January 03, 2004
Tribal Gatherings
As everyone knows, Galway is known as the City of the Tribes. Their names trip off the tongue; Lynch, Kirwan, Ffrench…um..er.. Comanche and Sioux. Galway City Council has named all the traffic roundabouts after the tribe names. A letter to the Galway Advertiser voiced much displeasure at this act (sadly no link) - the reasoning being that the tribes were all of the landlord class and caused nothing but misery and eviction to the poor Irish peasants. Let bygones be bygones, eh ? Given the amount of suffering that the roundabouts inflict on the current Galway inhabitants, it's probably more than appropriate. Hey, why not name them all after Cromwell and be done with it. And Louis Walsh. And Twink. Ok, maybe name two of them after Twink.
Personally, I preferred some of the old names, even if they did sound like a bad dose of the sniffles.Doughisha? Gezunheit! Bohermore. Sounds a bit tickly. Moneenageesha. Nurse!.
UPDATE: I guess I should explain, for my non-Irish visitors, who Twink is. She is a relic of that brief time in the Seventies when showband singers were named after characters in Battlestar Galactica . come to think of it, when she entered the Eurovision, she dressed like one too. She was part of an all-girl group called Maxi, Dick and Twink. Maxi is currently lulling drivers to sleep with her brand of Eazee listening on an early morning radio show (as if the roads weren't dangerous enough already); Dick had run away from the circus to join the group and promptly ran back gain afterwards. Twink did some panto, became part of Mike Murphy's comedy show that gave Dermot Morgan his break, and most recently, was the first 'recruit' to be chucked off Celebrity Farm (she described it as a life-changing experience despite lasting less than 48 hours with the show).
UPDATE Part II: Exactly how much suffering that the roundabouts cause is documented here, by a long-suffering cyclist.