ZOZIMUS

ALTHOUGH we’ve long been an admirer of Luke Kelly, we’re still confused as to why he gets two statues unveiled in the same city on the same day.

He was, after all, like the original Zozimus, merely a ballad singer, albeit a very good one, as was his partner in The Dubliners, Ronnie Drew, even though we’ve been told they didn’t often get along with each other.

But Luke was also a man of the people, although that wasn’t very evident from the ‘official’ statue unveiling, which had a very distinct pecking order. We’re told inner-city councillor Christy Burke, who campaigned for years for a statue of Luke, wasn’t present.

It got us wondering why the well-padded socialist/ Labourite ‘brothers and sisters’ of the Labour Party and trade union movement have snubbed the real chronicler of tenement life and revolutionary politics in Dublin, Sean O’Casey, author of three of the greatest plays of the 20th Century. Is it that O’Casey refused to conform to their trendylefty populist ideology? Or could it be embarrassment that their semi-canonised hero Countess Constance Markievicz, described by Kevin Myers as “self-styled and wholly bogus”, led the strident rioters who stormed the Abbey Theatre stage in 1926, in a bid to shut down the The Plough and the Stars, and drove O’Casey from Dublin to exile in Britain?

“Today, the censorious Countess is feted, while the working-class genius that was Sean O’Casey is ignored,” says our correspondent Eddie Naughton, who for years has been unable to persuade the city authorities to erect a plaque, let alone a statue, in the playwright’s honour on No.422 North Circular Road, Dublin 7, where Juno and the Paycock, The Shadow of a Gunman and The Plough and the Stars were written in an upstairs room.

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OUR resident telly addict spent the early part of the week studying RTE’s new €2m news studio and grew increasingly puzzled at the lack of activity in the ‘newsroom’ which acts as a back-drop to the Caitriona/ Keelin floor show.

A couple of figures — three in all — seem strategically placed around monitors, but weren’t very animated, until it dawned on our man that they’re “virtual” figures and the studio is, well, fake. As if we haven’t had enough of ‘fake news’ already.

Given the financial difficulties that RTE is facing, this may be something that directorgeneral Dee Forbes would welcome — but it’s a bit early to be introducing virtual reporters when RTE would seem to have lots of real ones wandering around Montrose.

One of these virtual reality figures is dressed in a blue jumper — and he hasn’t changed it all week. For a cool €2m, you’d think the designers could have stuffed the studio with virtual reality figures who changed their jumpers from time to time.

As to the studio itself, well RTE was extremely proud of it, but we hear that those in the real newsroom are far from happy the place is portrayed as almost entirely empty most of the time.

Their friends are asking if it is a real TV station or is the reality (as a wise member of the Doheny & Nesbitt School of Economics once put it) a goldplated pension scheme with a broadcasting station attached?

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ZOZIMUS took a rather precarious walk down memory lane last week when his old pal Eamon arranged a mystery tour of one of our old haunts in south County Dublin. By a circuitous route, we got into the Stillorgan reservoir, a place where we once swam and lounged in the long grass in the halcyon days of youth. The water that James Joyce described in Ulysses as “percolating through a subterranean aqueduct” to the “26-acre reservoir at Stillorgan, a distance of 22 statute miles” is now gone.

Broken into three sections, the main one, originally named after the Prince of Wales, held 43m gallons of water while the other two, named after Sir John Gray, “father” of the project, brought the total capacity to 177m gallons. Indeed, the Round wood hill Tunnel, which takes the water to Stillorgan, is at the same depth as the more famous Channel Tunnel, according to Michael Corcoran in his history of the project, Our Good Health.

We walked around the grassy banks at dusk, as the lights started to go on around what we used to call “the industrial estate” but now goes under the more grandiose title of ‘Beacon South Quarter’.

The reservoir, which was finished in 1865, is now going to be a “covered storage reservoir” providing a “secure and sustainable” water supply to 200,000 homes in the south Dublin area.

When it comes into operation, the two smaller reservoirs will be drained and used for other, unspecified, purposes by the utility company. Zozimus would like to suggest that they be left alone and turned into wild-water reserves for birds and mammals, stocked with fish and opened to the public for Sunday walks. That way the great over-washed might come to love Irish Water one day.

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“I’M a publican,” proclaimed Jay Bourke proudly when he eventually arrived at the opening of Bart’s, his latest pub/food venture in trendy South William Street.

The opening night crowd was treated to some very tasty deep-fried seaweed with various toppings in the bar, which is described as “a modern take” on the traditional Irish pub and what you would expect in this hip part of Dublin city centre.

Jay’s wife, writer Sarah Harte, held the fort with managers Lewis and Luke until the publican turned up.

“We want to keep the spirit of the old pub, but don’t want it to be fussy or false. I got the bar from Waterford — it cost an arm and a leg,” he said, pointing to the end of the room, where the impressive bar has been placed.

It certainly looked the part, and, as the crowds increased, so did the volume of the music. The colourful publican moved around the room greeting guests, including some of his sailing buddies from Howth, like Robert Dix and Ger O’Mahony.

Jay has been a fixture in this part of town for decades, opening bars and restaurants and leading the transformation of the pub trade and onceneglected parts of the city.

He has had some troubles in recent years, especially after he was disqualified as a director for seven years as he attempted to “trade out” of his lossmaking venture, Shebeen Chic. The opening of Bart’s proved that you can’t keep a good man, or a good publican, down and we’re looking forward to returning for tapas and a pint in this convivial new pub.