January 2001.
Galway isn’t a dream - it just seems that way!
It is the week of the Great Return. Whatever ‘normal life’ in Galway City may be, we now return to it after the double whammy of the festive season.
Herself returns from her European tour. The Guru returns to his life of contemplation, having made a rare excursion into the world of work for the month of December.
We raise and clink glasses in Tigh Neachtain with the furious happiness of reunion.
The Guru raises his pint of Murphy’s aloft and declares:
“We have all died and gone to heaven!”
and in a peculiar way I think I know what he means. Coming back to Galway is always a sincere pleasure.
My soul exhales a breath of relief as I see the raging beast that is January’s River Corrib.
As I look along the empty evening streets of the town centre, my brain always has a little trouble acknowledging that it is real.
No, this is not Toytown: it’s where I live and, more than that, where I belong.
Despite all this sentient knowledge, for the 24 hours following my return, Galway always seems somehow surreal compared the seething megatropolis that is the city of my birth.
June 2001.
The sun is out at night...
As I guide my wee blue car out of the car park at Knock International Airport, I punch the air out of my (open!) window, and let out a triumphal scream of return.
All the way down the slip roads of this little airport in the beautiful middle of absolutely bleedin’ nowhere, I join myself in an exuberant chorus of ‘Home on the Range’, adapting the American lyric to
“ ... where we drink beer watching culchie-lopes playy-aaayyy ...”
Back in the gentle buzz of early June’s Galway City, I’m delighted to find the Guru has once again signed away his soul to work alongside Grumpy Chef, the Snapper and Snarly Artist, down at Nimmo’s.
Within a couple of hours ingesting grape and digesting gossip, me poor auld ears are frothin’ wid a torrent of news about the utter filt’ and deborcheree that have filled the weeks of my absence.
Ah me, the midsummer sun is out at night, people are drinking like sponges, shagging like rabbits, and of course they’re digging up the city centre again.
All is well with Galway, I tell myself.
July 2001.
Hey, you, leave my memory alone!
‘Everyone deserves a Galway memory!’ claims the latest radio ad.
Explains a lot.
How many of you Galwegians have sat in the bright harsh light of the Morning After and complained that you’ve lost your memory?
There are hordes of ye out there, drinking coffee in the kitchens of Shantalla, lying sprawled on the sofas of Knocknacarra, straining your necks down the toilets of Newcastle, desperately trying to remember what the hell you did last night.
You sad memory-theft victims suffer the embarrassment of having to ask
“Was I bad?”, as well as the legendary “Who was she?” and that old classic, “How on earth did I get home in that state?”
This colyoom can now reveal where your memories have gone:
The tourists are robbing them. It said so on the radio:
‘Everyone deserves a Galway memory!’
I'm sure they do, but there’s only so many memories to go around. What could possibly be more private and personal than the process of recall, so give us back our experiences, ye shifty holidaying bunch of tea leaves.
We’ve all heard the stories.
“Well, I met this gorgeous French geezer, and then it all goes a bit blurry!”
“I can’t remember a thing after I started chatting to that Yank bird.”
Hmm, methinks another Galway memory nicked by a passing Dub; purloined by a touring pack of Americans; lifted by Franz from Mainz; all taken without permission, back whence they came.
Our only consolation for such vile robbery is the knowledge that at some point down the road, they are going to awake with a Galwegian’s memory kicking around their mind.
Let’s spare a moment for the ultra-swish Parisian accountant, staring out of the window of her minimalist Montmartre loft, wondering what hon hearth can means ziss bizarre memory of ‘... sheefting Donal in Central Park?’
Pity the poor 53 year-old Christian fundamentalist from Cookieville, Ohio, who came to Ireland to find her roots and buy Aran sweaters for all 15 of her nieces.
Now back home at a PTA cookout she suddenly ‘remembers’ taking Ecstasy, dancing in Salthill Park through the night and making love to a 20 year-old aerobics instructor in Bearna Woods at dawn.
Maybe everyone does deserve a Galway memory. But you can’t go nicking ours.
July 2001.
Diary of a dribbling fool.
Come with me, dear reader, all the way back to the timeless wastes of last week. Journey with this Jewish Gobshite into the long dark light of a Co. Mayo Monday:
Monday: Grey cloud. Write. Walk. Two movements.
Tuesday: Grey cloud. Rain. Write. Walk and get wet. One movement.
Wednesday: Rain. No writing. No walking. Just rain. Lashing rain. Think I might eat the cat.
Thursday: Rain. Lashing rain lash lash ha ha ha rain oh rain of my toes, rain of my athlete’s foot, rain on me. Hahahaha. Oh comforting warm wet showers of the goddess fly-producin’ rain.
Play the Ramones ‘It’s Alive’ with volume at ‘11’, and hoover like a sad basstid.
Win £8.00 on a scratchcard. Go straight to pub. Drink Guinness, eat cod and chips. Drive to Galway.
Arrive in Quay Street, and my legs stop moving. The Arts Festival hordes make me feel I’m in the middle of the river that flows past my house, but instead of water and sea trout, this is a torrent of Culture Wannabes.
The sight of all this bourgeois humanity gushing and splurting down Quay Street makes my legs refuse, like a horse in front of a jump.
Into Taylor’s Bar. Seamus Mulligan jabs me in the ribs and tells me a joke, which is in itself, quite a memorable event.
No idea of movements.
Friday: Morning sunshine in the city, so I grab a pew outside Neactain's, and drink coffee while thoroughly enjoying watching Galway doing its festival thang.
