Irish in Ireland AMA

[SrSteveOskowski]

Following on from a Dane in Denmark, I'm Irish, living in Ireland AMA

PinkieTuscadero why would you ruin a good digestive? 😁
Digestives and butter though 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

It's the only bit of the book I remember May

Just because it's written in Inner city Dublin slang, doesn't mean he doesn't have a massive understanding of what he was writing about. You don't need to be writing like Shakespeare to make an impact.
I believe he's actually on the English curriculum these days.

Oh what about Marieta biscuits and butter. Squashing the butter through the holes in the biscuits.

Calvita (or Galtee?) is the stuff of hangovers for me. On a cracker lol.

Marietta biscuits were for the culchies, like my parents. Urban sophisticates like my good self were more into the Digestives.

I survived on Digestive biscuits and cheddar cheese for the first 6 weeks of my dd's life. Whenever I got up to pee, she was mooching for me. My aunt told me about the digestive biscuits and cheese. I lot pretty much the entire pregnancy weight by 5 weeks in. Also lost my mind in the process, but that's another story.
I think I've forgotten what thread I'm on. Are we on the Irish thread? Or a pregnancy thread?

Ok, sorry, Irish thread. Ignore me.

Now I have a craving for some sharp cheddar on a digestive...

Oh what about Marieta biscuits and butter. Squashing the butter through the holes in the biscuits.

Ahh I used to love doing this as a child! A great way to unwind and relax after a session on the loloball in the back garden. Happy days (only allowed two biscuits though- they’ve to last the week!)

Any, the film of The Snapper was directed by Stephen Frears, who is English, and produced by an entirely non-Irish team — it’s not some searing Irish self-indictment about rape, any more than The Commitments was, when Alan Parker added comedy confession scenes and hymn-singing mammies, and swearing grandads and drink-stealing small children which aren’t in the novel.

The screenplay of The Snapper is by Roddy Doyle , and omits the sole mention of the word ‘rape’ which does appear in his novel, as far as one can judge to heighten the knockabout sweary comedy of the film. Frears isn’t directing social critique, it’s just sweary Irish people being sweary, which sells well overseas. I see no evidence whatsoever that Roddy Doyle intended any indictment of Irish society’s attitude to rape. I think that as shins said, he’s just not a writer who writes women well. Rape isn’t on his agenda at all.

And I take issue with the ‘that’s how we operated then’ comment. In 1993, I, and a lot of other women I knew, were fundraising for the local rape crisis centre.

And Marietta biscuits with butter is the food of the Gods.

Oh god The Family, that was insane. Which came first The Family or The Woman Who Walked into Doors?

I remember everyone watching The Family at the time.

Fun fact: I shagged a family member of Roddy Doyle. Sadly I never met him!

Pinkietuscadero? I wonder were we at the same school??? The teacher who was friends with Gabriel (I call him Gabriel cos I feel we should be on first name terms) had the initials MMcC? Taught English and French and was really nice?

In northside dublin. Wouldn't it be mad if we knew each other??? I still live in the same area.

any I also had to add, the Snapper (film) came out in 1993 and a family supporting their pregnant unmarried daughter would not have been a big deal in Ireland at all by then. Lots of girls I went to school with in the late 80s/early 90s got pregnant the minute they left and they certainly weren't sent to Magdalene laundries

The book The Snapper was published in 1990 so presumably written in the 80s. It was a time of some change in attitude towards unmarried pregnant women in Ireland but it was certainly still a big deal, a very big deal.

My mother had an unplanned pregnancy in the mid 70s, she was told to either marry the father or give the baby up for adoption. She chose the latter. She was sent away for the duration of the pregnancy so no one would know and then had the baby in some convent down the country. She never saw the baby until 20 years later.

Would she have had to do this if she got preganant 10 years later, in the 80s? Maybe not. Times were changing. But to say it wasn’t a big deal is inaccurate. I got pregnant in 2000 and it was a big deal. I was accepted but it was still a big fucking deal.

I used to get Migraines and my mum would always give me Marietta biscuits with butter for my tea after I’d had one.

They do still indeed do Galtee cheese slices. My dad always has some in the fridge even now. Love Galtee cheese with Tayto cheese and onion on batch bread. Yum.

My dad worked on Glenroe for years. We had all the gossip. If I could only remember it!

I’m also a Northsider. Opposite Cadbury’s factory. Across the Malahide Road. Never had Gabriel Byrne at my school though.

It was definitely a different time to be pregnant before marriage in the 80s. I left school in 1981 and it was still a big thing. Attitudes started to change towards the end of the 80s and into the 90s I think. A friend’s younger sister got pg around 86/87 and was only supported by the family if she had the baby adopted.

I remember a friend of my parents telling me that if I got pregnant he would think I was a slut. I was 17 so 1981. His son’s girlfriend then went on to ‘get herself’ pregnant the following year. The hypocrisy was shocking. It was definitely seen as her fault.

More girls got pregnant in my Leaving Cert year (1990) than went on to any form of third-level education from my school, though none of those babies that I know of were adopted. I suppose we were the transition generation in terms of easy availability of contraception still being a couple of years away, and we certainly had zero sex education at school (convent school, still run at that point by ageing nuns in all the senior roles), other than a talk about periods and an incredibly graphic video of birth that was clearly designed to demonstrate the inevitable consequences of sex, and hence put us off the whole idea.

The anecdote I do remember from that period is a friend of a friend who got pregnant in her final year at university in fact went into labour during her finals but had enough family support and determination to continue straight on to her HDip, where her school placement was at my old school. Where, unbelievably, she was formally cautioned by the head nun for having a baby seat in the back of her car in the school car park. It was giving a bad example to the girls for an unmarried teacher to be flaunting the evidence of her behaviour.

And remember the Virgin Megastore in Dublin being sued for selling condoms in 1990/91, and the fine actually being increased when they appealed, and then U2 paying the fine? And condoms being one of the main reasons Boots were so successful when they opened in Ireland -- does anyone else remember being kept standing at a chemist's counter for 20 minutes or being told you needed to have a consultation with a pharmacist before being sold condoms? They clearly didn't want to sell them to you, and were hoping you would be embarrassed and go away... Whereas in Boots they were on the shelves and you could just chuck them in your basket with your shampoo and tampons.

And could everyone stop talking about Marietta biscuits and butter? I have a craving, and the nearest packet is on the other side of the Irish Sea...

Same BeGoodTanya. Mariettas remind me of sitting up at the table in my Nana's kitchen, legs dangling in the air because I couldn't reach the ground, with a glass of fizzy orange (or rock shandy if I was lucky) and a plate of either Kimberlys, Mikados or Mariettas. Every time without fail that's what I'd get when I visited.

I've got my fingers in my ears and am ignoring the mention of Mariettas. (Though I had chocolate Mikados for the first time this Christmas and thought they were disgusting.)

Here you go tanya

That was most unfair, MayFayner. Stop flaunting your biscuits so shamelessly.

@MayFayner Might depend where you lived.My mam had me in 18973,she was unmarried and she kept ,me.I had my first son in 1995 and i never got any comments.