Pint of order – Frank McNally on getting to the ballot box

In keeping with half of an old American tradition, I always like to vote early (if not often) on election day. During a more than usually chaotic Friday, however, I hadn’t managed to cast my ballot by tea-time. Then I took the chance of meeting friends for a post-work pint in The Flowing Tide. –
Named for proximity to the Liffey, it’s a fine, storied old pub, dating from 1820. And whatever about the tide, the Guinness and conversation were soon flowing there, at risk to democracy.
Luckily, I had set my phone alarm. So at 9.30pm, mid-pint – and mid-point too – I tore myself away. Jumping on a Dublin Bike, I pedaled furiously the three kilometres to another watery-sounding venue, Basin Street, to do my duty.
Basin Street is named for a long-defunct city reservoir nearby – there is no water there now.
What it does have plenty of is polling stations: two in neighbouring schools. Alas, the local opportunities to vote are not matched by enthusiasm.
After emerging from the deep end of my ballot paper (I went down as far as 10th preference before losing my nerve and having to surface), I inquired about the turn-out. “35 per cent – maybe 40,” the woman said, gloomily. In the context of the classroom we were in, our neighbourhood was struggling for a pass.
***
Perhaps it was the tidal theme, but as results emerged on Saturday, a Churchillian phrase – slightly amended – came to mind.
“The whole map of Europe has been changed,” I could hear him saying. “The position of countries has been violently altered. The mode and thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs, the grouping of parties, all have encountered violent and tremendous changes in the deluge of the world. But as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm . . .”
Yes, I suppose the outcome was boring. But I thought of the electoral mania else, and of Elon Musk’s pre-election prediction that Ireland too would vote for what he euphemistically calls “Freedom”. Then I decided that, on balance, boring is good.
***
On a balmy Sunday, barely recognisable as December 1st, I went for a run around the city centre. And as I walked home afterwards, a stranger on a bike pulled up alongside.
“Are you Irish?” he asked, with a note of challenge. “I am,” I said. Then he followed up in the same tone: “Are you proud to be Irish?” I knew where he was coming from now, so I got my back up in advance before declaring, with an edge: “I am, most of the time.” “I’m not proud to be from Dublin,” he said, changing the subject a bit. “Dublin’s a beautiful city,”
I assured him breezily (a slight exaggeration of our immediate surroundings, which were full of the detritus of Saturday night, but this was no time for nuance).
“It used to be, but it’s gone to the dogs,” the man countered. I was tempted to quip that it was gone to the seagulls, maybe. But I knew it was immigrants he was really talking about. So I made a point instead about how a lot of criticisms of the city were from people who didn’t live in it, or had an agenda, or . . .
But suddenly the man just cycled away. I wondered afterwards if he’d been trying to recruit me to something – a local branch of the Elon Musketeers, maybe. Whatever his intentions, at the first sign of resistance, he vanished.
***
After a weekend in which the poor Greens took the brunt of whatever anger voters had, climate change nevertheless haunted Monday night’s Horse Racing Ireland awards.
I don’t think it explains the phenomenon of James Ryan, one a pair of 19-year-old twins who were sitting at my table along with their proud parents.
It would have been impressive enough, ordinarily, that James is already 6 feet (1.83m) tall. That he’s also a jockey – and a flat jockey at that, who weighs in regularly at under 9 stone (57kg) – seems almost freakish.
In any case, after 33 winners and a champion apprentice title this season, he was a dead cert for the night’s “Emerging Talent” award and won, pulling up.
But back to climate change, which arose in conversation with Conor Maxwell, former jockey, now trainer, for whom the Ryans ride. In general, he told me, the mild conditions in which the jumps season has begun this year are a problem. Horses are still soft and the ground is hard. Owners and trainers don’t want to risk injury.
More specifically, he mentioned Thurles racecourse, which has lost three meetings already this autumn due to lack of rain. Good drainage used to be one of the track’s virtues. A bit like a fast horse, the relative aridity of Thurles was always “good thing”. But the downside is that the track never installed a watering system. And now increasingly, like Basin Street, it’s high and dry.