LET DONEGAL be our guide to the Irish psyche. Donegal has voted - in the name, shape and policies of Harry Blaney - in favour of sperm in and Brits out. For he was for the man who successfully helped close down the vasectomy clinic in Letterkenny - possibly because the very notion of imprisoning the male seed seemed unpatriotic, un-Irish. No doubt the very technique involved was introduced by the British in order to subvert the Irish race.
But Harry also promised to support Fianna Fail in government if it secured the withdrawal of the British from the North and got a united Ireland: instead. It's that easy, apparently. Closing a vasectomy clinic one day, getting a united Ireland the next; which suggests that the British plot to subvert the virility of the Irish race has certainly failed in his case.
British television.
So Donegal votes for sperm out and Brits out too. But Donegal also voted for Brits in lovely, south western Donegal, the home of some of the most charming and nicest people in Ireland, voted - if I am to judge the success of Thomas Gildea correctly for free access to British television.
The people there, presumably, have TnaG; how many people in the Gaeltacht lair where Thomas is from and where the language is most under threat actually watch TnaG, the station designed to rescue the Irish language?
If given the choice of watching unlawfully deflected British signals or undeflected and lawful Irish signals, which would they prefer? Certainly, I am unaware of any of the many other areas throughout Ireland unable to receive TnaG offering the merest whimper in protest, never mind send in a politician to Dublin to set things right.
No matter. Donegal votes for Brits out; but as they go, please to leave their television air waves behind, thank you, for us to pluck out of the skies and enjoy at our will. It makes little difference in even the medium term. Very soon digitalised television I use the expression without having the least idea what it means will (apparently) be upon us and we will be living in the worldwide electronic supercontinent of Murdochia.
Those bright and ingenious souls in Donegal and Mayo hoping to deflect passing television beams with the aid of three tin cans, a stretch of fishing line, an old torch battery and a cat's whisker will have as much chance of success as wreckers simultaneously waving false lights from a Donegal headland in order to lure a Spanish galleon freighted with doubloons and pieces of eight to its premature doom.
So much of what we knew up until quite recently is either dead or doomed. Things are changing so fast in Ireland, and the penetration of the outside world is becoming so complete and so rapid, it is hard to know what to do the louder to curse or to rejoice. Maybe we shall be led with a curious soup of website nationalism and Internet orangeism, and all our old vices and our shibboleths will be expressed in Gatian, the language of the inventor of Microsoft.
Good food
Of the many changes occurring in Ireland, the spread of good food is surely the one with the least to condemn it. A good restaurant, like a good inn, is one of the blessings of civilisation, and the Egon Ronay Jameson guide over the years will provide a useful indicator for a future generation of social historians of the progress of the culinary revolution which swept across Ireland in the past two decades.
Is it surprising that Southwest Donegal, the area with the least number of restaurants listed in the latest guide. is the very area with the most interest in watching British television? Maybe if the people in Donegal had a few more good restaurants and hotels they might be less interested in watching the bootleg images of foreign television in their own private speakeasies. Whatever, of all the restaurant and hotel guides to Ireland, the Egon Ronay is the best and really is essential to all lovers of food and wine and other people's hospitality.
Turn the map of Ireland upside down and you have in the place of southwest Donegal that charming and still largely unsung area of west Waterford which happens to have produced a little guide to the restaurants and hotels. I note that Ken and Cathleen Buggy (who are mentioned in Egon Ronay too and who ran the wonderful Old Presbytery in Kinsale), have moved and opened a bed and breakfast at Glencairn, near Lismore, where they nightly burn votive candles that I not visit them.
Energetic socialising
Years ago I was staying in the Old Presbytery after many deadly hours of Kinsale hospitality - probably involving Brian Cronin over in the Blue Haven hotel he has filled grave yards with his energetic socialising, from which it is possible to escape only by achieving earth orbit velocity.
Some time around 4 a.m. I was impelled to attend to a certain bladderly imperative. In a walking coma, I rose and tugged open the door to get to the lavatory.
I was in fact hauling open a slightly jammed wardrobe door. As it opened, the one ton wardrobe fell forward, neatly encoffining me on the floor - at which point I woke up. It says a great deal for my strength of character that the incident did not put me off alcohol. It says even more for Ken and Cathleen that they did not expel me there and then, for their precious wardrobe was shattered in the fall. Indeed, the impact was so heavy the FCA was stood to and a few retired British army brigadiers snapped awake, thinking it was Dunkirk, and it was time to evacuate. Beneath the Buggy wardrobe, I couldn't have agreed with them more.