From Celtic tiger to pussycat

After a healthy Irish lunch I drove blithely off through the streets of Roscrea, I think it was, to find that everywhere I went the populace was cheerfully waving at me, smiling, gesticulating or blowing horns. When I stopped to ask them why, I found that I had left on the roof of my car a wallet containing my entire worldly wealth, cash, credit cards and all. So paradoxically enjoyable was all this, so irresistibly amused and sympathetic were the bystanders, that I came to think of the event as a sort of leitmotif of my visit to Ireland.

For whatever else has happened to the Republic, through it all the populace has remained fun, quick, laughing and kind to foolish visitors. I was pottering around for a couple of weeks trying to sense the present feel of the country, and in most other ways found it impossible to escape the layered changes in the nature of Irishness that have occurred during my half-century of bemused acquaintance with the place.