It must about fifteen years ago when I and my wife, holidaying in Italy’s “Le Cinque Terra”,drove down to the major port of La Spezia. We were enjoying a snack and a cool drink when a party from an oversized cruise ship took over the joint.
I think the party won places on the cruise as runners- up in crossword and quiz competitions hosted by “THE SUN” and “THE DAILY STAR”, together with T-Shirts with the Legend – “Wembley 1966” recalling a football match when England defeated a team representing part of Germany.
This was presumably to impress the Italians, whose national teams have won the World Cup three times. Another odd habit of the Italians is that they look strangers straight in the face, to be told by the female visitors that they were English, which apparently gave the natives a welcome excuse to look away.
Most European States, even those whose predecessors broke with Rome five centuries back give their workers a break (or furlough?) on Holy Days established by the Roman Catholic Church.
The State mainly populated by Taigs/Turloughs is an exception. The only Holy Day (other than the Christian Sabbath) it shares with the European mainland is Christmas Day.
Has any commentator who tells you that Ireland adopted a sectarian Constitution in 1937 remarked on this (apparent) anomaly?
I don’t think so. It would be inconsistent with the guff they spout ad nauseam.
In England nostalgia and hatred of Europeans seem to go together .
A lady writing in THE TIMES recently advocated a new Autumn Bank Holiday – “TRAFALGAR DAY” to commemorate Nelson’s defeat of the French and Spanish fleets.
Ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown established Arms Services Day.
Being a Dour Hoor, in the tradition of John Knox, Brown didn’t give the proletarian nose a relief
from the Grindstone. But they can console themselves that even whilst they suffered at home under the Empire that Brown finds admirable, they could always join the forces that murdered, tortured, robbed, starved and enslaved peoples in lands less pleasing to their common Creator.
How do we Irish differ from our island neighbours in these matter?
Ireland is NOT (totally) free of the nostalgia for the British Empire. That long lingered in THE IRISH TIMES before the Editorial Chair was occupied by Douglas Gageby, a Belfast Protestant, former Army Officer (in the Irish Army) and an admirer, though not a fawning one, of Eamon de Valera.
In 1969, a colleague on that paper’s Board, a Belfast Protestant, former British Army Major Tom McDowell, a non-retired member of MI5, contacted the British ambassador, in alarm.
Writing to the Foreign Office the envoy reported that the spy regarded Gageby as a “White Nigger.” As a result THE IRISH TIMES has been published under the dictatorship of agents of British spooks these past 50 years.
The results are bizarre. Irish citizens have been honouring genocidal monsters such as the poet Spenser and Sir Walter Raleigh. I hear, but am reluctant to believe ,that Fianna Fail’s leader, Micheal Martin, has attended an event honouring Sir Francis Drake, a murderous pirate, who had men skinned alive for his amusement.
There have been less stomach-turning British Naval traditions. Before the days of refrigeration, men of war used carry livestock and poultry. And the tars in charge of the poultry were known as DUCK EFFERS. Perhaps Drake himself was one?
But what sort of a Fianna Fail Man – an EFF-EFFER- feels he must honour a DUCK-EFFER?
A wanna be DUCE lover, or a Quack?
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