Two more reasons for the Irish to be happy

Earlier this week, I took the opportunity presented by St Patrick's Day to offer some well-earned praise for Irish music of a certain era (mid 1980s to early 1990s). It was a good day and the sun shone, which is pretty rare here, and a welcome break from economic gloom and doom. There are many reasons to be fed up in Ireland right now, from bankers, businessmen and politicians who may be venal, reckless, incompetent, or any combination of all the above, to rapidly increasing unemployment and equally rapidly decreasing salaries, leading to a general feeling of dispair and malaise.

However, even in the few days since March 17th, we have two more reasons to be happy in Ireland, and we are prepared to take any crumbs of comfort we can.



Firstly, despite the fact that I know as much about sport as a fish knows about philosophy, even I know that we just beat Wales in Rugby to win something called the Grand Slam. I even watched the match (despite genuinely not understanding any of the rules), and got carried away with emotion and excitement, just like several million other Irish people at home and abroad. We haven't managed this particular feat since 1948 (this I know because my now very proud father was there in person to see that match), and this is an enormous achievement which just might pierce our current gloom and raise spirits across the country, if only until the hangovers kick in, so let's enjoy it while we can.

Secondly, despite my very recent proclamations on Irish music of a decade ago, we still have some very very talented musicians, and my favourite of them right now, Cork's own Mick Flannery, just won the Meteor award (Irish music awards) for best male artist, and he deserves it, as he is really good, and he proves that the golden age may have scaled down a bit (what hasn't in Ireland these days) but there is still a lot of quality out there.

Well done Mick!

I will end this post with a clip of him playing 'Safety rope' in Cork's Pavillion Theatre last October. I admit that, yes, he appears to be invisible, but he was there, honestly (he is just blocked from view behind his piano by his backing vocalist with the spine-tingling vocals).