DUTCH is a tough language to master. Not as tough as Portuguese, which Squinter’s been trying to get his head round without a great deal of success for some years now as a mark of respect to his Portuguese son-in-law and his Portuguese-Irish granddaughter.
Dutch is a mish-mash of Norse, Germanic, Romance and English influences, delivered in a back-of-the-throat, no-nonsense way whose cadences and subtleties are unknowable to all but its native speakers.
Squinter and his mate Al fell victim to Dutch once when we were very young – 17 or so. We were working a summer job of boxing tulip bulbs while staying in a campsite outside the south Holland town of Noordwijk.
It was a summer of long, badly-paid days in a warehouse followed by boozy evenings of Amstel lager and pool in the campsite bar.
One hot day in a bookshop in Noordwijk Squinter bought a thick omnibus of James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small and every night from then on when the two of us got back to the tent happy and drunk, he’d read the book to Al by lamplight, being scolded by him every time Squinter forgot to do the dialogue in his not-at-all-bad Yorkshire accent.
“Nah then, Maister ‘Erriot, what does tha reck’n abaht Daisy’s chances?”
Squinter would stop reading from time to time to see if Al was still awake and when finally he stopped protesting Squinter would fold the page and slide his book arm into the sleeping bag.
Mornings bright and early after cornflakes and cheap cola we’d take our towels, toothbrushes and enamel mugs and bowls to the wash hut. Some yards away from the hut door was a large sink, over which was a water tap and a hinged wire cover. Before entering the hut we’d wash our mugs and bowls there and leave them to drip-dry on the wire while we washed.
There was always a lot of German families staying on the campsite, Noordwijk being a seaside town, and sometimes we would play badminton with the older kids with whom we got on well. But every morning as we washed our mugs and plates at that big sink their parents would regard us sternly and either ignore our greetings or mumble something non-commital. We put it down to the fabled German boorishness and hid our hurt feelings with a bit of the old “F**k you” Belfast spirit.
Came the time when an English bloke arrived on the campsite to work in the same place as us. He was a grizzled tulip fields veteran of at least 25 years of age and in the campsite pub on the night of his arrival he regaled us with advice-laced stories of his previous Noordwijk tours of duty.
Next morning he arrived at the big sink just as we were finishing our washing-up.
“What in Christ’s name are you doing?” he asked. Receiving no information from our blank expressions, he pointed to a sign in over the sink which was too much for our ‘twee biertjes/two beers’ Dutch.
Long story short, turned out the sign read ‘Empty your chemical toilets here and rinse after use.’ We looked at each other, Squinter and Al, together coming to a fuller understanding of those German dirty looks. Teenagers are achingly susceptible to blows to the ego and it was some time before the humiliation began to subside. And it was many years before we realised that more important than the fleeting sting of embarrassment was the significant PR damage we had inflicted on the Irish nation.
What’s this all about, you’re doubtless wondering as you harrumph at your paper or your phone. Well, it’s just that they’ve just painted the tarmac on the Falls in Irish: ‘Lána Bus’ on the bus lanes and ‘Stad Bus’ at the bus stops. And the media coverage prompted the usual round of online disgust/contempt/fury from increasingly disgusted, contemptuous and furious subjects of the Kingdom of Loyal Ulster.
‘Way to confuse the public, lads.’
‘Who’s paying for this nonsense?’
‘No idea what that means.’
But let’s be honest here, ‘Lána Bus’ is not ‘Lieg hier uw chemisch WC en spoel daarna af, bedankt.’ No motorist is going to evade a fine for driving in the bus lane by claiming they didn’t know what Lána Bus means, particularly when the words are repeated in English beside it.
Which is to say that ever-louder and ever more shrill objections to dual language signage in our public spaces are not based on technical concerns, as is often claimed. Nobody who uses public transport is going to be adversely affected by an imaginary arc of unwelcome possibilities stretching from ‘Missing the bus’ at one end to ‘Getting run over’ at the other. The difficulty that some ordinary unionists and all political unionists have with the Irish language, when we get right down to it, is not the smorgasbord of grievances financial, utilitarian and egalitarian. It’s just that they don’t like looking at it.
