The banner up in the village of Miltown, Co Kerry, earlier this summer announced the World Bodhrán Championships. I could take it or leave it myself, but my fellow traveller is the type of person who is physically incapable of driving past such a sign. He is more culturally attuned to the Lambeg variety, but apparently a drum is a drum is a drum.
So we got out of the car, even though it was, of course, raining, and stood in our waterproofs, watching young boys battering a round piece of goat's skin with a small stick. Beside us a young girl, dressed in a tracksuit and sparkly runners, was doing some class of a jig. I waggled a leg in solidarity, the image of my bronze medal for Irish dancing - there were only three of us in the competition - glittering in my mind. She offered me a smile. The smile said: "Mortified for you, missus, but 10 out of 10 for effort, like."
When the world senior bodhrán champion was announced, I was gratified to hear he came all the way from Whitehall in Dublin. For the first time in the half an hour we stood watching the competition I felt a jolt of recognition. I know where Whitehall is. I used to visit a friend's grandparents, Nanny and Tody, there. You pass through it on the way to Dublin airport. I cheered the teenager from Whitehall enthusiastically. I may even have shouted "up the Dubs" at one point. Deep in darkest, rainiest Kerry I needed the anchor of a familiar north-Dublin suburb to really feel at home.
Despite vaguely enjoying the bodhrán contest I had felt oddly out of place in that sodden, toe-tapping, whooping crowd. Even the visiting Americans seemed to fit in better, despite their tans and baseball caps. This should not have been the case. I am not just Dublin, I am Irish. As Irish, surely, as the next Irish person. But how Irish, exactly? Sometimes it feels like not a lot.
The case for the prosecution: I've never been to a GAA match. Sam Maguire means nothing to me. I'm not much interested in the old eiddly deiddly music, either, if truth be told, although I'm partial to a well-executed version of Raglan Road. I'm not a fan of St Patrick's Day. I don't quietly hanker for a united Ireland. The national anthem leaves me cold. I've never appreciated the Catholic traditions, either cultural or spiritual. And, case closed, guilty as charged, Guinness makes me sneeze.
I blame my mother. (Sorry, Mother.) I didn't have an Irish mammy, you see. She came here more than 40 years ago from England, pronouncing car park as caw pawk and listening to The Archers on BBC Radio 4. There is a tape in existence of my five-year-old self reciting poetry; I sound like a Mini Pops version of Queen Elizabeth. And I blame my father. As Irish as they come, he died too early to pass it all on.
Irishwise, I've always felt I was standing on the outside looking in. I think this might be why I'm so delighted about immigration. I have an affinity with these newly-arrived people trying to figure out where they stand. People who don't understand the significance of Sam going back across the Shannon. Or comprehend the beauty of a well-made crisp sandwich - which, admittedly, is one Irish tradition I've never struggled to appreciate.
Occasionally I genuinely feel like Paddy Irishwoman: U2 in Lansdowne Road/Manchester/Croke Park/anywhere when Bono sings Sunday Bloody Sunday. The Eurovision, even when we come second last. Italia '90, singing rude songs about hating Schillaci. Saipan, being all indignant on behalf of Keano. And, since last Saturday night, to that short list of cultural touchstones I can add Riverdance.
I know. I'm scarlet for myself. But my fellow traveller had family in town, and they wanted to see Riverdance at the Gaiety, and I couldn't very well send them off on their own. It might have been Declan Masterson's haunting uilleann pipes. It could have been the man leaping around with his fiddle. It was definitely the diddly-diddly-deh-deh-deh rousing chorus when all the dancers turn their heads in sequence, just like in that seven-minute Eurovision interval act back in 1994.
I was in a dirty kitchen that night, watching a dodgy TV in Golders Green in London with a crowd of Bosnians. Butler and Flatley danced and something foreign stirred inside me. Something Irish. The same thing happened during the standing ovation last Saturday night. If Moya Doherty and John McColgan could bottle this feeling and sell it to the world, but more especially to all of us outside-looking-in Irish, they'd make a fortune. Oh. That's right. They already have.
Make mine a double.
