St Patrick's Day Shenanigans

Posted Tuesday, March 20, 2007, 7:57 PM by Lonely Planet

Ryan Ver Berkmoes - Lonely Planet's foremost St Patrick's Day Parade Critic - tells us how it is in Limerick, Ireland...

'That one sucks,' said the little boy next to me as a barely decorated pickup truck rolled by.

He was right of course, like many of the 'floats' in this minor-league parade, the truck was merely a marketing tool for a local business - in this case Pimp My Ride, a Limerick car customizer, which if their float was any indication, considered a dangling air freshener to be the full pimp.

On a somewhat stormy day, Ireland's second city staged a parade that was every bit the reflection of this town's own checkered reputation: shambolic, merry, mean and ultimately grey - like the streets it traversed, the skies overhead and the complexions of the windblown spectators.

Fortunately we (myself and compatriots Erin and Janine) had our own little peanut gallery of ginger-haired moppets to provide a running commentary on all that passed before us. 'Shoot!' they cried to the grey-faced Irish soldiers, who rather disquietingly formed a good portion of the parade.

Amidst the military and shameless self-promotion ('the Sun Warriors are proudly supported by Hickey's Cleaning Services') there were the bits of oddball charm that always make a parade worth the effort. A little trailer bearing misshapen lumps on a papier-mache backdrop honored the 'the Salmon of Knowledge', a bit of Irish lore in which a man could be king if he ate the right fish.



Another float (really a trailer which, in near ubiquitous commentary on the unreliable weather, was covered) bore a huge, flaccid lump that the over-amped MC assured us was a dragon (verdict of the kids: 'stupid, it looks like shite').



After an hour, the last batch of hypothermic Girl Guides had passed and the crowd quickly turned to more important matters: getting drunk and watching Ireland play rugby against Italy (the parade time had been moved up to accommodate this - the match that is, as drinking was ongoing).

We repaired to South's, a pub mentioned in Limerick-set Angela's Ashes, now an upscale boozer that tips its hat to its literary legacy by naming the toilets Frank and Angela.

While a Scotsman whose name might have been Jock and an Irishman whose name might have been Pat competed to out-do each other in their regurgitations of English atrocities against the good people of the Isles ('It was 300 years ago and they killed everybody!'), we settled back with pints of Guinness that hadn't been chilled to death and tried to sort out the legacy of the Salmon of Knowledge, although in the end all we could decide was that, yes, the float had sucked.

Labels: Europe, Travelsnitch

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