Curried Chips, Tribunals, Connemara and Neutrality - it's 1999!

 

 Your scribbler sitting the bar in Terry's, Clifden, by Allan Cavanagh of caricatures-ireland.com

 

( More from the DV archive never before seen online. Here comes 1999, when we partied like … y’know!)

April 1999.
Not To Do List. 

Back in Ireland after 4 years in America. Time lingers heavy in the air, like the scent of jasmine at twilight.

Economic booms will come and go, but the essential qualities of Irish life do not change, because this young nation is populated by an ancient race, and at the core of the Irish heart is a need and respect for time.

Time with friends; time to be alone; time to walk the dog; time to play with the kids; time to wobble on your bicycle as you balance it on your neighbour’s gate and chat; time to live your life away from work, to say hello and have a few shcoops; time to appreciate those living alongside, to realise who you are and what you want to do about it.

The very thing that America could not offer became the coveted object of all this scribbler’s craving.

Squeezed into the narrow walkway by the roadworks on Shop Street, my hurried worried Americanised legs are just itching to get a move on.

The bodies in front of me are ambling. There is simply no other word for it. Ambling they are, past the workers on the other side of the wire who, for their part, appear to be shovelling sand and sliding cobblestones at a luxuriously relaxed pace.

‘Things to do things to do’ I mutter like a maniacal White Rabbit, picking up pace as I clear the roadworks, until I’m wrenched to a standstill.

A pair of hands grab my shoulders from behind. The Guru suggests a coffee, which turns into a pint.

By the time I finally get to the shopping centre I feel late. I have neither a schedule nor an appointment; merely the legacy of anxiety from the offices of California.

Sixty feet above the shopping centre, raised on top of a pole, a sign proudly declares 

NOW'S THE TIME FOR DIY!

Directly below, a giant quasi-digital clock reads 

10:56

I check my watch.

It’s 12:15.

‘Now’s the time to fix your clock!’ I say out loud to myself, taking the time to enjoy the irony of it all.

 

July 1999.
The Riddle of Galway? 

Ahh, the relief of finally lying down ... as that cruelly early Galway Summer dawn appears from behind the curtain ... ooohhhhh ... god, bed feels good.

Now, time to check the spin-ometer. Just close the eyes for a few seconds, see if the insides of my head are of a mood to start challenging the laws of centrifuge, physics, Copernicus and Pat Kenny.

Nope. Brain and senses feel calm and stationary.
Good.

Next see if the ooo ... aaahhh ... eee ... contents of my stomach are going behave themselves, or act out Newton’s laws of acton and reaction.

Nope. Lovely.
Smashed but safe and intact.

I strain to lift my head, to see if the Scores on the Time Doors say 4:30 or 5:00am, the Snapper soothes my partied brow.

“Ssshhhssshhh ... you’ve been feeding the Beast, babe, that’s all. You know how Galway City loves to be fed excess...”

So true, so very true, and the day being the Guru’s birthday, I drained it of every drop of celebration there was to be had.

A riddle for Galway occurs to me, worthy of the Sphinx herself: in which city can you step out in the morning on two legs, walk all day alongside many legs, and return to lie down, legless?

 

July 1999.
What next? Gardengate? 

At any given time there will be at least one pathetic political tribunal going on in this country. I’ve never lived anywhere like it.

The Tories set new parameters for sleaze in the early ‘90s with ministerial auto-erotic deaths and toe suckers abounding, and we know too well all about presidential cigars and the Oval Orifices of America, but you have to hand it to the Irish for their far-from magical ability to make a court case out of truly boring nonsense.

Beef, speeding tickets and supermarkets do not grab the public imagination in the same way as oral sex with interns and princesses crushed in cars.

There will always be some belligerent TD adamantly denying that he ever met, knew or spoke to the person who absolutely did not, at any time, ever give him a brown paper bag with £80,000 in it, and further, he didn’t even know what denomination the non-existent notes were of, because he didn't ever look in the imaginary paper bag.

What’s next? Dana found guilty of trimming her hedge a little too far over her neighbour’s fence? ‘GardenGate’ could run for three years, easy.

Anything will suffice, it seems, if it diverts the powers-that-be from the onerous task of helping ordinary people in their day-to-day lives.


September 1999.
No place like it? 

Vacating Taylor’s Bar at midnight I enter the chipper the proud possessor of £1.23, knowing full well that a small curried chips costs £1.30.

Engaging yer one with a smile and a joke about the big black dog that sits outside all day, I ask her for £1.23’s worth of small curried.

She smiles a little coquettishly and proceeds to cram the plastic tray with as many chips and as much sauce as the blighter will hold. Generous, warm, the Irish are ever-attracted to humans and humour.

Home.

She then carefully takes four paper napkins and slowly, ever-so carefully inserts them into the bag so that they are completely immersed in the sauce. The napkins instantly disintegrate into a papery curryfull mush.

Home.

October 1999.
Neutral? I Don’t Think So.

As an ideal, neutrality has always sounded safe, sage and civilised, but it’s not ideals that walk the streets.

Does ‘neutrality’ simply imply an avoidance of war, or does it aspire to purity of intent?

Ireland’s stance in World War Two lay rooted in the past, in resentment, the Empire and Partition. The nascent nation did not want to embrace Nazism, but had to turn its back on England, simply because it finally could.

‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’, whilst a little naive, is a wholly understandable reaction, but is it neutral?

I don’t think so.

Four years after the war, the Irish Minister for External Affairs, Mr. MacBride, was explaining his government’s position on membership of NATO to the Dáil.

“As long as Partition lasts, any military alliance or commitment involving joint military action with the State responsible for Partition must be quite out of the question as far as Ireland is concerned.”

Neutral?
I don’t think so.

Michael Collins, writing in the Manchester Guardian on December 7th, 1921, saw Irish membership of a League of Nations as:

“… necessary if the old world of internecine conflict is to emerge into the new world of co-operative harmony … Ireland’s inclusion as a free member of this league would have a powerful influence in consolidating the whole body, for Ireland is herself a Mother Country with world-wide influences.”

Neutral?
I don’t think so.

As a member of the European Union, Ireland has already aligned itself with two of the world’s nuclear superpowers and several members of NATO.

The notion that the EU is simply an economic arrangement between wholly independent nations went out of the window with the EU’s recent involvement in wars in former Yugoslavia.

As much as Ireland benefits from EU membership, it can no longer ignore the conflicts that influence the collective group.

During the Kosovo war, some members of the Irish football team made it clear that they were so appalled by Serbian activities, they did not want to play the Euro 2000 match against Yugoslavia at Lansdowne Road. The administration refused to permit entry visas to the visiting team.

This tiny act, so far from neutrality, was made by the same government that now tells us that membership of PFP will not affect Ireland’s neutrality.

What neutrality?

The Irish will hopefully never become international aggressors, but it is preposterous for them to pretend that they are, or ever have been, neutral.

©Charlie Adley

11.04.2026.

Connemara Conundrums and my Paramilitary Paranoia! (DV 1994, Part Deux and 1995)

More from the DV archive never before seen online. Here comes 1994, Part Deux and 1995. Enjoy! 

September 1994.
Alan Sugar? He’s nothing like me. Oh, except he is. 

It’s Sunday afternoon and almost the entire population of my Connemara village is in the pub, either watching the Arsenal-Spurs game, or having a good auld chat, d'ya'know.

On TV, the camera pans the North London crowd, and finds the head of Alan Sugar, the Tottenham supremo.

A voice chirps from the far end of the pub. “Jaize but doesn’t that yoke look just like Charlie!”

The souls who have got to know me in the six months since my arrival all mutter in agreement.

“Sure, but he’s an awful bollox, that fella!”

“Hexackerlee!”

Much laughter.

It’s time to protest my innocence.

“I have absolutely nothing in common with that ‘orrible specimen,” I plead, pausing to consider if this is the time to reveal myself to them, “… except, of course, that we share a religion!”

Long silent pause.

“But but but isn’t he wonna dem Jewish fellas?”

I smile, savouring the moment. The Jewish Community in the West of Ireland is just about non-existent. Like, I know all five of them by name.

Looking at the faces of these farmers and their families, jaw-dropped staring towards me, I can be pretty sure I’m the first Jew that many of them have ever met, let alone had living among them.

As with our shared respect for oral history (talking shite for hours) humour is as important to the Celtic people as it is to us Jews.

The Irish use it as well and as often as we do. Just in completely different yet equally amusing ways. 

“Sorry lads! All these years you waited for the dark hat, the raincoat and long floppy curls, and instead you got a Chelsea fan!”

