DESPITE THE CRACKS, WE'RE ALL IN LOVE WITH DUBLIN'S FAIR CITY

WHEN SATURDAY COMES

- BY ROY CURTIS

PERHAPS, as with a mother blind to her child's imperfections, those of us whose love for Dublin blazes unconditionally are guilty of impaired judgement, of spying only the tiny rill of crystal water in a largely muddied stream.

But, truthfully, I think not.

It is entirely possible to recognise the city's cracked terrain - a crippling, unsustainable cost of living, housing and homeless crises, menacing figures in nighttime shadows, a blight of dereliction that renders corners of the old town as sad and disfigured as a storm-tossed galleon stripped of its mainsail - and still feel a well spring of fondness for Ireland's enchanted capital.

Recognising the place that resides in our blood in lines from Belfast-born poet Louis MacNeice's Dublin: "The lights jig in the river/With a concertina movement/And the sun comes up in the morning/Like barley-sugar on the water."

Or struggling to dam the tears listening to Phil Lynott's haunting hymn to the town from which he emerged like an electrifying sun god: "How can I leave the town that brings me down/that has no jobs/Is blessed by God/And makes me cry."

Like one of the city's great mythical characters, Strumpet City's Rashers Tierney, Dublin can be both vagabond and custodian of an alluring personality.

If you turn your ear to the doomsday prophets of social media with their exaggerated cynicism, it can feel like nothing but a jet stream of misery flows from the city.

As Trevor White, director of the splendid Little Museum of Dublin, a 24-carat cultural treasure on Stephen's Green, wrote recently, what these naysayers share is "a determination to see the bad in everything".

Yet, as White pinpoints, dozens of international studies reveal the city to be relatively peaceful and safe. They equally show the overall happiness index of the residents is strikingly high.