South Dublin Read online

  History

  The earliest recorded reference to South Dublin, as distinct from the rest of the county, is in the writings of Claudius Ptolemaeus, the astronomer and cartographer. Around the year AD 140, he referred to it as Eblana Nosupitas, literally ‘Land of People With Their Noses in the Air’.

  The settlement of Dublin is thought to date back to the first century BC. The name is an Anglicized version of Dubh Linn, which is Gaelic for Blackpool, and the continued use of the name today reflects the poorer side of the city’s love affair with slot-machines,

  deep-fried food and walking around on sunny days with their tops off.

  Even in those pre-Christian times the division lines between North and South were being drawn. The more prosperous people settled south of the Liffey and considered the population on the other side of the river – who were proud, rather than ashamed, of being descended from the invading Celts – to be uncouth, with inferior intelligence and low standards of personal hygiene. Northsiders were distinguished c then, as today, by their wispy moustaches and pigeon-like gait, and they remain true to their Celtic ancestry to this day, with most of them supporting a Scottish soccer team that bears the name.

  Most Southsiders were keen to put as much distance between themselves and their Celtic past as they could, especially when they started to make serious amounts of wonga, which was the currency in Ireland's earliest monied economy. While Northsiders eked out a meagre living from hunting, fishing and farming, Southsiders became traders, brehons or, as they're known today, senior counsels.

  Fifth-century Ireland was divided into a number of kingdoms and the earliest record of South Dublin being defined as distinct from North Dublin dates from this time. St Patrick's efforts to introduce Christianity to South Dublin at this time were frustrated when, according to legend, he was told by the king, ‘We're loaded – what the fock do we need to be praying for?’, at which point Patrick switched his efforts to the poorer and more malleable population on the other side of the river. Christianity still thrives in North Dublin to this day, while South Dublin continues to worship wonga.

  Ireland's tradition of storytelling first took root during this period. In the centuries before the arrival of the high-definition plasma widescreen television, there was little to do at night but sit around recounting stories of great events, vainglorious battles and tribal histories, most of which were total bullshit. South Dubliners had their folk heroes, like everyone else. The most famous, recorded by scholars on a vellum manuscript that survives to this day, involved a giant named Oisún, who, despite horrific facial deformities, excelled at a type of kick-and-rush ballgame and is said to have bedded 1,000 women. The legend is considered to be the origin of the Leinster Schools Senior Cup.

  Ireland missed out on the civilizing influence of the Romans, and by the eighth century the place had gone to ruin, with killings and tribal warfare taking place on a scale that would embarrass some of North Dublin's most infamous suburbs today. South Dubliners were often heard to say, ‘What this place needs is a good invasion.’

  They got two – first the Vikings, then the Normans. Despite sacking, raping and pillaging the country, at least they made the streets safer to walk at night.

  The Northside resisted the Viking invasion, and, in 1014, Brian Boru, who had set himself up as High King of Ireland, won a decisive victory over the Norsemen at Clontarf. Typically, South Dubliners weren't too concerned, once the trouble was kept to the other side of the city.

  The Normans arrived in 1169, and within a year the warrior Strongbow had captured all of Dublin and married a girl called Aoife. His high approval rating in c South Dublin is reflected in the continuing popularity of his wife's name in affluent Southside areas today.

  Outside of South Dublin there was huge resistance to the Norman conquest, especially after the arrival of Henry II in 1171, which marked the beginning of eight I centuries of Anglo-Irish conflict. South Dublin welcomed the invaders from across the water, however, and intermarriage resulted in the Norman conquerors becoming more South Dublin than the South Dubliners themselves. Happy to be subjugated, most of the natives began speaking with clipped, English accents and developed themselves into a landlord class.

