Even though parents and grandparents would have you believe that there was no gallivanting in their days and that there was no sex in Ireland before Wanderly Wagon, there isn’t a house in Ireland that doesn’t have a fading greying naturally sepia-tic photograph of Granny draped erotically around the shoulders of Padraic O Conaire, the statue, not the man.
And in that photo you would see a different side to your ageing relatives, a fun side, a side normally hidden in accordance with the mores of the times. There was something about that statue that made people throw caution to the wind, to let down their curtain of pretence, to behave in public in a manner not normally accustomed with the era.
And when you ask about these photos, you get a deep silence and a sigh and a faraway look at times that were more innocent and more fulfilling.
I have one at home of my mother and her young friends taken sometime back in the fifties when they were gallivanting on a night to Galway. Probably having walked 60 miles barefoot and then cycled 100 miles across fields of briars and bushes, and yet emerged at the dancehall to dance to the likes of Doc Carroll and Old Man Trouble, and eat custard creams, while still looking the picture of loveliness.
And when people see those pictures, there is a great sense of Galwayness; of a Galway before the Galway we know now. Of an image that straddles both old and new Galway. And that is why the importance of the O Conaire statue cannot be overstated.
This week, the original statue was taken from its new home at the City Museum and transported to Dublin where for a few weeks, it will reside at a metals foundry where its exact likeness will be cast in bronze. (Try stealing the head off this one, punk! )
When he has left his casting couch, Padraic will then return to the City Museum where he will see out his days, while his shiny new bronze likeness will be implanted in Eyre Square to bring human character to an area that really needs it after a decade of environmental dysfunction.
To be honest, I often think that Eyre Square and its multifaceted nothingness of steps and railing and hard edges is a monument to blandness that has long cried out for a central feature with character. The Kennedy bust and the fountain are both nice but in essence they are supporting actors to the main star. And in 2002, that star left the stage when he was implanted and taken away to live a life in the shadows.
By the end of this year he will be back, and how fitting it is that just as the envelope with our application for the Capital of Culture bid is being licked in the city, our most famous monument to a native writer is making its way back to us. The tens of thousands of visitors who pass through Eyre Square every week will now have a new reason to stop and stare, a new reason to find out about O Conaire and his writings, and a new reason to love Galway.
And that image of the little man with the hat will travel the world and for a new century will also become an icon of fun and Galwayness for a new generation.
