Don’t Cross the River
I, and am sure you as well, have heard this phrase a thousand times, “wrong side of the river”, in dublin.
I wonder what exactly it means? And which one is the wrong side? No, seriously, I really want to know.
Am I suppose to, and others to force to, believe that one part is better?
How long did you say you had lived in Dublin? 5 years? Surely, in that space of time, you will have learnt that Dublin is a divided city. Divided by faith, divided by creed, by social class and a dozen and one other factors, but the overriding factor is the Liffey. People who live to the North of the river are Northsiders, those who live on the South are Southsiders – surprise, surprise. Equally unsurprising is the fact that the Northsiders will tell you that those who live on the Southside are not so friendly and not to be trusted and that the Southsiders will tell you equally unsurprising things about those who live on the Northside. Is there really a difference? Walk around the leafy avenues of Terenure, Rathgar and Donnybrook and then wander around the streets of Ballymun, Artane and Coolock. Take a stroll in Herbert Park or Bushy Park and then another in Ellenfield Park or any of the other recreation grounds in the Northside districts, and then tell me if you can’t see the difference. Moving from the suburbs of the South to the North is like moving from one city to another or one planet to another. They are so different. In the South are the expensive detached houses; in the North are the streets of tiny terraced houses – but there are exceptions and anomalies. For instance without doubt Clontarf, located in the Northside, actually belongs to the South and Tallaght, located in the Southside, belongs to the North and there are others which I won’t list here. Someone obviously made an error and got the map upside down during the planning stages.
But as to which is the better area to live that’s a matter of taste. Maybe I should ask whether you are Northside or Southside before I write anything else in this blog.