Michael Thomas Bass, MP outside Burton Town Hall
Observations and reflections after a Dublin Yuletide
It’s not wheat that bothers me, it’s yeast. It’s taken a long time for me to realise it.
In Dublin I stuffed my face more or less continuously for five days with soda bread, smoked salmon, and lashings of butter.
Not a bother.
Dublin airport fry-up at 8 am today, with one slice of ordinary toast, was another story. Copious sweating within minutes.
Soda bread – good.
Wheat – not good, probably.
Yeast – evil.
So the ideal place for me to live is, of course, Burton upon Trent—a town full of breweries with a pervasive hoppy and yeasty atmosphere. I think not. It’s God’s way of telling me that Irish soda bread is divine, which I’ve long suspected.
Change of subject
So far, Ireland has benefited from brexit with firms moving there from the UK. Whether that mini-boom continues remains to be seen. I hope it does for the sake of my Irish pensions.
But when my friends in Dublin raised brexit with me, they spoke to me in a “does he take sugar?” kind-of way, as if I, representing all the English, were a sad, self-harming imbecile. I assured them that I voted remain, but nevertheless I felt—feel—ashamed to be English. In truth, I’m probably not: more likely a mixture of Celtic, Viking and Slav.
My offspring are eligible for Irish, therefore EU, citizenship, living there since 1988 and intending to remain. One has, the other I think will. I don’t qualify, though if Scotland does the deed I could do it that way.
GOK what brexit will do for the island of Ireland. Economically I hope that the six counties and the Republic continue to grow together. Politically—who knows? A “border” of some sort between NI and Great Britain? What a bloody mess. Yet another example of the arrogance and ignorance of perfidious Albion.
Jonathan Swift would have had something to say. He is worth re-reading.
Rambling Rector Retired 