This is not one of Myles’s funnier efforts – the crankiness of later years is beginning to show. But it’s interesting historically, for at least two reasons. First, it was the column that earned him a forced early retirement from the Civil Service. The problem was his description in the opening paragraph, ostensibly of an unnamed member of Dublin Corporation, but in fact of the minister for local government – his boss – who immediately recognised it as such.
The other point of interest on the day that he finally became a full-time writer, aged 41, is the paragraph about the shortage of women's toilets in Dublin. A throwaway detail at the time, this would seven years later become a key part of the plot (insofar as it has one) of his comeback novel, The Hard Life, written under Brian O'Nolan's other main literary pseudonym, Flann O'Brien. The column's main target, however, was An Tóstal: a national festival inaugurated in 1953 to bring tourists to Ireland during what Patrick Kavanagh called "the monsoon season". FRANK McNALLY
IN THE Dublin Corporation there are a few persons of some standing and education who might be conceded, for convenience, the title “gentleman”. The rest are unfortunate shaymuses. If you asked one of the latter what they thought of Tito, they would reply that he wouldn’t have a chance unless the distance was at least a mile and a half. If you then wittily asked whether it would be a good thing to bet on the tóstalisator, the great jaw would drop, the ruined graveyard of tombstone teeth would be revealed, the eyes would roll, and the malt-eroded voice would say “Hah?”
A few years ago there was every prospect of an epidemic or plague because the Corporation could not “afford” to collect dustbins more than once a week. No money in the kitty. The next thing we read was that the Corporation were arranging to lay out some £6,000 of the ratepayers’ money to buy themselves “robes”. And they did. And I certify that you won’t see anything at the pantomimes to compare with a Corporator in his full regimentals.
Dublin is a city of some 500,000 people. Do you know how many ambulances the Corporation can “afford”?
Five! That is one ambulance per 100,000 of the population. If there was a mass accident such as the escape of gas in a cinema (as happened recently in a country cinema) it is likely that people would die like flies before they could be got to hospital.
It is in these circumstances that the shaymuses recently reached down into our pockets and voted thousands of pounds – or the price of many ambulances – for the purposes of this Tóstal, including the construction of two elongated troughs of water on O’Connell Bridge.
As I explained yesterday, we are all expected to paint our houses and pretty-up our gardens to enrich hotel keepers and publicans; it is even hoped that the impoverished Bank of Ireland may be given some sort of financial aid to remove the filth of a couple of centuries from its facade.
Here we have a characteristic shaymus attitude. The shaymus has a great admiration for the whited sepulchre idea – the cult of the external – no better exemplified than in what is permitted to go on in 70 per cent of the city’s public houses – dirty premises and utensils, adulterated drink, short measures and toilets of indescribable filth. It is the Corporation’s elementary duty to do something drastic about such a situation – and not to please some fly-by-night tóstalite, but to protect the lives of the people who live here. The Corporators have other fish to fry. And the excuse cannot be that the Corporators do not know about the situation, because many of them are rarely out of the pubs.
What will our tóstalite think when, descrying a pub resplendent with gaudy new paint, he goes in?
It is none of my business (I am blushing slightly at the moment), but here is a 6-mark question: how many public conveniences for women are there in the city proper?
TWO!
For Heaven knows how long, people living or working close to either bank of the river Liffey have been nearly asphyxiated at low tide. That has been quite good enough for the ratepayers, but now that nice visitors are expected, little Johnny Dublin must not be seen with such a dirty nose. The river bed is to be cleaned. (Perhaps, indeed, I am being a bit hard on the Tóstal if it results in even that much).
ACCISSOO! (Bless me again). Andy Clarkin’s Clock Is Still Stopped Ochone Ochone!
That joke has become rather thin. There is a large public clock over the Lord Mayor’s business premises in Pearse Street. It has been stopped for years and its two faces are rotting. Goodness knows I have drawn enough attention to it in the past. When the gentleman responsible has the nerve to tell us to paint our houses, put out flags and window boxes, and so on – and when he presides at a Corporation meeting whereat the shamuses vote away thousands of our money for this Tóstal, I say it is not good enough.
It impels me to say something which may seem rather tasteless. In two years Clarkin has got (or will have got) £5,000 of the ratepayers’ money, and since there is not a dee of tax payable on it, it effectively amounts to about £7,000. With other perquisites, the job has been worth £8,000 – and I make no reference to some further £1,400 tax-free pay as a senator. Surely to goodness he can AFFORD to take his own advice?
I wonder is he a hard-faced man? I have no idea what he looks like. Could he, I wonder, manage to use his influence and . . . and get . . . his picture in the papers?
To celebrate the work of Myles na gCopaleen, The Irish Timeswill print one of his Cruiskeen L awn columns each day during October