Dia Dhuit ar maidin. Good morning. Bienvenu. Wilkommen. Benvenuto. Bienvenido. Or, as we in Ireland nowadays declare in our preferred mode of transatlantic speech and in a greeting of lofty aspiration: High-Guise. Or otherwise: howyadoin. With so many tourists flocking into Ireland, and confident that the Bord Failte advice from the impeccably nail-varnished Blanaid and Sorcha might not entirely equip you for what lies ahead, An Irishman's Diary embarks upon its annual guide for visitors.
Many of you are in motor cars. Well done! Our Military Medal for heroism awaits you on your departure. In the meantime, might I suggest that Catholics pay a quick visit to the confessional. "Ye never know the hour nor the day": and either'll be a damned sight sooner than it'd have been wherever you came from.
Now. You will notice certain features on our roads which you also have at home. Beware. Where you come from, a double white line in the middle of the road means that you absolutely may not cross it. In Ireland, such lines have a different purpose. They are to enable certain people - usually driving monstrous four-wheel-drive vehicles you could traverse the Sahara in - to cross over into the path of oncoming traffic and overtake inconvenient vehicles at three times the speed limit (of which more soon).
Grand Prix chicane
You will notice many of the drivers wear baseball hats back to front as they veer from lane to lane, like Grand Prix drivers doing a chicane, and attempt to give 4 x 4 colonic irrigation to the driver in front. Vy ees dees, you ask. A most reasonable question.
I don't know, is the answer. To be sure, the condition known as Chronic Personality Deficiency Syndrome is treated in certain circumstances by a self-administered drug called an An All-Terrain Vehicle, which is then used to travel along that treacherous Khyber Pass of a road, the Stillorgan by-pass. This inadequacy of character is also treated with self-administered sunglasses, even in the rain. The baseball hat of course, though we have no baseball. But as to why? Why the moon? Why earwigs? Why the humble amoeba?
Okay, you ask, but vy so menny mod vonkers in zese dcheeps tzooming oll ofer dee place like gopshytes? You say you don't have nearly so many dangerous young men and women where you come from.
Probably not. All we can conclude of these wretched and lethal inadequates, with their stupid hats, and their sunglasses on the tops of their heads, and their nail-varnished fingers tapping time to the idiot-music within, is they are such unattractive people that, as with their vehicles, the sex-lives are also self-administered.
Vot about the polis? Another good question. Next? The speed limits? Well no doubt you are confused. We have some really interesting people who run traffic in Ireland. Our best and brightest. For the purposes of intellectual clarity and coherence of policy, we in Ireland use two distinct measurement systems - though we do not tell visitors this. We leave them to fumble their way to the truth; if some of you are killed on the way, serve you right for not reading the Department of Environment handbook on the departmental ethos entitled "Mismanagement: Our Abiding Watchword."
Imperial units
You won't see this again so absorb this carefully. Speed in Ireland is measured in miles per hour. Speed limits and speedometers are measured in this imperial unit. But distances on signposts are measured in the metric unit of kilometres. A dashboard in Irish cars will therefore measure distance in kilometres and speed in miles per hour? No. Even though our distances are measured in kilometres, our cars measure them in miles. Our cars are at least consistent in their unit, no doubt because they are made abroad. Our signposts are made in Ireland and are, as you say in Sweden, totally fjokked up.
I don't just mean speed and distance signposts, two of which might be alongside one another, one indicating 30 is the speed limit and the other that the distance to Castlebar is 30: and they are utterly unrelated numbers. And I don't just mean this is criminal state idiocy masquerading as policy. I mean that signposting, like the creation of coherent town-policy and planning, is something quite beyond the powers of government in Ireland.
No signs
As you leave your ferry or airport, you might see a sign indicating your destination. At junction after junction you will be reassured about where you must go. Until finally you have been lured to The Great Bog of Despond, beyond The Mountains that God Forgot, where you will enter a huge roundabout with 15 exits, and not one of them marked. You will not even be able to distinguish the route you arrived on. Small clusters of skeletons, and baffled Romanians trying to sell The Big Issues to stranded and famished foreigners will assure you that you are not the first to make this mistake.
And you won't be the last because the people responsible for signposting in Ireland are apparently awarded a bounty for every stranger they can bamboozle, fool, mislead and confuse.
You have heard about Irish hospitality? Of course you have. It is reflected in our roads policy, designed to put as many people in hospital as possible. Failte romhat.