Galway City is Frank and Shameless!

“The boats are gone.”

“Boats? What boats?”

“You know, the boats, the race, the world yacht racy round the planet boats. The reason why this place was packed like sperm inside a celibate last week. The reason we were crushed, mulched, drenched, squeezed dry and soaked again with all the drinking, and now they’re gone. The boats. The boats. They’re gone.”

“Oh right. Yeh, I noticed it was a bit mad round here last week, but sure enough d’yaknow, it’s just Galway. That’s what I said to myself. I said to myself I said ‘Sure, it’s all gone mental, everyone’s drunk and partying like there’s no tomorrow, but that’s Galway!’ "

If cities were fictional characters, Galway would be Frank Gallagher, the patriarch from Paul Abbott’s groundbreaking TV dramedy Shameless. Like Frank, Galway doesn’t care why or how it parties, it just concentrates on enjoying itself to the full, and then a little bit more.

The week before the yacht race hit town, I watched a Volvo bigwig on TV explaining how impressed all the Volvo people had been to see 10,000 Galwegians cheering and screaming in the docks when the boats arrived in the middle of the night for the 2009 stopover.

For some reason I found it more sad than amusing, because the man hadn’t a clue what was really going on that night. He said they’d decided to award Galway City the Grand Finale because of the enthusiasm the city clearly had for the race.

Enthusiasm ... for the race? Hmmm.

What he clearly didn’t know was that somewhere in that crowd of 10,000 there was a 26 year old from Athenry shifting a nurse from UCH.

“Slow down big boy! Let’s wait ‘til after the boats come in!”

“What boats?”

“Duh! The racing boats. The Vulva. There's a big race going on -”

“ - sure you’re right there girl, there’s a race on tonight, alright! A race for you and me to get naked!”

“No, choosh, y’know, the racing round the world boats are coming in now. That’s why everyone’s here!”

“Sure it’s half one in the morning on a Saturday night in Galway City - where else would we be?”

Sorry to dampen your nautical squib Mr. Racing Volvo Yacht person, but Galway’s ‘enthusiasm’ was not for the yachts, stunning and mighty though they are. In Galway City people enthuse about drinking. Come to Galway any Saturday night and there’ll be 10,000 drunks looking for a party, and your yachts coming in just happened to be the venue du jour, as they say in Oranmore.

That’s not to say the whole damn shebang was unimpressive. Just because Galway’s enthusiasm stops at the end of an empty glass, don’t think us shallow. We really were into your race: the winner, losers and craft, just in the same way you’re into the birthday girl at a birthday party. You happen to be the excuse for us to party today, right now, so that makes you special, and who knows what, who or why next week.

Except we do know. The boats are gone and Film with a capital ‘F’ is now ruling our roost for a few days. Then it’ll be the Arts Festival, followed by Race Week, followed by blood transfusions and then into the Oyster Festival, the Grand Soft Day Festival, and if my good friend The Body gets his way, the Moaning Festival, which I happen to think would be a blast.

Here in Galway we have festivals for literature; quilts; fishing; kites; food; bicycles; theatre; children; children's theatre; being GLBT and St. Patrick. We host Groove Weekenders and Cuban Fiestas and we somehow managed to create a festival for a Latin Quarter in the centre of a medieval Celtic city. We let rip with whiskey because it’s Tuesday and console ourselves with hot ports on Wednesday. We’ve got festivals and fleadhs coming out of our arse, and if anyone knows the second line of that catchy little ditty please send it in!

Galway is a pure party town. Our enthusiasm knows no bounds. So yes, boats, that was great. We went mad for the boats. They were brilliant, really inspirational.

Film this week.

We are Shameless. We’ll celebrate anything, everything, a void of things or a glut of things. Must be all the sea air that’s hurled at us by the wind. Whatever it is, I love it, and even though I don’t participate in the craic anything like I used to, I love the knowledge that it’s out there; that if I want to I can go into the city and know for sure that pubs will be filled with happy revellers any and every night.

Shameless’ Frank Gallagher would love Galway, but Frank is fictional and from Manchester, so with apologies to those who’ve never seen Shameless (particularly series 1-3!) I’ve adapted his famous opening monologue.

Were the world an honest place, this would have been the original pitch Let’s Do It Galway made to the Volvo Ocean Race committee:

“Now, nobody's sayin’ that Galway City is the Garden of Eden, but it's been a good home to us, to me and me mates, who I’m proud of, ‘cos every single one of them reminds me a little... of Galway.

“We can think for ourselves, drink for days and if the booze doesn't get us the Atlantic will blow us away.

“Come and watch students make a mess of the lives, doing Aftershock shots as they scratch up their hives. See post-traumatic drinkers with 1,000 yard stares and tourists convinced our city is theirs.

“What sounds on earth could ever replace locked Galwegians watching a horse race? ‘Cos this, people reckon is why pubs and clubs were kindly invented, to calm us all down and stop us going mental! These are Galway City’s basic essentials! But all of them, to a man a woman whoever we are, we know first and foremost the most vital necessity in this life is ...

