An Irish Diary

Frosty Welcome – An Irishman’s Diary about the contrasting experiences of visitors to Hibernia, the Land of Winter

A weather-hardened local at the Civil Service Cricket Club, Phoenix Park, Dublin. Photograph: Frank McNally

Frank McNally's face
Frank McNally
Sat Mar 3 2018 - 00:01

Dublin this week has felt a bit like Moscow during the last days of communism. Or so I imagine anyway, not having been in the Soviet Union circa 1989.

The Russians would have been better at dealing with extreme weather of course.

But whether the shelves were empty, as they were there, or the shops just closed, like here, the effect must have been similar.

Outside my neighbourhood supermarket yesterday, a gaggle of disappointed locals read a sign saying that, having shut early the day before, the store was not opening at all on Friday. Everything else in the immediate vicinity was closed too.

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So we expressed various levels of annoyance to each other. Then somebody shared a rumour that a Spar half a mile away was open – it might even have food? – and we all trooped off in that direction through the snow.

Our house was well stocked with provisions, as it happened: it was only an emergency supply of daily newspapers I needed.

But one man – Brazilian I guessed from his accent and appearance – seemed especially dismayed at the mass shut-down of businesses.

Maybe he was the only person in Dublin who hadn’t engaged in panic bread-buying earlier in the week and was sorry now. Or maybe he was one of those unfortunate tourists who got here at just the wrong time.

The streets were already deserted. At the park, however, I was far from alone in my recklessness, especially around the improvised ski-slopes of the Magazine Fort and Papal Cross

Whatever the reason, I overheard him grumbling to a companion about how other cities managed to stay open in worse snowstorms than this.

And although I couldn’t make out which cities he was talking about – they were hardly Brazilian, anyway – one of his phrases rang out clearly through the cold air: “The Irish are stupid”.

Naturally I found myself bridling at this, although not to the extent of taking the matter up with him.

Instead I started arguing with myself. Was he not right in suggesting we should be better able to cope?

Or would it be economically irrational for a country with a temperate climate to spend money, time, and energy preparing for an extremity that happens about once a generation? In the end,

I leaned towards the latter opinion, although when I caught the Brazilian man’s eye in a queue at the Spar, I still thought better of debating the point.

The evening before, by the way, I had reason to help a stricken visitor to these shores.

It was soon after the 4pm curfew on Thursday, when we we were all being urged to for God’s sake stay indoors.

Rather than which – so shoot me, but I’d been stuck at a laptop all day – I went for a long walk in the Phoenix Park.

The streets were already deserted. At the park, however, I was far from alone in my recklessness, especially around the improvised ski-slopes of the Magazine Fort and Papal Cross. And it was up near the latter, on Acres Road, that a small car passed me.

I watched its progress vaguely until, a hundred metres farther on, it did a 90-degree skid and ploughed into a snow bank. So by the time I got there, the male half of two passengers was trying to push it out, while urging his wife or girlfriend – in Polish, I think – to reverse.

This having no effect, I joined in, even though it meant sinking up to my knees in the roadside snowdrifts. But still the car refused to move. Then we tried digging around the wheels. That didn’t work either.

Several minutes passed, and so did two drivers, deciding this wasn’t their problem.

Unfortunately, being on foot and having to look myself in the mirror afterwards, leaving the scene wasn’t an option available to me.

I wondered aloud if the man had anything in the boot we could use for grip.

Apparently he did not, but I’m not sure, because neither did he seem to have any English.

Or maybe, my lips being frozen solid by now, he thought I was speaking a dialect he hadn’t heard before.

In any case, we had to work together in silence, uselessly.

Then another driver did stop. And when three of us pushing still couldn’t shift the car, the new man remembered he had a snowboard in the boot.

Jammed under a wheel, this did the trick. The car skied back onto the road, whereupon the smiling Polish man finally remembered some English: “Thank you!”.

The warm afterglow of virtue eventually defrosted my toes. And at least one overseas visitor – Eastern European at that – is now grateful for our ability to cope with the notoriously harsh Irish winter.

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