Waiting for Gavin
By Francine Cunningham Foxgloves, which used to grow wild in the shaded orchard behind my childhood home in County Tyrone, have always been a favourite flower. So, when we returned to Ireland after many years on the continent, I dreamed of a meadow-like garden full of native plants and humming with bees. It would be…
A Fairytale of Wicklow
By Francine Cunningham Many of us dreamed of giving our house a complete makeover during lockdown. I don’t know whether they wished upon a star, but for a few of my neighbours in County Wicklow, this dream has just come true. In the village of Greystones just south of Dublin, which we moved to six…
A tale of tweets, trolls and true courage
By Francine Cunningham When I read the press announcement last week about the decision by the Sunday Independent to terminate the contract of polemical columnist Eoghan Harris, due to his involvement in at least one fake Twitter account, I knew it was only a matter of time before “Lady Macbeth” would be blamed. True to…
Dryrobes and bikinis at the Irish Coast
By Peter Vandermeersch Why would anyone swim in the sea in the middle of winter? In most parts of the world people would think you’re not completely sane if you went to the beach in January, put on your swimsuit and ran happily into the ice-cold water. Not so in Greystones, the small Wicklow town…
[Dog] Shit Doesn’t Just Happen
By Francine Cunningham It might be called the perfect storm: an upsurge in people buying dogs to keep them company at a time of social distancing, combined with more people out walking and travel restrictions keeping them confined to built-up areas. A perfect shit storm. Walks around the pretty seaside town of Greystones, County Wicklow,…
Separated at birth? A St Patrick’s Day nod to our continental cousins
By Francine Cunningham On 17th March every year, it seems like everyone in the world can find some trace of Irish ancestry, at least enough to raise a glass or two in honour of St Patrick. Yet if the roles were reversed, which nationality would Irish people identify with the most? Could it be the…
Sunday papers and windscreen wipers
By Francine Cunningham There is a strange Irish phenomenon that has only intensified in corona times. For some reason, Irish people like to drive to the coast, find a parking space just in front of the sea and…. sit in their cars. No, they don’t drive there to have a walk at the seaside. They…
Thank God for The Happy Pear
By Peter Vandermeersch Every Saturday and Sunday for the last two months, this is my weekend prayer. The Happy Pear? Dutch and Belgian readers of this blog are already wondering what kind of religious sect I decided to join here in Ireland. Irish readers probably think that I’ve turned vegan. They obviously know the twin…
She talked to Rainbows
By Francine Cunningham She was simply the prettiest and wittiest creature I had ever seen. With her blonde ponytail, tutu skirt and Doc Martens. It was Dublin in the late Eighties, and it was the first time that I met Barbara. If I was quiet and bookish, she was vivacious and out-going. Where I would…
Time to lighten up about Oirish accents
By Francine Cunningham C’mere till I tell ye. If there’s one thing that the Irish like more than giving out about the British claiming any of their own who becomes a star (note to all UK eds: Saorise Ronan is not English), it’s getting all indignant about actors putting on phoney Oirish accents. So, everyone…
Lady, you’ve been trolled
By Francine Cunningham When I was living abroad, reading the whiplash wit and self-effacing humour of the social media posts of friends back in Ireland could cause the odd pang of homesickness. Now that I have one foot firmly back on Irish soil, I’ve discovered that there are trolls, too, living among the rocks and…
United Covid nations?
By Peter Vandermeersch We’re all in this together, aren’t we? Covid-19 is basically the same in Dublin, Brussels or Amsterdam. According to the official figures, in Ireland, Belgium and The Netherlands combined almost 20,000 people died due to Coranavirus over the last seven months. The English terms “social distancing’, “lockdown” and “second wave” are also used in Dutch…
Small town with a big name
By Francine Cunningham Something about those hollow eyes, the serious but suspicious gaze and that pallid skin, speaks to me across the generations. It’s a picture of my hometown of Strabane in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, taken after the flood of 1910. Look closely and you can see the boy’s jumper held together by a…
Welcome to the neighbourhood(ie)
By Francine Cunningham Walk down any shopping street in Paris or Brussels and you will spot scores of women wearing the standard female uniform – a trench coat with a Longchamp bag slung over the shoulder or carried in the crook of the arm. Stroll through the streets of Dublin and you will see this…
Call yourself Irish? It’s in the genes
By Francine Cunningham My family is nothing if not European. Born and raised in Northern Ireland, I’m entitled to both Irish and British passports. My husband has both Dutch and Belgian nationalities. Our son has a Belgian passport and went to a Dutch-speaking primary school, followed by an English-language international school in Brussels. He is…
Cycling in Dublin?