We know how to throw a PARTY! HA HA ... SHCATTER!”

"Are you eating your own hand, Charlie?" "No shanks, I'm fine!"

The Irish habit of leaving Ireland when times get tough appears strange to this Englishman. Maybe the English stay in England because they love a grumble, while their Irish counterparts mutter only:
“Sure, I’d complain, but what’d be the point?”
Maybe it’s because the Irish are broadly welcomed anywhere in the world, while the English have to overcome post-colonial loathing in so many countries.
Then there’s the two things that Paddy loves best: the leaving of Ireland and the coming back to Ireland. Personally, apart from a couple of weeks’ hols abroad, I hate leaving ireland, but Galway City is another matter.
With Galway I suffer a similar paradoxical conundrum to Paddy’s. I have left it and returned to it three times, each stay being an absolute pleasure, until it becomes unbearable.
Now, as another Summer of festivals approaches, my mind wanders back to the Spring of 1994, the first time I left Galway City.
Truly, it was one of the happiest days of my life.
Two years before I had left England, and arrived at Galway after a few months spent wandering, wondering whether I might live in either Granada, Barcelona, Roscoff, Cork and Kinsale.
Sharing in a tiny house in Salthill, I had partied like a mad thing for two years, but not as madly as the 24-hour party people living next door. My nerves were shot to shit, my liver was the size of Cyprus, and I yearned for privacy and peace. Each weekend I’d hitch out to Connemara, and recharge my soul, gradually realising that what I really wanted was to live out there, alone.
Some things are just meant to be. Through a bizarre twist of fate I called a certain Pat from Ballyconneely on the phone about a house I’d heard he was renting and got through to a completely different Pat from Ballyconneely, who purely coincidentally just happened to have a house to rent, but hadn’t even advertised it yet.
Off the main road, by a lake, with nearby beaches on three sides. the tiny housesheen was perfect, and as I loaded my life’s belongings into my transit van, I was aware that this was indeed a seminal moment in my life: the end of a very long road which ran from the leaving of London 5 years previously, downsizing to Bradford, Galway and finally to the townland of Bunowen.
The sun shone as I drove out of the city, the silhouettes of my broom handle, upturned chairs and boxes of books appearing in my rear view mirror. I’d never had a house to myself before, and was amazed how easy it was to move my stuff into it. There were no parking problems; plenty of space, and unlike flats in the cities of my past, no flights of steps to struggle up and down up and down, with all my stuff.
Within an hour it was all in the house, and I was off to the pub to celebrate.
The next morning I awoke to the sound of grass being ripped from the ground by cows outside my bedroom window. I was in a state of bliss. After walking to the beach I started to prepare my first proper meal in my first solitary house. In honour of the occasion I was treating myself to a lamb shank, with roast spuds and crunchy green things.
As I took the meat out of the oven my stomach growled with hunger as my heart swelled with pride.
I was plain full of myself, so happy I could burst. I had done so well, to get away from all the madness of it all, to be alone at last, wanting nothing from nobody, anywhere, ever.
The sun shone in the blue sky. A hare sat on the gravel outside my house. A soft breeze whispered a scented zephyr through my open windows and the carving knife slid slowly but surely through the tender lamb, out the other side and right through my hand, at the base of my thumb and finger.
Instantly I knew it was a deep cut, and my body settled straight into shock.
Fuck fuck fucketty fuck. Not now please please not now. No no no.
Being a most basic beast, my main concern was for my dinner. All I had wanted was to sit and eat a fine meal in my fine house and feel fine.
My roast lamb was pink, but I was looking increasingly crimson. Having washed the wound and caught sight of something white that hopefully wasn’t bone, I considered asking for help.
Clearly I needed to go up to the farmhouse and ask them to take me to a hospital for stitches.
And then again, maybe if I did, I’d look like an idiot incapable of lasting 24 hours on his own without managing to dismember himself.
No. Nobody needed to know.
Screw it. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Instead of being sensible, I wrapped my gaping bloodied wound in acres of toilet paper, and holding it high above my head in an effort to staunch the bleeding, I stubbornly proceeded to try to eat my dinner.
Clearly a knife and fork were out of the question, but who cared? I was all alone in the middle of nowhere, and still had four good fingers and one opposable thumb.
The veggies and spuds went down in three or four hand scoops, and as I lifted the shank to my mouth and started ripping into it like a cross between Fred Flintstone and Henry VIII, my young landlord just happened to put his head round the door to make sure his new tenant was settling in alright.
In place of the calm clean Englishman he had welcomed 24 hours previously, he was greeted by the site of an insane gravy-smeared carnivore, holding a blood-soaked arm high above his head, muttering through a lamby mouthful:
“Yesh yesh hime fine, danksh Pat! Good ash gold, shanks!”
Afterwards I wondered if he thought I had chopped off one hand to eat it with the other. Poor guy probably still has nightmares about that. Sorry Pat!
Having once again learned that pride comes before a fall, I proceeded to live a splendid life in that house.
But every two weeks I made an excited dash to Galway City, to see my mates, make sure I still had the power of speech and could behave like a human being in public.