A Singular Country by J.P. Donleavy

Author:J.P. Donleavy [J. P. Donleavy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843512080
Publisher: The Lilliput Press
Published: 2011-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

PORTENDING THIS VAST AREA OF LONELINESS WHICH KEEPS THE WEST AWAKE, AMERICA IS NEVER LOST UPON THE CONSCIOUSNESS AS THE NEXT PARISH BEYOND THIS BAY AND ACROSS THIS OCEAN.

VII

Now so that you wouldn’t be wondering what’s old and what’s new and what’s next in Ireland, it would be appropriate to confuse the issue further by pronouncing the single overriding fact of the matter of this country is that time is of a strange continuous kind. That envelopes you as you stand at the bar of any half way decent pub, and where you’re not unlucky to be left dreaming. And in so far as your yesterday is concerned it was more or less much like it is today and you can be certain by the end of today that it will be no different tomorrow and therefore you’d soon be left thinking for a considerable prolonged period that your life had stopped in its tracks with nothing you ever did or were in the past mattering or worth a damn. And the future will bring about no change. Except ordering up the next round of drinks to toast the memory of someone you kindly recall. Who did what you’re doing, only faster.

But of course if you believe any of the above it only means you didn’t read the previous chapter. And if you have read it, I know exactly what you’re thinking. It’s that Ireland could do with more of your Katrinas wandering in out of storms. And you’d be right. For let me tell you, plenty of your farming Irishmen in the nation are lurking lonely within their cottages waiting and looking for a non Man Fighting variety of wife. And this is what’s new. Here and there they’ve been appearing with this infiltration slowly happening over the last few years, and the foreign influx changing Ireland out of all recognition. With ladies almost resembling the like of Katrina found wandering all over the place from the remote byways to up and down the main street of many a town. Arriving as they do with their backpacks and shepherd’s crooks and representing every sort of ethnic variety from your French to your Dutch and from your Finnish to your Icelandic. Here to marvel at, to be exasperated with and to enjoy the uncommon exhilarating nature of this land.

So you can forget now for a second your previous old hat descriptions you’ve been getting of this country. Even back as far as them ancient scholarly monks scratching their heads isolated praying in their stone huts and diving into freezing cold lakes at dawn of a morning. And disregard the time when the locals were having their dickens of a good time and fun at the expense of himself come over from somewhere else with his grand airs and who waltzed around the ballroom up in the big house, the structure of which, aided and abetted by themselves the natives, was falling into chronic disrepair. But better you might say than

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