Last week I flew back to Ireland for an emergency wedding. It was in fact a brilliant two days, where the wine and song flowed well into the night as I retraced my last visit to Dublin with the enemy, the good lady wife. It was a pleasure to be back among taxi drivers who are all philosophers, accountants, tour guides, potential Euro MP’s, statisticians, gynaecologists and crop rotation experts. If you don’t know what I am getting at, get into a Dublin cab and start a conversation.
The one who took us from the airport, “Noel”, started with the Celtic Tiger economy, touched on Big Brother and ended with the O J Simpson trail, a journey of only twenty minutes but it seemed longer! When the enemy asked him, how far the village was if we wanted to walk from the hotel, he answered ….. ten minutes!
‘Mind you, ‘ he added. ‘That’s an Irish ten minutes. You can do it in ten minutes but you would probably have a stroke!’ Wise words from the Irish Tourist Board there!
Wandering around Dublin, the first thing I noticed was the sign on The Irish Business School door. It read ‘Closed’. Business is not good in Ireland. There was also a shop called Eternity. That was closed down as well. I found that a little ironic
As a romantic gesture I suggested that I took the enemy back to the restaurant where we went ten years earlier when we decided to spend the rest of our lives together. The name had changed but the staff were the same and settling down a waiter came over and got talking to us. We explained that is was our ‘sort of’ anniversary and told him of our night ten years ago and we held hands in the candle light. As the soft music played, I remembered a woman on the table opposite punched out her boyfriend and then pushed a pint glass into his face. Six waiters sprang out of the kitchen just like the film Crouching Woman, Hidden Vegetable and joined in the fracas. Within minutes, the bloke was bundled up like a roll of lino and delivered by the six waiters into the hands of the waiting police. A light spread across the face of our waiter…..he was one of those six and he remembered that evening…not us I hasten to add…just the fight and was able to described the assailant and the injuries to ‘punch drunk Pat’.
‘Your wife had the perfect night out in Dublin!’ stated the waiter. ‘Good meal, plenty to drink and got involved in a fight!’ Wise words from The Irish Tourist Board there…again. He offered us complimentary drinks to celebrate our anniversary and looked hopefully around the restaurant to see if someone would start a brawl for us, just to recreate the atmosphere. Sadly it was not to be.
We got back to the hotel at midnight and there were two functions going on, a wake and a wedding. In true Irish style, by the noise level and frivolity, it was difficult to tell which was which.
Slante
Fitz