Hours later, gently off my head, I float off into Friday night Galway. A night now lost to me, you will doubtless be delighted to hear.
Saturday: Out of bed with the lark. I want to be a tourist. Jumping onto the first brightly-painted double decker Tour Bus that passes me in Eyre Square, I am entertained for the next hour, being driven past houses I used to call home.
As we pass the Atlantaquaria, our guide bursts into a slightly croaky but brave early morning rendition of ‘Galway Bay’, and fair play to her.
However, the highlight of the tour was not her singing, but her explanation of the route:
“For those of you following our journey on the leaflets we gave you, well, if you’re confused, that's because today we are doing the tour backwards!”
The Arts Festival crowd are not yet gone, and with the hot weather, the Race Week hordes have arrived early.
Galway City is building to a whirling frenzy of consumption, and I’m drinking Red Bull like a madman as I plot my escape.
February 2001. (From Irish Post UK)
The Celtic Tiger is a fragile, imaginary beast.
Mary from Ballycaloony is on a radio phone-in, giving out to poor Georgio, an Italian official from the European Union.
“Oh yes, Georgio, we hed some verra verra haird toimes in this conchee, so we did, back in da Aytiz, but do you know what we did, Georgio, do ya, do ya?”
Poor Georgio doesn’t quite grasp the rhetoric inherent in Mary’s question.
“Way-all, Mary, I donna hexackerlee-”
“Well, Georgio, oil tellya what we did. We pulled in our belts, and we pulled up our shocksh, and we ate bread and water, and we worked like divills, and we went without holidays to Shpain and da like, and gradjally … gradjally we made it to where we are today, the most succeshful conchee in da world, which we are, I think you’ll find. And now, soon as we have got ourshelves out of the gutta, and made some money so’s we can go on holidays to Shpain and da like, you lot in Europe come along and tell us that we are doing it wrong. Do ya know what I says to dat? Do ya? Do Ya?”
By now, poor Georgio is just the slightest bit wary of Mary and her rantings.
“Er, yes, I mean no, so, we are hall very ‘appy for hireland’s success and-”
“Do you know what I says to dat, Georgio? I says you have no right, dat’s what I say. Joss because your Euro is so patettic and all that, and you haven’t done as well as we have at making a go of it, you can’t shtand seeing the little cunchee doing well, can you? Dat’s da trobble widjall your brossels broorocrats.”
At this juncture, the radio show host jumps in, but sadly fails to bring any sense to proceedings.
“So, Georgio, you can see the feeling in the country is running pretty high. Answer me this, Georgio, on a scale of one to ten, how does Ireland score for unemployment?”
Naturally, poor Georgio evades a direct response to such a crass line of questioning, but our host continues unabashed.
“Okay, so Georgio, on a scale of one to ten, how does Ireland rate for old age pensions? How do we rate for education spending?”
Poor Georgio states the obvious, that it is pointless to score points in this manner, but our host, (and Mary, whose continued presence on the line is heralded by her 40-a day wheezy breathing) are in the mood for a scrap, and any European foreigner will do.
“So Georgio, tell me, would you like to take back the tax cuts? Would you like to stop the old people getting a rise? Tell me, Georgio, which bit of our success would you like to put a stop to?”
I can’t take any more and turn the radio off.
What on earth is it that possess the Irish when they talk about their economic progress?
Everyone, from Mary out on the bog, to Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy, chooses to behave like four year-old children, if that’s not being completely unfair to toddlers.
Personally no, Mary, I don’t get what you’re saying to be honest, because, to use the vernacular, you’re talking absolute bollocks.
As a child I was taught that when one friend tells me I’m wrong, I’m right, but when five friends tell me I’m wrong, I am wrong.
Charlie McCreevy came out of a meeting where all 14 European Finance Ministers admonished him for his inflationary budget, and just like Mary, Charlie stuck his tongue out and shouted:
“I’m the King of the castle, you’re the dirty old rascals!” Then he ate some mud and was sick on the carpet. Well, no, he didn’t, but he might as well have. Instead he adopted the same infantile argument as the radio host.
“Is anyone suggesting we take £500 million from health? Is anyone suggesting that we don’t go ahead with the very necessary roads infrastructure?”
No, Charlie, I’m not. I’m just taking a look at all those new roads, and Ireland’s improving infrastructure, and appreciating the billions of pounds that Europe have invested here over the last few years.
Everywhere you go in this country, huge signs proudly fly the European flag, informing us that European funds have helped build this hospital, that road, this causeway and that airport extension.
What planet is Charlie McCreevy on? Given the billions of pounds of Structural Adjustment Funds that pour into Ireland from Europe every year, how can he have the gall to say:
“Over the last five years we have not received any particular favours from the EU. Anything we got, we got on its merits.”
Right, and I’m Napoleon Bonaparte.
Why do Charlie and Mary both fail to realise that far from wanting to spoil the party, the European Commission is trying save the Irish from rampant inflation, a misery that affects the poor worst of all?
For god’s sake, grow up and smell the coffee.
You can’t expect kazillions of pounds in investment without some notional rules of control. You can’t sign up to a single currency, and expect everyone else to follow your lead.
Do the Irish really imagine that the Celtic Tiger economy has been built on Irish sweat and Irish money?
The Celtic Tiger is a fragile, imaginary beast, more of a chameleon really, fed by American investment, protected by the camouflage of European subsidy.
Until the Irish see that their success is very far from homegrown, they will have to mature quickly and answer to those who make their good lives possible.
©Charlie Adley
21.04.2026
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