Another long pause as they all reconstruct their horizons of ethnic stereotype.

“Well, that’d be why you’re always in the pub during Mass then!”

“Don’t take it personally Máirtín, I don’t go to Synagogue either. I’m an Atheist.”

“Whassat?” coughs 88 year-old Packie, never a day away from the pub in 37 years. “Whassat he says about his pancreas?”

January 1995.
Paranoia can be fun! 

“All I’m saying is you want to watch your accent when you’re up in Dundalk, Charlie.”

Whispering Blue is trying to feed my natural inclination to paranoia. What he doesn’t realise is that sometimes I just plain enjoy feeling paranoid. As an Englishman living in Ireland it can be an exceedingly helpful attribute.

“Why? What’s so special about Dundalk?”

“Well, let’s just say that about 60% of all cross-border missions are planned there. What is it this lad wants you to do, anyway?”

“He’s a friend of mine from Connemara, and his poor old mum has to move into a ‘home’, so he wants me to drive my van up there, pick up a few family heirlooms and then bring them back to Connemara before the house is sold.”

“His poor old mum, eh? A likely story. Tell me, this mate of yours wouldn’t be into any of that Republican stuff at all, would he?”

I could just turn my brain off.
I could just say “No, he’s as straight as a die!”
But it’s more fun to build the paranoia.

“Well now, let’s see. Ooh yeh, now that I think of it, he used to write for an Phoblacht.”

“Jeeze Charlie!”

“Oh, and he has a photo of Gerry Adams and himself sitting together on a rostrum. It’s got pride of place on his mantelpiece in his house out in Connemara.”

“Oh lord, what have got yourself into this time? Look, it’s a traditional route, you know, when the Brits want the guns handed in, the RA run ‘em to the west and bury them in the Connemara bog ’til they’re needed. I’d take a good look at what he’s loading into your van, Charlie mate, really.”

“Well, now that I come to think of it he said he didn’t like the idea of stopping overnight in Galway City on the way back. Said he wanted to get the stuff back safe. Said he couldn’t risk losing the contents of the van.”

“I’ll bet he did! They’d have him up against a wall for that! No probs.”

Fear is now running around my brain like a naked hippy at a free festival, but my mate continues to stoke my madness.

“And wouldn’t the IRA Army Council just love it if a Brit got caught doing the gun run for them?”

A vision appears in front of my eyes. My mum back in London, watching the BBC News on her tele, and there’s my face up on the screen, arrested for IRA gun smuggling.

This was no laughing matter.
A cool clear head: that was what I would need on the day.

Stay sharp, cool and clear-headed.

My mate arrives on the Saturday and we’re due to drive up to Dundalk on the Sunday morning.

Cool. Clear. Sharp.

We drive to Galway City, where a few shcoops are downed. By 4 in the morning the poker game back at the lads’ house has been going for hours. Blitz appears out of the kitchen carrying plates heaving with rashers, eggs and chips.

So, no sleep on the agenda here then.
Cool clear head.

The Body keeps us alert by calling the new game as only The Body can.

“Seven card stud, two in the hole, last card down, red threes, black sevens, queen of diamonds and nine of hearts are wild.”

“What??”

“You heard me, and don’t ask me to repeat it, ‘cos I can’t remember either!”

Around 8 in the morning we set off on our cross-country jaunt. Cool sharp and alert are not the terms that best describe my state of mind. The road dances in front of me and the signposts look like they’ve been written in Klingon.

I’m so worried about keeping on the tarmac that any fear of of terrorist activities seems secondary.

The sun shines, and gradually I relax and start to enjoy the trip. My friend turns to me.

“Oh yeh, I forgot to tell you. There’s something I think you ought to know about this stuff we’re picking up, Charlie.”

“No! No there isn’t! Please don’t tell me! I don’t want to know! I’m just a lowly innocent scribbler. You can’t make me do it! I wasn’t there! I know nothing!”

“I was only going to say that some of it needs to be put in boxes when we arrive at my mum’s. That’s all. Why? What did you think I was going to say?”

“Who me? Nothing. Nada. De rien. Zilch. Zip. Hey listen, I’ve been practising my Ulster accent. Tell me what you think...”

January 1995
The nightmare is over... or is it? 

We can open our eyes now. The nightmare is over. We have a new government, and it looks pretty much like the one we voted for two years ago.

