Abroad thoughts from home, instead of covering the tradfest in Brittany this week. Watch the Irish highlight of last year’s Interceltique festival, a live performance from Sinead O’Connor.
It’s a busy period for your CLUAS correspondents, away on dangerous assignments in exotic settings. Beijing Beat is undercover at the Olympics, subverting Chinese totalitarianism while checking out the women’s volleyball. Key Notes is backstage at Ireland’s music festivals, his Wonka-esque golden wristband granting him access to all manner of rock n’roll debauchery with people in skinny-fit jeans. And Sound Waves is surfing, an activity so hip it even makes Bundoran glamorous.
However, your Paris correspondent (right) is slacking off as usual. We’re back in Ireland for a couple of weeks.
Since our last Irish tour, a lot of things have changed here. You’ve swapped a media-friendly prime minister for a dour, pudgy finance minister. You’ve fired a hysterically incompetent native-born football manager and replaced him with a sixty-something Italian. Ireland: are you England in disguise?
Also, the weather is terrible and everything is ferociously expensive and terrible value. But fair play to you all, you’ve accepted it well. Not one word of complaint have we heard from you.
Well, we really ought to have been covering the Interceltique Festival in Lorient. This year, Ireland is principally represented by The Chieftains and Moving Hearts. So, that should be enough Irish people there, with no need for us to tag along. Last year’s Irish headliner was the forever-cool Sinead O’Connor. Here she is performing ‘Paddy’s Lament’, and giving plenty of love to France from Ireland: