City folk beware! Puncturing myth of rural bliss with a pitchfork

OPINION: Summer is a time to leave the city and explore the unexpected pleasures of the Irish countryside.

AT THIS time of year - the monsoon season - many Irish city dwellers make their annual visit to the countryside. And they frequently return, vowing: "Never, ever again". You see, they go with such utterly unrealistic expectations. "Ah!" they think, "won't it be grand? Waking up to the sound of the cock crowing and the donkey braying. The smell of an old-fashioned fry on the hob. And the enticing prospect of long, healthy walks in the great outdoors."

Oh, they'll wake up early all right. At about 2am to the sound of jarred lads kicking the lard out of one another outside the village pub followed by the va-va-voom of cocaine-fuelled boyracing. And enjoy a "Jumbo Breakfast Roll" from the petrol station's "hot deli". And discover that access to the fields is blocked by big signs proclaiming: "Poison Laid" and "Beware of Bull". You can't walk in the country! Footpaths stop at the edge of villages and the narrow roads are as dangerous as Monaco during the grand prix - so if you're fond of walking you'd be far better off, and safer, sticking to Dún Laoghaire pier.

Blame the bookshops - which are chock-full of bestselling accounts depicting rural bliss. Ever since the saccharine A Year in Provence, there's been a torrent of escapist sludge. Recent random examples include: A Table in the Tarn: Living, Eating and Cooking in South-west Franceand Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons: Travels in Sicily on a Vespa. There's a clue there. After all, you never see books called: A Year in the Golden Vale; or Drumlin Dumplings: Memories of a Cavan Kitchen; or, Toomevara Tales - Trysts in Tipperary.

Yet off people merrily go - down to Cashel or Callan, Tuam or Macroom - expecting what? Horny-handed peasants cultivating organic smallholdings? Atmospheric farmers' markets full of fresh local produce? Rosy-cheeked lassies herding free-range geese? Look, if you want to see the goose girl, go to the National Gallery. And where do you think farmers get their vegetables? From the freezer cabinet in Tesco, of course. And regional delicacies? They eat kebabs after closing time - just like in Dublin.

And think you'll find a traditional "public house" with a Pegeen Mike barmaid dispensing large bottles of stout and a frisky Widow Quin lookalike giving you the come-on, and fiddlers in bawneen jumpers having a "seisiún", and old-timers with cloth caps dispensing Jackie Healy-Rae style nuggets of phlegmy wisdom from the high stools? Well, sorry. It's Sky Sports for the "footy", Slippery Nipple cocktail shots all round, poledancing in the Noreside Bar, an Ann Summers "naughty knickers" party for the girls in the Slievenamon Lounge and a charity hair and beard "shave-a-thon" in the Ballydung Arms to raise funds for the GAA club's new dressing-rooms.

Not everything has changed: "the 10 tinkers is camped in the east glen" and "the harvest boys with their tongues red for drink" haven't gone away, you know. Christy Mahon is still acting the playboy and has taken up with a Latvian girl from the check-out at Lidl. Oh, and "Old Mahon" is still around - though whether his head is bandaged from a belt of a hurley or the result of a drugs gang's drive-by shooting is not quite clear.

But if you do go, at least talk to the locals. No visit to rural Ireland is complete without chatting to a farmer. He should be full of the joys of life now, shouldn't he? The hay saved and Mandelson bet. The weather is always a neutral topic, isn't it? "Lovely day!" you venture (if it's a - rare - dry day). "Ah, there's rain wanted badly," he'll reply.

Meet him a few days later - after downpours which could have quenched the fires in Sodom and Gomorrah - and you expect he'll be over the moon. "You got the rain you wanted, after." He'll look at you like you've got horns and say: "The harvest is ruined."

Of course, if you're in Co Monaghan you could try: "I hear there's gold in them thar hills" - but he might reach for a sprong.

If a farmer asks: "What do you do up in Dublin?" you must not reveal your occupation if you happen to be a civil servant. If you admit to this he will react by laughing like a hoarse hyena while slapping his thighs with the glee of a lederhosen-clad Tyrolian performing a Volkstanz. "Oh, be the hokey man," he'll say, "you have one cushy number all right!" And you will then discover that he believes "civil servants spend all day long sittin' on their backsides drinkin' tea and eatin' biscuits and draftin' forms to torment people with". Farmers, eh? They haven't a clue, have they?