On Patricks and Long-Chain Polymers.

I should have stayed in bed, nursing the remnants of my cold but no, I had to go out, didn't I? I had to go to my local to watch the rugby. It was the first time I had ventured out of Pither Towers in a week - just about as big a mistake as that evening, 50-odd years ago, when Noel Edmonds' father said to his mother "Fancy an early night?"

England lost by a record margin to the Fenian horde - they were TW (The Worst!). To say it was an embarrassment is a slight understatement. We were outclassed in every single department and even I had to applaud the performance of the Irish. It was inspiring.
Being an English, socialist man, you get used to defeat and humiliation. Sport, in particular, is not one of our strong points. Inventing games, now that's a different cup of piranha juice. We can invent games for.......for.......well, for the world. That's the trouble. The rest of the world soon catches on, learns how to play those games and proverbially rams it up our traditionally restrictive sphincters at every available opportunity.
So there I was yesterday, proudly sporting my England rugby shirt, looking like a model of the snow-covered Malverns, with a prime seat in front of the landlord's bedsheet (NOTE: The pub, thankfully, doesn't have a big-screen TV so, on the very rare occasions when a game warrants watching, the gaffer uses a projector to show the action. Unfortunately, he's too tight to splash out on a proper projector screen so hangs up a bedsheet - complete with outline traces on it of his urinary and sexual habits. "Come and watch all the bigsheet action," he proudly proclaims).
The landlord is as Irish as a green Irish thing in a bog, complaining about something and looking for a fight, so your first task is to try to outshout him. That is not a problem. The annoying part is sitting next to loads of other people during the afternoon, chatting about how brilliant Sherbert Fountains were and who was your favourite Banana Split, when they announce just before kick-off that, although they are patently English, they will be supporting Ireland. "My grandfather was Irish, you see," they explain. What!!!! EVERYBODY'S GRANDFATHER WAS FUCKING IRISH!! There's a reason for that. Emigration became very trendy on the Emerald Isle about 160 years ago when Spud-U-Like closed down over there and two million overly picky eaters among the populace went in search of branches abroad.
My soon-to-be ex-wife's grandmother was Irish. In fact, here's a true story. When my STB EW was a little girl, she was sat at her granny's knee and, having been taunted about her family at school, asked that white-haired, little old lady whom she worshipped if it was true that she used to smuggle guns for the IRA. Her granny, in a thick, Irish brogue, put her mind completely at rest by snapping: "That was never proved!"
Anyway, back to the point. What is it with these millions of Plastic Paddies? You shall know them by their utterances. They are the types who say "feck" instead of the recognised English expletive because they have watched Father Ted and think it will make them sound like a street-wise, Shane McGowan type. I'll tell you why they pretend not to be English and claim Irish citizenship. It's because it's trendy, because they can lay claim to being from an oppressed, downtrodden, victimised people and not a member of a race which was/is noted for its imperialist ways and its habit of subjugating people around the world.
Don't get me wrong, there are thousands of episodes in Britain's past (for the words England and Britain are interchangeable to the Irish) which do not leave me bursting with pride. What the British did to the Irish is not something to rejoice in, even though it was the Catholics who asked the Brit army to go in to protect them from the Proddies in the first bloody place. No, what sticks up my oversized hooter is the highly selective memory of the Irish. So, collaboration with the Nazis never happened, did it? Innocent men, women, children and even fucking horses weren't blown to bits by Fenian murderers on the British mainland, were they? The IRA didn't become one of the world's largest gangs of organised drug peddlers, did it? Knee capping their own was not a favourite pasttime of those "fighting for liberation", was it? They didn't massacre their own innocents at places like Enniskillen and Omagh, did they?
Bloody Sunday was mass murder of innocents by the British. It was, no-one can deny it. This is not ANY justification for a massacre, but how many times do the Irish tell you that the Black and Tans went in to Croke Park with murder on their minds because 14 of their own had been slaughtered by Irish gunmen? It's not justification, but it does take the gloss off the poor, oppressed, victimised, "wouldn't hurt a fly" nation angle a bit.
I am not a brain-dead American and so fail to see all-consuming, twiddly-diddly-dee romanticism in Ireland, let alone feel a desperate need to lay claim to it. I am happy with what was thrust upon me at birth - MY nationality. More than that, I am not overly keen on nationalism full-stop! I thought we were all as one, struggling against life itself, not against each other.
I seem to have wandered off the point a bit. Never mind. Anyway, Plastic Paddyism can go to Grantham. If these people feel so fondly for Ireland then why don't they go over there and actually contribute to the country by paying some taxes instead of propping up the evil empire? "Oh, no darling. Jackasta, Gemma and I would miss the Rotary Club, that charming little Korean eatery in town and our amateur dramatics club cheese and wine parties. Besides, Ireland is an awfully long way away, isn't it, and the people smell?" Feck off!