THAT old country saying, "You can take the man from the bog, but you can't take the bog from the man," was being cited on the wireless last week. It might be taken to refer to those wonderfully preserved corpses that are periodically unearthed (unturfed?). Less facetiously, it sums up a stereotype whereby some people are deemed to have a unique and persistent way of life and worldview hand on their inhabiting these marginal lands.
However, when John Quinn opened A Day on the Bog (RTE Radio 1, Thursday) by telling US; that his father used to employ this old saw, it seemed to mean nothing more than: "I remember being on the bog as a child and it's nice to go back."
Quinn is a supremely accomplished producer and presenter, and this documentary is another episode in his apparent project of rescuing the midlands for romance, of reminding us that sweet nostalgia is not the preserve of Kerry or Connemara. He even goes so far as to do it in his home county of Meath, God help us.
So while "deceptively simple" is an apt description for the technical achievement of capturing the summer day's work of a group of men hand cutting turf, and distilling it into a charming 45 minutes, the ideas in A Day on the Bog were truly simple - lovely, but simple and free of any traces of conflict.
There were, however, intimations of mortality, of exploring a way of life that is literally dying. Represented among the "meitheal" were a coronary bypass and at least two replaced hips. And while Quinn repeatedly compared the sod catching skills of one, man to a Meath midfielder, the match being revoked was less the then upcoming Leinster final against Dublin than the 1949 All Ireland, Meath's first victory.
As a huge machine gathering pent moss roared past, the turf cutters reminded us of a more careful and precious harvesting. Descriptions of the old slean (pronounced "slane" in those parts) with cow's horn handle, and of a "scuff" made from a old Volkswagen hubcap, evoked the no waste culture of the past. And a 52 year old - sod of turf, that is - wrapped in a county council declaration that it was the first piece cut from this bog told us how vital this fuel was to Ireland in 1944. More of this, and less of the rather forced music and romance, would have been treasured; still, this was grand listening altogether.
THE SOUND of Quinn's car rattling down the old bog road might have disturbed those of us who value turbed those of us who value our suspensions, but it was nothing compared to the aeronautics terror in Flying to Cincinnati (RTE Radio 1, Tuesday). Bernard Farrell's play was part of RTE's modestly titled Radio Drama Festival of World Premieres.
That mouthful is the station's way of telling us that it has put serious money into commissioning drama from well known writers, starring well known actors. Tonight, for example, Pauline McLynn stars in a new Fergus Linehan play.
Flying to Cincinnati was no great ad for the series, and it had an ending that was so astonishingly pat and comforting that it would have surprised even those familiar with Bernard Farrell endings.
Nonetheless, it's not going to make it on to any in flight entertainment systems: Farrell has sought catharsis for his self confessed fear of flying by offering up a truly terrifying scenario - a jumbo jet hurtles toward a Shannon runway for an emergency landing without its electronic stabilising system.
I've no idea if this is technically credible. But even with rather thin characters on board, it was dead scary.
And it was scary in spite of its technical shortcomings. For all the boasts about these well resourced productions, to create the proper soundspace it was deemed sufficient to have the noise of a jet engine in the background; the acoustics were far too lively for an aircraft cabin, and the planeload of terrified people sounded suspiciously like a half dozen extras.
The Sunday Show may be tiring, but Andy O'Mahony sounded in great form in Off the Shelf (RTE Radio 1, Thursday), mixing it with a trio of intellectuals and keeping the chat down to earth - without trivialising it.
Richard Kearney and Luke Gibbons both have new books on the market, which may help explain how agreeable they were, with each other as well as with O'Mahony - even when the host said "I feel like I'm being conned." Gibbons (who had a good radio week, also featuring on Soundbite) was especially interesting, putting the contested realm of culture back into Irish history.
Angela Bourke cited the irony of an essentially historical discussion taking place without historians, Irish historians generally seeing culture as window dressing on the basics of economics and politics.
It is, indeed, a particularly rich irony - after all, whose history of Ireland in the last three decades could fail to see the period's cultural artefacts, and shifts in mentalite, as being at the heart of the story?
