TD 1
and depicted in Ulysses as one Cashel Boyle O’Con
nor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, the legend goes that Endymion lost his mind while rescuing a friend from a gin vat. He became an eccentric flaneur, always armed with two swords, and according to St. John Gogarty, speaking backwards and wearing the cuffs of his sleeves on his ankles. By all appearances, as someone upsidedown in a country moving backwards, he was St. John Gogarty said, the “National Mind.” And, in the 21st Century, few are as deserving as Acid Granny of that honorific. They cut through Temple Bar as the sun sets, ploughing down Parliament Street. Across the quayside crossroads, they dance frantically. The tempo of their set accelerates. A track comprised of bird caws appears to summon a flock of seagulls overhead. Reilly uses one of the chicken fillet rolls as a slide for his toy guitar, and Byrne approaches nervous pedestrians, asking questions in the name of “science.” “Excuse me sir, what did you have for breakfast this morning?” “Nothing.” “Nothing? A little bit of a famine throwback.” “Just like…” Butler begins, “famine times.” “Just like famine times,” Byrne replies. The performance is inherently absurd, and as such, a reflection of the city around them as it degrades. Like on tracks such as Would You Be My Landlord? and Respect the Garda, they soak up the various facets of Irish history, politics and culture, and spit them out as farcical composite images, or a deranged version of Reeling in the Years. “In most parts of Irish culture, there are always these strands of… just absolute bonkers nonsense,” says Daragh Lynch, the vocalist and guitarist of Lankum. “In a weird way, it taps more into the human condition, like Joyce, Beckett, or in musical terms, someone like Tommy Potts.” “Acid Granny’s taking to the streets is symbolic of the stripping away of creative spaces in Dublin,” Freeney says. “Our government favours hostels and hedge funds over artists that really keep Dublin’s heart beating.” Though not explicit in their politics, the group’s formation was noteworthy as having coincided with the emergence of the direct-action housing movement, Take Back the City in 2018. The next year, their trolley cropped up outside Leinster House one night as climate change activists chained themselves to the Oireachtas’ gates. And, in 2020, after retail chain Debenhams announced the closure of all stores in the Republic, they performed on the picket line, in support of the workers striking for 406 days. Over the course of their development, more and more their bandwagon came to 20 Oli Ryan