And the DUP, UUP and TUV don’t like looking at Irish simply because every word they see translates into ‘Change’ and every sentence they read translates for them into ‘Those days are gone forever, pal.’
Squinter’s not going to pretend that the Irish language problem of unionists is less acute or more easily fixed because it’s one of discomfort; far from it. Squinter can’t fluff up the pillows for Gavin Robinson, Jon Burrows and Jim Allister. All he can do is tell them what he knows from a lifetime of growing up and living in a city that was not indifferent to Irishness but actively hostile to it: Cutting a deal is better than having one cut for you.
And that’s true in any language.
Stormont debate develops a Carry On character
SQUINTER’S written before about the long, slow morphing of DUP leader Gavin Robinson from cuddly everyman to TUV tribute act. Whether the East Belfast MP has organically made the transition or whether some PR guru has focused-grouped this new Gav into being is neither here nor there, really. All Squinter knows is that it suits him like a tutu.
NEAR THE KNUCKLE: Gavin Robinson’s Carry On-style retort was very un-DUP behaviour
Squinter can wish all he likes for the old Gavin to come back, but it seems that not only is the soft-spoken, smiley big teddy bear gone forever, the new Gavin is developing another atypical and potentially more worrying trait.
When Senator Conor Murphy said of Stormont on Friday past that “there’s a danger that the wheels could come off,” Gavin didn’t respond with classic DUP wrath. He didn’t hiss a reply with narrow-eyed Jim Allister-style venom. He went all Carry On. With a flair for saucy seaside postcard comedy reminiscent of Kenneth Williams in his trouser-dropping prime, Gav said that if Conor was really worried about the wheels coming off the institutions he should “tighten his nuts”.
“What the ffffflip?” Squinter thought. Here’s another side to Gav we’re seeing. One that most of us, if we’re honest, could well do without seeing.
For the pun was quite deliberate, of course – as anybody with a passing grasp of the King’s English will know. Conor was referring to Stormont when he said “the wheels” are coming off. Stormont is a proper noun. Which means that if whoever wrote the line – Gavin or an unnamed minion – wasn’t trying to be funny, they’d have gone with telling Conor to tighten “the nuts”. Conor clearly wasn’t referring to himself when he said the wheels were coming off, and yet the line pivots with clanking deliberateness to the third-person possessive “his nuts” in order to ensure that the risqué reference to the Shinner’s ging-gangs was easily understood.
This new Gav persona – 1960s Ian Paisley meets Sid James – is a risk. If the latest opinion polls are anything to go by, Gavin’s struggling badly to pull off the hard man shtick. Being overtaken by the UUP would be a blow to a DUP leader at the best of times, but being overtaken by a UUP led by Jon ‘Jazz-Hands’ Burrows has got to hurt.
And so in the hopes that Gavin can positively develop this new Carry On character and claim back the top spot for his party, Squinter has written to him offering help.
Dear Gavin,
It’s been a difficult year for your party and I’d like to offer my assistance.
Some of the challenges the DUP faces are stiff ones, but my motto is the same with life as it is with challenges: The stiffer the better.
I strongly believe the Catholic Church is partly to blame for this crisis in unionism. I’ll be writing to senior clerics in no uncertain terms to let them know this. As anyone who knows me will confirm, I’ve never been afraid to bash the bishop when I think the time is right.
Recently I visited the DUP HQ and I have to say it’s in dire need of a revamp. The carpet’s worn and dirty, but I know a bloke in the business who’ll do the party a good deal on a replacement. He says there’s nothing quite like a good long shag to brighten up a dull office and while I personally wouldn’t know, a lot of people seem to agree.
In relation to the proposal to twin Belfast with an English city, I think the choice is between the north-east and the south-west. And while I think Newcastle’s attractions are many, I have to say after having studied them for some time I really like Bristol’s.
Ooh, Matron!
