What are we supposed to be remembering?

Have we lost the ability to produce monuments? I ask this having seen the incomprehensible monument to what the taxi driver returning us to the airport described as a ‘junkie’s vision of heaven’; in other words the gigantic metal spike (or as the taxi driver would have it, “the biggest fucking needle in the world”) in Dublin’s O’Connell Street outside the shot riddled historic General Post Office.

Everyone in Dublin must surely make the pilgrimage to the building, the symbol of The Rising, to have the opportunity to stand outside it, look for and at the bullet holes, and muse on what might have been. I’ve been told that when the rebels were led through the streets of Dublin, members of the general public spat at them. It was only when the crass Brits decided to create martyrs and shoot them that the real trouble started. Whatever the hypothetical speculation might be, the reality is that this building, the street and the environs are important in the history of the Irish Free State. So why is there a big spike in the middle of the road?

The taxi driver (fountain of all knowledge) said that the raising of the spike was, as usual, beset with problems and a crane lurked in the main street for months waiting for the right weather conditions. Although a Millennium project, it did not manage to get built on time, but at least it had a better fate than the submerged countdown clock in the Liffy which was supposed to build up interest to the raising of the spike. “They might at least have made sure it was fucking watertight,” commented the taxi driver who also rejoiced in the memory of the slime which obliterated the clock face under the waters, adding that, the fucking thing was out of the water more than in!” And you should have heard him on Irish politicians, especially on one Irish woman minister; his description of her wiped out the whole history of the feminist movement in their attempts to moderate the language of sexist men.

Cardiff’s attempt at a big shiny metal sculpture signifying God knows what is outside the Millennium Centre: not as tall as Dublin’s, but with the added ingredient of being covered with falling water which coats the sides of the monument. This is an excellent addition and makes the object genuinely exciting. When the water is actually switched on. Which is more often than not, not. Having seen the thing with a shimmering film of moving water, when it is not running, the thing looks inert and dead.

In my view, at least the Cardiff structure is mostly there, because I consider the only monuments worthy of the name to be fountains. Cardiff had an unhappy experience when deciding to place a fountain in front of the City Hall. The City Hall is a fairly exuberant building with statues, a dome, a portico, large windows and dressed Portland stone. Although built in the early twentieth century, its spirit is Baroque and any attempt at a fountain should have had more to do with the Bernini than Bang & Olufsen. But Cardiff, in its wisdom, decided on a thin wall of water behind which a delicate representation of the three feathers in three spumes. The reality was pathetic: the wall of water was never level or convincing; the three feathers were spindly and, to put it mildly, squirts rather than mighty spurts. The only time the feature came into its own was when naughty students filled the thing with soap suds! It looked as though someone had been to the local garden centre and cobbled something together with cut price, second hand, cast off fountain bits. Eventually the ‘wall’ went and beefier fountains were installed and civic pride was restored.

We simply don’t do these things well. I wonder if any other city has done better.

Another thing which has improved is the Job Centre. My last visit (first year of university) was a searing experience: official distain matched with militant unhelpfulness. This time round, polite security men motioning me to comfy chairs and interviewers who took great pains to explain everything and ‘make me part of the process.’ I’m not sure that I actually gained anything, apart from a number of pieces of paper, but I did feel ‘valued’. Or something. I wait to see what will come of the form filling and discussion that I have completed.