Is Ireland now more modern than England?

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

While I loved my travelling years I carried much more of a burden than the weight of Blue Bag on my shoulder. At the tender age of 17 I discovered that an Englishman abroad had much to prove to the world. The drivers who helped me on my way as I hitched around France uniformly imagined I was German, because I spoke French.

“Allemand?”

“Non, je suis Anglais.”

“Vraiment?”

As a student of history at school I knew we had plenty of it with the French, but naively imagined that because we’d rescued them and liberated their country 30 years before, they might show some generosity of spirit to the English.

Silly me.

Gladly I did share much love and generosity with the French, but that was as an individual, long after I’d found the way to shrug off my Englishness.

As the decades and continents went by I grew weary of the process. Time after time I was charged with the slaughter of however many thousands or millions the British Empire took from that particular part of the globe.

Yes, I now, it was appalling, but you see, I wasn’t there. Over and over again I said it, car after bus after plane; town after village after city; relentless, just about anywhere and everywhere in the world.

Gradually my response reduced to an aggressive tone of voice delivering a defensive reaction.

“Not me, mate. Wasn’t there.”

As is the way with the human condition, the more people accused me of evildoings by spurious historical proxy, the more I dug my heels in.

I wouldn’t apologise to them for being English. Of course there’s no excuse for what happened with the Empire, but as I said umpteen times, not me mate, wasn’t there.

Secretly, I felt a weird immoral pride. This itsy bitsy country took over a third of the entire world? Coal, steel and misguided ambition allied to the fact that the English could thrive in any weather conditions and live without sex for months, while any food they ate would be better than what they’d get back home.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.