When Dick Spring climbed into bed with Albert Reynolds he gave a raised finger to all those who’d voted for him. A stamp in the face for all those who voted against Fianna Faíl. If the ensuing coalition works, just call me Raoul.

Is this set-up what we want?
Who knows?

There was no General Election.
But did we want another General Election?
Not really.

This was the politicians’ mess, and they had to clean it up.
Free from the tyranny of the ballot box, the politicians came together and produced a Rainbow.

Sounds pretty, doesn’t it?
What chance a crock of gold?
Ha.

The Russian Doll that is Fianna Fail continues to shed its skin, reappearing in a form identical to the last, just a little smaller. Maire Geoghegan-Quinn was just the wrong shape. She didn’t fit the mould.

Over on the left, the Labour Party has become a bizarre vulture, lying on the ground as a rotting corpse, occasionally raising its head to tear chunks from its own stomach, rip flesh off its own body, feasting and gorging on itself until it rises again, stronger and larger than before it was dead.

John Bruton looks more like a turkey than a mythical phoenix. Pulled one way by his Tanaiste and another by his Treasury, he tries to regurgitate financial fodder straight into the left-wing beak of Social Welfare.

Our entire government sorted, and all without the stroke of a voter’s pencil.

Democracy is great, isn’t it?

 

February 1995.
Know your enemy! 

If I hear one more Irish person wondering how the violent scenes at the Ireland v England match at Lansdowne Road might have been avoided, I think I might scream.

Take it from someone who knows:
It wasn’t anything to do with the fact that the England ‘fans’ were on the upper tier.
It was nothing to do with the Garda presence.
It mattered not whether the first goal was scored by Ireland or England.

Indeed, if there hadn’t been all this domestic browbeating, I’d have been happy to leave the matter well alone and starve the thugs of the oxygen of publicity. And when this colyoom starts to sound like Margaret Thatcher, you know there’s something rotten in the air!

What we saw that sad night was nothing more than a Party Political Broadcast made by a well-organised alliance of three right-wing English groups. They crossed the water solely to do what they did, and sadly, they succeeded with gusto.

But truly, I love this country. On the night of the game I was sat in what can only be described as a Republican pub in Belfast, chatting with a lad from the Falls Road.

As we watched the riot develop on the TV, I hang my head in shame, weary of the burden of Englishness once more.

Far from acrimony, the wit flies fast and furious.

“So that’ll be the headlines in the Sun tomorrow, eh?” shouts long-haired beardy across the bar. “ ‘IRA thugs dress up as England fans!’ Eh? Eh? Whaddyasay?”

 

©Charlie Adley

05.04.2026

When Connemara bliss turned into a messy nightmare - (DV '94 Part 1)

More from the DV archive never before seen online. Here comes 1994, Part 1. Enjoy!

February 1994.

I’m sitting on a loo in a B&B in Clifden, but I am not alone. There on the window sill is a little plastic female doll who is wearing a long woollen skirt.

She stares at me with a certain dignity in her eyes, which is somewhat surprising, considering the fact that her skirt is stretched out, over and down the spare roll of loo paper.

There is something plainly disturbing about people who feel the need to hide lavatory paper in decorative nicnacs. It is bourgeois and hypocritical.

There are, no doubt, some among us who pass only perfumed wind and delicate stools shaped like handmade Belgian chocolates, but most of us are willing to accept that bodily functions are not clean and tidy matters.

We know it’s a messy business, and we need to use toilet paper, which when unused is doubtless the least offensive part of the entire process.

So why on earth is there something in the minds of 60-something women that requires the disguising of the clean spare roll?

I know that it’s not right to mess around with other people’s things, but the lines of ownership waver a little when you pay for a room for a night. Picking her up, I’m delighted to find out that she is not just half a doll, but a whole female of the plastic world.

Mercilessly, I plunge her head down into the spare roll, folding her skirt inside-out over the pink paper sheets.

As a protest it’s fairly pathetic, but the end result brings a smile to my lips. The loo roll is now protected by two long plastic legs.
Indeed, they are ever-so slightly parted, leaving just enough room to rest my cigarette during my ablutions.

My companion is concerned by my childish behaviour. What if we are turned out into the cold February streets?

She is showing understandably nervous reactions, given the day we've just endured.

