Farmer’s Market, Cornmarket St, Cork city, Ireland.

The fishmonger, blinded by sunglasses and foggy rain, lacerated his own hands and dripped blood all over the customer’s fish

Cornmarket St, Cork city, Ireland.

The sheer unbelievability of the depravity and backwardness that will be encountered 24/7 in Cork city will not only stun you but also make you question the origins of humankind. That humans have evolved from an ape-like creature is clearly evident but after experiencing south-west Ireland you’d be forgiven for thinking that the race which resides there developed immeasurably later and from a much lower species of ape than the rest of mankind.

If you read on and imbibe the fatuous act I witnessed one morning in a Farmer’s Market in Cork city you’ll realise that the people in question don’t even have the levels of intelligence that is to be found in today’s higher-order simians.

One dank, wet and cold February morning I went to Cornmarket St in Cork city to check out a Farmer’s Market which pitched up there every weekend. Initially it was much as I expected: most of the stall staff had some degree of mental retardation and any queries about the product’s prices were met with slackjawed stares or fatuous comments that were millions of miles away from what might be construed as relevant answers.

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English Market, Cork city

I toddled among the stalls thinking that all was as it should be in south-west Ireland: I was surrounded by brain-dead ingrates selling iffy farm produce to slackjawed gombeens. Everything was a gaping-mouthed swivel-eyed normalcy until I reached a fish stall at the southern end of Cornmarket St. And then a thumping great reminder whacked my occipital lobe, informing that I wasn’t simply amidst the Irish but among the very lowest of this genus.

At this fish stall I encountered an unique act of Gaelic dumbness, so bad it would probably confuse a sober monkey as whether to laugh or cry. Fifteen to twenty natives waited in a queue to buy fish and when I glanced towards the stall’s attendant I saw a sight that would leave an experienced psychiatrist no option but to consult her textbooks in attempt to comprehend how this multi-celled creature could display such amoeba-esque behaviour.  

The least alarming aspect of the attendant’s and customer’s behaviour was their way of trading. The stall had on display a barely legible handwritten sign which informed that the fish was being sold in bags and that each (bag) cost €5. The Cork halfwits don’t do weights very well; a pound or half a kilogram of fish means nothing to them, they have to visualise what they’re buying and only then will they be able to gauge whether they have enough for that day's meal – just like 150 grams of sweets means nothing to a 3-year-old child, he wants a bag, and only then can he estimate how long he’ll be chewing for.

The oversized marker was stuck
to the scale’s dial similar to above.

When a customer stepped forward and ordered the attendant proceeded to gut and fillet a number of small fish which he then threw into a bag that he had positioned on a weighing scales. An irregular  piece of paper was adhered to the scales’ dial at about the half-a-kilogram mark and when the pointer reached its vicinity the fish-filleter knew he had enough fish in that particular bag.

It was obvious that this fish-filleter’s boss didn’t trust his employee (or son) to use the scales’ factory fitted markings to measure how much to put in each bag. But the size of the paper marker which had been used to customise the dial didn’t say much in favour of whomever it was chose it. It was about an inch wide and straddled both sides of the scale’s original 0.5 kg mark; and the fish-filleter wasn’t very particular, so long as the needle came anywhere near the vicinity of the ad hoc marker he was happy. So, depending on the fish-filleter’s whims, a buyer’s €5 could get him from as low as 300 grams, or as high as 700-800 grams of fish.

This type of simian idiocy is commonplace with sellers and buyers in south-west Ireland and after a few years of living there you become inured to it. But the manner in which the attendant was filleting the fish and the appallingly unhygienic practices which Cork consumers showed they will tolerate go beyond a normal person’s comprehension.

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Sophie Toscan du Plantier

I’ll reiterate that it was a cold damp February morning; a foggy steady rain was being driven northwards along Cornmarket St; you wouldn’t be able to distinguish a person’s face from any more than 12 metres away. But all the time the attendant was wearing a pair of wrap around sunglasses1; they were of cheap and gaudy manufacture and were jet black rather than simply opaque.

The fish-filleter’s hands looked as
if he’d put them in a meat grinder.

Upon spotting this fish-filleter it immediately became apparent that he couldn’t see what he was doing. Moving closer I realised it was much worse than him simply trying to blindly feel his way along in an attempt to look macho and chilled-out. 

In his self-inflicted myopia this sad idiot was actually lacerating his own hands as he tried to gut and fillet the fish. He was wearing blue latex gloves and both of these had numerous cuts with clearly visible bubbles of his own blood underneath – he was obviously in pain and suffering discomfort.

What further added disbelief to his schizophrenic act of imbecility was his frequently switching the knife from his right to left hand. It wasn’t that this chap was ambidextrous, it was because both his hands had become so painful that he had to alternate the knife frequently to give each a rest in turn.

Due to his awkward attempts to wield the knife with his right hand and then his left it was impossible to tell which was the dominant one – he had gotten to a stage where he was hacking at the fish in the manner of a blind madman. What was alarming and unsettling was that the blood seeping out from the cuts on his hands was being splattered all over the fish he was preparing.

He became more and more psychopathic
as he blindly hacked at the fish.

And like a scene out of a low-budget zombie movie the queue of natives moved forward one by one to buy a bag of fish which was soaked in the imbecilic fishmonger’s blood. At times there were up to twenty people queuing at the stall and each of them would have had a clear view of the fish-filleter’s abnormally sick behaviour – I’d suspect his idiocy even made passing gulls queasy. 

Not one of the customers showed any sign of discontent or unease at the fish-filleter’s insane conduct, or at his bodily fluids being all over the badly hacked fish they were buying and intending to eat.

I don’t think even a lobotomy victim would buy fish from this idiot let alone bring it home and feed it to their family. If this fishmonger was infected with HIV, Ebola or any other virus he most definitely passed it on to many citizens in Cork city that morning.

When you'd witness this type of incredible stupidity you'd think twice about rural Irish restaurants and gastropubs that advertise the use of fresh local produce. Are they buying the fresh fish and meat from traders that have in their employ insane people such as above self-blinkered imbecile. And what are the odds that the viruses and germs it has probably been infected with survive the cooking process?
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1It’s rare to enter a Cork or Galway pub or restaurant on any winter’s night and not find at least two morons roving around wearing gaudy dark shades. They’ll further exacerbate their moronism by attempting to slyly peep out under them when trying to count money or check their change.