Irishness, meat pies and something about Mary

Sorry, all you anonymous commenters out there - I've changed my blog settings so that only registered users (registered with Blogger, that is) can comment. You can blame that Mary woman/person/organisation and her useless space-wasting penis pill comment. There's enough junk out there in cyberspace already, what with my spending all my free time blogging, without the addition of unproductive comment spam.

So it's St Patrick's Day today. Excuse my lack of St Patrick's spirit, but what a big commercial con. And I'm not just saying this because my alcohol tolerance has decreased from drunk-on-a-double-gin to zero, nor because I've never liked Guinness.

There's just this big image of the Irish as somehow cooler than everyone else. I have nothing against them as individuals - I've never met one I didn't like. But I do get sick of yet another Hollywood movie about charmingly alcoholic Irish people (from The Commitments to Road to Perdition). I vaguely remember a comedic song I once heard which basically said that as long as you can pass yourself off as Irish there'll always be film work (and bar work) for you. I think it's utterly true. Bah humbug, I say.

On a more positive note, I came across a really nice steak pie today. Americans will no doubt think that the very idea of a pie with a savoury filling is about as familiar and appealing as say, putting barbegue sauce on your ice cream. The rest of us know better. Meat pie quality varies from yummy to nasty, from a product which is little more than a pastry pocket full of gravy to the meaty, tasty item I had for lunch today. Among other things, it depends on the filling/gravy ratio, and whether any rodent bits have slipped in unawares. The latter isn't just a joke you know - back in the Seventies it was a running joke that a buying a certain brand would just about guarantee you a chance to taste stewed mouse (which sorta reminds me of that Buffy episode, Doublemeat Palace - "It's not meat, it's people!").