We awoke earlier that morning to find Connemara glazed by Winter sunshine. A wicked frost the night before had left the air chilled to perfection.

A day to send the pulse racing.

Buying food for a picnic we head for the beaches of Ballyconneely, where the sea looks sublime, as tourquoise as the Aegean.

I turn the van down a bohreen towards a beach, but soon it becomes only a bumpy stony path, and then a suitable site for the world’s 4-Wheel Drive Championship Final.

My Transit van leaps boulders and crashes into puddles, finally parking in front of a seven foot lump of morraine that none shall pass.

Climbing over it we slump onto sea front slabs of sun-warmed granite, congratulating ourselves on being at the right place at the right time.

Well, no. Not quite the right time. As we close our eyes and soak up the rays, the tide is busy on its business.

Before you can say ‘What? No wellies?’ we are cut off from the beach, forced to paddle, fall, stumble and crawl through the shallows of the recently-arrived ocean.

Marvelling at our own stupidity we make it back to the van, and unable to turn around in the tiny space, I reverse all the way back to the main road, dripping sea water over the pedals and seats.

Don’t know what I was thinking, but I incautiously praise the van for making such a torturous journey. Naturally, hubris rules, and half a mile down the road there issues a terrible grinding sound from the near side front wheel.

‘Aha!’ thinks I, ‘A pebble is caught in the brake pads, so I will drive on until it frees itself!’

The grinding continues and deepens until it sounds as if the very gates of Hades are opening inside my front wheel. All of a sudden the brake pedal flops to the floor, loose and useless, and I pull over to the side of the road.

For a while I act the Mensch, trying to impress my companion with technical terms culled from memory.

“I’ll check the servo ... blah blah ... it’s not my big ends ... blah blah ... binding pads ... blah blah ... master and slave cylinders ... blah blah ...”

Then I lie on my back under the van and fiddle with this and that until my hands are covered with oil.

She asks what we are going to do.

I suggest we have a cigarette and wait. Suitably unimpressed she sends me off to find a house with a phone, which is no mean feat given our location.

Eventually I find a kindly old couple in a brown bungalow and call the local garage. Yer man at the other end says can I wait a few minutes and he’ll call me back.

The woman nods that I can wait, and so I settle into a seat by the range, where my eyes are assaulted by an impressive collection of religious icons hanging from the wall.

We have the Pope, something from Lourdes, Jesus holding his own bleeding heart, and I feel a little lost for words, until I suddenly remember that today is actually Ash Wednesday.

These people are clearly good Catholics, so I should pay them some respect.

“It’s Ash Wednesday today, isn’t it?” I offer, to be greeted by himself and herself sitting in absolute silence, staring stoically at me, as if they are both preserved in aspic.

“Yes.” she eventually replies, “I believe it may be.”

Spooky.

Beating a hasty retreat I make it back to the van where I try to cheer us up by preparing a wee picnic. Taking the loaf, I use my trusty penknife and slice through the bread until I feel the bone on my finger offering resistance.

My blood is oozing out in a steady flow, and trying to remain cheerful I cover it up with one, no, not enough, blood still seeping out, there, two handkerchiefs.

Look! At last, the tow truck is arriving!

The young mechanic is greeted by a seaweed-strewn soaking-wet Englishman, his hand covered in blood, brandishing a blade.
He takes a step back, fear etched on his face.

I replace the blade and offer apologies. I am a prat who has cut himself, stuffed his van and soaked our clothes. Saying nothing, he attaches tow chains to my van. We climb into the cab of his truck and set off for Clifden.

The journey is slow and eventful. I peer round to see my van lurching on its chains, swaying horribly from side to side. I decide not to look, and facing the front I become a bit perturbed when the passenger door against which I’m leaning suddenly swings open, the road beckoning me below.

“Oh yes.” intones the lad, “It does that.”

I appreciate the tip, entertaining for a moment the blissful irony involved in falling out of his truck and being run over by my own van.

Contemplating whether that might be a fitting end to our day, I continue to bleed over his spare parts, not to mention his hydraulic jack.

Later that night we return from a suitably heavy night’s drinking to find that the landlady has been into our room to deliver clean towels.

She has seen the plastic legs in the air and we have now been deprived of our spare toilet roll holder.

It’s gone. It is no more.
We are bad bad people, not to be trusted.

The next morning, possibly by way of some bizarre retribution for obscenely tampering with her doll, the landlady shows us to our breakfast table.

On the wall beside us hangs a painting of a stallion with a massive erection.

My sausage pales in comparison.

©Charlie Adley

03.04.2026

The Saw Doctors, Michael D, Eamonn Casey, the craic and the rain - DV from '93.

 

Recently it occurred to me that many colyoomistas have never seen any DVs published before 2007, when we went online, so over the next few weeks I'll be posting excerpts from different years. Here comes 1993.

January 1993.
Taking a breather. 

Back in London for a few days, I can see that my first 6 months in Ireland have so far been very good to me. To someone born in London, Galway is like taking a breather.

Well, as far as stress and strain are concerned. However, the craic is far from gentle. The Galway weekend runs from Wednesday to Tuesday, if you let it.

February 1993.
To ash or not to ash. 

Classic entertainment from RTE last Sunday. A discussion on the midday radio show concerned itself with the important and weighty matter as to why it was that Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern attended the Budget debate with ash on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday.

One of the panellists declared that she thought that they had done it solely to detract from the poor Budget they were presenting. She thought that their actions had trivialised a solemn day.

The phone rang in the studio, and on the line was none other than himself, Bertie’s big brother, who testified on air that Bertie had always worn the ash on his forehead.

“He’s always done it, for as long as I’ve known him.”

“And how long have you known him?” asked the DJ.

I paused for thought.

How long has your big brother known you?

February 1993.

The state of the Church in the State.

There is a massive ignorance in England of all things Irish. Before I came here I didn’t even know that Ireland is the only country in the world, aside from Vatican City, to have the Catholic Church written into its constitution.

So on Sunday I tried and miserably failed to answer the questions asked by my friend Joanna, visiting from England.

We were strolling past Salthill Church just as the congregation was leaving Sunday Mass.

Two teenage girls walked out from the church in front of us, their hands covering irrepressible giggles.

“So what was he like? Did you shift him? Will you see him again?” 

Behind them followed two women in their 70s, engaged in fierce debate with each other.

“So he says to me it’s a feckin’ cert, so I put 10 on a reverse forecast and the other bloody one comes in. His is probably still feckin’ runnin’.”

I suggest we go to the pub in order to relax the raised quizzical eyebrows of my guest.

“The pubs are open? On a Sunday? But I thought this was a religious country?”

“Oh it is, but not in those ways. There are more fundamental ways in which the Church influences people here. Like there’s no divorce, and -”

Joanna is choking on her Coca-Cola. Her eyes plead at mine, as if awaiting a punchline, but there isn’t one.

“So do you just have to stay with your husband or wife, even if it’s a nightmare?”

“No no, there’s a lot separated wives and single mothers.”

“But if they’re not divorced they can’t remarry, so if they meet somebody they’re forced to live as adulterers, in sin?”

Confusion bounced around my vacant brainbox. I thought of telling her something of the recent furore about the open selling of condoms; about how chainstores didn’t even want to stock them for fear of alienating their customers.

But I didn’t, because I didn’t want her to think of Ireland as some kind of medieval anachronism. I do know that I love this country, even if I don’t yet understand it, and anyway, she was ready with more questions I couldn’t answer.

“So this Bishop, the one that everyone in Galway keeps saying is such a good Bishop, he wouldn’t be the one with the son in America, would he? Not the one who tried to persuade the woman to get rid of the baby? Not the one who stole Church funds to pay off his mistake?”

“Well yes, that’s him, but apart from that, he’s been a good Bishop!”

July 1993.
Festival of Life, or life of festivals? 

I’m standing next to a family of American tourists on Wolfe Tone bridge, when all of a sudden a vast crowd passes by. Actors, musicians, drunks and kids rush past, chased by restaurateurs, shopkeepers, publicans and hoteliers.

Everyone is singing, shouting, laughing and having a seriously good time. Merrymaking swamps us for a moment, and then it’s all gone.

“Wow! What was that?” asks the tourist father.

“That? That was a festival, mate.” I explain.

“Awww, I didn’t want to miss the festival.”

“Don’t worry,” I comfort him, “there’ll be another one along in a minute!”

July 1993.
Local boys slap city on the back! 

“Anyone want to know the truth about Eamonn Casey?” asks the Saw Doctor to an ecstatic Arts Festival crowd.

Is the Pope a Catholic?

