Roughly once a month I go to the German shop to get all the all the stuff I didn’t list here. For a discount store that gets bad press betimes, I have always been overwhelmed by the service. Until this week that is.

A trolley with 6 trays of cat food for my neighbour, who, by the way, has a cat and isn’t on some economy drive; 2 large packs of loo roll with a cute kitten on the wrapper, not that I’ve ever wiped with a kitten although I wonder what …; anyway, 2 large bags of dog nuts for my best friend who is a dog; 2 slabs of German beer for me who I’m very fond of; 4 packs of kitchen roll; 3 bottles of washing up liquid; and so on - 2 of this, 4 of that, 5 of another.

A trolley groaning under the weight. And me groaning too. I get to the checkout and place one of each item on the belt. By her name tag I guessed the (scaldingly hot) girl is Polish. Cześć się masz? Cztery z tych pozycji; sześć z tych; dwa; pięć; trzy - pointing out each and the remainder in the trolley. All distributed so as to be easily visible, mind you.

Was she impressed at my crap, yet brave attempt, at Polish? No! All items must be placed on the belt. But why? I always just put out one of each? All items must be placed on the belt. But that’s pointless. And they’re heavy. All items must be placed on the belt.

I gave in and took everything out. All the while declaring resistance is useless! in my best Vogon.

The guy behind me obviously wasn’t on for hassle and had the belt piled high before I had paid. As I turned to leave I heard her tell him you will have to go to another checkout - I am closed and she walked off. He roared after her: You people are gone as bad as the Irish.

Maybe she was just having a bad day. Or maybe it was a case of when in Rome, drive like a lunatic, shout a lot, eat pizza for lunch etc.

MacKozer has been writing about racism lately. In his latest piece he recounts the story of a Polish man in the UK found guilty of rape and murder despite evidence to the contrary. (The John Cornwell reference in the article can be found here). Prior to this, he wrote about the growing number of homeless immigrants in Ireland and the growth of racism in Western Europe in general. Mac has been personally subjected to excessive abuse on his blog by anonymous trolls.

Kevin Myers, in the Irish Independent, writes of the tidal wave of immigration. While I am not normally a fan of Mr. Myers, he makes some excellent points: 600,000 people arriving on our shores in the last 5 years is the same as 45 million arriving in the US or 9 million in the UK. Such a massive influx over a short period of time has to have an impact. The social fabric changes almost overnight. Incidentally, for once Myers, made me giggle: African after African in Balbriggan complained there were no places for their children in the existing local schools … how could we be expected seven years ago to have planned school-building projects in north county Dublin for Africans as yet unborn?

By the way, Mr. Myers, I suggest you keep this article on your hard-drive as you will get to use it again seven years from now. So few newcomers completed the last census form that we still don’t even know the true population never mind have the data needed to make plans for the future.

Myers is right - racism is not about a country’s inability to provide services for an unforeseen tidal wave. Let’s take this local: Don’t arrive unannounced to my house expecting lunch. My fridge is never well stocked. Call me first and I’ll have something prepared. Or better still, expect not to be offered lunch and eat something before you arrive to keep you going. As MacKozer says, so many [of his country's] people come to Ireland completely unprepared and without money.

MacKozer is right again - racism is about prejudging someone’s character, ability, intelligence, even propensity to crime based on their nationality, colour or creed and treating them differently because of that. Let’s take this local: My close neighbours were burgled this week as they slept. A lot was taken but by far their greatest loss was a family heirloom, a ceremonial sword handed down through generations. We all know how important such things are. Far too many of us know how it feels to have had their home compromised. It is impossible to sleep after such a thing. The whole community offered sympathy - many in person. Yet very few refer to this family as the Malhotras. They are the Indians. Mention the Malhotras and the response is who? Oh, yeah, the Indians. Everyone knows their name but just won’t use it. Is it a subtle way of maintaining distance?

Again, local: A woman called Tylda works in one of the pubs. Try saying the name. It’s easy isn’t it? But the vast majority feign an inability to pronounce it. She is called Tilly, Hilda, Helga and more besides. (I can only guess at what she would be called if her name was Zdzislawa or Ewunia). More commonly she is simply the Polish girl. No name - just a nationality and a gender. Not a person. Over the years there have been a Kate, a Kay, a Katie, a Cáit and a Kathy working there. Yet Kay was never confused with Kate. Nor was she called May.

When I was young, the biggest farm in the area was owned by a German company. The manager, Kurt Schlosser, married and reared a family here, yet twenty years later he was still the German.

