Ancestrally speaking, and just between us, there are things Irish people are and are not good at.
Digesting dairy? We’re very talented at it. Our lactose intolerance rate is under 5 per cent, which is way under the 65 per cent global average. That makes us almost superhumanly good at digesting butter, as well as exporting it. We can enjoy it without a roiling gut and an afternoon of debilitating cramps. Our ancestors equipped us to digest the foods around us, which is apparently largely dairy, and whatever the British weren’t first having themselves.
Knowing the secrets of everyone in the small town where we grew up? Nobody is better at that either. We are like a nation of grizzled but lovable private detectives. We all know Jimmy “the wagon” (unfortunate and insensitive nickname – classically Irish) is off the wagon again when we see him sitting inside the window of the local Supermac’s eating garlic cheese chips without a fork at half 11 in the morning. We are all familiar with the widely circulated rumour that Mary from down the road killed a man in a disagreement over scratch cards in 1984. Crucially, since they never found a body, she’s still the school lollipop lady (we are all innocent until proven guilty).
There are things Irish people are good at. Emigrating and then remaining very Irish in almost hermetically sealed cabals of their own despite being in Canada, or Australia, the Philippines, or wherever else. Alcohol consumption – unfortunately, we earned that reputation fair and square, and my numerous family members with drinking problems will readily attest to it as, I’m sure, will yours.
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We have many gifts and talents. A penchant for the creative – art, literature and music. A sort of hardiness that comes of being largely cold and wet for hundreds of consecutive generations. (We might be genetically coded for immunity to trench foot.) A fitting and solemn respect for a dinner that is mostly carbohydrates as long as it has gravy on it. But we have shortcomings too. Many of these are not our fault, and I would argue strongly that one example is our poor ability to adapt to other climates.
We have pollen in Ireland, of course, and the summer season is an absolute pain in the face (quite literally) for anyone with hay fever in a country richly carpeted in grass
Living in Australia, I’ve seen more than one man red as a beet in a Mayo jersey, his boiled forehead audibly sizzling under the Australian sun as he declares it’s “actually unbelievable to feel the heat” on his face.
“My friend,” I think, “the heat you are feeling is radiation scrambling your DNA. Get some factor 50 on or you’ll be scraping your forehead skin up off the floor.”
Those of Celtic heritage developed their skin tone, as I did, vaguely in the vicinity of Limerick, where sunlight is a thing we mostly read about in books and consider a rare and special treat, like having pancakes for dinner. It’s all well and good for us to be going to California or Sydney or the UAE or wherever, but we would be foolish indeed to think that we don’t need to take precautions to protect ourselves against a climate we are ill-equipped to survive in. We need sunscreen, ultraviolet protection factor (UPF) clothing and a decent hat or we will, quite simply, perish.
Pollen is no different. We have pollen in Ireland, of course, and the summer season is an absolute pain in the face (quite literally) for anyone with hay fever in a country richly carpeted in grass. We would go to visit my great aunt who lived on Bere Island every summer when I was a child. Each year, just as I was taking in the verdant majesty of my favourite part of the country, my eyes would promptly swell shut. Because it was the 1990s, nobody thought to actually do anything much to assist a temporarily blinded seven-year-old with restricted airways.
In fairness, my great aunt did say she’d pray for me, which was good of her. Unfortunately, in the depths of my youth and physical discomfort, this promise served only to convince me that I was dying.
So look, I thought I “knew” pollen. She has been my old nemesis, reeling drunkenly forth each year as spring slurs blowsily into being, and staying long past her welcome once September arrives, still swaying alone on the dance floor as people are stacking chairs in the background. “The season is over, you relentless slattern,” I would think. “Go to bed”. And, eventually, she would. My airways would clear and my eyeballs decrust, and there would be room to promptly catch a cold that you couldn’t shake till April, like every other respectable Irish person.
Still, somewhere out on the vast, mountainous horizon, there are plants desperately trying to have sexual intercourse with one another
Then, I moved to Canberra, the hay fever capital of Australia, which does have a primary pollen season during the summer but also enjoys a rolling repertoire of other, less extreme pollen seasons through most of the year. You can actually see the pollen, rolling in mucky clouds, on a windy day. It furs window screens and sills, parked cars and public benches, giving everything it touches the look of something long neglected on Miss Havisham’s diningroom table.
It gathers in your hair and eyebrows, clinging to your clothes. You can see it running down the drain when you wash your face at night. It plagues people with asthma, who are advised to shower on arrival at home during the worst of the year, lest they keep repollinating themselves each time they move.
[ The challenging art of pollen forecastingOpens in new window ]
Now, it’s autumn in Canberra, as the Irish climate warms up, and I somehow still have hay fever. The leaves are falling, limp and yellow, and my thermals are on and my feet are cold, and still, I am sneezing. Still, somewhere out on the vast, mountainous horizon, there are plants desperately trying to have sexual intercourse with one another.
Possibly, there’s some sort of lesson in all this, but I’m too congested to glean what it is.
It does make me miss Limerick a bit, though, and its chaste plant-life that has the decency to die – or to play dead – once autumn shuffles in.
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