We’ve just witnessed a flood of Macnas dancers twirling umbrellas up on stage, alongside dragons and drummers.

It’s party time, with the Local Boys Done Good Band playing at home.

Not only that, but Home is Galway, and Galway is giving itself a massive and well-earned slap on the back.

For a city that has no municipal theatre, Galway manages to put on a fair amount of theatre. At one stage during this year’s Arts Festival, we had a choice of thirteen live performances, with people and players moving from tents to warehouses; just about anywhere but the municipal theatre, because we don’t yet have one.

There were pictures in pubs, carvings in cake shops and sculptures on the street, some of them human.

Around midnight the atmosphere at the gig is peaking, and the feel of it is so local that, whilst I don’t in any way feel excluded, I do feel slightly detached. Mind you, there are many who've been saying that about your colyoomist for some time.

The Shams are singing about Presentation Boarders, a lyric that has to be explained to me later. My mind wanders to Race Week, and something clunks in my brain.

Race Week?
Again?

For the first time there is something on the calendar that I remember.
This time last year I was walking off a ferry from Roscoff to Cork, setting foot on Irish soil for the first time. Hiding from the rain in Cork City, I sat in my B&B and watched the Galway Races on tele.

And now I live here, and love it.

It was a great Arts Festival and doubtless an excellent Race Week to come. Never mind the weather, the punters want to spend, and who are we to stop them?

Galway even manages to market itself through the rain.

“Splish-splash splish-splash!” sing the Saw Doctors.

July 1993.
Fuck your politics, it’s your accent we hate! 

Last week I was hitching down to Limerick. Three Republican lads driving from Belfast to Lisdoonvarna in a Range Rover were in raptures of delight to have captured me, and the wind-ups came fast and furious.

I quickly became frustrated, and asked them why they presumed my politics. How could they possibly know how I felt about the Troubles, or a united Ireland?

The reply came quick and emphatic.

“We don’t give a fuck about your politics. It’s your accent we hate.”

October 1993.
By the way, what does the ‘D’ stand for? 

Michael D. Higgins floats a spoonful of whipped cream on top of his coffee.

The Piano Bar of Murray’s Salthill Hotel provides an other-worldly atmosphere of times gone by, and the present Minster for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht offers the same.

At a time when politicians are rarely anything more than pendulums, swung this way and that by public opinion, Michael D. offers a flashback to the days when people had principles and opinions, which they were not shy of airing in fiery manner.

At first glance he appears more elfin than ministerial, but as he sits, he rubs his hands over his face, pushing them hard down over his head, and the person that emerges is ready for action.

It is the movement of a tired man, which he repeats several times over the course of the evening. I resist the urge to send him off home to bed.
Michael D. speaks with fluidity and conviction.

He may be small of stature but he is not someone who can hide in a corner. Throughout the interview many who pass feel at liberty to say ‘Hello!’, and he responds to them all by name.

For someone doing what is essentially an inhuman job, he retains an accessibility that many others have lost, or never had.

December 1993.
Ireland has not yet ‘Gone with the rain.’

Last Friday I was as mad as a hundred hatters.

The full moon hung massive over the river, unleashing a torrent of light into the black velvet sky. Galway City on a wet windy December night.

Lovely. Bloody lovely.

Coming down from Mill Street towards Monroe’s, the south-westerly storm force wind tore blinding sheets of land-bound ocean into me.

Diving into a sheltered nook by a shop’s front door, I suddenly found myself in exceptionally close quarters with a wild-eyed white-bearded older gent, who seemed to be having far too much of a good time on such a night as this.

Turning to smile and appear peaceful in my intentions, I offered the simplest and what I thought the safest of openings:

“What about that rain, eh? Terrible isn’t it!”

We turned to look at the solid sheets of sideways rain flying up the street, as if God was emptying his bathtub by turning the world the wrong way up.

“Fannnn-tashtic!” cried he, “Fantastic! ‘Tis God’s gift to Ireland, the rain!”

With that he looked over at me smiling, searching into my eyes, and without a discernible trace of irony continued

“If we had no rain we’d have no Ireland. There would be hotels on every clifftop and towns on every beach. Everything you love about Ireland will be gone! Gone with the rain!”

‘Gone with the rain’?

The man was clearly a genius, but thirst was rapidly overcoming my desire to stop and chat with this gifted old geezer.

