…in County Ramsey as a yoong lad; loife was guid.

Of cairse, we were coovered in scabs and coal dust and usually doused in me Da’s vomit – he drank a wee bit – but loife was guid.  We lived oof the boonty o’ the land – the scallion, the arugula, and o’cairse, the staple crop – the tomato.  Acres ‘n acres o’ them, the staff of loife.

Oy remember as a lad, we had tomaters for ayvery meal; tomato toost for breaykfast, boiled tomayters for loonch, tomato bisque with a shot of whuskey for dinner.

Then?  Then came the Greet Tomato Bloight of ’09:

Yes, the same virus that caused the six-year Irish Potato Famine has struck our own tomato crops. Indeed, said blogger has actually found blight on her plants.

The late blight has also shown up in the UK.

More here and here.

Unsurprisingly, the cold and wet summer we’ve had isn’t the best weather for tomatoes (or peppers), but it’s great for a lot of fungi and virus that attack these plants.

It got all the tomayters; the ‘ayrluims, the Bootcher Boyos, the Big Boyos, all of ’em.

We troyed.  We ate endive, mint, even jicama.  But eventually, we couldn’t goo on.

So we emigrated, by the millions.  We sailed to Oirland, where the tomatos practically grow on plants.

And every year, for Saint Barack’s Day, we get droonk and have a parade and vomit in the streets.

But sometoymes oy woonder aboot those oy left behoyd…

(MITCH ADDS:  Yeah, yeah, I know: I can do dang near every Commonweath accent there is, down to different neighborhoods in London.  I can even tell Cornish apart from Welsh, for crying out loud.  But I can’t even speak a halfways convincing Irish accent, much less write it.  So I know, I know, it was all Scottish.   

But it was lowland, dagnabbit.