I HAVE a confession to make. I have been succumbed to the Love Island hype. Well, I now watch 10 minutes of it here and there, and I know who Maura is. She’s growing on me. That’s about the height of it. Not my proudest moment.
During this week, a teenager in the house was glued to the nightly catch-up with the residents of the most amorous island on telly. I sat down, joined in and asked, "Why are they always so serious?" Is it just me, or is there is no craic on Love Island?
The girls are all make-up and skimpy outfits and the fellas are all about the six packs.
It’s all about capitalising on Puppy Love. I have said it before, I think that whoever devised Love Island spent time on the summer courses in the Donegal Gaeltacht learning Irish.
I was bored to tears by the deep and meaningful conversations on what I saw of Love Island this week. I understand that we only see edited, carefully chosen sections of what happens each day on this TV set. What we do see is far from exciting, it’s very childish and can be downright mean. That said, it is a licence to print money and engages millions to watch an hour of television every night. That is the holy grail for any broadcaster.
During that hour each evening, the contestants are made-up to the max. When we were at the Gaeltacht, we made a bit of an effort for the evening pursuits, which was usually a céilí. This preparation involved a wash (remember, we were allowed one bath per week, each), maybe putting some mousse in the hair and borrowing someone else’s clothes.
The clothes. On Love Island the girls can hardly move in the outfits and shoes they wear. The lads wear very tight shirts to ensure that the fruits of their labour in the gym are firmly on display.
In the 90s, we thought that we were very cool. Most people wore Levi jeans, baggy jeans, combat trousers, T-shirts and baggy sweatshirts – the same for both sexes. The type of T-shirt someone chose to wear spoke volumes about them – usually what type of music they were into, and THAT was usually the deal breaker.
I went to see Eddie Vedder in Dublin on Wednesday night (what a night of music and craic – I love him now more than ever) and the T-shirts were out again in force. I’d say many members of the audience proudly wore the Pearl Jam colours back in the day. Come to think of it, a few people I saw in the audience appear to have adopted 90s style for life.
Back to the Gaeltacht, our Oileán Grá. We didn’t have Casa Amor. We had the salubrious surroundings of the hall. Girls and boys stayed with local people, who banished their own children to a hut out the back and we slept in rooms with at least four bunk beds to a room.
Each day we set off to the hall for a 10 o’clock start. We had Irish classes in the morning, singing and dancing classes in the afternoon, games and then a céilí in the evening. The opportunities for coupling, which would have been a sneaky court at best, came at break times, when we were playing games, and when we were dancing. I still maintain that there’s something very attractive about a fella who can luascadh/céilí swing properly.
We spent lots of time getting to know each other, chatting, laughing, flirting of course. Very often, after time, the lovely personality shone through, and with that came true attraction.
For us, the three weeks in the Donegal Gaeltacht all lead to the Céilí Mór – the big céilí on the last night of the course when everyone hoped that they might get to kiss the person they had their eye on during the course. If your desired one had been coupled for the previous three weeks, you hoped and prayed that they would decide to uncouple for the Céilí Mór.
There wasn’t much romance about the céilí mór, more a production line of girls and boys lining up to kiss each other. In that regard, the experience was just as crass as Love Island.
The whole concept of Love Island has been staring us in the face all these years. Time to try it as Gaeilge? Oileán Grá – after all, for thousands of teenagers each summer, Irish is the true language of love…