  For eight centuries the English were a largely benign presence in Ireland, apart from a few isolated incidents, such as the Plantations, the massacres by Oliver Cromwell and his Ironsides, and the Penal Laws, none of which received much publicity in South Dublin. The area was also unaffected by the Potato Famine of 1845-9, which saw one million Irish men and women die of starvation and a further million emigrate, mainly to America. South Dubliners experienced no such horrors, having long since switched to a richer and more varied diet that included wild salmon, roast pheasant, wild boar and various multi-coloured pastas.

  The Famine was a watershed in Irish history, as the inadequacy of the British government's response left an enduring legacy of bitterness that fired the demand for independence. South Dublin did not agree with the notion of autonomy from Britain, an attitude that is still common to many Southsiders. The area resisted Home Rule more vigorously than Ulster's Protestants and played no part in the War of Independence (1919-21). The Easter Rising in 1916 was also a purely Northside affair. The guns were landed in Howth by the Irish Volunteers, who took over a number of key administrative buildings, most of them north of the Liffey. Heavy artillery was deployed against the rebel strongholds. Hundreds of shells were fired at the GPO on O'Connell Street, causing millions of pounds worth of improvements. South Dublin opposed the Treaty that followed the War of Independence, believing, like Éamon de Valera, that its future lay as part of a thirty-two-county Republic – under British rule.

  Modern History

  South Dublin went into a collective sulk after Independence, but soon knuckled down and got on with doing what it does best – making potloads of cash. The rest of Ireland, finally free of ‘the Brits’, spent the next eighty years obsessing about them and engaging in lively debates about who hated ‘them c across the water’ the most. Meanwhile, South Dubliners eschewed bitterness, embraced education and began the transition from a mostly landlord class to a diverse professional one.

  In 1939 Germany’s invasion of Poland precipitated a I conflict that killed 55 million people, involved an effort to exterminate the entire Jewish race, saw two Japanese cities vapourized and, by the time it ended six years later, left the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over the Earth like the Sword of Damocles. The world called this horror the Second World War; Ireland called it The Emergency, making it sound rather like a chip-pan fire.

  During the war, Ireland remained neutral – but neutral more on Hitler's side of things, what with them hating the Brits and that. South Dublin, on the other hand, stood four-square behind the Allies. When Winston Churchill considered a strategic invasion of Ireland to take control of the so-called Treaty ports, the people of Dún Laoghaire were panting like a gaggle of prostitutes waiting for a naval ship to dock. Alas, Churchill changed his mind.

  For once South Dublin found itself on the same side as the Catholic Church in the row that brought about the collapse of the inter-party government in 1951. The Minister for Health, Dr Noël Browne, proposed a ‘Mother and Child Scheme’ that would give free medical care to expectant mothers and to children up to the age of sixteen years. He drew the ire of the all-powerful Catholic hierarchy, which felt the proposal interfered with the rights of the family and the individual. South Dubliners opposed it because they resented their tax money being spent on people who could afford cigarettes but couldn't afford private health insurance. The term ‘parasites’ entered the South Dublin lexicon for the first time.

  Ireland joined the European Economic Community in 1973, and, after twenty-five years of membership, the rest of the country finally started to enjoy the kind of lifestyle that South Dubliners had been enjoying for generations. Germany, France and the ‘bloody Brits’ paid for Ireland's roads. America opened up lots of factories, giving
hundreds of thousands of barely literate boggers jobs in manufacturing, thus saving them from a lifetime on a milking stool.

  Now that it has the M50, the Luas light-rail system and the new Dublin Port Tunnel, as well as plans for a rail link to the airport, an underground transport system and a new national sports stadium, Ireland is expected to be very nice when it's finished. South Dublin already is. Even before the upturn in Ireland's economy the area was ridiculously well off. The Celtic Tiger has simply made it rich beyond its dreams. In 2001 South Dublin was declared a UNESCO Region of Extreme Affluence.