By Peter Vandermeersch For nine years, I lived in Amsterdam and every day I cycled from my apartment to my newspaper. Obviously, as a cyclist in Amsterdam you have to take care that you don’t collide with tourists who are either drunk, stoned, or just don’t seem to realise that you shouldn’t walk in the…
Re-inventing the Irish pub
By Francine Cunningham Ireland’s public houses may be world renowned, but time spent abroad has only strengthened the mixed feelings I have about Irish pub culture. As a young journalist in Dublin, I used to make excuses not to join the crowd who would go straight to the pub after work and stay there until…
New Irish Writing in a time of Coronavirus
By Peter Vandermeersch Two distinct articles in two different newspapers, both on the same day: Saturday, 8th August, 2020. On page 8 of The Financial Times, I read an excellent column by Cordelia Jenkins, ‘An ode to the poems almost foregone’. I learn that poetry is to be downgraded on the GCSE English exam and…
Between the devil and the deep blue sea
By Francine Cunningham The sea has always lapped around the borders of my life. Childhood summer trips to Buncrana, Downings or Marble Hill, eating crisp sandwiches full of sand, or sitting in the car looking out at torrential rain falling on the beach. Followed by student days living in an old, damp house along the…
A year in Irish politics
By Peter Vandermeersch Dear Belgian and Dutch friends, As some of you probably remember, I started my job as publisher here in Ireland at the beginning of August 2019, exactly one year ago this week. The past year has been an exciting one in Irish politics, something which has not always been noticed on continental…
Thank you for holding…
By Francine Cunningham First world prices should go hand in hand with first-class service. Frustratingly, that is too often not the case in Ireland. In the last months, there have been multiple examples of inconsiderate, or downright shoddy, service of the type that makes me wish I could remember the few Gaelic curses I once…
Visit Talbot Street, its crime, its colour
By Peter Vandermeersch ‘There’s a lot of colourful people in this street. Some of them are very interested in you. Especially in your wallet and your phone’, a colleague at the newspaper office warned me. It was my first day in the building of ‘Independent News and Media’ (INM), which has its offices in one…
Cultural distancing
By Francine Cunningham Ask the average foreign visitor how they would describe the Irish and the typical response is ‘friendly’. Not exactly an original thought. Yet now that I’m spending time back on Irish soil I can’t help asking myself when does that pervasive friendliness cross the line? When does it start to make me…
Angelus forever
By Peter Vandermeersch Ireland, still a Catholic society? I have been visiting this country since 1990 and maybe there is no region in the world where the massive power of the church disappeared so abruptly. One of the main reasons for this is the way it became clear that the Catholic church was responsible for…
Washed Ashore
By Francine Cunningham It’s mid-summer when I land at Dublin airport, back in my home country after more than two decades. At the security control, I show my Irish passport, while my Belgian-Dutch husband and our son present their different passports. We join the throng in the arrivals hall where my mother is waiting, already in tears. Two…
Landlords with euro signs in their eyes
By Peter Vandermeersch Moving to Dublin, I was convinced I had a very decent budget. In July 2019, a month before packing my bags for the Irish capital, I had sold a chic apartment of 100 square metres smack in the centre of Amsterdam, one of the liveliest cities in Western Europe, where… everyone is…
A stitch in time
By Francine Cunningham On a rainswept, wind-buffeted visit to Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands off Ireland’s west coast in mid-July, I couldn’t resist the urge to buy a handknitted Aran jumper. This water-repellent knit was definitely more of a necessity than style statement for the farmers and fishermen who have inhabited the…
It’s not the Champs Elysées
By Peter Vandermeersch April 2019. Paris! Fresh croissants! Les Champs Elysées! Le Musée d’Orsay…. I am preparing to leave Amsterdam, where I have been working for nine years as the editor-in-chief and a director of NRC Handelsblad, to move to the city of lights. I have been editing and managing newspapers in Belgium and The…
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Ireland by Accident 