Why I love the industrial estates of Ireland

YOU don’t see them in coffee-table books. They don’t appear on JustAnotherListWebsite.com’s ‘20 Reasons To Visit Ireland Before You Die’. They get a bad press. 

During the day, they are portrayed as the hallmark of the grim, soulless nine-to-five, like in the opening credits of The Office. At night, they are the perfect place for Nidge-types to conduct large, cash-based transactions or for boy-racers to have their New Horizons In Revving planning conventions.

But I still have a soft spot for industrial estates. I’m including ‘business parks’ and the odd retail park in this bracket, too. I’m not including shopping centres. They are awful. Just full of cranky children whining about wanting more Taytos. It’s the unheralded industrial estates I like — not just the newish ones, with the glass-and-aluminium frames and sculptures and work-life balance initiatives, but also the old ones; the ones with brown sandstone walls and crumbling pavements. The ones with plucky poplar trees that someone in the ‘landscaping section’ grudgingly planted years ago and which have defied the odds and now look down on humanity going about its business. In empty lots, the buddleia has a crankily invasive purple beauty all of its own.

Sometimes, business parks get notions beyond their station. I used to work in Park West, in Dublin. All the roads there are named after Irish authors and playwrights. I worked at the corner of Joyce Way and Yeats Way — on paper probably one of the most important junctions in literary history. Joyce and Yeats never worked in Park West, although it’s tempting to imagine they did: Joyce getting carpeted by his line manager for the rather ‘free-form’ nature of his status reports; Yeats booking a meeting room for an hour on his own, just to get a bit of peace. There was also a Beckett Way, around the corner. There was a call-centre on it, but I imagine you’d be waiting ages for an answer from them. I’ve not always been so positive about industrial estates.When I was a child, trips to them were a disappointment. Brightly coloured stickers on the windows of the premises looked promising. Maybe they sold Taytos. But it was usually tyre calendars or Castrol advertisements or a catalogue of rawl-plugs. Back into the car I got, to break the news to Teddy.

Speaking of cars, if you are not convinced by the aesthetics of industrial estates, you will at least agree that driving around them is pleasurable: there is nothing like the action-packed ‘yerra horse it anywhere’ parking and exiting. Whereas city driving is made stressful by lights and parking and other motorists, doing errands in an industrial estate, or retail park, is a montage of successful negotiations of roundabouts and generous car-parks.

And you’re not worried about looking cool. Everyone’s in their tracksuits, which are almost falling off one hip due to the weight of a measuring tape in the pocket. And there’s no humming and hawing when buying in the Roundaboutlands. They either stock the tile cement or they don’t. Badabing Badaboom. Back into the car for the next destination — what’s next? Hinges? I know a man in a tracksuit who’ll sell us those. There’s a sense of flow. (Unless you are looking for curtains, which is a long dark afternoon of the soul, no matter where you buy them.)

I’m thinking of writing a lavish photo-book: the Industrial Estates of Ireland — but not for the coffee table. It would go in the shed. Next to the tile cement.