I have, of late, come under some degree of pressure to write scene 17. Rest assured loyal readers (Sarah and Aoife) that it is on its way. In the meantime I have taken the time to compile a list of villages that are worse than Lisgoold. For, as someone once put it to me, Lisgoold may have produced Crystal Swing, but where is producing their audience? I will mention that these places are being judged mainly on aesthetics and my impressions of them don't reflect on their inhabitants, who should only receive sympathy and moral support.
1. Whtechurch
Whitechurch is a commuter village just east of Blarney. The first issue here is the fact of what it is: A commuter village. What a strange country where that type of thing actually exists. That adjective and that noun should not go together. Here is a list of things that co-exist quite happily with village:
Rustic village
Fishing village
Charming village
Commuter town? Grand. Commuter village? No. That belongs to a list like this:
Microsoft village
Industrial village
Scientologist village
Whitechurch's only charm is that its parish priest is a bona fide nutter: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/kfauqlcwkfql/rss2/
To describe Whitechurch to the outsider. Imagine a few half-empty estates, an estate consisting solely of showhomes, an unfinished housing estate and one church and one petrol station, the latter's deli leaving much to be desired. Nevertheless, if you like aesthetic distress and negative equity, Whitechurch is the place for you.
2. Grenagh
Another fucking commuter village. To be fair to Grenagh, most of the estates are quite nice and are compacted into a single area, rather than sprawling all over the place. At first sight it might even seem like a nice place to live.
Wrong.
Once you have been in Grenagh for more than ten minutes you notice something hard to describe but utterly chilling. There are many, many houses, but no fucking people. You suddenly get the feeling that Cillian Murphy gets in 28 Days Later. Except that at least if you were in London after a zombie apocalypse you could at least seek comfort in the modern infrastructure and ease of access to the British library. Me and another person were there in the middle of summer after both the secondary and primary schools were out, but there were no young people. No teenagers chattering loudly about...whatever teenagers talk about (probably sex and amphetamines and that type of thing). No children's laughter. Nothing. Just one middle-aged man staring at me through a second floor window. To be fair to Grenagh, it is the only town in the world that seems to have been designed by Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett, but even they wouldn't want to live there.
3. Dromahane
The pick of the litter. The most godawful place I've ever came across.
I think there are advantages to both living in the counryside and to living in the city. The former is generally nicer what with cows, fields, mountains and that type of thing. While the latter has better services and infrastructure, though usually a higher crime rate and a more stressful living situation. Dromohane combines the worst of both. It is as if someone took a few streets from between Harbour View Road and Mark Caroll drive and plopped them in the middle of nowhere. Dromohane is ugly. Very, very ugly. Here is the grey hopeless mass of stone they call a church:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/70/DromahaneChurch.jpg
That, frankly, is one of the nicer parts of the place. Dromohane's other problem is very different from that of Grenagh. While Grenagh was weirdly empty and had an almost Silent Hill quality about it, Dromohane seems to be almost entirely populated by roving gangs of feral children. I know I said I wouldn't mention the inhabitants but in this case I feel I must.
To give an idea of the kind of people who live in Dromahane, look at this guy:
http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=1670275795
Yes people, they still use Bebo for some reason. I imagine they reject facebook as some sort of withchcraft.
According to Wikipedia: ' Thomas Russell is referred to as the “The man from God knows where” and, as it happens, he was born in the village on November 21, 1767.' I wonder why, when asked his hometown, he replied 'God knows where'. My theory is he blocked out all his memories of Dromahane to maintain his sanity. Russell was hanged in 1803 in Downpatrick. His last words were: 'Better the gallows than Dromahane'.
Oh also, being within an hour of the city, it has three ghost estates, because what would a commuter village be without fucking ghost estates.
Dromahane. Depressing, ugly and shit, it is the winner of this week's Golden Turd award.
L.C, the writer, is chief researcher for 'Drisceoil's Graveyard Tours of Ireland' and is currently working on his own travel guide 'Worse Than Lisgoold: A Bastard's Guide to shit villages'
