BEING THERE:Lovers, shoppers, models, tourists, bookworms, ducks and the odd troublemaker - it's an average day on St Stephen's Green, writes Róisín Ingle
MORNING HAS BROKEN in St Stephen's Green. Office workers in suits power-walk along the paths while joggers work up a sweat along the herbaceous borders.
Gradually, the park begins to buzz with tourists, children, their minders and - that stalwart of city parks the world over - locals with no particular place to go. The dense foliage around the railings operates like a buffer between the park and the city, softening the sounds of traffic. Birds call to each other across the trees, all those elegant limes and horse chestnuts laden with nearly ready conkers, while the ducks prepare for a feeding frenzy which will last the whole day.
This morning they don't have long to wait. Two teenagers from Co Monaghan have taken the bus to the capital and in a break between shopping and lunch are studiously feeding bread to the inhabitants of St Peter's Lake.
"You have to watch for the pigeons," says Maria (16). "They scare the ducks." They went and bought the bread especially, it's just "something good to do" in Dublin, says Áine (17) who adds that they are here for a day of "shopping and eating".
SPEAKING OF SHOPPING and eating, further along the path near the entrance to the park, a large supermarket chain is making use of the park's scenic backdrop for a photo shoot to advertise a new recession-busting range of cut-price goods.
Model Alison Canavan, dressed in yellow and black ("amber and black," the PR woman corrects), teamed with knee-high boots, poses while carrying a basket full of bargain groceries. Tourists are bemused. "That's exactly what I look like when I am doing my shopping," jokes one passerby, as the model pouts and preens and offers seductive glances to photographers over bottles of cheap bleach and cartons of washing powder.
There was a slight spillage earlier when a packet of salt burst on the path. One of the park's many industrious staff sweeps up the mound of white obligingly. He knows that most days you can't walk through St Stephen's Green without falling over a lovely girl flogging some product or other.
"It's the central location," explains the PR woman, as the crowd of onlookers gather to take photos on their mobile phones and the model, now a free sideshow, starts to really earn her fee.
That's when another of the park's regular sideshows gets under way. "You f**kin' pervert. You racist prick," shouts a man, backing away from security guards who are attempting to remove him from the park. He keeps up the verbals until he walks out under the Fusiliers' Arch, disappearing among a crowd waiting for the Luas. The park attendants stand guard for a while longer, just in case.
The Fusiliers' Arch, at the Grafton Street entrance to the Green, in the northwest corner, is a smaller version of the Arch of Titus in Rome. You might pass under it every day and not realise it commemorates the 212 soldiers of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who died in the Boer War between 1899 and 1902. Or you might not notice the pockmarks in the stonework, probably made by bullets during Easter 1916 when Constance Markievicz and members of the Irish Citizen Army took up position in the park.
Being from South Africa, artist Leanie Zink and care worker Sheldon Carroll share a particular interest in this feature of the park. Leanie, pushing two-year-old Luke in his pram, talks knowledgeably about the battle of Talana Hill and the Irish involvement in the war. "Did you know," she asks. "That the name of the Irish Free State was inspired by a South African province called the Free State?" This local didn't, actually. Leanie and Sheldon walk off in search of another Boer-inspired monument.
You walk past the lake and over the small, hump-backed stone O'Connell Bridge to the central area of the park which is laid out in Victorian style. Filled with fountains and flowers and surrounded by benches, it's a popular spot with readers and people-watchers. Sitting on the side of one fountain is Sylvia Cowan from Belfast. "It's so peaceful here and the park is so well kept," she says. "I could sit here all day just watching the world go by."
She is in Dublin to stay with her daughter and to attend a Christian rally led by her Pastor, James McConnell from Belfast's Metropolitan Tabernacle, at Fairyhouse Racecourse. "I like him because he tells the truth," she smiles.
Heads turn when a bride glides into the park, a surprise flash of white amid all the greenery, followed by her ecstatic-looking husband and a small wedding party. With the University Church on its southern perimeter, the Unitarian Church on its western one and the registry office a short limo-ride away, St Stephen's Green is a mecca for wedding photographers.
