NOT KNOWING WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT

Yesterday I found out what 'bohereen' means. It's an Irish word referring to a country lane with sleeping drunks or possibly ogres somewhere off from the side, abandoned tractors, possibly an illegal distillary, and an old-fashioned smithy where they still make chainmail and elvish swords. Heather, peat moss, cottages with no running water, and assorted peasants who smoke Erinmore Flake or Peterson's Aran Mixture (vanilla, peach blossoms, and old overcoat; dee-lightful).

It will not surprise you when I admit that I've never been to Ireland.
From what I understand is rains an awful lot . Every day.

Plumbing and central heating are rare.

But there is hot sauce. A wide range of them. As well as sambal.
So I expect that they now also have Dutch tourists.
About whom the less said, the better.

If you're lucky, there is a branch of an academic bookstore at the end of this lane, where they haven't heard that the age of literacy is over, and the era of flesh-based civilization is in its last two decades, the machines will be better at it all than we were. Though they appreciate what we will have left behind. If you're not, there is an Irish supermarket (Dunness or Tesco), with their version of chimichangas with a side of beans or potatoes in one hundred different choices in the ready-to-eat section. To the left of beers (seventy percent of the available space). And James Joyce in the cheap paperback racks near check-out.

The Irish are the most hot-tempered and Mediterranean-like of all the Celts, which I learned from reading Roddy Doyle and James Patrick Donleavy, whose distinguished bearded face glowers out at me from a nearby bookshelf. James Joyce didn't know that, so instead he described them as mostly drunk with mildew in their oxters. Also correct.
But a Mediterranean temperament sounds more positive.

Their music can be good. But it usually isn't.

Their alcohol is excellent.


They don't particularly like foreigners. The English and Americans are prime examples of that. The jury is still out on where the Canadians are in their estimation.
And the Dutch are as yet a blank slate.


Pneumonia and hurling (all types) are the national pastimes.



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