Elizabeth Wadsworth Ellis
With the President: Thrashers, Rashers & Castles
non-fiction
President Clinton’s visit to Ireland was supported by the State Department. I was an American employee attached to that team. The maxim in the State Department is “Always be ready to hit the ground running.”
Locals say our embassy resembles a spaceship. Our Consul General in Belfast reports to London, not Dublin. The US has naval facilities in Wales.
American-made cars, I read, are not distributed here.
An American woman living in Dublin introduced me to her Irish friend Tony. “I could tell you were American,” Tony said. To start a conversation, I asked Tony “Where are your parents from?”
“Dublin.” In America, that question could’ve made the conversation go on indefinitely.
I heard that Gerry Adams’s voice was first broadcast on national T.V. in America. It was banned in Great Britain; considered so powerful, it was dubbed.
In a pub, I met native Colin Sharkey who dubbed the conflict between the British Protestants and the Irish Catholics “the troubles.” On the notebook I carried with me he wrote, “Sectarianism—being totally against someone else’s religion.” I think he misspelled it.
When I was invited to take a taxi to go shopping I said no. I came here to learn, to compare and contrast, not to go shopping. This is a walking city.
Northern Ireland’s Belfast is British, not Irish. The paramilitary is the Ulster Defense Association. Northern Ireland is now power-sharing. The mix is pro-British Protestant. The pro-Irish Catholics were the minority in 2000. The Protestant military victory of 1690 is still celebrated here 300 years later. My notes say the Normans overtook the Saxons. Ireland was freed from the UK in 1921; Northern Ireland has been part of the UK since 1922.
One of my favorites of cinema is the Irish The Commitments.
Aer Lingus lost my luggage.
At a commoners restaurant near Phoenix Park on Park Gate, I ordered “Thrashers.” “Black pudding” is not sweet like our pudding. It tastes like liverwurst. I think it’s blood sausage. It was there that one Patrick Kelly signed my notebook and told me his mom had twenty-one pregnancies (seventeen survived) because “She was afraid of the local priest.”
Our Ambassador’s residence is in Phoenix Park, one of Europe’s largest urban parks. It has gardens, sports, a zoo, and Ashtown Castle.
I came here to learn. On Saturday I walked to St Patrick’s Cathedral, Bride’s street to Christchurch place, Cork Hill, State Entrance, and Lord Edward Street to Dublin Castle. They were all closed and locked. Dublin Castle is not the way I picture a castle. The Formal Gardens at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham were walled, lovely, quiet, and without flowers, but with benches, grass, greens, sculptured urns, and a small fountain. I saw Judith and the Head of Holofernes at the Nat’l Gallery of Ireland. The oldest pub is Boarshead, established 1198. A quay, where boats dock, is pronounced “key.” Tall Ships with sailors from other countries were in the harbor when I arrived. The masses came out to see them.
There was a McDonald’s and an Eddie Rocket’s chain offering American fries, burgers, and shakes. Their walking street—pedestrians only—is Grafton.
Most water in homes, I read, is from open tanks in the attic, and I read that they are eighty-five percent self-sufficient in food. Street signs are on the buildings, not on poles as in the U.S. They drive on the left not the right. This opposite-side traffic keeps getting me in a jam. Not only do they drive on the other side, but the driver is on the other side as well. My biggest problem was not getting hit by a car.
An American I work with told me “Fitz” means bastard, and he was amazed President Kennedy would use his. On his visit here, President Clinton was shown how to sign his name electronically. The girls who usually served me begrudgingly at O’Brien’s perked up and smiled when they spotted my Clinton tags.
They say ’em, we say ‘um. They say holiday, we say vacation. To let is to rent. Garda is police. Gaol is jail, gael is Senate. “Take away” is take-out. Fine is pronounced “fina” meaning people. “Flat” is an apartment. “Pound City’ is their dollar store. I spritzed a Yardley’s English Lavender sampler there. Yardley filed for bankruptcy. In Europe, it’s written date/month/year. In America, it’s month/date/year. At 6 p.m., behind the Concert Hall, a bell ringer announced, “The park is closing.” From my sleeping quarters, I heard a rooster cock a doodle doo on St. Stephen’s Green.
98 FM is dubbed Dublin’s best music hits, but I couldn’t pull it up in my hotel room. Perhaps Neal Jordan’s The Buther Boy is violent, but the soundtrack to The Crying Game, based on a Frank O’Connor short story. is still lovely and melancholy as is Stephen Rea.
There’s a Guinness factory, and we were given a complimentary bottle of Jameson Whiskey when we left. Back in America, I was scheduled to meet someone at our National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., but I came out to find that my car had a flat tire. A man walking by offered to change it, and when he did, I ran in and grabbed the Jameson and gave it to him. “Do you know how much that Jameson cost!” someone scolded me.
“He earned every penny.”
“Wheels up!” means, You can relax now. VIPs have left the ground. 09/3/98.
Elizabeth’s work has been accepted for publication in the following literary journals: Antonym, Barzakh, Bluntly, Bell, Denver Quarterly, Oregon State’s 45thParallel, Poached Hare, and Underwood.