MAYA FENG and Andries Middelkoop were married half an hour ago in the registry office on Grand Canal Street. Maya, a nurse, is from south-east China and Andries, who works for a mobile phone company, is a Dubliner who owes his name to his Dutch father. "We met in a café on Grafton Street," says Andries, who can't keep his eyes off Maya, and keeps gazing at her as though he can't believe his luck. "I just started talking to her and I got her e-mail address. It was love at first sight."
Maya giggles. "He was very persistent," she says. "I went away to China and he started e-mailing every day." When she returned, their first date was here in the park. "We met for lunch and a bit of a walk around. He was a bit nervous but it went very well," she remembers. They got engaged after a year. "When you know, you know," explains Andries.
Hundreds of photos are taken of the couple, on benches, in the summer house, by the fountain and on the bridge. Andries whisks Maya up into his arms and they are snapped like that, laughing when Maya's friends arrive, fussing over her, filling the park with excited Mandarin. Andries's sister Tzarina says Maya is a lovely girl. "He hadn't been going out with anyone for a while before he met Maya and he just knew she was the one. He never gave up, you know the way if you want something badly enough. He dotes on her," she says while looking fondly at her brother and his bride.
As the party moves across to the north side of the park, a group of child artists set up easels ready to paint. Then members of a youth orchestra carrying their instruments rush past across the garden circle headed for the bandstand. Through lunchtime, they entertain couples snogging on the grass, groups of friends on their lunchbreak eating falafel or sandwiches or McDonald's, backpackers sprawled in weary circles using their luggage as pillows. They play Crazy Little Thing Called Loveand a Grease medley - the kissing couples go into overdrive to a brass band version of Summer Lovin. "Get a room," shouts one wag to the worst offenders, but they don't hear and even if they do they take no notice.
St Stephen's Green, laid out in its current form between 1877 and 1880, spans 22 acres in total, so you could spend several hours discovering its nooks and crannies while still never bumping into features such as the sensory garden for blind people.
The plants here are labelled in Braille and designed to withstand regular handling. Other features of interest are the bench dedicated to the women of the Magdalene Laundries, in the central garden, and the statue of the Three Fates inside the Leeson Street gate, a gift from Germany to thank the Irish for housing refugees after the second World War. The jaunty statue of Robert Emmet looks towards his birthplace, or the location at least, the house at 124 St Stephen's Green having been demolished. And lovers of the park can pay silent homage when they pass Lord Ardilaun who gifted the park to the state and now sits in stone facing out towards the College of Surgeons.
ALL OVER THE GREEN, people have their noses in books. After duck- and pigeon-feeding, it's probably the second most popular activity. Today they are reading: What Are You Like?by Anne Enright, This Charming Manby Marian Keys, The Family on Paradise Pierby Dermot Bolger, Farewell, My Lovelyby Raymond Chandler and Forgotten Laughterby Marcia Willett. Melhat Guray (26), a Dublin-based student from Turkey, is reading The Bastard of Istanbulby Elif Shafak. "But I am not from Istanbul, I am from Ankara," she says. "I just like coming here, maybe once a week, I find it very relaxing."
As the afternoon sun goes behind a cloud, you are reminded that, like city parks the world over, St Stephen's Green is a place of contrasts.
There's that group of women with a gourmet picnic chatting loudly on mobile phones while behind them sits a man who has just finished his more modest lunch: baked beans followed by rice pudding, and both enjoyed from the can.
There's the man with a packet of Rizla in one hand and a joint in the other smoking happily just a few yards from a little girl feeding sandwich leftovers to the "ugly ducklings" trailing in a line after the swans.
A man in dirty clothes lies snoring near 'Tonehenge', the Wolfe Tone monument, while beside him a noisy circle of Spanish students make enough of a racket to wake the dead in the nearby Huguenot Cemetery. And as the ducks splash and the swans glide and the children in the playground plead that they don't want to go home, another summer passes in St Stephen's Green.
