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| Side by side on their sideboard, oh lord, why can’t we? |
An elderly man from Cork has, for the first time in his life, acknowledged Dublin as the real capital city of Ireland. To the disgust of his neighbors, family, friends, former cellmates and at least one mistress, Seanie ‘Dave’ O’Driscoll (87) last week said that the people of his beloved Cork should move on and accept Dublin, for so long Cork’s bitter rival in the ‘We’re The Best Place in Ireland’ game, as the nation’s capital. A game County Leitrim was never, incidentally, invited to partake in.
Seanie, a sprightly pensioner with, according to his former friends, the mind of a 20-year-old, and the table manners of a baboon, is fiercely proud of his Cork heritage, and has, over the years, had twenty-three mostly Cork-related tattoos inked on to his skin, though one of them, a map of Limerick covering the left side of his face, was done as a joke by friends on the night before one of his weddings. Sadly, nobody has told Seanie that crayon tattoos such as that one, wash off rather easily.
Micilin Beag ‘Jim’ O’Conaire, a long-time friend of Seanie from 1941 until 1976, then again in the mid ’80s, and twice more after the millenium, when questioned by The Heraldy Press on Seanie’s comments, said; ‘He what?’ When we explained the circumstances to him, he continued; ‘The dirty langer’.
Dublin and Cork have enjoyed a healthy rivalry for many decades, be it in Gaelic Games (Barney Rock vs Jimmy Barry Murphy), literature (Brendan Behan vs Sean O’Faolain), stout (Guinness vs Murphys) or music (U2 vs The Cork and Surrounding Counties Tin Whistle All-Stars), with neither county either gaining, or giving, an inch.
The last time someone from either city paid a compliment to the other, was in 1973, when Phil ‘Howya’ Humphreys, of Finglas, north Dublin, said that the Cork hurling team of the previous season; ‘Weren’t as shite as their footballers’. The same year, a woman from Bantry, County Cork, purchased a tape by The Cranberries, thinking they were from Dublin, but returned it when she realized Sinead O’Connor or ‘Any of them Corr sisters’ weren’t in that band.
Seanie maintains that he will continue to; ‘Love Cork as my wife, though not my first wife, she was an oul’ bitch, but treat Dublin like the prodigal son. As long as he hasn’t turned into some sort of langer on his travels’.
Words by Bosco Coppell, Picture by Daisy’s Chainsaws and Ribbons.