  How to Get There

  Despite its wealth and prosperity, South Dublin does not yet have an airport of its own. If you intend % travelling to Ireland on a commercial flight, remember you will be landing on the Northside. Don't be alarmed by the burning buildings and car chases you might see below you as the plane descends towards Dublin Airport. The M50 motorway, which was completed in June 2005, was built as a means of transporting visitors from the airport to the Southside as quickly as possible, without their having to witness any of the Northside's desperate squalor. Alternatively, you can fly to Britain, privately charter a helicopter or small jet, then land on any of the thousands of helipads or private airstrips that are scattered all over South Dublin.

  In addition, Stena Sealink operates a high-speed

  THE FATHER OF MODERN SOUTHSIDERS: DAVID McWILLIAMS

  He's not only Ireland's cleverest man but its poshest, too. And just to send us goys even further over the edge with jealousy, he's also one of the sexiest, according to a poll in some women's magazine or other, proving that knowing loads of stuff isn't necessarily a turn-off for women.

  The strawberry-blonde brainiac has been described as ‘Eddie Hobbs with looks’. But, hailing from staunchly middle-class Dalkey, McWilliams is unlikely to advise anybody to scrabble around trying to save 50 cents on a tankful of petrol, or to cross the Liffey to get the cheaper tea-towels in Guineys. While misery-guts Hobbs has tried to make a generation feel guilty for its profligacy with his catchphrase ‘You're being ripped off!’, the man who defined the Celtic Tiger generation in his bestselling book The Pope's Children would likely respond, ‘So what, Dude? We can afford to be!’

  Hard as it is to believe, McWilliams played soccer as a boy, much to the concern of his family. But, despite his early identity crisis, he has been flying high ever since. He was educated at Blackrock College, Trinity College and the College of Europe in the Belgian city of Bruges. From 1990 to 1993 he worked as an economist with the Central Bank, doing all sorts of boring stuff, before heading up the European Economics Department for UBS. More corporate high-flying followed in Paris and New York, before he finally appeared on our television screens as the presenter of TV3's Agenda, proving once and for all that economists don't have to be tedious old farts. Tens of thousands of men watched his interviews and said, ‘No man could be that clever,’ while women said, ‘I wouldn't throw him out of bed for talking about carefully staged pre-releases of preference stock and notional rights issues.’

  McWilliams has interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger, presented a morning drive-time show on NewsTalk 106 and hosted The Big Bite, a topical afternoon discussion programme on RTÉ television. He's well-known as a really good goy. And he has a holiday home in Croatia – the posh part, naturally – which he's prepared to let people use for free.

  P.S. Don't ask to borrow McWilliams's gaff in the first two weeks in August. I usually have it then. – Ross

  ferry service between Holyhead and Dún Laoghaire, in the heart of Dublin's Southside. Be warned, however, that the service tends to attract a lot of riff-raff, some enjoying what's known in the local argot as a ‘booze cruise’, others on their way to and from Premiership soccer matches. Even 100 minutes can seem like a lifetime when you're stuck on a boat with a bunch of people wearing Manchester United shirts, drinking cans of Tennent's and singing songs by Aslan.

  The People

  Being born in South Dublin is like holding a winning ticket in the lottery of life. So it's not surprising that the locals have adopted something of an island mentality. Visitors should be warned that Southsiders can often seem rude to strangers – and also to people they know. Bad manners is only a small part of the picture, c however. They are generally a fun-loving people, whether soaking up the sun aboard a 60-ft oyster yacht off the coast of Dalkey, or watching proudly as little Hannah rides her dream pony Chestnut to victory in the local gymkhana.

  With their appreciation of French food, Italian shirts and Caribbean holidays, Southsiders can justifiably claim to have been Ireland's first multiculturalists, long before the media ever discovered the term. No one has embraced the invasion of non-nationals quite like them – especially as immigrant workers are cheaper than Irish ones and tend to steal less.

