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Tea Pots and Plastic Sheep
By Hugh Dougherty
I love going window-shopping in Ireland. But it’s not the grandeur of Dublin’s
Grafton Street or trendy shops in Galway that attracts, but those genuine
Irish shop windows that seem to have been there for ever, and which combine
the mundane things of life so well with trinkets and images of Ireland.
It’s the sort of shop that has a statue of St. Patrick sitting alongside
a model sheep, or, perhaps, it’s one of those superb medical halls, as chemists
tend to be known, where, alongside all the latest patent medicines and beauty
aids, you’ll find doses for sheep fluke or potato blight.
These are the sort of windows that attract you inside, wondering just
what treasures lie within. And often, you’ll have to duck as you pass through
the under-sized doorway.
I’m reminded of Marner’s in Carndonagh in Donegal’s Inishowen, where
souvenirs sit alongside confectionary. The shop is also the town’s bus agency
for the Lough Swilly Bus Service.
Down in Clifden last summer I came across an excellent example of the
genre, with a statue of St. Patrick himself, the obligatory musical Irish
cottage and sundry other souvenirs competing for limited space with kids
toys, including — as in all Irish rural areas — the every-popular plastic
farm sets.
Oh, and there’s usually an ice cream sign outside.
These are the sort of shops that seem to have survived from another era,
and which manicured, pan-European branding has managed to miss, leaving
them as beacons of individuality in a sea of drab and characterless sameness.
It was down in Clifden, too, that I noticed a hardware and cycle hire
shop, which also did duty as an undertaker, while, marvellous to behold
was a medical hall where the entire front window was taken-up with medicines
for horses.
These are exactly the sort of shops that I remember as a child in the
1950s, when we took our holidays in Bundoran. On wet days, it was not unknown
to spend almost the entire day window-shopping, and there was always something
fascinating to see in shops that sold everything and anything the holidaymaker
would require.
There’s no doubt that they’re a valuable part of Irish culture and part
of the attraction of the country, for it’s the very lack of ability to define
entirely the function of a shop by looking at what’s on display in its window,
that’s part of the fascination.
Window-shopping in Ireland is a tourist activity to be savoured, but,
there’s also the fact that by buying from the smaller shops, you’re helping
them to survive in the harsh world of the supermarket. You’re also helping
keep some of that essential Irish character alive. There’s no doubt that
the Irish everything shop, with that cluttered window, needs all the support
it can get as the numbers of decline.
This summer, I’ll be back window shopping, looking in on an aspect of
Ireland that comes from an era when marketing and corporate branding were
barely developed by today’s standards.
I’ll be able to choose between that St. Patrick statue and an Infant
of Prague, not forgetting a calendar, Club Orange and a miniature turf hearth
— and all from a shop that declares itself a newsagent.
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