because if you hang your nose over the cesspool, you should not complain about the stench. Here they are in random order:
1-Making mobile phone calls at Pollenawatch. You might jam Dusty's frequency.
2-Park in the middle of the side of the road. Especially when I have to drive (and walk) up halfway to the Slieve Elva.
3-Get your change in a pile. That way you can't see if it's right and checking feels impolite. As a foreigner I don't care a bit and that has saved me a lot of money.
4-That, 'always', when you start driving, there is a car behind you, that makes is blatantly clear that it wants to overtake you, which again is quite impossible on these narrow and winding roads. People here often drive very fast, but that is intelligible. Each time you go down on these mountainous roads, you get, so to speak, a push in your back. It is impulse-comparable with the overtaking of ever faster cars on the highway.
5-The in Holland somewhat antique phrase for 'How do you do?', here still very much is on as 'How's it going?' They could not care less. It is a common social reflex, like a fly that spontaneously opens in company and next is zipped up hastily.
As a second half a true life story that illustrates the difference between the Irish and the Dutch until far behind the comma:
Some people one should not take too personally. Like the elderly lady, who parked her car right in front of my nose on Bridie's terrace, while in full concentration I was voicing the magnificence of the ocean in my 'ebb and flood' book. I did try to put myself in the other persons place, but did not come beyond: 'What can be so important that justifies this rudeness?'
She stepped out of the car with a chunk of meat in a plastic transparent bag, hardly grumbled a greeting and went inside.
Fifteen minutes later she walked back to her car. Right before my feet she belched really ugly. A neater justice to my displeasure than I could ever think of.
Jan Ploeg, Fanore beach, July 16th 2003
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