We looked at each other with suppressed grins and he suggested that after such a Winter, the Summer should be moity.

I agreed wholeheartedly, and we parted company, knowing full well what nonsense that was. 

 

©Charlie Adley

01.04.2026
 

Three Snippets from '92

Artwork by Allan at www.caricatures-ireland.com

After the recent self-congratulatory piece about DV passing 750k hits, it occurred to me that many colyoomistas have never seen any DVs published before 2007, when we went online. So over the next while I’ll be dropping a few excepts from years gone by.

I first stepped onto Irish soil in August 1992 and was awarded the colyoom three weeks later. Click below to read three snippets from the following three months, when I’m all spanky fresh and green in the Emerald Isle.

September 1992.
Inside out in Cleggan. 

The people in the dining room of the B&B are trying their best to ignore me. The state of my brain is mirrored perfectly by the low cloud drizzle that is swamping and subduing the whole of Cleggan Bay this morning.

I am blissfully unaware that my T-shirt is on inside out and back to front.

In fact, far from matters of sartorial elegance, I’m having a great deal of trouble simply eating. I try ever-so carefully to secure a piece of toast and fried egg onto my fork, and manage to fumble it into my mouth.

At this precise moment an immaculately turned-out French couple glide into the dining room. These slickers were not in the pub until early this morning, unlike some scribblers I might mention.

They stop in their tracks as they see fried egg slowly slip out from my mouth and ooze its way down my chin, on its journey back to the plate. 

Plainly horrified, they disappear from the room, having lost their appetites.

Now everyone has turned to look at me, in their clean-cut European V-neck sweater kind of way.

Do I care?
Not while there is food to be eaten.

The rain continues to come down, so all my healthy intentions to climb hills and break a natural sweat are banished.

Back to Oliver’s bar, the scene of last night's crime, where today the big screen is up, and here we go again. Galway confound the tipsters, and I can think of no better place to watch the game.

Every time a point is scored the place erupts, and at a Galway goal small riots break out in various corners of the pub.
A brave female voice insists on calling

“Come on Tipp!”

and yet, so different to my native England, nobody here boos her. They don’t need to. It’s Galway’s day, and we eventually resign ourselves to the ensuing celebrations.

Nothing like a quiet restorative trip to Connemara.

Nothing. 

 

October 1992.

Illegal Numbers?

I was out on Saturday night on the trail of the obligatory craic, and found it in the shape of ‘Zrazy’, a two woman band playing in the wonderful Galway sleaze pit that is the Jug o’Punch.

They played a strong set of love songs and political songs, and soon enough the place was hopping. After the set I went to ask Maria of the band about one song that seemed to involve the constant repetition of a string of numbers.

What was that all about?

“It’s the telephone number of a Pregnancy Advice line, or an Abortion Advice line, depending on your way of looking at it. Either way, it’s illegal.”

“What’s illegal? I don’t understand.”

“The telephone number is illegal.”

“The telephone number is illegal? But how can a telephone number be illegal?”

“You can’t print it, broadcast it or dial it. That’s how it’s illegal.”

Holy cow, Ireland is so weird. Who is frightened of what? Even if it is technically possible to outlaw a string of numbers, how can it be morally defensible? The arguments of those who would impose such mindless censorship must be oh so fragile.


November 1992.
His business just didn’t add up. 

I wander into a shop in Salthill to buy two lightbulbs. Himself behind the counter smiles to see this stranger, and tells me how the weather has been fine.

“Do you sell lightbulbs?”

“Well now, I do, yes, I do, but, c'mere to me now ...” he hooks his finger and motions me to move closer, whispering. “I do sell lightbulbs, but truth be told, there’s a place just down the road that sells ‘em a mite cheaper than me.”

I stand flummoxed. If I walk out it will look like I am a cheapskate, but if I stay I’ll look like a fool.

“I will buy them off you, thanks all the same.”

“Ah good man. Now, so, it’s two you want is it? Well, they are 30 pence each, or 3 for a pound.”

Looking deep into his kindly eyes I find no trace of irony or humour in the moment. He clearly has no idea what he has just said.

“I’ll take 2 at 30 pence each please!” I say, and thank him for his trouble, leaving the shop amazed and confused.

It’s a business that looks like it’s been around for generations, but if that’s the way they operate, how on this good earth have they managed to stay in business?

©Charlie Adley

29.03.2026.