OpinionOn the road from Adare to Tralee last Saturday, as no doubt elsewhere, the traffic seized up in deference to the central rite of one of this island's cultural identities. Fleeing from the central rite of another identity, we were confused. Half the cars inching through Adare were flying GAA flags, that much we knew. But whose were the colours, when was the game? writes Fionnuala OConnor
By the time we made it to a pub in Castlegregory, there were silent Kerrymen at the bar watching something that gave them no pleasure. Tipperary playing Cork in Killarney explained the traffic. Cork was winning, which explained the silence.
It took until late the next afternoon in the empty front room of a pub in Dingle to realise what a big GAA weekend it was. When the back room stopped abusing Limerick, a lone drinker came in search of fresh company. But we were oddities, Northerners who hadn't watched Armagh whip Donegal. "You're unsporty people, so."
Back in Belfast, we thought, the other culture's in full flow: pinning the Tricolour and Bairbre de Brún posters on top of Eleventh Night bonfires, rigging up a platform in north Belfast for a UDA arms display, firing shots through the windows of an isolated Catholic home.
We were honouring the Twelfth rite that takes many Catholics and a fair sprinkling of Protestants out of the place. Why try explaining how unaware many are of the importance of Gaelic football to their fellow Northerners and its centrality in the South, much less the wholly beneficial nature of pride in parish and county and partisan passions that produce good jokes instead of bullets through windows?
We could have told him, of course, the damning impossibility for many Northern Protestants of separating out football and hurling from violent republicanism, the still fresh memories of Sinn Féin meetings in GAA halls.
All we said was that you can be sporty in the North, but not a Gaelic fan. "Ah now, everyone in the North is interested in GAA." No, wrong there.
"Ah, I have a lot of friends from the North and they're all interested, the sporty people and the unsporty people." (This reminded him, the Protestant half said later, of the unionists who insist Catholics loved the Twelfth until the Provos created residents' committees and a hatred of Orangemen.)
All right, we said peaceably. Tell us about the smoking ban, seems great to us. "Ruined the social life, it's a disaster." Where he lived, he waved towards the west, was far more beautiful than Dingle. "And the bar that I use is a grand bar but now it's ruined."
But in out-of-the way places like his, in winter when there was nobody there but local people, the ban would collapse. He'd been in earlier, the bar empty. The woman who owned it said "Do you smoke, Johnny?" "I said 'I do', and she brought out the ashtray. The two of us had a fag and looked out at the sun shining, and it was lovely."
We saw a variation on the theme in Banagher at the door of a small hotel: mid-20s, in his shirt-sleeves, grabbing a passing friend. "She asked me did I effing smoke. What did she think I was effing doing coming out here in the effing rain?" There were very few in the bar behind him, but he knew the effing rule.
In an Ennis hotel there was a male, about 65, with female, the pair of them tense. Wait - was that a cigarette? He held it almost flashily, no attempt at concealment. A friend came by, clearly joking about it. It went to his mouth and came away again, but no red tip, never got any smaller. She looked grim. There was a sharp exchange and out he went. Then they were both gone.
Perceptions change more slowly than reality. Some in the North still think the South is poor, dirty, priest-ridden, and call it "Ireland" and its people "Irish" as though it truly was a different landmass.
Remember when crossing the Border northwards meant smooth tarmac instead of potholes? The potholes have moved North. Some citizens note sadly how greedy their new Ireland is. But towns and toilets have spruced up. No smoking in bars, cafés, restaurants, offices.
Refuse tokens, real fines for littering and you pay for plastic bags: Britain and Northern Ireland are scrambling to catch up.
The changes have become the norm, it seems, before the public drew breath, imposed ahead of public opinion, intuiting half-articulated wishes. They defy a right few cultural stereotypes, yet for many Northerners this remains an alien state.
The gulf is wide as ever, the dominant cultures North and South as different as Bangor and Banagher.