Blow-Ins

Why did I come here?

That's a good one.

It wasn't my plan to come here.

I've been around to different countries in the world,

but I hadn't seen my own country.

I remember standing up in the street and thinking to myself,

I don't know what it is, I have to be honest.

There was just something about the air.

It just felt good.

I was like, you know, I've been in Amsterdam

for eight years and I knew more people here after two weeks.

As soon as I got to the top of Conor Pass,

I felt like I could breathe for the first time

in, must've been 30 years.

Just an insanely rich place

and it seems to all be concentrated

in this small little town.

I'd say you can say that it's magical

in a way that no one was planning on staying here

when they come here at first,

and it just takes a week to make up your mind and stay here.

I really don't believe that half the people

that live here, realize how lucky they are.

It's a complete bubble.

The town sort of takes care and respects us

as much as we respect them and the town.

Look, there's two cultures in Dingle.

There's the blow-ins and the locals.

If you're not from Dingle town itself,

then you're not Dingle and that's it like.

But yeah, being of blow-in,

I've just got used to that now 'cause you can't hide it

because of the way I speak.

It'll take 10 generations from now

for my great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren

not to be blow-ins and to be considered local.

Famously as a local said to me,

"If your grandparents bones are not in the graveyard, man,

you ain't local."

Is he local? No.

Yeah.

He's from Lispole.

He's from Liospole, it's four miles away.

So you know, he's a Liospolian,

he's from Ballyferriter, he's from back west,

but back west encompasses seven or eight villages.

You're a blow-in if you're from Dublin

or Killarney or Cork.

God, can't understand Cork people at all.

Oof, Dingle.

What do you want to know about Dingle?

Dingle is a cosmopolitan fishing village

on the west coast of Ireland.

And where the border probably is, is Lispole,

and then maybe Ventry?

When you hit Blennerville,

you know that it's just green thereafter.

You're nearly home. It's not far to go.

And the same when you come into Inch,

it's like, right, we're so close.

Goin' to school, you had the townies,

which were Dingle and the westies from west

of the Milltown Bridge

and you have, you know,

the Lispolian's from Lispole and the crowd

from over the hill where Castlegregory.

Oh yeah. There's, there's definitely a townie thing.

There's the townies and the westies.

So the westies would be people living back west,

starting from Ventry probably.

And yeah, everyone living in Dingle is called a townie.

And there's the blow-ins that kind of try

to mix everything between everybody else.

Dingle Town is certainly Dingle town

and West Kerry is an Gaeltacht.

What I think of blow-in is?

Somebody who's not from Dingle,

somebody who's, who wasn't born here.

I actually looked up a definition before

we came to meet you today and one of them said,

"you must be at least 10 generations removed from the area".

I think it will take about four generations

to actually be classed as a local.

The native native who's been here for whatever,

10 generations and, you know,

you're just not one of them.

I know someone that's in Dingle for 60 years

and is still called a blow-in.

I haven't lived in East Cork for

almost 40 years.

Right? But I go back in one day

and I'm more local than somebody

who's been there since I left.

You're always going to be a blow-in,

there's no doubt about that.

I'll be dead and buried in the local grave

and they'll say, "Oh yeah, she was from Cork".

I'll always be a blow-in.

Even if you kids are born here, you know,

it's still, you'd wonder are they still classed by some

as blow-ins or are they native?

But then there's also people who come in and marry a local

or get or have children with a local,

and are their children blow-ins?

They probably are, if they're half blow-ins,

can you be a half a blow-in?

Half blow-in.

Yeah.

It looks a lot like that girl there.

Yeah, I imagine I'll be, "Ah, yeah",

she's been here for 30 years.

She's local. We adopted her", that kind of thing.

I have lots of friends around here,

so I'd say I am like here local.

I'm not, I'm not different, just I'm, because they,

most of people like, they're not speaking Irish as well.

So it's like I'm not different to them.

I'd say 99% of the population of Dingle are blow-ins.

Well I wouldn't go that high now, Tom.

Well maybe 90%. There are a lot of blow-ins, so.

Yeah, so the Euros are on England playing

and I was gone, I'd gone down to my local pub,

great crack going on outside and as I've wandered in,

the lads are very kindly pointed out that, "Oh yeah,

there's your table there, that's the English table".

There's this empty table right in front of the TV screen.

So I've plunked myself down there.

10 minutes later my wife comes in and says,

"What are you doing there?"

I said, "This is English table, this is where we gotta sit".

So the two of us sat there for the rest of the game,

on our own.

It's more an elbow in the ribs, a term of endearment,

you know, "Ah, you fucking blow-in",

but the first five years we didn't own a car,

we let a car when we needed one,

but we rode our Boardwalk cruiser bicycles

into town and it was always, you know,

"You know, Trevis, the yank on the bike",

I'll always be the yank on the bike.

I suppose with the Dublin life, sometimes it can go wrong.

So from the early years I would've been into,

getting into addiction and things like that.

Every now and again when I look for some sort of guidance,

I speak to me, me grandmother, me mother's mother,

but she was the one that would always take me back again.

She would be the one that was, you know,

would always say "look he's still my grandson" so

You know, "It doesn't matter how much he does"

you know, and up until the day of her death

or a day or two before her death,

I know for a fact that it was on her mind

and that I was on her mind and that she was thinking about

And I was on a binge for a couple of weeks

drinking and drugging and things like that.

And it got on top of me, it just,

it was getting on top of me. It was too much.

I didn't wanna be doing it.

So I remember throwing me head up to heaven

and the saying, "Please."

Gran gives a dig out here, gives a hand",

never thought nothing of it.

Went to bed and the next morning,

I woke up with Dingle in my head.

I got a bus to Tralee and walked to Dingle.

Later on and I was thinking about it,

reminded me that film, The Mission.

Do you know the film, The Mission?

You know, where he kills his brother

and he's kind of, he's walking through,

I think it's the Amazon or whatever with bags

of armor and swords and all his,

his penance kind of, it was kind of like that.

Reminded me of that.

And as soon as I got to the top of Conor Pass,

I felt like I could breathe for the first time

in must've been 30 years.

And I just felt the weight being lifted off my shoulder.

So I knew then and there that it was the place for me.

Someone rang me to offer me a job in Inch Beach,

which is on the Dingle Peninsula.

And that's how I ended up here. Fell in love with the place,

the landscapes, the quietness of the place in the winter.

It wasn't, it wasn't my plan to come here,

it wasn't my plan to come back to Ireland.

And I woke up one morning in London and I said, "That's it.

I've had enough in London".

And I thought, I haven't been to America,

I'll go to America.

I said, "But you know,

I've been around to different countries in the world

but I hadn't seen my own country".

So I thought, okay,

I'll go back to Ireland and I'll tour around Ireland.

And then when I'm finished with Ireland,

I'll fly to New York,

walk out the airport and see what happens.

I came to, I was touring around Ireland,

I came to Dingle and I remember the first day

I came to Dingle, it was early in the morning,