Stories from the Wall

I HEREBY PRESENT some stories from Dublin's South Wall, including one where I take all my clothes off in lashings of rain because I momentarily become a member of a cult run by an American man with a megaphone. (Skip to the last few paragraphs if the images this conjures up mean you simply cannot wait.)

But first things first. Back in the day my mother used to go to the South Wall with my father when the Half Moon Swimming Club on the wall was a strictly "Men Only" zone. Being from scandalous London she got into her togs and swam anyway, not caring what the locals thought of this mad woman in the sea.

The red-painted Poolbeg Lighthouse at the end of the wall was manned back then by a fella my father knew from Ringsend. Sometimes they'd bring bottles of beer and have a party in the lighthouse. My mother remembers walking the wall with my father and Luke Kelly from The Dubliners. Later, when more children came along, she'd push the pram from Sandymount all the way down to the Pigeon House Road.

"You'd have to spend the whole day at the Shelly Banks to make it worth the walk," she said when I asked. "You'd meet the devil and all down there on a sunny day." Expressions like "the devil and all" do not usually trip off my English mother's tongue except when she's talking about the South Wall back in the days when it was, she swears blind, "like the Riviera".

A couple of my brothers still go there to swim, to walk or to catch sparkling mackerel from the rocks. For those not familiar with the wall, think of it as a less gentrified version of Dún Laoghaire pier. It has what you might call industrial charm. The seascape is captivating, but unlike Dún Laoghaire there's a refreshing lack of Ugg boots and RTÉ personalities ambling along it on any given Sunday. No Teddy's Ice Cream shop, or any shop for that matter, but then you can't have everything.

The last time my older brother was home from California, via Hawaii and India - yes he has a very hard life - a funny thing happened on one of his regular jaunts down to the South Wall. Yoga Boy was steeling himself to jump into the sea and decided to check with another man about the temperature of the water.

"What's the water like?" asked Yoga Boy amiably.

"It's cold," answered the man.

"God," said golden-skinned Yoga Boy, and in hindsight he thinks this next bit might have acted like a bit of a taunt to the pale-skinned swimmer. "I've just come from Hawaii, the water's lovely there, I don't know if I can handle this cold Irish water."

"Oh really," pondered his new acquaintance. "Well why don't you get in the water and swim back to f**king Hawaii if you like it there so much."

Yoga Boy contemplated this for a moment. The man spoke again. "Are you queer?"

"What?" said my brother not sure if he'd heard right.

"Are you f**king gay, because just tell me if you are, I just want to know, I hate it when they don't tell you, I just hate it."

"No," replied my brother.

"Are you from Ireland?"

"Yes," said Yoga Boy. "I've been coming here to swim since I was a kid."

"Well that's the strangest Irish accent I've ever heard."

Yoga Boy went off to do some yoga. "Only in Dublin," he sighed, recounting this story later. Or, more specifically, only on the wall.

When he heard that Spencer Tunick's naked art installation was going to take place on the South Wall, my brother was raging. He's had his kit off there more than he's had hot dinners so it would have been a doddle for him. But unfortunately he was in Maui or Fiji or Bognor Regis at the time. Me? I was present in a professional capacity to record for this newspaper the 2,500 men and women taking off their clothes while Tunick took their photograph.

It was all Krystle's fault. I met this lovely young lady as she clattered on high heels down the wall moaning about not having waxed. I met her again, on the way back from the first shoot down by the lighthouse. She was exhilarated. Her eyes shined, her cheeks (all of them, presumably) glowed. Just then another brother of mine wandered past. "You should do it, Ró," he said. And suddenly I was all "Yes. I should do it. I've spent years feeling ashamed of my body, now all these people here, all shapes and sizes, are saying no to body fascism and yes to a man called Spencer standing atop a cherry picker with a megaphone. Even Ray D'Arcy did it. So yes. I too am going to get naked. For art. For truth. For hopefully only a few minutes. It's bloody freezing in fairness."

The second shoot was on the Shelly Banks. It's all a bit of a blur. I took off my clothes, put them in a white plastic bag and then hid the plastic bag in a special easy-to-find place near some reeds. Krystle and I ran hand in hand on to the beach. There was one moment when I looked up at the wall and the red and white chimneys and all the naked, shivering, screaming bodies and I felt free. Most of the time I was just mortified. The next thing I knew, I was running up and down the beach looking for my clothes in what was now a sea of white plastic bags.

"Are you going to put this in your column?" laughed one man as with bellies wobbling, breasts jiggling and buttocks complaining, I scrambled nakedly up and down the shore in search of my clothes for 20 naked minutes. (Did I mention I was naked?) Like they say, only on the wall.