Dublin

Dublin. Ireland. A city of millers.

You notice it on arrival. All around the airport arrival terminal. The terminal is much in need of renovation – in fact a new terminal is being built – so this, you think, explains the milling.

You notice it again in busy O'Connell. Street. Well there are so many tourists there that their presence must explain it. But on further examination, there are a lot more locals than tourists and even the locals – or perhaps especially the locals – mill.

Then you notice it at what in other cities might be called pedestrian crossings. Well these ARE pedestrian crossings but unlike many other cities, the people don't quite behave as you might expect – or hope.

Delightfully – or dangerously. Some people wait for the lights to change; others second guess the change of lights and begin to wander across early while others ignore the whole pedestrian lights thing and just cross. Any which way. So that if you happen to cross against them, neither you nor they know whether to veer slightly to the left or slightly to the right. And drivers approaching a crossing not only slow down but often give way to pedestrians crossing against the lights.

Having become conscious you notice it more. You see it again in or around the Temple Bar area. Again there are lots of tourists here but most of the people in this area are locals. Milling into or out of shops, theatres, galleries or - this is Dublin - bars.

And then there are the landmark attractions and the paths leading to them. Around the entrance, within the portico and then in the courtyard of Trinity college for instance, people mill. Just as they do around Dublin Castle, on the way to the Chester Beatty Library or – much further out of town - to the Irish Gallery of Modern Art.

So what causes this milling? I first thought it must be the Dublin aura. It’s almost mythical status that events and people have given it. James Joyce, sweet Molly Malone, the potato famine, the Easter uprising of 1916 or of course St Patrick and the snakes. As you think about Dublin and all these mussels, uprisings, authors or migrations, you could easily find your mind milling and that could easily lead to ambulatory milling.

But I think they are not the cause of modern day milling. Of milling as a late 2009 Dublin art form.

If you have no plan as to where you are going then it doesn’t matter where you go. That is a truism of sorts. In Dublin you may have a plan and you may know where you are going. The truism is that in Dublin if you have a plan there will be no way of knowing how you are progressing against the plan because Dublin, unlike most modern cities - and many not so modern – does not have signage systems.

There is a general though not complete absence of street signs. The absence is clearly unhelpful but even the occasional presence is also unhelpful because these signs are invariably not where you'd expect them. Many for example are at knee height. Presumably for the benefit of small children or leprechauns but not for the benefit of the majority of direction-seeking people.

Even the locals get confused. Down there, the policeman said to me. Turn right at Molly Malone's statue and then go straight on. But his left hand – his pointing hand - pointed left.

Major landmarks, though they may be indicated in maps, frequently do not have signs outside to let you know you've arrived and often, as you progress hopefully toward the major landmark, signs are confusing. The National Art Gallery for example is along Nassau St but though there are signs to some of the other museums in the same vicinity there are no signs to that Gallery.

I found the directions to Irish Museum of Modern Art on a brochure and they seemed quite clear – in Military Road opposite Heuston Station in Dublin City. But in the real world that station has two sides, Military Road is not directly opposite either side and the Museum itself is about 1.5 km or 20 minutes walk from the station. There are no directions to confirm you are going in the correct direction. None. Not even in Military Road itself.

My assertion that people in Dublin mill is belied here. They don’t mill at the Museum of Modern Art but that I suspect is because they don’t manage to get there. Yes, there was quite an absence of people here. No doubt they were back at Heuston station or somewhere contributing to the milling there.

Dublin Castle is right in the Temple Bar area and the Chester Beatty Museum is nearby but finding either proved extremely difficult. Apparently there is a sort of shame attached to Dublin Castle because it was unsuccessfully attacked by the Irish at different times and because it is an English castle. This apparently explains why it is relatively unsigned but I’m not sure that that explains the difficulty in finding the nearby Chester Beatty Museum.

Interestingly from somewhere in this vicinity there is a sign to the Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane which is about 2 km away.

Once you’ve got to your landmark finding your way around is still not without difficulty.

For instance having arrived at the Irish Museum of Modern Art it took me a while to find the entrance to the gallery. Neither in the grounds not within the courtyard are there signs as to how to enter the building.

I finally found a place marked “reception” though there was no-one there receiving people. Signs here referred to e.g. the West and East wings but there was nothing to indicate which wing I was in and therefore which direction might be West or East. Nor was it immediately obvious that for one wing you went upstairs but for another you went outside [where again there were no signs until you found the wing through am unmarked door].

The corridor which seemed most likely to lead to one or either of these wings actually led to an exhibition area which was not itself part of the Museum of Modern Art but to an historical exhibition about the building itself which at one stage was a hospital for soldiers returning from one of the European wars.

The Chester Beatty Library consists of about three or four floors but as you go up the stairs there is no indication what is on the next level nor whether you are allowed to proceed to the higher levels [it turns out that you are].

I visited the promisingly titled National Photographic Archive. There was just one exhibition but no indication of what the exhibition was about. There was no introductory poster though there were captions on most of the photos many of which referred to Peter Kavanagh. So who, I was left wondering, was Peter Kavanagh?

Trinity College Dublin. I did find the book of Kells because whilst milling in the College portico I discovered that a tour of part of the College was about to start from there. It was an excellent tour and – as promised – ended at the queue to the Book of Kells.

After milling through that exhibition [in this case it was not absence of signage but quantity of people] and peering at the pages of the Book of Kells I found myself in the Long Room library. It is most impressive but why was there an exhibition about Napoleon? And though I ultimately found it was in chronological order it was not initially clear whether you went up, down or criss-crossed the display.

So no wonder people mill and even extend their milling to crossing the street. So confused.

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