Whimsy, Music and Just a Touch of Magic

Dublin is, for me, a city filled with whimsical delights. This could be because I am brand spanking new here, but I'm not sure that the magic will ever wear off for me. 

I live right near Merrion Square and have taken to walking through there as a nice little shortcut to St. Stephen's Green. Merrion Square is a small park (Dublin is full of them) and walking through there makes me think of The Secret Garden, Alice in Wonderland, or any of the myriad of Blyton books I read as a child. There's something a little bit magical about the winding paths lined with gorgeously green trees and shrubs, the little squares within the square filled with garden beds of bright flowers, the fact that you are in the middle of a city but feel like you've just stepped into an English summer garden. As a child I often imagined escaping to just such a place, and it appears that as an adult I have finally managed to achieve this goal. 


I have mentioned the abundance of music here previously, but you will find that music is a topic I will return to again and again, like a moth drawn inexorably to a glimmering flame. I have now been to a pub where they were playing traditional Irish music (or Trad, as the locals like to call it), and I have to say that there is something in the mournful ballads, as well as the toe-tapping faster numbers, that touches my soul. Music is something that never leaves my head, I constantly have a song running through my mind, and have been delighted to discover what I always suspected, that music is an essential element of life in this city, indeed, this country. I love the fact that you can go into a pub to hear Trad, then walk into Grafton Street on a Saturday afternoon to see a band of handsome youngsters dressed in Buddy Holly style get-ups singing Presley and other 1950s American dream songs, only to turn the corner and find a singer-songwriter or a funky young rock band like The Riptide Movement (yes, I saw them again today, I think it is fate). Dublin is marching to a beat that I can understand, and I think that the lyrical Irish blood in me is finding a place here.


In other news, tourists keep asking me for directions, I suspect that this has something to do with my tragically Irish colouring of fair skin and dark hair (and hope that it is because I look effortlessly local and comfortable in my surrounds). I am not necessarily complaining about this, some directions asking by a rather cute young American tourist led to a statement that I had 'enchanting' eyes. He may have been full of it as he said this almost immediately after mimicking my accent (a phenomenon I am growing to dislike as my accent is so coarse here in the land of diddly dee, potatoes, potatoes), but I am not going to dismiss such a compliment, as it made me feel rather less hideous (spending roughly twenty-four hours on a plane, the jetlag that follows, and the cold from hell do little for your looks, and recovery is not immediate).


In a completely opposing story, whilst consulting my map to try and determine where the Temple Bar Food Markets were located, I was approached by an older (ok, let's just cut to the chase and say elderly) Irish gentleman who offered me directions for anywhere I could ever need to go in Dublin. He rounded off these directions by planting a kiss on my cheek. It was a most amusing experience, one might even say a little whimsical.


B. J. Barnes