a rooskie in dublin

The Irish National Sport!

by Irina Kuksova

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At first I was convinced that complaining about the weather was only a habit within a certain Irish family I happened to be staying with. Getting to know more families that played the same game, didn't immediately change my belief. I assumed they must be secretly related to each other. It took a recent newspaper article written by an Irishman to make it clear: Complaining about the weather is the national sport.

Before this piece of newspaper borne enlightenment, I used to get it all wrong. Whenever I heard a comment about "debilitating heat," "miserable cold," "rain cruel in its unpredictability," "wind strong enough to blow the whole country away," I would try to come up with a reason why this "terrible" state of affairs should be considered normal. I'd produce a raw list of solutions. A pause would follow. Then: "But isn't it just terrible?" The whole conversation would go round in circles until I gave up and agreed: "Yes, yes, the weather is quite dreadful."

If we compare the above conversation to a ball game, it looks like I receive the ball and start studying its physical properties instead of just kicking it back to continue the game.

But really my way of answering those casual Irish conversation tidbits was as much a part of my own Russian national sport as damning the weather is for the Irish. The main Russian conversational gambits for a non demanding chat are "Whose fault is it?" and "What are we to do?" I don't know why "The weather is terrible" doesn't work for us. Perhaps because it's no one's fault when it rains and there's just one thing you can do when it does!