Home thoughts from abroad

I haven’t been home for a couple of months, but if even half of what I’m reading in the Irish press these days is true, the streets of our great nation appear to be awash with swollen rivers of blood and vomit, the by-products of the gallons and gallons of drink being consumed with considerable gusto by our nation’s youth. The image being portrayed is one of a country being fast rent asunder by alcohol-fuelled anarchy, with fist-fights, drunken brawls, wailing ambulance sirens and al fresco romping being common sights in even the most provincial of small Irish towns and villages on a Saturday night around 2am. It was never like that back in my day.

OK, maybe it was.

But while such bulletins are about as newsworthy in 2003 as reports that the Titanic hit a big iceberg and sank, they are disturbing for a number of reasons, the main one being that the Evening Herald isn’t sold in London. If the media outlets that can usually be relied upon to provide reasonably balanced accounts of the descent of Irish society into alcoholic or drug-fuelled Armageddon are reaching such levels of hysteria, one can only wonder if there are enough capital letters and exclamation marks left in the world to allow the Herald to chronicle the DEPTHS OF DEPRAVITY CURRENTLY BEING PLUMBED BY OUR DRINK-SODDEN YOUTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The fact of the matter is that young people in Ireland definitely drink more than is good for them. And despite the pontificating of endless politicians, opinion formers and psychologists over why they this has come to pass, it seems obvious to me that the reason why young people in Ireland drink too much is because drinking is fun and there’s sod all else for them to do.

Having born and reared in Birr, Co. Offaly, I like to consider myself something of an authority on life in the sticks in Ireland. Birr is a very pleasant Georgian Heritage town with a population of about 5,000. Not counting pubs, Birr’s amenities consist of a golf course, a swimming pool, a few tennis courts covered in moss, a well-run theatre, an old castle and Mundy.

There is no cinema, no bowling alley, no shopping mall, no BMX track, no skateboarding park, no ice rink and no anything else a kid in small town Ireland with lots of time on his or her hands might fancy having a bash at to keep themselves amused.

And while you couldn’t reasonably expect a town that size to have all of these lovely facilities to keep its youth from becoming disaffected, the most horrifying aspect of this dearth of things to do in Offaly when you’re bored is that compared to neighbouring towns such as Roscrea, Birr is like Disneyworld. Is it any wonder we’re all piss artists?

If the politicos of Ireland can hear me from where they’re standing in judgment on the high moral ground (heaven forbid that any of them should ever get legless), might I recommend that they alleviate the problem of alcoholism among young people in Ireland by issuing anyone under the age of 30 found in a state of dishevelment in a town square after midnight with a one-way Ryanair ticket to Trieste, in Italy.

From there, it is only a short hop in a taxi to Slovenia, a beautiful country in which myself and some friends had the pleasure of spending a long weekend earlier this month. My embarrassing ignorance of geography meant that on my first sortie into eastern Europe, I fully expected this picturesque part of the former Yugoslavia to be peopled with wizened old toothless crones out begging for spare change or queuing obediently for bread, while their gnarled husbands drove ploughs attached to oxen across their fields of solid rock.

I couldn’t have been more wrong – while my adherents and I sat in the sunshine outside a variety of bars getting slowly pickled (well, we did have to fly the flag) we found ourselves endlessly remarking on the astounding beauty and style of the local talent, not to mention the seeming determination of every Slovenian under the age of 30 to rollerblade his or her legs into stumps or die trying.

It was more of the same in Zagreb, where we spent one night roistering after a fine dinner in Cavern Boban, the restaurant of former AC Milan and Croatia legend Zvonimir Boban. (Much to our disappointment, however, the proprietor does not appear to be as hands on as many of his GAA equivalents and was nowhere to be seen behind the bar horsing out pints.) In the five days we spent in Eastern Europe, the only unbridled drunkenness we bore witness to was our own giggly mouldiness, while you’d have had to walk for miles to encounter a piece of litter on the street, never mind a fight.

Which is not to say that Johnny Slovenian is averse to a sniff of the cork. While we appeared to be the only tourists in town, every bar we visited was doing a brisk trade, with more than a few of the locals making little secret of the fact that they were toking on big fat spliffs as they drank ice cold beers at €2 a pop.

Perhaps that’s the solution to Ireland’s ongoing drink and violence problem – reduce the price of the pint by 50% and legalise marijuana. If there’s men in the country so aggressive that they can still find a fight after a feed of cheap porter and a big bag of skunk, then we’ll know we really have problems.