Travel with Angela Lansbury: Where to Celebrate St Patrick's Day, in Ireland, England, English-speaking Belize, Singapore and Irish pubs and pubs worldwide

Sunday, March 6, 2022

Where to Celebrate St Patrick's Day, in Ireland, England, English-speaking Belize, Singapore and Irish pubs and pubs worldwide

You can celebrate St Patrick's Day all over the world, especially places with Irish pubs. In fact, many pubs celebrate St Patrick's day. 'If you're Irish, come into the parlour,' as the old song says. But, as as a modern pub proclaims says, 'today everybody is Irish!'

On St Patrick's Day, I hope you will have ' the luck of the Irish'. Drink a pint of Guinness, and have the gift of the gab.

Ireland is home of the Blarney stone and known for its writers. The poet William Butler Yeats wrote: Tread softly for you tread on my dreams.

You can read the dreams and daydreams of other famous Irish writers. Alliteratively named James Joyce wrote Ulysses, which starts on a day in Dublin. Oscar Wilde was Irish and is known for his wit. Brendan Behan, another alliterative name. Jonathan Swift had his little people, in Gulliver's travels. Edna O'Brien. In modern times you find Maeve Binchey. Irish sounding names, Brendan, O'Brien, Maeve.

Go to a pub for a Craic and sing along. Drink Guinness, or whiskey. Eat simple soda bread. Or salmon.

Irish pubs have spread far and wide. So have Irish celebrations.

Singapore

Singapore has a street festival from the 15th to the 17 of March 2020.

I recall seeing St Patrick's Day being celebrated in Singapore at an Irish pub in Orchard Road. Singapore has several Irish pubs. Molly Malone, named after the alliteratively named and therefore memorable heroine of the song about Dublin's fair city. Another pub with a popular Irish name is Murphy's.

When I was back in London, England, I took this photo of Wetherspoons pub in Hatch End in 2018. Notice the big Irish flag, the rows of Irish flags, triangular and oblong, on the bunting, and the balloons in the flag colours of orange, green and white. I have explained the flag in another post.

Wetherspoons pub, the Moon and Sixpence, in Hatch End, London, England. hotot by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

In London, as I took the train home, on St Patrick's Day, the carriage was full of Irish people wearing green, and green hats given away by pubs, singing Irish songs.

Over in Ireland you can see a statue of St Patrick in Northern Ireland, at Paul. How alliterative.

St Patrick was a real person. However, it is not true that he was responsible for ridding Ireland of snakes. A geologist says there are no fossils of snakes, so there were never any snakes.

Thinking of hot countries, over in Belize, which is English speaking, being a former British colony, now independent, the pubs celebrate St Patrick's Day enthusiastically, especially the pub on the British army base. As my friend Edward Young, who is from Belize, enthuses, 'any excuse to party!'

I am preparing for St Patrick's Day. In Singapore, I bought green Irish shamrock theme sandals in size 4. I spotted them in a small supermarket in a condo, amongst the other flip-flops. I bought them in a small size 4. I buy boots in size five, and can wear socks to pad them out to the right size. I prefer adjustable sandals and shoes as my feet swell up in the heat and then shrink in cold weather or air conditioning. However, you need to buy toe-post shoes a size smaller. Too large and you are gripping them and getting hammer toes.

Or the sandals slip off. You fall. Or risk falling. Inconvenient. Unnerving. Inelegant.

When I wore the sandals they were not comfortable. But I consoled myself with the thought that I didn't like my first pair of Crocs when they were new, and now Crocs are my favourite footwear. You may know the saying, don't cook anything new for a dinner party. The same applies to shoes.

Good advice for travellers is: don't wear new shoes when travelling. Even her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has somebody with the same size feet wearing in her majesty's new shoes to wear them in for a day before wearing them out and about. Not wearing them out. (Ruining them.) Unintended pun. Wearing them in before wearing them out. Oh, the English language.

I shall wear my sandals on St Patrick's Day. You can't see your sandals when they are on your feet under a desk. Nobody else can see them on Zoom, unless you stand up and draw attention to them, or hold them up. What you need to be seen in green is a green tee-shirt or top or a green hat or headband. (And a green background.)

Tee-shirts from teeshirtplace have lots of amusing messages. My favourite witty Irish sounding saying is: World's tallest leprechaun. Here are a few of my favourites.