Differences (rep Ireland) Irish V UK

"I'll get you a drink, no sit down, I'm getting this" Irish person goes to the bar, English person gratefully accepts the drink not realising it's understood that they must buy one back.
Same thing with the 'tight' English person who is thanked profusely for attending the wedding blissfully unaware they will be subjected to a complete character assassination privately for handing over an empty card.

I don't recognise this. I can't tell you the amount of times I've battled to get to the bar before an English person, especially if they're from the north. And as for not understanding we have to buy a drink back, that's not true at all. Your round, my round is very normal for us.

I've never been to a wedding empty handed and don't know any English person who has.

I'm from an Irish background and spent most of my childhood around the Irish in England and Ireland. I've lived in Ireland for many years now and overall, there's a definitely levity about them and they're very accommodating. They have a true confidence and are gifted verbally. I love the Irish and always look forward to coming back when I've been away. I do think that people in the north of England are similar. Not sure if I'm making any sense😬

I have 50:50 and don’t get maintenance, I get the CB though.

@LittleSF rights to what in reference to your cohabitating couples thing?

Oh and also this 50/50 thing is basically only new here too like I dont know any split couple that have 50/50 where the man does not pay maintenance and the woman gets the cb. I dont actually think men can even get or apply for cb here at all 50/50 or not.

@LittleSF - what rights do cohabiting couples have in Ireland? (Asking out of real interest - I've lived there but had no real idea about it)

😂😂😂 sorry, this made me laugh, and is definitely ‘anecdotal’ and NOT the norm!

Ps. My Father's Wake by Kevin Toolis is a good book on the different attitudes to death and dying. He is Scottish but his family are from County Mayo.

I went to the funeral of a friend's dad in Putney Vale Crematorium. He was Irish but living in London for many years. The priest had no idea who he was of course and kept referring to a scrap of paper with the name written on it. After twenty minutes of mumbling the coffin disappeared and off with us to the pub.

His daughter had flown in from Los Angeles. ' That was ghastly ' she said ' I don't feel I had a chance to say goodbye to him.' So it's one extreme to the other. Some will prefer to keep it small and quiet .

I didn't need any help in accepting that any of my dead were actually dead. I totally accept that people need and choose different things; what I do mind is when a particular way is held up as "better" or condemned as "grim"

Well that’s because you likely have a different attitude towards grief and different expectations.

I find the communal nature of them comforting. It’s the sense of community. I feel like because there are a few days of “activities” around it where people are all just talking to you about your grief and generally being there for you. That it helps you accept the death. Spending time with the body, particularly in your home, is also very helpful for accepting that the person is dead.

Also Irish mammies want to keep their kids home as long as possible. I see a lot of 'ah but she/he is 18 and an adult now kick them out' or the idea that they would only be in your home till around that age. I am wording it wrong but I have noted in English relatives the expectation that their kids will move out after 18 is a normal thing but in Ireland we still are wrapping them in cotton wool at that age.

but I didn't want people to hold me up in my time of grief. I wanted to be left alone

Funerals, weddings, attitude to money and humour all very different, as already mentioned,

I’m a Londoner with Irish parents. They’re country folk and death on the whole is still ‘done’ very differently.

Get a Mass said for the person,.obsessive listening to death notices on the radio (or now it’s checking RIP.ie), send a Mass card, go to the wake/funeral home and stand about chatting for ages, funeral, hotel meal afterwards, Month’s Mind, anniversary masses, go to the cemetery for the ‘pattern’….its a lot of rigmarole and my parents will do this for bloody everyone.

but I think so much healthier than the Brit attitude of few days off work for the funeral then shut up about it,

Takes that long to get divorced here most don' bother with a second wedding cos you would be attending your next spouses funeral sooner!

I think Covid killed off the old tripartite (rosary, removal, funeral mass and burial) funeral. Plus there are hardly any priests left.

100% this! OP, I think your attitude to this is quite antiquated and parochial. I got married 13 years ago (Dublin) and we got a mix of physical gifts and cash, many of which were very generous - but certainly neither my husband and I, nor anyone in our circle, would have been crass enough to comment on how much people had given, or to criticise somebody who didn’t give a gift. I would hate anyone to feel they had to turn down an invitation to my wedding just because they couldn’t afford a large cash gift

Also, as somebody who provides medical terminations, I can confirm that Irish women seek abortions frequently, and for many and varied reasons.

Sandwiches in a gaa hall after a funeral are amazing. As are traybakes at a northern wake. Better than funeral soup in a hotel.
Our local hotel owners reckon removals are now less of a thing. The lying in repose means the hotel has lost night before a funeral catering.
Although they are taking bookings for next years communions.

Well I can only take your word for it. As I’ve only been to the one. It was poles apart from what I am used to. No wake, no neighbours dropping in sandwiches, no 100’s of people shaking the families hands over the course of the the 3 days of the wake, removal and funeral. You are literally surrounded by people for a full three days. A younger person dying in rural Ireland would literally have hundreds of people. There were 500 people at my mother’s funeral. This was just quite a small funeral followed by a a close circle invited to a reception and then the family returned home on their own. Which I assumed was their choice but still.

I was completely taken aback by English friends talking about neighbours reporting on people who'd stayed out past the mandated 'exercise' period during the strictest Covid lockdown. A friend of a friend who'd had a perfectly civil relationship with her neighbours came home from a run to find a note on her front door saying they were reporting her for staying out five minutes beyond the stipulated period -- the irony was that she was (and they knew this) a medic working hospital shifts and who'd just lost her first Covid patient, and they were out clapping for the NHS later the same day.

You'd dismiss that as individual loons, but several people I'd kept in touch with in the English village I'd just left months earlier said parish council members were patrolling in hi-vis and blowing whistles like Dad's Army.

I don't remember any of that in Ireland.

That’s really a ridiculous generalisation! I’ve been to lots of English funerals ( people from all walks of life)and they generally are crowded, sociable and boozy, lots of stories, lots of music.
Possible the funeral of a young person would be more sombre, as obviously it’s so awful when a young person dies, but I’ve never been to one where the person was under 60 thankfully so I don’t know.

My mother (lived her whole life in Ireland) has masses of siblings and a group of friends from primary school. It's only since retiring that she's made a couple of more friends through new hobbies - as an adult she didn't really get to know anyone new and I know she was bemused by my tendency to pick up new friends in the various places I lived. Her family is similar - they are very tight with each other and know a few other people and that's it - despite being a very large family, the overall network of people is quite small.

I don't know about the comparisons between Irish people and people from different regions of the UK.
I'm foreign (European), lived in Ireland over 20 years. Now in the UK and SE England middle class people seem very "normal" to me. Northern English people just seem "rough" relative to my norm.

I’m not disputing that, just the appalling tenor of the questions from Gay Byrne who must have been at his least incisive and most belittling and sexist in this.