  South Dubliners have earned a reputation for intolerance due to their long-standing objections to the building of halting sites in their area. This is undeserved, however. They are, in fact, a very charitable people and there's nothing like a natural disaster in some far-flung country to bring out the kinder side of their nature.

  NATIONAL ANTHEM

  (to the tune of Go West by the Village People)

  We're rich – and we know we are,

  We're rich – and we know we are,

  We're rich – and we know we are,

  We're rich – and we know we are.

  (instrumental)

  We're rich – and we know we are,

  We're rich – and we know we are,

  We're rich – and we know we are,

  We're rich – and we know we are.

  Per capita, South Dublin contributed more money to the Asian tsunami and Turkish earthquake relief funds from roulade sales and fashion shows than any other nation on Earth.

  Generally speaking, South Dublin women don't work, but they do keep busy, many of them enjoying hobbies such as tennis, golf and having lunch. There's little they enjoy more than getting together with ‘the girls’ for a good natter over a spinach, pecan and blue cheese quiche in Avoca Handweavers, or c anywhere that serves posh food. They also tend to be very involved in their children's lives and like to consider themselves to be best friends with their daughters. And, like their daughters, they sure love to shop!

  The men are usually very driven, both by their work and by the sporting achievements of their children, through whom they live out their own dreams vicariously. They drive Kompressors, speak with upper-class English accents and ‘take’ The Irish Times every day. Their dream in life is to play a round of golf with Dermot Desmond, JP McManus and John Magnier. Although they leave school, school never really leaves them, and they maintain an almost Masonic loyalty to their alma mater until the day they die.

  It is a fact that South Dublin's young men – or goys – have two main preoccupations: rugby and girls. Their devotion to one and their studied disregard of the other is considered an index of their malehood. They are heavily influenced by American jock culture, and their language and rituals – high-fiving and calling each other ‘Dude’ – are informed by the high-school scene in America. Adolescence lasts much longer in South Dublin than in other parts of the developed world, often into the mid thirties, the age at which most eventually leave home and stop bleeding their parents dry.

  As they have their own recondite language and accent, it's virtually impossible to understand South Dublin girls if you are an outsider. Remember, American sitcoms and dramas, such as Friends and Desperate Housewives, form the collective unconscious of the female 14-30 generation, which explains why most speak with American accents so pronounced that even Californians struggle to make sense of what they are saying.

  South Dublin females enjoy a far broader range of interests than males do, including losing weight, boys, texting, shopping, losing weight to get boys, wearing pink, texting boys, shopping for clothes that make them look like they've lost weight, reading Hello! and Heat, shopping for pink clo
thes, saying ‘OH MY GOD’ a lot, as well as texting each other to report how much weight they've lost, how much shopping they've done and what boys they're interested in. To say that South Dublin girls learn to text in the womb is only a slight exaggeration. In fact, most children's clothes from the age of two up are made with a special pocket to accommodate a mobile phone.

  South Dublin boys and girls are generally stupid,

  YUMMY-MUMMIES

  They're in Pia Bang and Pamela Scott, trying on clothes designed for women twenty years their junior. They're in Laura Ashley, looking for a pale pink taffeta lamp to match the curtains in the guest bedroom. They're in Avoca Handweavers, eating sun-dried tomato, olive and ricotta-stuffed baked potatoes, pretending to be Protestants.

  They're Yummy-Mummies.

  They're in their fifties, but could pass for forty. They're well preserved to the point that the secret must be embalming fluid. They have two or three children of college-going age, and yet they've kept their figures intact and their pretty faces unlined. They use just the right amount of make-up. They smell of rose petals and lavender. They have young names, like Claire and Sarah. They play tennis. They drive SUVs and wear sunglasses on their heads. They are always smiling and never hassled.

  They are little rays of sunshine that illuminate all our lives.

  hence the proliferation of grind schools in the area. They seldom find this an obstacle to getting good jobs, though, which explains why South Dublin has the highest standard of living relative to literacy in the entire world.