The Irish Immigrant

One of the benefits our local (as in watering hole) is the supply of free copies of The Irish Immigrant, available at the beginning of every work week. If you stop by on a Monday, Tuesday or even Wednesday evening, you're bound to find one of the gang paging through the latest issue.

The Immigrant has three chief attractions for us: a weekly glimpse into that rogue Andy Capp, the cross word, and best of all, weird news bits from Ireland. By weird news bits, I mean stories that leap off the page and make you think 'what the fuck is that all about?' More often than not, these stories involve some sort of violent trauma, extreme alcohol consumption, criminal courts and motor vehicles. And every week we grab a copy looking to see what sort of mayhem they have for us. Now, no doubt the editors of the Immigrant select from a large volume of stories available to them, and pick only the most, shall we say, distinctive ones. So it's not like we're getting a balanced picture of what happens daily in Ireland. But the probably unintentional effect is that the Emerald Isle comes off as a sort of outlandish place.

Take this story from the latest issue: Body lay bed for a year. Sorta gets your attention doesn't it? And it gets better too. This poor woman's 'skeletal remains' lay in the bed where she died - while her brother and sister, who both lived in the house, went on about their business. Here's a quote from the article: The Irish Examiner reports that, when questioned by gardaí, Sonny Lyons claimed that he had no idea his sister was dead as she had become totally reclusive and had confined herself to her room.

Damn. I have to tendency to procrastinate myself, but I like to think that if a roommate vanished, I might get a little curious after a while.