I love Ireland. Seems that almost everyone you meet here has a sense of humor. You just have to look a little deeper for it in some people than in others.
Yesterday we we being driven out to visit a scenic beach in County Cork. Some guy in a rented Ford tried to pass us on a narrow beachside road. When he pulled back in behind us without passing us, he slammed into the back of the 27-passenger van that our driver Paddy Downes is using to drive our group around Ireland. The sound it made when it hit the van and then bounced against the stone wall was better than a cup of coffee for waking us up after a short night. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but the rented Ford is probably headed for the clunker pile of Ireland today.
We decided to get out and walk the remaining mile or so to the beach. A line of traffic was stopped on the other side of the road. When one of the drivers leaned out of her window to ask what happened, we told her "there was a car smash but nobody was hurt and the Garda are on their way." She smiled a wry smile and said "they should be here by tomorrow, then."
The French guy who was driving the car had his own sense of humor. He tried to tell the people gathered around his smoking hulk of a rental car that our bus had been stopped on the road when he hit us. What did he think the 27 of us on the bus would say to the Garda about that? Maybe he would claim we were all suffering from a shared hallucination. Now, that's blarney!
Tom Pigott, our tour director, told us the first day that "most of what I tell you the next ten days will be true." Today he told us that St. Brendan the Navigator discovered America in a leather boat several hundred years before Christopher Columbus did. He also believes that the Irish Famine of the 1850s could have been a form of genocide. Who am I to say he is wrong or right?
The Klatt Brothers had a fun and sweaty night performing at Shanley's Piano Bar in Clonakilty, County Cork. Our travelling party of 27 people practically filled up the place. Phil Shanley, the owner of the venerable institution, had been talking up the evening with the locals. So the house was packed. Even though we could not hear ourselves very well, the crowd were primed to enjoy themselves, and so they did. Three of the most sustained rounds of applause we got were on songs on which we were joined on stage by guests. Tom Pigott got up and sang acappella and brought the house down. Brendan our van driver (yes, we have a van to go along with our bus!) got up and sang a blues song with us, complete with a series of scorching harmonica solos. Finally, Matt the erstwhile soundman got up and played his fiddle to great effect on a song we'd never heard but managed to back him on with a sentence of instructions. It was an evening to remember. My black gig shirt was still wet when I woke up the next morning.
Our tour organizer Peter Pavarini made a great observation about the Irish sense of humor. He pointed out that it is delivered in a wry way that is rarely cynical. They choose to overcome tough times by trying to find humor in just about every situation. The laughs come easily in this country, and that's no blarney!
Tomorrow.......Ballybunion. There are no riding carts (or buggies, as they're called here), so I'll walk until I can walk no more. I may have discovered the best way to lower my golf score.
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