Maybe It’s Mullingar

Annelie Ní Dhálaigh

There’s a lot of ways to measure how great a town is. Keep it simple, look at the economy, stupid. Take it a bit further and we can get social. Villager satisfaction, smiles per street, general frolickery. Community involvement is another way to measure it. You could look at how many people are involved in local volunteering. I think many in Ireland would think back to local sport. The success of the local Gaelic football and hurling teams. Local club pride goes deep. That pride gets at the clan level of the Irish, you’re representing your surname then, justifying your role in the town or village. The annual tidy towns contest ranks each village on the basis of cleanliness. That’s no joke in certain towns - the entirety of the local retired can be lost to it. The purpose they once found in their work, now expressed religiously in the organisation of clean ups and flower planting.

What you don’t see is the devilment behind the scenes. There are on the tidy towns committees ultras, diehards. No laughing matter with the likes of Maura and Noreen from Glenties. Glenties won four times in a row, until 1963, when Maura refused to let the entirety of Noreen’s extended family in to listen to John F. Kennedy’s speech on her new radio. The echoes of the schism are still felt today. The town has wasted away, Juliet Roses overgrown by horrifically common daisies, spat-out chewing gum lies dormant. Even the plays written about the village took on a more grim tone. Brian Friel’s ‘Philadelphia Here I Come’, a classic ode to feeling forced to leave your small, backwater town because of awkward relationships with your ex and your father, is based on Glenties. A tome sombre enough to be prescribed reading for the Leaving Cert. Prescribed action for a few too.

No, I wouldn’t rank towns on tidiness at all. Tidy Towns are full of secrets. There’s probably a certain inverse element to the relationship between best and tidiest town. At a point, the tidier a town is, the worse it is to live in. On a night out you fear the wrath of the committee in the event you trod on a daffodil, let alone puke up the pavement. No, the totalitarian state necessary in the pursuit of the Tidy Towns award is not conducive to receiving my Best Town award.

What all metrics miss, is a capacity to calculate wildness. To measure the immeasurable je ne sais quoi of a town and its inhabitants. To measure how likely you are to get punched square in the nose by an enemy’s henchwoman, and still call it your greatest night out. To measure the ratio of teachers to past pupils in any given pub at any given time. To calculate speed times swagger of preteens on electric scooters that have infested the streets, and the heat of the indignant rage of the Mammies that wage Facebook wars on them.

“If wildness and unpredictability could be measured, and were taken into account, Mullingar would win the Irish Times’ ‘Best Town to Live in Ireland’ year after year.”

Mullingar is a town of 20,000, in the centre of Ireland. The Royal Canal connects it to Dublin, and loops around the centre of the town. While once exclusively local, it was only half its current size in 1990, the rising Dublin house prices have pushed lower income families out to Mullingar, and Ireland joining the EU brought many Polish and Lithuanian to the shores of Lough Ennell and Owel. The local Travelling Community, an ethnic minority in Ireland, have also contributed to the cultural specificity of Mullingar. Their horses, which can often be seen racing alongside cars on the town roads, are the first impression to outsiders that there is a wildness about Mullingar. Those horses wouldn’t win any Tidy (Gentrified) Towns competition.

You might have heard of Mullingar, as the hometown of former One Direction star, Niall Horan. He shows up on occasion, looking majorly out of place - far too tan and significantly too wealthy. In the heyday of One Direction, starstruck, dazed teens could be seen pacing the main street, asking if he was around. In typical Mullingar fashion however, Niall’s father still works at the deli in the local Tesco. The real musical pride of the town though, is Joe Dolan, a singer from the 70’s, whose statue sits in the centre of the town. A photo with this Elvis of Ireland monument is mandatory on a night out. Our other claim to fame is Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair, who also grew up on the streets of M-town.

It’s no surprise that such a small town has so many huge successes. The wildness of the town has made Mullingar inhabitants known for being ‘chancers’. A chancer is a person who takes every opportunity they see, without too much regard for risk. O’Leary comparing Lufthansa to “a crack cocaine junkie looking for state aid”, or trying to introduce standing flights would be good examples of how Mullingarians freely speak and act, always on a mission.

The latest mission to captivate Mullingar, and distract from the general objective of mischief, has no doubt been The Fleadh. Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, the annual all-Ireland traditional music competition (and festival!), was held first in Mullingar in 1951. 2022 was the first year since then that the fleadh has been home. 2023 will be the next, thanks to our efforts. The whole town was uprooted the past few years. Pavements widened, one way system installed. New traffic lights were installed, leading to the Era of Flashing Amber Lights. A golden age in Mullingar history, where traffic flowed through as if by magic. Without some authoritarian light system, with its outdated green/red binary, some symbol of Tidy Townsiasm, us free thinkers ruled for months. While this age remains lamented, our efforts for the fleadh were rewarded. You can smell the money in the town. Smiles are brighter, pockets heavier, there’s even been a dog park built. The Celtic Tiger is revived and well in Mullingar.

The best side of Mullingar can be seen on Christmas Day each year. You can drive out, any time of the morning, before lunch, to the diving boards at Lough Owel. As you walk down from the carpark , across the railway tracks to the lake, freezing, but radiant faces smile at you as they pass. “Ah it’s lovely and warm”, says one, “you’ll feel great once you’re in” says the next. As everyone strips off their Sunday Best, into swimming togs, the plunge, past or pending, is all that matters. It doesn’t matter if your least favourite primary school teacher, or your ex’s new fling are there, it doesn’t matter that you floored yourself on your 11th out of 12 pubs of Christmas the night before. The sting of that icy water, the heart rush, the electricity, the congratulations of people you’ve never met, but are probably related to, maybe it’s Christmas spirit, maybe it’s the remnants of drunkenness, maybe it’s Mullingar.