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Living in London, it’s easy to forget that people can talk to each other. I walk my dogs around Wapping past hundreds of people on pavements and in parks and it is very rare a smile is exchanged or the silence broken. I occasionally get ‘Are you Graham Norton?’ ‘Love the show’ or a simple ‘Faggot!’ but for most people making their way through the capital, you soon learn that people generally only speak to you when they are (a) crazy, (b) want money, or (c) both. We quickly learn the rules and for the most part they work. In Ireland it is impossible to imagine not saying hello or commenting on the weather. When I first started going back home again, it would always take me a day or two to stop thinking everyone I met was trying to sell me something or explaining why they needed £2 to get the train. I know this is true of rural communities the world over, but talking seems to be something we in Ireland are especially gifted at. There are nights in the pub when my friends look on in slack-jawed incomprehension as someone opens their mouth and a torrent of words tumble free. Usually they don’t have anything to say. Their gate fell down. Who put it there. The man who fixed it. The general state of gates in the area. I will then remember an ‘interesting’ fact about my own gate. They will know the man who owned the forge where they made it. Are they a relation of the man who delivers the stuff? And so it goes. A seamless gush of phrases and banter as traditional as a sing-song or drink-driving. It is talking for the pure pleasure of it and not to communicate a single thing. It is the human equivalent of barking or birdsong.
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