Mathias - Burnt barley: how to eat, dance & sing your way around Ireland

I was finally on my way to Ireland on my Irish passport to see what they eat and drink and sing about.

I had first applied for an Irish passport when working in France in the 1980s. Producing my birth certificate provided inordinate complication as does every bureaucratic transaction in France, because you couldnt have just any old birth certificate you had to provide a longbirthcertificate, one that included the births, deaths and marriages of relatives back to the Inquisition. In the saga of trying to find the mothers birth certificate I discovered something I had often suspected that the mother did not exist. I called the mayors office in Tipperary where she was born.

Hello, Madam, I said politely, Im looking for the birth certificate of my mother, Ann Long. She was born in your county sometime after 1920 and as a direct result of that I find myself being her daughter

Glory be to God and you called all the way from Paris to tell me that. Im sure youre a great credit to your mother, said the voice on the phone.

Yes, yes, but Mother doesnt have a birth certificate because her father didnt register her because the English said you had to so he refused as a matter of principle but I need some sort of a certificate to get a passport to work in France.

Well, thats a very interesting story but Im afraid there is nothing we can do, pet. I cant invent a birth certificate for someone I have no record of and thats that.

Stupidly I accepted this and went ahead and married a gorgeous Frenchman so I could stay in France. A few years later I noticed my brother Paul had an Irish passport which he had obtained by insisting on a replacement birth certificate for our mother. Within two weeks I was Irish.

The plane from London to Dublin left half an hour late, familiarising me early with Irish time.

Are you Peta Mathias?

No.

We saw your hair. I love your show.

Its not me. Its someone else. Hailing a taxi.

Goodbye, Peta. Have a great time in Ireland.

The first thing you notice as you whiz into Dublin from the airport is all the street names in two languages. Besides English there is Irish, which is unpronounceable to any human other than a Celt. The girls name Saoirse is pronounced Sear-she; the word for to your health, slinte, is pronounced slaun-te. The second thing you notice is that its gently raining. I knew they called it a soft Irish day so I decided to be very brave and positive about the softness. The Irish language has many words to describe rain words for dew, kinds of drizzle, medium rain, wet weather, heavy rain, downpour, pelting rain and wet weather that may cause flooding.

The hotel was quite a nice one but in an insalubrious area on Lower Gardiner Street. The upside was that the desk clerk said Good night now and God bless when he delivered my suitcase. The downside was that you had to rent your phone in lump sums of 5. It could suddenly run out in the middle of a conversation or email and you couldnt call the desk and pay more rent by phone. You had to actually go the 20km trek through a jungle of corridors, secret-coded elevators, expanses of dining room, dark-stained stairs and flamboyant decor to personally rent and pay for more time. All it required at the desk was the flick of a switch and an addition to my bill but no amount of intelligent persuasion on my part could change this mediaeval arrangement. I stayed there six days and when I asked for my bed linen to be changed halfway through, the request had to go through a supervisor.

Even on a soft day its a long summer day in Ireland, the dawn twittering at 4am and the dusk obliterating all at 10.30pm. On my first night hunger drove me to the only food area Id heard of, Temple Bar on the groovy side of the River Liffey. I crossed the river on the curved, ornate metal Hapenny footbridge. This eighteenth-century cobblestoned part of the city is riddled with restaurants, pubs, alleyways and individuals below the age of 30 in equal quantities. It was as if there were a high school or university inauguration day going on. The smelly, drunken throng were falling out of pubs and restaurants, but so crowded were they that nowhere could you get a meal, a drink or a break. The best you would have obtained would have been beer down your frock, a grope and a view of the security cum doormen running around looking desperate and driven to distraction by the importance and stress of their jobs. They all had earphones which they kept touching as they squared their shoulders. My umbrella, my new J.P. Gaultier dress with Japanese dragons on it and I made a thorough, gut-rumbling tour of the place, hated it and decided to go home hungry. Without my supper I would look even better in that dress tomorrow.

On the way back across OConnell bridge to the ungroovy side of town I was drawn to a sumptuous hotel entrance on the exquisitely named Bachelors Walk. The Arlington Hotel had a huge mediaeval decorated pub and dining hall done up in brocade, heavy beams, stags heads, dark panelling and gloriously over-the-top decoration, Dublin style. The bars were lined with liquor bottles, books and footballs, a look guaranteed to confuse any outsider. I was to discover that Dublin specialises in voluptuous, outrageous, Rabelaisian decor in gigantic spaces. This place felt more civilised than Temple Bar so I sat down and ordered a pint and an Irish stew. Best to begin as you intend to continue. In Ireland when you order a pint it means a Guinness. If you want something else you order it by name. To test if a glass of Guinness is ready to drink, you tap the side of the glass with a coin there will be a dull sound initially and when its ready the sound goes up a few notes to a clearer, ringing tone.

Excuse me, are you Peta?

No.

Look, Im from New Zealand and my friends bet I wouldnt come over and say hello. Im sorry to do this. You must get so sick of it.

Thats fine. I dont mind at all. Shaking hands.

My names Lorraine. Anyway, we love your show and if you go to Belfast, this is the taxi you must call. George will take you on a tour of Belfast youll never forget. A large portion of stew arrived along with the band, who lurched into tourist favourites like Oh Danny Boy and a dreadful sloppy thing about Irish unity, a topic big on the agenda in July 1999. At this very moment the peace accord talks were at a crucial negotiating point, with exhausted leaders from both sides being interviewed nonstop on television and radio. They also love interviewing terrorists and informers dressed in woollen hats and dark glasses with scarves around their faces saying things like: It doesnt matter what the politicians sign, theres still product [arms] on the ground. Then they pull up their jumper and show the camera their battle scars. It was the topic on everyones lips.