Una Mullally: A St Patrick’s day reality check

St. Patrick’s Day, like New Year’s Eve, is a celebration that can never live up to anyone’s expectations.

As our cities and towns descend into bacchanalian boozefests, and Irish people merrily propagate our national stereotypes while simultaneously complaining about them, it’s a day firmly separated by expectation versus reality. Here, I’ve detailed some of the dreams of a day that often turns into a nightmare.

The parade

Expectation: a joyous carnival

I didn’t see a St Patrick’s Day parade in the flesh until I was about 16. As a child, the thought of going into Dublin city centre on St Patrick’s Day when the busses would be full, the DART bulging, and parking non-existent was more than enough to turn my non-Dublin parents into parade refuseniks. Sure why would you when it was on television? And it’s in front of the television where I sat, scoffing my face with sweets saved up in a jar during Lent and now permissible to eat because… em, well, no one ever questioned why, it was just a distinctly Irish Catholic quirk, like sticking your tongue out for communion, wakes, or having to baptise your child to get it into the local school. When I did eventually see the parade, I realised that the best view had to be from a helicopter, or by stealing someone from Macnas’s stilts so that you could see over endless children on shoulders, barriers, novelty hats, and piles of people hanging on to Daniel O’Connell’s statue for dear life.

Reality: combined claustrophobia and agoraphobia

Themed food

Expectation: minty refreshment

I love a good gimmick, but with Shamrock Shakes and their consistency of some kind of protein solution fed to people in hospices, Tayto changing their bags so that cheese and onion now looks like sour cream and onion (a sin), and anything coloured green immediately taking on the look of mouldiness, one quickly realises that St Patrick’s Day does not lend itself to culinary joy.

Reality: stick to the bacon and cabbage.

Having the craic in Temple Bar

Expectation: the best party of your life!

A couple of years ago myself and a few pals decided enough was enough with the St Patrick’s Day bitching, and that we were going to dive into it headfirst. We set off for Temple Bar, half anthropological expedition, half recklessness. To liven things up we concocted a points-based competition, the winner of which would have drinks bought for them by the rest of the group. Snapping a photo with a tourist’s oversized leprechaun hat, one point. Getting a tourist to put you on their shoulders, two points. Convincing a Irish-American you were related to them, five points, and so on. Everything was going well until someone produced a novelty rugby ball and we tried to teach a group of strapping young American lads about line-outs. Of course, Americans don’t understand rugby, and probably confused that the ten seconds of play we were showcasing wasn’t interrupted by several ads for burgers the size of schoolbags or the new Lincoln Ocelot turbo SUV, they dropped my Paul O’Connell-inspired pal and she cracked her elbow on the cobblestones. We spent the next half hour stitching her arm together with Steri-Strips in a nearby pharmacy while the crowds hollered, hurled, and hoolied outside.

Reality: Spring Break but with more insurance claim potential.

Shamrock-wearing

Expectation: patriotism in foliage form.

Shamrock was something my dad always wore in the button hole of his sports jacket. By the time mass was over, it was already wilting. As we know in Ireland, wearing shamrock is for adults, and children have to make do with more synthetic brooches. The default badge was the discreet Goal shamrock, which would stick to your school jumper leaving its adhesive residue until you went to college. Failing that, more elaborate versions are available that look like the type of rosette you’d pin on a miniature cartoon Dáil candidate or a winning pony.

Reality: you are neither a victorious horse or a local councillor.

Green beer

Expectation: themed nectar of the gods.

I drank a pint of green beer in Texas on St Patrick’s Day a few years ago. It tasted like regular American draft beer, which is to say, terrible.

Reality: come back Guinness, all is forgiven.

The wearing of the green

Expectation: Keira Knightley in Atonement

I honestly believe the reason Irish people aren’t more outwardly patriotic sartorially is because our flag is a bit crap. As colour schemes go, green and orange are never going to make street style trends at any fashion week anywhere. Blue and red? Now they’re colours that everyone looks good in. When I was in my teens, we’d go into Dublin city centre wearing our green, white, navy and yellow tartan school kilts and teach tourists the Walls of Limerick at the giant céilí. I would go to the joke shop at the top of Grafton Street, buy two cans of green hairspray, and then charge tourists for a novelty green badger stripe in their hair. But ultimately, very few people can pull off green and orange clothes.

Reality: Itchy jumpers, mild skin eruptions from coloured hairspray.

Teenagers kicks

Expectation: oh to be young.

Last year, I was wandering down the quays on St Patrick’s Day when a marauding gang of yoofs clattered by, smashing empty naggins and yelling at stress-faced tourists, while singing a song with the lyrics “We’re getting locked” to the tune of Rihanna and Calvin Harris’ ‘We Found Love’.

Reality: calling the gardai.