My granny is 92-and a-half years old - the half years only matter to the very young or the very old. The last time she stayed with me I made the mistake of taking her out for a quiet drink. She went bananas, dragging me from pub to pub to club, and we ended up in a flat somewhere on the northside chilling out 'til dawn. There's nothing like coming down when the sun's coming up, she said.
So when she came to visit last week I decided to rent a video and sit in with her. I was looking for The Quiet Man, but I opted for Michael Collins. After all, my Granny was on both sides of the civil war. She absolutely hates violence, but loves war. Not this newfangled, hi-tech, long-distance warfare we see on Sky News. Granny wants to see blood'n'guts, she wants to see the bayonet plunge into a man's belly, she wants to see his eyes bulge, and the blood spurt from his mouth and ears, she wants to see a photograph of a wife and young child clutched in the dying man's hand.
Granny can't eat popcorn, because of her false teeth. So I stocked up with a box of Irish Roses and a bottle of Jameson. She filled her pipe, vanished into the couch, and just as the film started, so did she. Old and wrinkled, her skin about two sizes too big for her, with the face of a mole and the ears of a fruit bat, she started rabbiting on: "Beef, helicopters, corruption, Ansbacher accounts, passports for sale, politicians, Government jets, brown paper bags, Celtic Tiger. Thanks a million big fella! That's some kind of a how'd'ye do all de same! What this country needs is a revolution!"
She said it again. "What this country needs is a revolution." I pointed at the TV screen and explained that we were watching the revolution. "Revolution! We never had a revolution in this country," she insisted. "1916! War of Independence! Sure they weren't revolutions. Easter 1916 was an insurrection, a blood sacrifice, a passion play, a resurrection revisited. But, ye don't think it was a serious attempt at revolution, do you?"
As I struggled for an answer, she barged in with more. "1916 was like a beaten dog snappin' at the heels of its master, waiting for that flake on the head that'd put manners on it," she hissed. "What kind of revolutionaries begin their revolution in a post office, a biscuit factory, and a public park, and all on a Bank Holiday Monday? All we ever had in this country was a rising," she said. "See, the Irish are dab hands at the auld risings; been having 'em for hundreds of years. But a revolution? Now that's a different kettle a' fish. The French are the boys for the revolutions.
"See, with a revolution ye need only do it the once. Once is enough and all is changed and changed for ever."
"We got our freedom," I suggested. "Freedom?" She sucked on her pipe, "Freedom from what? All we had was just a transfer of ownership. Look, the spailpin fanach, unemployed, blue-collared worker, even the middle classes don't get a look-in, in this new Ireland. Our liberators are hightailing it into the arms of the European Empire, and we just after escaping from the clutches of the British Empire! What sort of madness is that? When Hannibal came over the Alps what did he do? He built roads! When the Romans conquered Britain what did they do? They built roads!
"When The Germans Blitzkrieged Europe what did they do? Built roads! The only difference now is that we're building de flamin' roads for them. Can't you see this is the rise of the Fourth Reich?" She blew out a lungful of blue smoke.
I'd never thought of it that way. "Think about this," she said. "At Easter time in the year 2016, when a band of young idealistic poets, writers, Feis schemers and geriatric shopkeepers take over the GPO in an effort to cut the cord with a Europe gone mad. A Europe hell-bent on bombing the Africans or the Arabs or some other poor creatures like that. Well, it won't be the British lancers that'll be coming down Sackville Street to root them out. It won't be de Irish army either. It will be a crack squad of Euro anti-terror troops, Germans, French, Italians, maybe even a few American military advisors. "Think about that," she said.
By the time Granny had supped her third Jameson, the calm had set in and from that point on, our viewing was interrupted only by the odd sigh or polite curse. At one stage she pointed at Liam Neeson and said, "Isn't Michael Collins a fine looking man?" Obviously, she had some difficulty in separating fact from fiction.
I remember when Michael Collins was released. It generated some controversy regarding its omission of the Treaty debate and alleged historical inaccuracy. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly said it was "A serious historical drama, drained of serious history". But let's face facts. The history of history can be traced back through folklore to story-telling all the way to our basic human need to entertain each other. Me and my granny were thoroughly entertained by Michael Collins. But what about the bitterness after the war of Independence?
"It had nothing to do with the Treaty debate," she said. "It was just too many chiefs and only room for the one Taoiseach."
And my Granny should know. She was there.