Ireland has always been xenophobic and the racism was there before Myers’ tidal wave. It will be there if that wave washes back out. But we need to know what it is. It is not our inability to provide schools for the unforeseen numbers of newcomers’ children or to provide accommodation for immigrants who find themselves homeless through their failure to ensure they have the means to survive until they find work. These are issues we must address, but we are not racist for not having them solved yesterday.

Racism isn’t only about the glaringly obvious: Automatically assuming the foreign party is the guilty one; branding all Muslims terrorists; calling someone a Chink or a Polak; physically attacking an individual because their skin is the wrong colour; paying poor wages for long hours. The good people of Ireland don’t do these things. Oh, no, we condemn these acts. We are not racist, they shout. Yet aren’t the good people of Ireland being just as racist by keeping their new neighbours at a distance; by refusing to get to know them; by failing to nod a greeting when they meet; by pretending not to know their name?

Now some crowd called the Metropolitan Police Sikh Association (MPSA) in London have gotten into the should Gardaí be permitted wear turbans debate. They say the uniform policy was 40 years behind the United Kingdom and accused the Gardaí of racial discrimination.

Well lads, do you know what you can do? You just go fuck off! It’s none of your business telling a police force in another state what they should, or shouldn’t, be doing. That kind of shite is best left to despots like Bush and Putin.

Why are they spouting on anyway? Probably because some Irish journalist passed the story on to them and asked for a comment.

Why do our journalists and politicians always insist on using Britain as a role model? Ireland brought in ASBOs because Britain had them. Dublin is considering congestion charges because London as them. Ireland implemented a penalty points system for driving offences because Britain had them.

Where will it end? Will we revert to measuring things in inches, ounces and acres because Britain do it? Will we pull out of the euro just to be like Britain? Quick lads, Britain has had a foot and mouth outbreak - we’d better have one. How about a monarchy?

Do our law makers only read the Guardian or the Times and only watch the BBC? There are more countries in Europe, never mind the world, than Britain. Hey, Bertie, go get yourself today’s Frankfurter Allgemeine, El Pais, La Stampa. Oh, I forgot you don’t speak foreignish - well sit down and look at Euronews or France24 for an hour.

Britain may be our closest neighbour geographically and, in some ways, culturally. But she is not our twin. Ireland’s issues of multi-racialism, multi-culturalism and integration are not clones of hers. Too often we forget that Britain went out into the world and created an empire. Ireland didn’t *. Britain retains strong links with former colonies. The Commonwealth of Nations. Former protectorates. The people of many of these territories are legally British citizens or entitled to be.

Often we hear it quoted come into my house, respect my rules or when in Rome, do as the Romans do. In Britain’s case, most of her immigrants are Romans. It is their house.

I am not saying that Ireland can therefore ignore the issues or be heavy handed in imposing Irish culture and values on newcomers. What I am saying to our law makers and commentators is to seek out another role model. Stop slavishly following Britain’s lead.

* Okay we did a bit of it around Britain’s west and north west coasts, the Kingdom of the Isles and all that, but we took weekends off and after invasions we always said sorry about that, lads, but shur it could’ve been worse.

The county of Kildare, sometimes referred to as the land of the three S’s (sheep shite and soldiers) is more widely known as the short grass, due to the grazing of sheep on The Curragh plain. Her residents are known as Lilywhites. Or at least we were. The Central Statistics Office has just reported that only 4 out of 10 living here are from the county.

I knew that. I didn’t need to see census figures. Most of my neighbours have Dublin accents. In my local shop I’m served by Russians and Pakistanis. The filling station is staffed by Indians and Chinese. Strolling the length of the main street in Naas I will hear 20 languages. There are signs over shops in Hindi and one finance provider advertises 100% mortgages in Polish. Does this make me an ethnic minority? I’d find that kind of cool, but then I hear the pay is not great.

Is Naas suffering an identity crisis because of this? I think so, though it manifests in subtle ways. The council have funded signage and pathways for walking tours in the guise of tourism initiatives. Are they really telling the newcomers to go get to know their new home town? Submissions were requested from interested parties on the provision of places of worship for heretofore uncommon religions. But not before a big shiny new GAA complex was built - GAA being the true religion of the Gael.

The latest débâcle is reminiscent of the Dingle-An Daingean-Daingean Uí Chúis saga mentioned recently by Conor and previously by Eolaí. No, there is no attempt being made to adopt the Irish name for the town. Rather the issue is one of deciding what the town’s Irish name actually is. An Nás appears over the court house. The county council offices show An Nais. The sign on the post office reads Nás na Ríogh. On other signs the accent is omitted from Ríogh and some don’t have it in Nás either - Nas na Riogh. Even Nás na Rí pops up in places.

