People go on and on about the number of cars in Dublin, and right enough it's a horror. But anyone who's been in the city recently can't have escaped the conclusion that there are way too many pedestrians as well.
Footpath rage is a growing problem in the capital these days. Especially during business hours, when more pedestrians are rushing around on narrow pavements never designed to cope with the numbers. But the problem can be worse at weekends, when an influx of slow-moving and often erratic tourists is added to the mix (I don't want to be rude, but if some of those Americans were trucks, they'd be banned from the city centre).
The widespread use of mobile phones has also had a very detrimental effect on footpath traffic. Lane-discipline has gone out the window, and hand gestures are an increasing hazard. I need hardly point out that an expressive, cellphone-using stockbroker with martial arts training could inflict potentially fatal injuries on a passer-by.
That there hasn't been more street violence so far is down to the natural Irish reluctance to risk contact with strangers. When you're driving, if a BMW driver cuts in front of you, forcing you to brake, you can safely express yourself by furiously beeping the horn, or quoting the Old Testament at him, or whatever. But if a guy in a BMW-type suit cuts in on you on the footpath, you can't say anything or you run the risk of - at the very least - a conversation.
Even the most rational and mild-mannered of people - by which I mean me - can be affected by footpath rage. And the problem is going to get worse in the run-up to Ch**ist**s. You probably read during the week about the so-called "Day of Six Billion" (either the UN estimate of world population, or Bord Failte's projection for tourist numbers next year - I can't remember); but in another few weeks you'll think there's that many people in Henry Street alone.
The pedestrianisation of parts of Dublin city centre is directly to blame for the upsurge in footpath usage. It seemed like a good idea: reclaiming the streets from the car so people could stroll amid tree-lined boulevards, as in the artists' impressions, with at least 50 square feet of personal space each.
Unfortunately, studies show that by creating more pedestrian routes, you simply increase the numbers of pedestrians. Anyone old enough to remember Grafton Street when it carried traffic will know you could get up and down the footpaths reasonably well most of the time.
That was before the economic boom, of course. Dublin could still be heaven, with coffee at eleven and a stroll in Stephen's Green. There was no need to hurry, no need to worry, and - on the downside - no need for a Department of Finance, because Ireland had less industrial output than an ant colony. Above all, there were very few pedestrians then, which was why the authorities fitted fake pedestrian buttons on most of the city's traffic lights. We still have the fake buttons, of course, but if you tried strolling in Stephen's Green now, sometimes, you could cause a multiple pile-up.
If pedestrianisation is mainly to blame, however, the baby boom has had a big effect too; insofar as, instead of driving four-wheel vehicles these days, a lot of pedestrians are pushing them. When I was in the zoo recently there was gridlock on all routes. What was worse was that many of the buggies were in the hands of impatient male drivers. "You got a second a gear on that thing?" one guy's expression would say to you. "Yeah, same to you, pal," you'd think right back.
But the population of Ireland hasn't changed all that dramatically in 20 years. So one can only conclude that with the economic boom, and the resultant improvement in the weather, Irish people have just moved out of doors in a big way in recent years. Personally, I think it's time for an initiative to move them back in.
AS regular readers will know, I've been working my way through Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable lately (only 400 pages to go) and I just can't put it down. So when we drew Turkey in the European championship play-offs this week, I found myself looking up the phrase "Young Turks". You probably knew this already, but the original Young Turks were a political party, founded in 1891 by young people from - of all places - Turkey, who were a liberalising influence on the country until they were dissolved at the end of the first World War. They would have been middle-aged Turks by then and, unlike the Rolling Stones, they knew when to quit.
No doubt you also know that the name Pakistan - also in the news this week - is an acronym coined from the country's component parts:
unjab, (A)fghan border states, (K)ashmir, (S)ind and Baluchis(tan). And that, when he captured the fourth-named of those territories in 1843, Sir Charles Napier announced the news in a one-word message - Peccavi - which is Latin for "I have sinned" (and for a pun like that, he should have been horse-whipped).
I bet you don't know where the once-popular phrase "all my eye and Betty Martin" (meaning: "rubbish!") comes from. But that's OK, because neither does Brewer's; although it speculates attractively that it might have been a phonetic rendering by British sailors of an invocation to St Martin - "O mihi, beate martine" - heard in foreign parts.
The same sailors are responsible for half the English language as we know it. "Sweet Fanny Adams," for example, originates from the gruesome murder in 1867 of a person of that name. But the Royal Navy, with the sensitivity for which it was famous, was soon applying it to tinned mutton.
And from there, it gradually descended to mean "something of little worth". The initials have come to represent other words since then, of course ("Scottish Football Association," I mean).
Frank McNally can be contacted by email at fmcnal@irish-times.ie
