Michael Moynihan: No trains and planes, just automobiles for Cork jazz
Singer Christiana Underwood and musicians Liam O’Brien and Eoin Leahy ready for the jazz. Picture: Clare Keogh
AUX armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons!
I quote La Marseillaise advisedly but with good reason. The struggle is now upon us.
I refer to the concerted effort to cut Cork off from the rest of the country, a transparent attempt to downgrade the city and its environs by isolating us from the rest of the island.
The evidence is before your eyes.
The old saying that all roads lead to (insert name of location) for (event synonymous with same location) has had to be modified with the announcement that there will be no direct train service to Cork for the jazz weekend.
This means that all (rail) roads still lead to Cork for the jazz weekend — you just won’t be travelling on any of them once you get to Mallow.
There is an €8m project, aimed at upgrading the signalling system, scheduled for completion during this period which will necessitate bus transfers between Mallow and Cork city on the weekend in question.
“Signalling is complex,” Jim Meade of CIÉ toldthis newspaper last week.
“Behind the signals themselves, which tell the driver when it’s safe to proceed, and the route ahead for their train, signalling systems tell us where the train is, control the movements of trains, and control systems such as points to direct trains.”
Well, allow me to retort: In this instance the signalling to Cork is not complex at all, but rather pretty simple.
As in: Get stuffed.
In the interests of clarity it should be pointed out that the train down to the jazz is not usually an experience to be compared to the California Zephyr or the Orient Express, though murder often seemed a strong possibility on some of my trips.
In another life your correspondent spent much of the working week in Dublin before getting a train to Cork on Thursday evenings.
Over the years this led to some interesting experiences: Being stuck on an unlighted, unheated train somewhere in the midlands one winter evening, in a darkness so complete it was like a sensory deprivation tank rather than the 5.10 (express) out of Heuston.
On another occasion a member of the Houses of the Oireachtas was removed from the train before we had even left Dublin, to the audible glee of one of his parliamentary colleagues sitting in the seat behind me.
Then there was the early morning trip in the opposite direction when a gent sitting not too far away fished out his mobile as we rolled out of Kent Station and detailed his plans to mislead the tribunal he’d been summoned to. Very loudly.
(I sometimes imagine an opposing barrister halfway up the carriage making notes furiously as we zoomed through Charleville.)
None of those experiences matched up to one or two jaunts southwards to the jazz, however, when the train interior resembled the roof of the US Embassy during the fall of Saigon, but only if the invading hordes were not North Vietnamese troops but Dubs looking forward energetically to a couple of nights away.
(And obviously if those invaders were not trying to get off the train/embassy but were happier... actually, we’ll leave this one here.)
Your appetite for spending nearly three hours cheek by jowl with Dublin people intent on arriving in Cork well refreshed diminishes with age, but I bow to the obvious reality.
The jazz has been a boon to the city in terms of revenue, exposure, and on-street bonhomie for over four decades, giving businesses of all kinds a welcome boost just before winter really gets a grip. If you’re serious about your John Coltrane or Charlie Mingus, you can also find something that will appeal to you. If you’re not, you’ll find plenty to appeal to you as well.
All of which makes the train issue such a colossal kick in the backside. One of the attractions for Dubliners of your columnist’s acquaintance was the accessibility: A single train journey and you were plunged into an enjoyable weekend away.
A single train journey and bus transfers from Mallow doesn’t have quite the same romance attached.
If you think I’m overreacting, consider that the city is already without its air link.
The work on Cork Airport’s runway continues apace, but that work means there’ll be nobody getting an eyeful of the city from a window seat as they bank in from the Irish Sea until next month at the earliest.
Again, not good news if you’re in the mood for some Miles Davis-influenced sounds this weekend.
Presumably the work being done in Cork Airport is also necessary, but as Pat Dawson of the Irish Travel Agents Association told this newspaper: “It’s an awful shame it wasn’t done sooner. We were told it couldn’t. And we have to take that on face value, that it couldn’t be helped, but Shannon will gain some of what Cork has lost.
“But there’s no doubt about it, Cork Airport will be weakened by this. It takes a lot of hard work to get an airline in. It’s a two- or three-year project. And when they leave, you have to do a lot of fighting to get them back.”
Establishing an event like the jazz weekend is a challenge but it’s worth the hard work if it can be done, because it means the festival is the first port of call when considering the entertainment highlights of that particular week every year, the dominant event when you get to this part of the calendar. You don’t have to consult your notes from Harvard Business School to realise that when people associate your particular event so strongly with a particular time of year, then you’ve achieved your goal.
That's why putting obstacles in its way is so disappointing, though I presume it could be worse.
Mind you, when I got a push notification a day or two ago that the Jack Lynch Tunnel maintenance closure zone would extend further than usual on the N40, with the N40 to close in both directions, from the Dunkettle Interchange to Junction 9 (Bloomfield), I began to worry.
Is there going to be any way in or out of the city at all this weekend?
The only way to turn these lemons into lemonade is to realise that the only people at the jazz this year will be Cork people. That means no nasally intoned questions about where the Metropole is. You won’t have to interpret odd requests for coddle. You can sit back this weekend in Cork and realise you are among your own people, people you understand and who understand you.
Allow me to perform an elegant three-point turn in order to congratulate Irish Rail on helping to make the jazz a more enjoyable experience all round, confined as it is to God’s chosen people.
Merci beaucoup.
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