Stab City

Limerick's reputation has spread out from its industrial fringes like some oily stain, bubbling and flowing in so fast a manner that you have no choice but to yell, "Quick, Ted, quick, get the mop it's heading for the carpet!"

A famous site for stabbings, gang warfare, and Frank McCourt's father abusing his mother, Limerick is an industrial carbuncle on the otherwise perfect, emerald face of Ireland. Almost every comedian tells jokes about how awful Limerick is, as it seems to be a guaranteed laugh from anyone who is not from Stab City. Otherwise, it's a definite shank in the spleen.

So, while sitting on the bus, cursing my iPod's batteries, I made a promise to myself: I was going to squeeze some positive blood out of that gritty stone.

I think I got a few drops.

Limerick was the first time that I've stayed with people who were not family members, hostel patrons or couch surfers. Amazingly, a friend's cousin gave me a place to sleep and welcomed me into his social circle. But here I discovered the first major flaw of traveling by yourself and staying with locals -- you're the only one who is on holidays. Thus, for most of my stay in Limerick, I was sitting in lounge rooms with the television on. That's my fault too though, because I should've hopped off my arse and gone for a walk, but for the record, I'm not actually complaining here. Rather, I'm using the literary device of "setting the scene" to bitch without getting into trouble.

Anyway, this meant that my view of Limerick was of row upon row of grim council estate housing, of streets draped with grey skies and fast food rubbish. Every boy had all but the top of his head shaved, and they were all sporting tracksuits and faux gangster bling. Punctuating every suburb were tagged walls, barbed wire and electricity pylons. Even the horizon was braced with the metal skeletons of grim industrial development.

So my first thought was, "Time for a can of lager".

It's now time to introduce Brian. In ancient, prehistoric times, pantheistic tribes believed that every animal, rock, tree, waterhole or piece of poo had an inherent, spiritual spark. These essential beings captured the most pure image of whatever object they inhabited.

Brian, I honestly believe, is the spirit of Limerick.

Standing at 6'2", with dirty blonde hair, a cheeky smile and hands that could be carved for Christmas, Brian's first words to me were - in an accent thicker than a pub toilet's atmosphere - "It's all gravy, baby!".

Though almost entirely unintelligble, Brian and I spoke constantly in the few days I was in Limerick. He was "born, reared and dead" in Limerick, and at 20 years old was overcoming a hefty load of baggage.

In his mid-teens, Brian witnessed his twin brother burn to death in a house fire. Another brother was lost due to a weak heart. Since then he's been charged for assault and drug offences, has had numerous bones broken, arteries slashed and his lungs and liver are apparently now on loan from Keith Richards.

But, that's starting to change. Though he still drinks a lot (I personally watched him drink 15 litres of beer in an eight hour period), he has straightened a lot of his life out. You can see it too. Occasionally, when he gets really excited about a subject, Brian's usually cherubic face spasms into an aggressive snarl akin to (warning: nerd alert) Bilbo's lunge for the One Ring while talking to Frodo in Rivendell. That, Brian later tells me, is how he looked all the time.

Limerick's changing too, and Brian proudly showed me the new development of the Thomond Park stadium. Ross, my awesome host, also told me that the inner city is going to be revamped and turned into a pedestrian-only thoroughfare.

"The media pick on Limerick all the time," Brian said one night, "and it's unfair. Crime happens here, yeah, but it happens everywhere. People poke at Limerick because of our rep. Fucking Angela's Ashes."

He's right too -- Dublin has a much higher crime rate than Limerick (look up the facts yourself, I'm in an internet cafe). What Limerick does have, however, is a very colourful criminal history. Two days before I arrived in the city, a massive gang feud fired up after a year's hiatus. It seems that a whole load of boys were released from jail on the same weekend and hopped straight into shooting eachother. On the actual day of my arrival, the city was in a tense state of lockdown, with Gardai cars zooming around the city.

"Poor fucker had to dig his own grave," Brian told me, explaining that the most recent feud member to be shot was driven around town, dressed as a woman, and shot dead at the age of 20. The only reason why he was found was that he'd been forced to dig in a very muddy area so, a few days later, his corpse sunk head first into the soil, causing his feet to sprout out of the ground. It was his funeral the day I came to Limerick.

"See that hotel there?" Ross asked, pointing at what looked like a giant cigarette lighter hanging over the river.

"A woman was murdered there a few years ago. Went there to meet up with a man she met in ones of those ads in the paper. The cleaners found her the next day."

"And there was the time when the man leapt to his death from the top floor. Also, a manager caught employees robbing the till one night, and was stabbed to death."

It's quite hard to get away from the sense of Limerick being the seediest, crime capital of Ireland when you're surrounded by that sort of talk. Still, I did enjoy of my time in the city, even if it was spent sitting down watching British soaps and music videos with single mothers in council flats.

UPDATE: I received an email from Aonghus, the Connemara boy who had his face busted in a fight. It turns out that he didn't lose a tooth at all; his jaw was fractured in half and is now being held together by a titanium plate.

And that wasn't even in Limerick!