More happy memories: St Patrick's day, Ian Paisley and a US visit

Well, St Patrick’s day has come and gone. 

The Irish take St Patrick's day seriously
Well, for some value of the word ‘seriously’

Its arrival always reminds me of the time, oh, three decades ago, when I spent it in California. A memory I treasure. 

Let me tell you about it.

At the time I was working for the UK end of an American Hospital Information System company, then called TDS. On one occasion, I took two doctors from Belfast City Hospital out to the States to visit some of our best implementations, including a bit of a showcase, El Camino hospital in Silicon Valley. 

My American colleagues had prepared name badges for our guests. Those for my two showed them as being from ‘Belfast City Hospital, Ireland’. Now, that was strictly true. On the other hand, the single word ‘Ireland’ did rather blur the distinction between the Republic of Ireland, an independent nation, and Northern Ireland, still part of the UK, despite feelings about that status which I suppose could best be described as ‘mixed’.

The distinction, I admit, is the culmination of nothing more significant than about nine centuries of struggle, dotted with massacres, pitched battles, bomb blasts, tortures and assassinations. Some might regard those events as sufficiently important to deserve recognition. Others, apparently, weren’t even aware of them.

In passing, I should say that the blindspot isn’t specifically American. Before travelling to the States with these guests, I’d visited them in Belfast with a colleague from London. The day before we travelled there, she’d come to see me.

“Will I need a passport?” she asked.

These were the innocent days when you could still travel on domestic flights without photo ID.

“And do I need to convert some money?” she went on.

I carefully explained that this was technically a domestic flight and that the pound sterling was legal tender in Northern Ireland, seeing as it was still within the United Kingdom. I resisted the temptation to ask whether she might have noticed that this issue had been widely covered in the press and on TV, with occasional reports of bomb blasts or of heavy-handed police (if not army) action in response. She clearly hadn’t made the connection.

Anyway, if an understanding of Norther Ireland’s position had slipped right past a citizen of the nation that had spilled so much blood, some its own, more of it Irish, to secure its status, how could I criticise Americans who’d missed the information too?

“Never, never, never, never”
To be fair, Paisley got nicer later

One of my two guests was a Protestant from North Antrim. That meant his local Member of Parliament was none other than the famous, or infamous, Ian Paisley. He was the man who’d made the word ‘Never’ a statement of political doctrine (have you never heard his “Never, never, never, never” speech? It’s worth listening to). In the end, he mellowed, accepted that the Irish Republic would have some say in the affairs of Northern Ireland (that’s what all that never-ing was about) and established excellent working relationships, even a close friendship, with Martin McGuiness, formerly of the enemy sworn to the destruction of what he believed in, the IRA.

My guest in California was far less strident (I’m glad to say – my eardrums couldn’t have taken it) than Paisley, but had the same accent.

Neither of us was particularly interested in St Patrick’s day, he as a Protestant, I as – well, as me, I suppose. So we had no idea in advance that our visit to El Camino was happening on the day itself.

He, unaware that the date meant the action was particularly rich in symbolism,  unthinkingly put on a green sweatshirt that morning.

El Camino hospital
Visited on the wrong day for one of the guests I took

Now, on St Patrick’s Day, it seems that practically every American is Irish. People whose names, and sometimes even their accents, betray Italian or Central European roots, are Irish for the day. And here in front of them was a man wearing a name badge proclaimed him to be Irish, and a green top to boot.

Everywhere we went in El Camino that day, we’d be constantly distracted from the software and medical wonders before us, as people came up to him and warmly wished him, “Happy St Patrick’s Day”.

And each time he would respond, in a tone more gentle but just as forceful as Ian Paisley’s, “we don’t celebrate it”. 

If you can, please read those words in Paisley’s accent, for the sake of authenticity.

Never before or since have I seen as many people wandering away, bemused and uncomprehending, from what they’d expected to be a cordial exchange of good wishes, bruised by so surprising a reaction.

It’s too late to wish you a Happy St Patrick’s Day this year. Can I can get away with just hoping you had a good one? Perhaps you can forgive me since, as it happens, we don’t actually celebrate it.