An Irishman's guide to celebrating St. Patrick's Day in Ireland

St. Patrick's Day Parade in Belfast City

Hail glorious Saint Patrick, dear Saint of our isle! Of course St Patrick’s Day is a momentous one in the world calendar (there aren’t many other national holidays that prompt an audience with the President or turn rivers a different color) and it’s a day to be savored. But before you do, consider the following things to make the most of the national day.

If you don’t get to the city by midday, don’t expect to move freely

It can be hard to get all your ducks in a row on St Patrick’s Day. There’s no school so there are more people to coordinate, and harder to get them out of bed, to say nothing of the inevitable last-minute-scramble-for-shamrocks-down-the-garden-to-attach-to-your-lapel. But if you’re not in the city early enough to nab a decent place for the parades, all you’re likely to see is the back of a 6ft 5 man’s head for an hour and a half, and that’s if you’re lucky. Although, if you’re not located in such a bustling metropolis you might be OK, which brings me on to...

The local parade

Habitually these start about 3pm and end about 3.25pm, although this can be stretched to 4pm if you include the Pied Piper-esque ritual of walking up the street after the floats have passed. Well I say floats, I mean tractors and lorries with people in wigs on the back and kids holding banners while dancing/doing karate/martial dance.

Have a roster of Irish songs ready to belt out at a moment’s notice

If you’re exhausted after the parades and fancy a refreshment in one of Ireland’s myriad public houses, you may a) have to wait a while and b) be called upon to sing a verse or two of The Irish Rover. And possibly some others, because once a crowd gets into the singing groove they won’t stop just because the Irish songs have, as I learned when dozens of revelers outside The Quays in Galway started singing Eternal Flame.

Pace yourself

Once you’ve served your time at the bar (approximately 4 months on St Patrick’s Day), the intoxicating mix of a day off, effusive atmosphere and beer can all get a bit much. That mixed with the fact St Patrick’s Day is one where you can break Lent means things can get a bit messy. Disappear for half the night messy. Wake up the following morning feeling like Adagio for Strings was written just for you messy.

Try and avoid The Daily Mail the day after

Head rattling is bad enough, but hand wringing won’t do your fragile self any good. It’s pretty common for everyone’s favourite makeshift doormat to write a “Think of the children!” diatribe the day after St Patrick’s Day, shoving genteel Ireland’s face in debauchery they apparently hate but must show. A few pages after that, they may also have an affectionate piece on that loveable old troublemaking roister doister Oliver Reed.

March is not a great month for Irish sightseeing

If you’re away from home on Patrick’s Day and resolved to do some sightseeing round the general area, bear in mind the weather may not sit well with your plans. So if you were spending Paddy’s Day in, say, Cork, going to the Cliffs of Moher on the way home may result in being soaked to the skin and blown around the adjoining fields without mercy in near-hurricane weather, before being flung down the steps on the way down at great speed by a gust of Beaufort-busting wind. Not that I’m speaking from experience. Ahem.

A good oul film to end it all

If you decide not to go down the drink yourself into a Daily Mail-outraging stupor on St Patrick’s Day, you can always go home, perhaps with a takeaway, and watch a good oul Bank Holiday film, often with an Oirish twist (Sean Connery as an Irishman in Darby O’Gill anyone?) but sometimes without (Tropic Thunder, as RTE showed last year, crosses all ethnic barriers. Except maybe Vietnamese ones). Sure what else would you be doing?

Margaret Thatcher, Meryl Streep and The Iron Lady's true legacy - VIDEO

Meryl Streep and Margaret Thatcher

While walking round Dublin of a crisp, pre-Christmas morning, you couldn’t help but be taken aback by some of the posters adorning the city buses. As if the sharp Arctic air wouldn’t take the breath out of you easily enough, seeing Meryl Streep made up uncannily like Margaret Thatcher for her latest film would wind a man for sure.

The film in which Streep plays "The Iron Lady" is being released this very week, which is as intriguing as Meryl Streep’s makeover is terrifying.

She’s a fascinating character, a woman who more than anyone in the last few decades molded the political landscape into her own graven image, who prompted die-hard loyalty and incandescent rage in equal measure, and the manner in which she relinquished power is worthy of Shakespeare.

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It was inevitable given Thatcher’s propensity for evoking strong feeling that a film would be made about her career one day, and as she gets increasingly old and frail thoughts on her legacy are coming into sharper focus. Ironically enough though, the increased publicity and focus a film provides may only serve to distort.

The Iron Lady is being publicised as the story of a no-nonsense woman who made it in a man’s world, whereas in reality Thatcher was no vanguard feminist. In fact, save for herself, the only other woman at cabinet in the eleven years she was in power was paleo-conservative Baroness Janet Young.

Discussion about whether she was Britain’s savior or Satan’s own envoy on earth will probably never cease, but Thatcher’s objective legacy boils down to a single statement: she knew her own mind, but little else.

She was a conviction politician without parallel, but she had a disregard for nuance that was terrifying. No matter what the issue, be it Northern Ireland, the Falklands, inner-city discord, economic theory (and accompanying strife) or Europe, she almost made being closed off to ideas that weren’t hers into an art-form. And some of her ideas, for example suggesting “The Cromwell Solution” to Northern Ireland, were insane.

Most damning of all though is that she failed in her driving mission. Thatcher wanted a return to a Great Britain that was essentially Victorian: frugal, modest, respectful, upright, rebelling in private enterprise. Instead, what she helped create, along with Ronald Reagan and monetarist economists, was a world order that codified selfishness, glamorized wanton materialism and, with her abysmal claim that there was no such thing as society, detached a social bedding that has set in motion a range of problems we grapple with today.

Margaret Thatcher was without doubt a towering presence on the world stage and an immensely influential figure for longer than that, but while she may be seen by supporters as a wondrous counterweight for morally bankrupt politicians with malleable ideals, she ran right past steadfast and careered towards wrong-headedness. On matters of political delicacy, be it the Unions of the far left she detested or the “wet” Tory moderates in her own cabinet she dismissed, she destroyed what needed to be finessed. Her binary world view is summed up by some of her most well-known statements when in power: “Out, Out, Out” in reference to the Anglo-Irish Agreement, “Crime Is Crime Is Crime” on the issue of political prisoners, and “No, No, No” on Europe, the position which would be her undoing.

Influential as she was, memorable mantras and a simplistic world view do not a successful political leader make, irrespective of personal drive. It is that simple truth that ought to shape the Thatcher legacy: for a woman with such vision, she was incredibly short-sighted.

Here's the official trailer for the movie: