Forty shades of green around the gills

1. The River Liffey as it passes through Dublin. Normal rivers have banks that you can have picnics on, but the Liffey is not a river you can fish or paddle in. Nope, the river that runs through our town has two big medieval walls on either side of it that make it look like a moat - or a criminal. The walls are like big ignorant bouncers, similar to the ones you find outside Spy on South William Street, that want to separate you from the possibility of enjoying the water below. It is a river to commit suicide in. The Liffey only ever looks good at night when you can’t see it.

2. The Spire is a classic piece of municipal architechtural pretentiousness. I don’t know who decided to greenlight the spire project, but the big selling point of the spire is that it makes you look up. That’s an awful lot of money to spend to make people look up. We have to endure this fucking eyesore because Dublin city officals got seduced by architects with their scale models of Dublin on a stick.

3. Property buyers, or as PJ Gallagher calls them, ‘Housers’, and their little backroom dealings. Ireland is all about property. You haven’t really arrived in society unless you own property. Property, property, property. Small-minded, self-contained, fat-fingered men are looking down on us because they have a house. I’m not impressed, although my middle class background might suggest I am. It’s a deeply empty existence, buying a house. And then another one. And they think they’re so shrewd. Entreprenurial wheeler-dealers collecting rent from 100 Chinese people in a room in Ranelagh. Interesting to think that 10 years from now one of those Chinese people will be renting that self-same room out to your smack-addicted teenage daughter who you neglected when she was a child because you were so consumed with making money.

4. Des Bishop’s continuing success. How long can it go on? Bishop walks around Ireland like the king of the world, like he’s cock of the hoop with his movie-star good looks. This middle-class rock boy has an entourage of comedy mates who were brought into existence by his TV show Joy In The Fucking Hood. Comedy monsters created by their creator’s munificence, his magnonimity, his desire to inspire and control the faith of human life. But of course, as we all know, my hatred of Des Bishop and success is simply an Irish version of admiration.

5. Women who collect their kids from school in giant, ignorant environment-wrecking sports utility vehicles with their giant oversized bumpers and their sunglasses that are 60 times too big for their head and their horrible ceramic hair-straightened hair and their badly plucked eyebrows and their orange tans, happily married to Johnny O’ Business Park who snorting coke off the asses of young rent boys who aren’t much older than the children that are being collected by his sexually frustrated wife.

6. Some Gardai, not all Gardai, some Gardai. There are a few Gardai who have the horns out for me whenever they see me busking. The majority of the Gardai couldn’t give a shite about street performers, they just wave at you and go on about their business. But there are a few who are cowardly bullies and they should be ashamed of themselves, spouting off useless regulations that don’t serve anybody, morons with a uniform, giving the rest of us a bad name.

7. I don’t hate drugs, or drink, I just hate the people who’ve had their fill of them and then turn around and say how bad they are. Seven years of uncontrolled self-indulgent drunkenness and then to come out the other end of that and say how bad everything was, is a lie. Humans don’t take drugs because they make you feel bad. Some of the absolute best moments of my life were when I was on drugs or drunk. Occasionally now, I’ll do a bit of heroin but I always do it under controlled medical supervision because I’m not stupid.

8. Waiters in Ireland are some of the worst in the world. They hate the idea that you might think for one second that you are in any way better than they are and they will let you know this in various ways. Firstly when you walk into the restaurant, you are made to feel like you are an inconvenience that has to be dealt with so they can get back to their conversation with their fellow waiters. Secondly, the only reason that they are there is because they need money and in their time off, if they had money to spend, this is the last place in the world they would come and hang out, so they have an absolute contempt and a deep lack of respect for your choice of location for socialising. Their logic is, “I have no choice, I have to work. But you, you chose to be here.”

9. People’s constant surprise about how bad the weather is in Ireland. Ireland is stuck in the middle of the Atlantic. It’s always raining somewhere in Ireland and if it’s not raining it’s thinking about it. We never fail to be annoyed by it because in our hearts we feel that Ireland’s destinty is sunny and that’s why we don’t carry around umbrellas because we won’t be told what to do by the rain. As far as we’re concerned, the sun is shining and the rain can go shove itself up its own arse.

10. Our inability to express sexual desire when we’re sober. That’s why we drink so much, because it helps us lower our inhibitions to the pont where we can finally express ourselves sexually and flow into each other like the liquid we’ve been drinking. People talk about drinking like it’s some kind of heroic endeavour, but babies from the very second they are born are drinking from a breast and they don’t go around boasting about it, although if I was sucking my mother’s breast I would keep pretty quiet about it too. Irish people drink so much because as a nation we’re so ugly it’s the only way we can have sex with each other. If you’re not aware of how ugly you are, you haven’t travelled.