You know you're really Irish when...

[Gossipyfishwife]

...you tell the barman to put the change in the poor box.

It was lashing out of the high heavens here last night.

I've just taken a cake of soda bread out of the oven, will I put the kettle on?

You have to wrap it in a tea towel first!

Top tip of the day....go easy on fabric softener if you intend to do as squoosh suggests.....Soda bread with a tint of lavender or summer breeze is not a good thing!!

squoosh thanks for the Oliver Plunkett head . For many years I was convinced his head had moved to under my bed and so I had to hop, skip and jump from the door into the bed.

My dad , not a swearer at all, used to say Jameses Street when cross. I have no idea what the hell that was supposed to mean.

School trips from North Dublin to Wicklow , to spend the day admiring the hydroelectric power station. Every summer.

Sorry Gypsy if I reignited a childhood horror! It was a gruesome thing to make little kids go and see.

The hydroelectric power station you say? Fancy, a friend of mine used to go to the HB factory, or was it the Tayto factory? Either way, I was jealous!

School trips to the Crannógs in Wexford or the Cheese factory in Mitchelstown.

The Ireland of today is so different to the reminiscing on this thread! It's all Avoca and Powerscourt darling, it was clara laragh, newgrange, now it's Tayto park not tayto crisps! zipline, bounce world in sandyford industrial estate......

That sounds like a very swanky trip.

Glendalough was another thrilling school day out.

In fact going for a drive up the mountains in general was alleged to be top class entertainment for a Sunday afternoon. The only redeeming feature of this trip was that there was always an ice cream van up the mountain too. Randomly waiting for up poor saps.

The sandyford industrial estate sounds crap compared to Clara Laragh!

I know, Ishould. I'll never forget the first time I saw my parents ordering cappucinos.

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, it's

WITH O'LEARY IN THE GRAVE.

One thing I noticed though, 7 seaters really, really embarrassing in London, not so in SoCoDu. Condoms prevent MPVs. I told that joke when I hit the shores of Dublin and people started defending their 7 seaters.

Clara laragh. Oh god another shite memory. Fun park my arse.

Still lots of greasy hands in the till!

squoosh it is, everybody piling in to their 7 seaters to go to bounce world. claragh laragh was the biz.

Is there actually a Tayto park? If so I think could be persuaded to visit that!

I loved Clara Laragh, one summer a child died or was seriously there and that made it all the exciting to us. Evil children that we were.

bibliomania! Indeed, once I saw babycinos for sale in my local park I knew it was all over. In my day it was a slurp of water from the pond.......and you were grateful for it!

Great nutrients to be had in pondweed, don't you know.

I ll burst ya was another one that was said a lot.

I quite like the sound of a Tayto park...

Oh we also went on school tours to Mount Mellary or get this, A different Ursuline Convent to the one we already attended. You know, for a treat.

Also, the mention of an ice cream van has thrown me back to Sunday afternoons.

Dad forced to take us to the beach sitting on the bonnet of the car, in his shirt and tie on a boiling hot day, eating an ice-cream and listening to Michael O’Hehir commentating the Hurling match on the ‘wireless’

Invariably joined by other Dads, and usually a random Guard, all sitting on the bonnet of the car, all in a shirt and tie (sleeves rolled up), eating icecream and listening intently.

I just welled up then.

This thread reminds me of my Dad. He was Irish and reading it has made me realise just how many habits and expressions he had brought with him.

And yes of course we had a see through plastic Virgin Mary bottle with Lourdes water in the house.