The Irish TImes has published a list of 50 reasons to love Ireland today. It doesn’t speak to my heart. Here’s the link although since they did the website redesign you now will have to click at least twice more to read the entire list. Sorry.

Anyway, as I said, it doesn’t speak to my heart, not all of it, or possibly, even much. We all, I guess, have our own things which cut into our feelings about the place, be it good or bad. Finding Hope In Bleak Theatre per Fintan O’Toole as sure as hell is not one of mine. So I decided to write my list.

Here goes.

1. Doolin Point on a day with offshore wind. A person standing here can look to the wave off Crab Island if they are a surfer, the Cliffs of Moher away to the left, and the Aran Islands away to the right. On a clear day, the lighthouse that way is dead clear. I wish there was a webcam down there.
2. The general mildness of the weather. Seriously. When we have snow, it’s minimal compared to a lot of other places on the same latitude. We have it easy. Our biggest complaint is the wind and the rain.
3. In the 18th century, we had the biggest telescope in the world in Birr.
4. William Rowan Hamilton and George Boole are two of our greatest mathematicians whose work has greatly facilitated the use of computers today.
5. James Whelton started the coderdojo movement when he was still in school, something which may turn out to be one of the better contributions to this smart economy our politicians go on about when talking about rebuilding our economy.
6. Flann O’Brien.
7. John B Keane.
8. Lough Corrib. Amazing place.
9. The neutrality markers doubling as navigation aids in the second world war.
10. The National Museum in Kildare Street, and yes it’s free and yes it’s on the Irish Times List but it is amazing and something we can be justifiably proud of.
11. The Museum of Country Living in Mayo. I’m not going to box the individual museums when there is something special in all of them. I defy anyone not to be moved to tears by a comment in that museum from a man talking about hearing classical music for the first time when the radio came to the remote part of the country he lived in. We take stuff like this for granted.
12. Marconi sending telegraphs across the Atlantic.
13. The weather station in Valentia.
14. Croke Park and Landsdown Road – two fantastic stadia. For a city the size of Dublin, quite an achievement.
15. The small unknown music festivals all over the shop. Willy Clancy School. West Cork Chamber Music. Malahide Pipe Band. Cork Folk Festival. And that’s before you get to the big ones like the Guinness Jazz Festival.
16. We’ve got fantastic climbing opportunities all over the place. Talk to Mountaineering Ireland.
17. Alfred Tennyson wrote The Splendor Falls for very good reasons. The area around Killarney is beautiful and justifiably popular.
18. We have some of the best surfing conditions in Europe on occasion. Right now, at 11.40 on a Sat morning, Bundoran looks particularly sweet.
19. Even if you don’t surf, we’ve got some stunning beaches. Barleycove Co Cork. Silver Strand Mayo. Coumeenole Co Kerry
20. We have some seriously scary roads. Scenic Road from Inch to Camp? Check. Keel to Keem Beach, Achill Island (check). The mountain road around Ballinskelligs?
21. We have some fantastic myths and legends.
22. The Book of Kells.
23. The Crawford Art Gallery.
24. We have one of the oldest operational lighthouse sites in Europe at Hook Head. And we’ve plonked lighthouses in some very dramatic and interesting places. The Fastnet counts.
25. Bog snorkelling contests.
26. Road bowling. Two examples of adapting the need to entertainment to locally available options.
27. Trim Castle County Meath.
28. Giants Causeway.
29. We don’t take too much seriously.
30. Some of our public art is quirky and amazing. Robot on the N21 between Charleville and Limerick? Model T Ford in West Cork? The bull somewhere outside Blarmey on the N21? The boats outside the tunnel in Limerick? Do I really need to make a whole list?
31. We punch above our weight in golf. And boxing.
32. Brown soda bread. Not long out of the oven wrapped in a tea towel.
33. Barrys Tea.
34. Taytos. There are two items on the lists demanded of visitors to emigrants. Strange that…
35. Dara O’Briain.
36. We have some ubertalented musicians in many fields of music who are doing their thing very successfully around the place.
37. We have given the English language some very interesting idioms such as people looking like they have been dragged backwards through a hedge. How do we do this?
38. The Dunbrody and the Jeanie Johnson and the famine ship memorial in County Mayo.
39. We still have (despite it all) quite a few local newspapers, however much trouble the nationals are in.
40. People talk. On trains, on buses, prior to concerts, in cafés.
41. We have some very good street performers.
42. It does not rain all the time. We owe the emerald branding to the stuff that does fall.
43. Kilkenny sort of reinvented itself as a design centre. Good going.
44. There’s that tree in Carlow that everyone has to take a photograph of.
45. Our politicians are semi-accessible (seriously – compare it to getting at the ones in other bigger countries).
46. We sort of embrace modern technology quite a bit. Don’t know why.
47. The Pen Corner in Dublin.
48. The English Market in Cork
49. Maeve Binchy.
50. The place is littered in history and the present. Regardless of how many gadgets you have in a 2013 car, you can’t go very far without tripping over a 12th century castle or a dolmen or something.