Avanutria and I spent a few happy, if chilly, hours wandering about London (69th best city to live in due to petty crime) watching the early St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.
London has a sizeable Irish community, and it was a pretty big parade; it gets bigger every year apparently. There were bands playing in Trafalgar Square (fountains dyed green), workshops in Leicester Square, and a Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square. There was a Food Fair in Covent Garden, and Ava bought some Irish Porridge Oats.
Anyone else join in any St. P D celebrations around the world yet?
London also has a sizable English population but I bet they do b*gger all to celebrate on April 23rd. We’ve never really got the hang of celebrating as a nation have we.
No early celebrations here.
In this part of the US most places have Corned beef and cabbage as their “special Irish” food for St. Patrick’s day. Is that actually valid? Is Corned Beef and Cabbage Irish? Is there a more Irish food I could eat instead? Besides beer.
Quite. http://www.stgeorgesdayevents.org.uk/home.shtml
We’re generally encouraged to be proud to be British, but ashamed to be English.
Personally I’ve always felt the other way round. Proud of my English antecedants as well as my Irish and Welsh ones. (If any Scots would like to adopt me I’m open to offers. 
)
Bacon and cabbage would be closer
I’ve been trying to get Friday off work but to no avail alas.I’m on 06:00 to 14:00 this week so I don’t mind going in on the day itself as long as I can Boogie the night away but a few hardened Gamblers - above me in the Hierarchy - got the week off for the big Racing Festival at Cheltenham and my attendance on Friday is not negotiable.
I might drift out in the afternoon with a set amount of money in my pocket,just enough to get me home early-ish…but you know what they say about the best laid plans of Mice and Men…
I do however have the small consolation that I am a Man and not a mouse..
Mrs.D is afraid of mice…
I live in hope..
Slan,
D.
I marched in the Spokane St. Patrick’s Day parade on Saturday, March 12. They always have the parade the Saturday before the 17th. This was the first year the Spokane Folklore Society was involved. Usually I just go downtown and watch the parade, but because I asked at an SFS board meeting early this year why SFS wasn’t in there, guess who got to organize an entry! We only had a few people but enough to carry the banner and pass out info.
Didn’t get out to the Celtic Nots concert on Sunday the 13th, and probably won’t make it to the Wolf Tones at a local casino on the 18th. And on the 17th my daughter has a band concert in the evening at 7:30 - I start a new job tomorrow and will be working until 7 so my husband is going to have to get her home after he closes the store, eat, get her down to school, come pick me up, then we need to get back up to the concert. After that all he’ll want to do is go home and watch Survivor, which we have to remember to tape.
~wanders off to the stereo to turn on some Irish records~
But what suffices as a celebration is going to a bar, drinking domestic swill (at least here in my lovely town…Bud IS the king 
), and maybe listening to REAL Irish music like “When Irish Eyes are Smiling”, “Harrigan”, “Danny Boy”, sung by various sundry characters (my dad was all into listening to “Danny Boy” sung by Elvis last night when I talked to him.). When you mention listening to something that might have a FIDDLE in it, you get strange looks…nevermind asking about a whistle. Oh well…not everyone can be as cultured as I am