Irish Signs

Ireland, land of terrible street signs, features many other kinds of signs, many of them interesting and amusing. I present here a selection of those I encountered on my travels.



From Northern Ireland - a small reminder on the wall of a small laneway, in a country of giant murals with opposing sentiments. If you don't know much about the so called "Troubles" then I suggest that you do a bit of reading on the subject. It's sobering to recognise a long fought war between supposedly civilised nations in my lifetime. It always seemed much further away than this is.

To brighten my mood and increase my perplexedness, already running high, was this sign in the very next street. "Vital Organs free!!!" Surely nobody would give away perfectly good vital organs, even here?

Also from Northern Ireland. Can they really be having such a big problem with abuse of healthcare staff that they need to put up signs about it in bus stops?

The signs in the Republic of Ireland tended to be more jolly. This is one of my favourites. Although swimming is forbidden, running on water is apparently permitted in this area. I wanted to try it, but doubted my level of belief in miracles would be enough to pull it off. I will try somewhere outside Ireland, somewhere with warmer water.

I managed to get the gist of this one ... although I suppose it could be prohibiting rolling rocks from the cliffs. I include it only to provide context for the next sign, which appeared right next to it.

We speculated on the meaning of this one for quite a while. "Don't stand in fires?" "Don't cook seagulls?" Finally we found another sign that decoded the glyph as something along the lines of "Conservation regeneration area, stay off." Ahhhh.

Of course if everyone pays as much attention to that sign as they did to the one above, I don't know why they bother. I suppose some paint on a gate isn't particularly authoritative. However that doesn't seem to discourage the sign posters much. We saw a sign in Belleek forbidding digging in the riverbanks "by authority of the Traditional Angler's Association."

Pardon? I hope this kind of thing doesn't spread to Australia. The CWA might start banning rival lamington drives and all the school playgrounds would be bereft of jungle gyms. For the benefit of non-Australian readers, the CWA is the Country Women's Association, a fine body of women of a certain age who do much good work in the community and are a bona fide national treasure of whom much mockery is made by disrespectful young people from the city. A lamington is another national treasure, but very much harder to explain. Basically you take a square of stale spongecake, dip it in cocoa butter then roll it around in dessicated coconut. I know you can't understand it, but every Australian has eaten hundreds of these things in the name of various worthy causes. Almost all of us have sold them to other Australians in the name of various worthy causes. If you ever decide to become an Australian citizen, you will probably be forced to eat one after your naturalisation ceremony. If you refuse, they might just deport you on the spot for being unAustralian.

This one absolutely baffled me. There is nothing to the right of this sign except more of the featureless grey wall to which it is affixed. Collections of what? Why are they forbidden on the right and yet permitted on the left? It shall remain a mystery forever, although I will cheerfully accept any theories posted as comments, since I have no coherent theory of my own.

For the first, and hopefully only, time in my life, I almost bought a souvenier teatowel. Fortunately, I was firm with myself. Souvenier teatowels are not permitted until after I turn 55. Souvenier teaspoons are verboten forever. By order of the generation gap maintenance associaion I am permitted only ironic T-shirts and novelty shot glasses until after I turn 35.

This bus mounted advertisement caught my eye only because the model they've chosen for the ad is so waif thin that puberty probably forgot to deliver her breasts. I thought it rather an odd casting decision for a boob based ad campaign.

This gravestone is at Sligo Abbey. The OPW tour guide told us that it's the only professionally defaced headstone they have. There are two conflicting stories about how it came to be violated. The first is that the wife of a prominent local citizen had an illegitemate child while her husband was out of town. The child died and his mother had him buried under her husband's name with great honour in Sligo Abbey. The outraged husband then had the gravestone defaced when he returned so that the child would receive no favour in heaven, which is a bit rough on the innocent soul that the husband believed would suffer for it. The alternate story, which I like much better, is that the stonemason who made the headstone was never paid for the work and so defaced the grave as revenge and to discourage future defaulters.

I love this one. It's the name of a chain of convenience stores in Ireland. It's a bit like a 7-11. Mace? It's so warm and inviting isn't it? Makes you want to stroll right in and do a spot of shopping. Maybe pick up some riot gear and a Molotov cocktail while you're out. Who does the marketing research in this country?

We all know what this sign at LAX airport means, right?

What about this one right across the hall? I still have no idea what it means. Any suggestions?