Councillor Seamie Moore is calling for a plebiscite to settle this once and for all - “People recently moved to the town refer to it as An Nass, they don’t see the fada, and we don’t want to have an association with an ass”. Seamie may have his head buried up his Nass because this is something I’ve never heard. Many of the newcomers are more used to accented vowels than we Irish are. Why some have even cracked the accented consonant thing. Seamie might better serve the community feeding the gondolas.

Even if a vote happens and a name is selected I have my doubts we’ll see conformity in signage. After all, this is the council who named a new road after Theobald Wolfe Tone and then erected a sign reading Wolftone Street.

Macra na Feirme’s second annual Know You Neighbour weekend is on the 14th and 15th of this month. What is that all about?

Well to start with, Macra na Feirme, is Ireland’s young farmers’ association. If you are a member, or in the know otherwise, you get to call it da macra. That shows you are really cool. Way back when I was in da macra (see how cool I was then!) the membership was 20% young and 80% confused 30 and 40 year olds who, for farmers, knew little about growth and never moved on to the adult equivalent - the Irish Farmers’ Association.

But anyway, they did, and still do some good work such as organising the Know Your Neighbour weekend. You can find out all about it on the website. It’s not a great site mind you. It looks like it was designed by a very junior member, even a child - all milk and cookies. Well there are definitely plenty of cookies and I’m sure there’s a link to milk somewhere.

What a fantastic idea, I thought. I’ve love to know that hot babe who moved in recently. Biblically if possible.

When both myself and God were in short trousers I knew everything about the neighbours. Names, ages, occupations, phone numbers of those had them - I would have scored top marks in the Know Your Neighbour quiz. There are far more houses now and I couldn’t tell you half the newcomers’ surnames.

So I popped around to a few of the older families - the Coughs, the Snots, the Sneezes (no relation), the Spits. Isn’t about time we got to know some of the new folks - the Ejaculations, the Farts, the Wees, I asked. The response was muted. The attitude was that they aren’t from this neck and we’d have nothing in common. But we could have a barbecue, a few beers, a coffee morning. It’d be fun. Paddy Cough suggested we invite the Belches back for the weekend. They were great neighbours and sadly missed since they moved. But that wasn’t the point of the exercise.

There was nothing for it but to go ahead on my own so I called in on the newbies. The Ejaculations and the Wees had a problem with a few beers and the former aren’t really morning people which ruled out coffee. The Farts weren’t mad about barbecue for some reason.

I’ll have to think of a mutually acceptable activity. And involve the old-stock too. I never realised integration could be so difficult.

- Primally wimally woo.

- What? What now?

- Nothin’. Just looking at the back of your paper. What’s a Sarko?

- Eh, Nicolas Sarkozy is the new president of France. Now go away - I’m reading the front of my paper. If you’d stop talking just for the sake of making noise, I’d get to read the rest of it.

- Oh, grumpy woompy woo today aren’t we. You’d no problem putting down your paper to talk to her earlier on.

- Did it ever cross your mind she might have something to say that’s worth hearing?

- Yeah, right. What would she have to talk about? All she sees is this place day in day out. And anyway, her English is shite.

- Her English is improving rapidly. Her French is good. Her Russian excellent. Best of all, her German is fluent, so if we’re having difficulty we switch to that. She has a masters in economics and European trade and has been accepted for a Ph.D. The money she’ll make here will help a lot with that. She is a qualified showjumping instructor and competed at international level. She makes great pottery and takes brilliant photographs. She is a self-taught web designer. She has read books I struggled with. She has travelled more than I have. You, on the other hand, are a full-time shop assistant and part-time bar worker and have never done anything else. You look at the pictures in Hello magazine and go to the Canaries once a year. No contest!

- It’s just because she’s pretty.

- Oh, yee gods, give me patience! This is déjà moo.*

- It’s just because you fancy her. You’re trying to get into her knickers.

- Hardly. I’m nearly old enough to be her father.

- She’s not that hot anyway. I’ve got bigger boobs.

- True. And a bigger ego. Pity your IQ doesn’t pass the double-A mark.

- Men! Yee’re all the same. Yez treat women like meat. Tits and arse is all yee think about.

- Well what I’m thinking about right now, is that you should get your tits off the counter, your arse in gear, go do some work and let me finish my paper before it turns into yesterday’s.

* The feeling you’ve heard this bullshite before.