Oh yeh, and it sends you mad. Stark staring cuckoo. Whoever you are, and whatever you're doing, if you are around Galway City during Race Week, it will infect you, as sure as a gee-gee has a leg at each corner.
Kitchen porters are clanging and rushing; chefs pouring sweat while barstaff fill buckets; hoteliers hop; gamblers and cards sharks a-pumping; prossies a-jumping; priests go insomniac with the overtime; the streets overflow with eaters and drinkers and dresses and hats, plastic pint glasses and a billion fag butts.
Up above choppers fly everywhere, buzzing-bizzing like is this a flashback or a film?
Spot the difference: Galway during Race Week and the set of Apocalypse Now.
Horror.
The Horror.
The Mystery.
The marvellous madness.
What’s a fella to do, as the song says. Thunder clouds roll in and it’s sweaty. The flies are out and it’s Race Week.
On Thursday morning Siobhan from Claregalway spends hours in front of her long cupboard mirror, checking her accessories.
She’s broke but hell, she’s going anyway.
Tommy from Salthill, well, nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him for days, but that’s the way it is in Race Week.
He’ll get himself into a card game and you won’t see him ‘til he’s done. Used to be a problem back in the day when the kids were young, but now, well, to be honest, it frees up his long-suffering missis for a few days. So everyone’s happy.
Himself from Ballybrit is delighted to be back working the door at the Owners and Trainers Bar, watching the good money coming in and the bad money going out.
He’s grinning to himself at the pittance he’s being paid compared to these Fianna Fail gombeens.
He’s watching it all and lapping up the scenery. There’s yer trainers and owners, coming and going, and then there’s all these other yokes who are looking for nothing but a little bit of information, d’y’see?
Just a nod or a wink from the bloke who owns a fetlock and Colm from Roscommon is on to his phone to do the betting faster than the Heineken floods cold nectar into his glass.
Then there’s the players. The really class ones are the types most people miss, but Himself on the door, he sees ‘em, because he’s learned to spot people hiding in plain sight.
Relaxed, happy, calm, but sucking up the hottest angles, placing the biggest bundles on the nose. They’re not yer each way betters.
He smiles as he thinks of it. No, these aren’t yer each-wayers. These are the players.
The work is good, he’s happy for it, but the watching, listening and learning, that’s better than a banker’s bonus.
Well, no, not better than a banker’s bonus, but great craic. Rather be doing it than not, safe to say.
Siobhan’s met up with her friends in Eyre Square, and they're heading up to the course on the bus. They were going to get a taxi, do it in style, but there was a bus right there, so wha’the.
Her mates all look amazing and it’s just a kickin’ day out.
She’ll get the first round in. That’s it, she’ll get the first bottle of bubbles, that way everybody’ll remember and nobody’ll notice that she doesn’t do much betting.
She’d budgeted for her share of a taxi, but the bus was a money-saving godsend. Thank you God, she says to herself, as she listens to Anne-Marie’s story about and a lad called Brian and bottles of Bulmers.
As long as the bubbles aren’t too crazy expensive, she might even have a bit left to bet with, too.
Now that’d be a laugh alright. She’s working part-time in the Londis round the corner, and hitching to lectures at NUIG. Loans and rent and life’s not all fun, but you have to sometimes.
Sometimes you just have to, and today is Ladies Day.
After his stint working the door, Himself is back in town, sitting outside Coili’s, watching a fire juggler across the way.
Turning to the grey-haired boho next to him he says:
“He’s alright, s’pose, but not good enough for Johnny Massacre Corner!”
The man replies: “I am sorry. Who is John ze Masterpiece, pliz?”
Himself smiles. “S’alright mate, no bother.”
What was he thinking? Like yeh, really, the guy’s gonna be a Galwegian, tonight, in Race Week!
Cork’s got jazz and Kilkenny makes comedy and hurlers. There’s the All Ireland Finals at Croker, but that’s a couple of hours sport with a day and night’s drinking.
The nation comes to Galway for a week, but this is not merely some pathetic endurance test.
Back when Plate Day Wednesday was the big day, when the meeting ran only a few days, the Galway Races were no less significant.
There’s a depravity, corruption and decadence to the affair that cannot be ignored, but putting aside the traffic and the pavement pizzas for a moment, the best part of Race Week is the spirit of the city.
Galway soaks up the farmers, politicians, insurance brokers and hairdressers. They are all welcome to have their own parties, to gamble and screw each other, or gently sip tea and suck Galway oysters from the half shell.
Siobhan’s eye liner is a disaster by the time she’s back on Quay Street. The cobbled streets are a total mare to those heels now, ouch, bleedin’ exhausted, pure bubbled out, but nobody noticed about the money.
Now they want to go for a drink. She’s enough for one and the bus home.
“Coili’s for the music?” asks Roisin.
So they head up High Street, and in the distance, Himself spots Siobhan, and she kinda catches his eye.
What’s a fella to do?
©Charlie Adley
29.07.2023
