Yahoo News I get why Irish eyes aren’t smiling on us. So go to Dublin, sink some Guinness and show them you care
It was 25 years ago that I first went to Dublin — and immediately fell in love. I relished the grandeur of its Georgian civic buildings and vast squares. I was taken to proper pubs where silver-haired barmen took pleasure in the slow ritual of pouring a pint. I breathed the heady smell of turf smoke from a myriad fireplaces, the city’s defining winter scent. At parties I met young actors and musicians who could afford to live in the centre of the city.
For a Londoner who’d just signed up for pain-inducing mortgage payments, this seemed remarkable. So, too, did the slower pace of life, where debate and discussion was encouraged. It felt like the antithesis of the direction in which financially confident, brash London was headed in the early Nineties.
Over the years my romance with Ireland extended to the whole country, from the islands off West Cork to the loughs of Donegal. I persuaded the boss of the classical music station being set up by state broadcaster RTÉ that his listeners would not mind a presenter with a distinctly English accent.
I started working there, like many others making full use of the new low-cost airlines to skip between London and Dublin.
To keep abreast of events I’d buy the Irish Times from a Camden Town newsstand and relished witnessing the ever-warming relationship between our governments, culminating in the Queen’s state visit of 2011.
Which is why I am so depressed at the attitude of some British politicians towards Ireland now. Did those campaigning for Brexit really believe that the Irish would be desperate to help us out after a referendum that has caused them almost as many problems as it has us?
Today the country is led by a man who turns 40 this week. For an older generation of Irish politicians the UK was a totemic reference point, whether positive or negative. But for Leo Varadkar, relations with Brussels, Berlin and several other European capitals are just as important.
A prominent Irish journalist told me recently that he believed relations had not been this bad since the Falklands War, when the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, refused to support EEC sanctions against Argentina.
"A prominent Irish journalist told me recently he believed relations had not been this bad since the Falklands War"
Much has changed in Dublin since I started visiting. The Celtic Tiger grew, died and then rose from the ashes. It’s true that property prices have forced today’s emerging art-makers to share flats in the suburbs — but the young Poles and Hungarians working in the city’s restaurants and bars have no fears about whether they will still be welcome at the end of the year. Whatever happens on March 29, patching up relations with our closest neighbour must be a priority. And it’s diplomacy that we can all play a part in.
Do what I did all those years back: book a flight or a ferry ticket, have a Guinness under the gaslights at Neary’s in Chatham Street, walk the pier in Dun Laoghaire, rejoice at the treasures of the Hugh Lane Gallery — and make it clear to all you meet that you come in peace. You’ll be made welcome.
Updated Sondheim is good Company
I was in Cardiff at the weekend, presenting song recitals for Radio 3 at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. A poster caught my eye, for a student production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company. With a man playing Bobby, the lead character.
Company is my favourite Sondheim show but it’s the one that annoys non-fans more than any other. It’s easy to pick up on the brittle, sharp nature of its comedy, its playboy lead and its borderline misogyny.
Or at least it was until Marianne Elliott reinvented it at the Gielgud, casting Rosalie Craig as Bobbie.
My immediate response was that with a female lead she had made it into a piece of theatre truly of today. When I caught it again at a matinee I was struck by the coach-party crowd enjoying every second. A friend who saw it last week told me he found the reinvention sincere, generous and warmer than previous productions he’d seen.
Real Sondheim fans will travel to see the master’s work. I’m sure I won’t be alone in heading back to Wales at the end of March to see if his greatest show still works with a bloke as Bobby.
Dump the diary for unpredictable 2019
One of my favourite songs in Company plays on the neurotic desire of New Yorkers to fill their diaries with pre-planned social engagements. We’re as bad here, so spontaneity is going to be my 2019 mantra. No restaurants booked weeks before, no immaculately planned dinners that collapse when a guest cancels. Instead it will be last-minute breakfasts at greasy spoons, a glass of wine drunk 30 minutes after the meeting has been suggested, impromptu suppers with store-cupboard pasta.
We are living in uncertain times, so there’s little point in doing any long-term planning. Send me a text — I might well be free.
