Differences (rep Ireland) Irish V UK

[Sillysandy]

I am Irish living in Ireland. My DH is British, he is an immigrant who grew up in London but had lived for 20 years in Ireland when I met him.

I discovered mumsnet about 8 years ago when I took on a sort of stepmum role and was flabbergasted at some of the stories, attitudes and opinions.

I still found the site extremely helpful, often giving me clarity on situations which would cause me a lot of angst.

However when I talk to friends and family members living in the UK I realise that a lot is to do with cultural differences.

It's amazing given how close geographically we are.

Attitudes to money, marriage, divorce, wedding gifts, abortion, house purchases, communication with friends are so far from anything I've seen in my circles.

To give my pov; (these are all generalisations) we get married later, we stay married, we don't consider abortion unless it's very particular circumstances, we are indirect about money "I'll get this one, you can get the next one (but it is LAW you only accept if you are buying back)" and sending bank details for a small amount would be horrifyingly rude, you only attend a wedding with a card containing at least 100 euro pp, you usually get married in your mid thirties, your kids are mainly all with the one father, we hide behind humour until we know a person very well, we don't report benefit fraud, we laugh a lot more... That's just off the top of my head.

The other thing is that most Irish people know all about English Irish historical tensions but many English people are utterly oblivious.

YABU You're talking out of your ass
YANBU The differences are enormous

I'd love to hear some thoughts on this. In my line of work now I do a weekly call with my UK based team and I always notice subtle differences in attitude.

@AgDulAmach Yes there are loads of great things about England but they don’t know how to throw a decent funeral. I found it so upsetting going to the funeral of a relatively young woman, and it was utterly depressing and very lonely for the family or something. Like there isn’t that same sense that people are coming together to hold you up in your time of grief.

Yes, I agree. Not long after I moved to England someone mentioned being invited to a funeral - that spun my head entirely. There might be the odd occasion in Ireland where the family wants a really small funeral and they'd say that, but otherwise the understanding is everyone and his dog can come along if they like. My gran's entire social life revolved around funerals. I went to my former babysitter's dad's funeral when I was in my 20s and the funeral of my best friend's elderly next door neighbour (they were close and I knew her too). The mother of a classmate died when I was at secondary and the school arranged transport for the entire year to go to the funeral. It's common for hundreds of people to turn up.

It’s the kind of thing ‘Reggie from the Blackrock Road’ builds his routines around. or his ‘Ask Audrey columns.) Google if you haven’t come across him. At his best, he’s hilarious on small city snobbery and the way every county/small town has a neighbouring county or small town they despise.

Though he’s now touring outside of Cork (I think I saw dates in Kilkenny and Dún Laoghaire), so I assume it works beyond Cork.

https://www.reggieblackrockroad.com

Oh, I loved London and lived there for ten years. I struggled far more with my period in village Middle England.

Yes, all my mother’s childhood neighbours did this when my paternal grandfather died — they had met him once at my parents’ wedding, 19 years before, but they drove 40 miles to make the removal.

Oh sure, but most people don’t read great literature. Those who do naturally find their way to Joyce and Yeats and Wilde and Heaney. And through that they come to know Irish history. (My own knowledge of Irish history has been filtered entirely through literature - especially the works of Joyce and Heaney. I also love Wilde, though he’s something of an outlier as he was a bit of a mash up of British and Irish culture.)

I would add that Irish people are chatty, in that they'll strike up a conversation anywhere, but I find English people friendlier. I would say it is harder for an English person to embed themselves in an Irish town (unless they marry into a big family) than it is for an Irish person to embed themselve into an English town. Irish people tend to stay quite connected to their families and while it is easy to have a conversation with someone I'd say it is hard to break into established networks and make friends. My English friend who lives in rural Ireland has only managed to make friends with other 'blow-ins' - the locals all have their families and old friends and just aren't interested. By contrast I had no trouble making friends when I moved to the east midlands, partly because most people I met had moved around a bit and weren't necessarily near their family or long-term friends.

WRT history - I had the most awkward conversation a few years back. I was having dinner at a work event - English boss was there and also people boss was trying to impress, so it was quite stiff and formal. For some reason the Irish famine came up in conversation. One of the attendees was South African and he started speaking very knowledgeably about it. Boss and another bigwig looked totally blank and bemused. I tried to end the conversation but bigwig started asking questions and they eventually had to admit that they had no idea what he was on about. I had to fill in some details, which was not comfortable at all and the overall feeling was that boss and bigwig had shown themselves up by not knowing about something so major. Ugh. Awkward.

Oh for sure, the bloody Rose has been infuriating me for over fifty years and it seems to be unkillable!
Im glad to read about your neighbours there, and their happy lives.
I just hope there are some among their pals who attend their debs in a fabulous trouser suit and indeed a buzz cut….but I bet such a look is rare.

Camogie or not, I think few modern girls get away with much divergence from that Disney princess look when they are required to look their best.
(Probably starts with their First Holy Communion, when dressing up as a frothy meringue is de rigueur)
I do not believe that all of them can love that vibe, but the expectation is now that this is the accepted feminine look, and there shall be no other!
Not a hint of any look but this gender straitjacket, and for some, the mismatch with self image can cause considerable anguish and confusion.

There’s still a strong seam here of ‘Lovely Girls’ as a cultural ideal, where being a determinedly ‘anti-loveliness’ type of kid, refusing to conform and serve, just means misery and bullying.
The Rose of Tralee epitomises this nonsense still, as you say, no matter how much it seeks to fool viewers into thinking it’s not primarily about female pulchritude but about fascinating careers and interests.

(Huh. Don’t mind me. Feeling ill and out of sorts, and it makes me rant-prone)

100 euros at least for a wedding gift? Christ, no wonder people stay married in Ireland. No bugger could afford to come to their second wedding.

None of that is wrong (though I do see a lot of young women on campus who don’t do conventional femininity at all, so there’s that) — ranting is needed.

If you want to scream yourself blue in the face and haven’t already seen it, see if the Housewife of the Year documentary is still on the RTE player.

I can’t believe the Rose is still going either. I get that there’s now a woman presenter to improve the visuals of a middle-aged man patronising a series of young women carefully curated for their ‘lovely’ qualities. My poor mother remains disappointed she raised a trio of bolshie atheist feminist careerists.

Oh god, I made friends completely unproblematically in English cities, but my utterly miserably friendless period was in an East Midlands village.

There were some strong women on the Housewives documentary in fairness.
My colleague...mother of the debs...had a do in her house which included a deb in a tuxedo who is working through her choices. The debs granny was taken aback.

Fabulous trouser suits, same sex dates, going solo are all totally normal at Debs.

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.

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 justifying anything. I'm pointing out that GENERALLY Irish people aren't likely to report benefit fraud but UK people seem to be. A PP gave some background on it.

It's really strange how you're taking everything I say to be "this is how we do it so anything else is wrong". It says more about you tbh.

This is very insightful. We (Irish people) are great at some entertaining conversations but actually quite closed. I'm from SoCo Dublin but have lived many places around the country and in other countries so I think I'm more open to new friendships but I know absolutely loads of people who have their group and that's it forever.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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