The Golfer and the Scobe

Katherine and I managed to find retail jobs catering to the opposite extremes of Cork society, which has made for interesting conversation and armchair sociology. Far more so than in the United States, playing golf in Ireland is a very class-conscious affair. Sure, there are snoody golfers on American courses, especially at the more expensive clubs. But there are also countless public links full of beer-guzzling Joes hacking divots the size of mortar impacts. Alas, I have witnessed the latter half much more so than the former.

In Ireland, if you golf it means that you're rich. Or, at the very least, you want people to think you're rich. During my visits to Katherine's workplace it isn't too hard to see what stratum of people she's dealing with: well-dressed, well-educated folks (it's easy to tell the education level by the accent, or lack thereof). And some of them are willing to shell out a few hundred euro for golf attire in the middle of a nasty recession. Katherine's customers are also all Irish...for the significance of this, read on.

My employer, Guiney's, is a different story. There we cater to the most modest of shoppers, who are desperately looking for deals. On my first day a woman asked me about winter coats, one of which she wanted to buy for her construction worker husband. Relying on my own knowledge of construction attire, I found her a good candidate for €29. Her response? "That's a bit expensive, don't you think?"

Guiney's customers are a good cross-section of the new immigration to Ireland, as are the employees. I work with Slovaks and Poles, and I have only met about 20 percent of the workers. Of the dozen or more customers who ask me for help during the day, probably three to four are Slavic, one or two are African, one is Indian, and the rest are Irish. And the Irish are sometimes the hardest to understand––this is where I run into the real Cork accent that everyone grumbles about. But it's fine because half of the time they don't understand me.

Why golf is so class-biased I'm not entirely certain. The easy answer is tempting: it's because of the English. They certainly exported a class system along with settlers. In a similar vein is hunting: here, and in Britain, hunting is a very elitist activity, dating back to when the forests and the game therein were property of the barons and the King. It's funny how utterly opposite the situation is in America. Please speak up if you disagree, but for the most part hunting is regarded as a poor rural activity.

Long story short: Katherine keeps track of seventy-euro golf jackets, and I arrange brooms that are worth €1.50 each. But we earn about the same, so I'm not complaining.

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I'm painfully aware that I haven't been posting many photos recently. The fact that it has been raining constantly is partially to blame, as is the work schedule. We have tentative plans to journey out to Kinsale or somewhere this weekend, I'll be sure to have a full photographic record. But for now, I will add to the visual appeal of this entry with an older picture I took in Killarney––the interior of St. Mary's Cathedral, which took about seventy years to build: