Hoteliers of Ireland - remove your plastic sheets!

After a few minutes lying on my hotel bed in Clifden, I started pouring sweat from all over my body. 

Ooerr. Not nice.

Maybe I’d overdone the delivery of toxins into my body. 

Maybe I’d drunk too much alcohol too quickly in too short a space of time. 

Maybe I’d failed yet again to escape from the craic that is Race Week.

Each year I decide whether I’m going to embrace the 7 crazy days Galway plays host to the entire nation. Where the Galway Races are concerned, you have to be either immersed in it or run away from it. There is no happy medium.

This year I fled, heading off across the sea to inis Mor, to spend some time with Soldier Boy. The last time I went to visit him I brought with me Grumpy Chef and another friend who had recently been through a major trauma. 

Reliable as ever, Soldier Boy delivered a splendidly mad time for all of us, cramming as many macabre and bizarre experiences into our first 40 minutes on the island as the Universe might provide, should it conspire to do its deadly best.

I’ll spare you the details of that true yet highly unbelievable story and instead just share the ingredients: a very hungover ex-soldier covered from head to foot in freshly-ripped flesh wounds; a mobile phone that barked like a dog; a savoy cabbage; several bottles of wine, some bacon and a steep corner on a bohreen by a stone wall, eight foot above a hundred yards of tightly-packed bramble bushes.

As the Americans so quaintly put it: ‘Go figure.’

This time it was going to be different, calm, quiet, just me and my mate sitting outside his gaff for hours under cloudy skies, looking down on the small harbour town of Kilronan.

Off the boat, it felt natural to fall into and out of a few pubs, and then polish off a few tinnies outside his home. Then we strolled back into town in the evening for few more and then a couple or three by the side of his fire pit, under the stars in the evening, talking gentle bollocks into the early hours.

It was one of those days when you hardly noticed how much ye’d been imbibing, but a flow of beer as steady as the rain that falls on da Wesht was delivered into my bloodstream, so it was only when I stood up that I realised I was exceedingly drunk. 

Mind you, sitting down had not been easy either. As soon as I lowered my substantial frame into one of Soldier Boy’s Director-style chairs on his deck, it slowly and wholly disintegrated, sinking beneath me like a lift in an elevator shaft towards the ground, very much as an ex-chair might. Sorry about that, mate!

Next morning we both awoke with sunburned faces, rigid and peeling. Despite the fact that we looked like a pair of grated beetroots, nobody seemed too troubled. In fact, everywhere we went to eat and drink the service was great and delivered with a smile. But sadly the recession was hitting hard, and at 8:30 on a July evening, when the pubs in Kilronan should have been kickin’ major tourist butt, there was myself and himself in Joe Macs, a table of Yanks visiting their family and a few locals at the bar. The place was deader than dead, and if it was like that in high season, gord help the people of the Arann islands.

Mind you they’ve seen worse times, and doubtless will yet again. 

The next day it felt great to turn Shaaanny car left at the crossroads after Rossaveal, heading west for Clifden. I’d forgotten just how mouth-wateringly beautiful is the road that cuts through Roundstone bog. Stopping the car, I stepped out into the sounds of the silence of a Connemara day. 

The wisssshh and shusshhh of the breeze; the gurgle of the streams running off the bog; the fwwwummm fwwwummmm sound of a ...  oh thank you thank you Universe ... a single black swan in flight, cutting low and magnificent across the face of the distant hills.

My hills - the Twelve Pins, God’s own fruit bowl, sensual peaks and swirly valleys smoothed by glaciers, looking perfectly majestic and commanding in a comfortably moderate Irish way. 

My good friend The Goat had been called off to play in Tully Cross, so upon arriving in Clifden I checked into the Alcock and Brown Hotel, where new owner Mike was just the right side of incredibly enthusiastic, managing to resist the temptation to ask me if I’d recently walked through a forest fire, or did my scarlet scabby face always look like that?

I headed straight to the bar in Terry’s, for a pint of Guinness and some excellent fish and chips, but despite the time of year and the exceptionally friendly and efficient staff, the place was empty. I’d expected the posher places to be suffering, but thought that the capital of Connemara’s pub grub would be hitting the high season tourists’ bellies aplenty, but no. All the crowds I’d seen that afternoon had been day trippers, now disappeared, leaving four French tourists to wander disconsolate, looking bored and hard-done by as only the French can.

D’Arcy’s was closed and Malarkey’s was empty. It was just too early for the locals to be out in Clifden, so I took my sandpapered face off on a Stations of the Triangle Tour. Into Griffins to watch some sport, then to Vaughans to sup a few whiskies, then into Lowry’s to talk to a fisherman or two and drink some more black, and back to Terry’s for a couple more, followed by another excursion to Malarkey’s.

By the time dusk had fallen, I was quietly and privately bombed, so tired and weary I fell upon the bed in my hotel room, to read my book and grab an early night.

All was fine.

Well, no, all was not  fine. I felt sweaty. All of a sudden I felt yuckysweatyhorrible and pooper, please tell me I’m not coming down with something!

No. I wasn’t ill, I was just lying on a plastic bottom sheet. What a vile and patronising practice that is. Hotel rooms are not cheap, and if you’re a hotelier you simply have to treat your guests with respect. We’re paying handsomely precisely for a good night’s sleep in a bed we don’t have to make ourselves, and yet, there I was, having to strip the bed entirely, remove the wretched sweat-inducing placcy precautionary device and remake the bed from top to bottom. 

Instead of feeling all special and mollycoddled, I now resented having to pay to sleep in that bed. It was no longer an object of comfort and luxury. 

Hoteliers of Ireland, stop treating your punters like 6 year-old bed-wetters. Take off your plastic sheets and help the tourists feel at least as comfy as they do in their own beds. Otherwise they will day trip and go home.

Next year I think my liver and I will stay home for Race Week. I’ll just give in, let it eat me up and burp me out.

You know when you’ve been Galwayed!

 

 Artwork by the excellent Allan Cavanagh of Carictures Ireland

I’ve been Galwayed. Galwayed good and proper, that’s what I am right now.

I had a double Galway: both city and county.

If I’d mixed the county after the city, I might not be feeling so bewildered and crap.

But I didn’t.

So I do.

My head is crushed, my thoughts spinning in negative spirals that I know well to leave alone.

This is not about a hangover.

Being Galwayed is a combination of sleep deprivation, excess consumption, over-stimulation of sensory experience and a glut of social auld bollox that seems substantial at the time, yet fades into ephemera with the first snore of your sweaty comatose night.

Coming or going are concepts you abandon while truly Galwayed.

As I write this I know that it’s Monday, but it could be Saturday, Flipday or tomorrow.

I’m going to pin the guilt for the whole sad and wonderful day on the sun, which rises so early and sets so late over Galway at this time of year, you wake up three hours before you’ve gone to sleep.

So yesterday, Sunday morning, at 5am, I open my eyes, go for the middle-aged peeper, and realise to my horror that I am quite awake.

I go back to bed but I’m half thinking about herself getting home safely, and half thinking about how that’ll be fine, and half thinking about the blue sky and sunshine and how you can’t have three halves.

So I get up at silly o’clock on a Sunday, and walk the causeway to Mutton Island under blue skies before the shops are open, wondering how to fill my day off.

Even when you work for yourself, you have to have days off, where sloth is no crime.

But today is a day for action. Firing up Shiny Car, I do what I do most naturally, and head west, excited at the prospect of a very early very empty road to Clifden.

Connemara looks jaw-droppingly stunning, as piercing summer sunshine is hidden and released by towering tumultuous storm clouds.

The Maamturk Mountains themselves appear to move, as vast black shadows travel at speed above and across them.

Your scribbler arrives in Clifden at 10:15, and takes a most excellent breakfast in the Off The Square Restaurant.

Great service, fab food, followed by a stroll down to the bridge on the Ballyconneely road, to watch the river cascade a while and build a thirst.

All the serious pubs are shut.

Himself the Goat is not responding to texts, and why would he?

What am I doing in Clifden so bloomin’ early on a Sunday?

Well, now what?

Back in Shiny, to drive at a more leisurely pace back to Galway. I pick up a hitcher in Oughterrard.

We chat and laugh and then I’m back, aimless and hyper in Rahoon (never a good combination). I call round to Angel, but he’s not about, and Soldier Boy has been out since yesterday fortnight, so I’ll leave him be.

I go home and see her curtains upstairs still drawn. I sit and try to read the Sunday papers but no, not for me, not today.

Something is eating me up, so I drive into town not knowing if I really even want to go into town.

Instead of parking in the Claddagh, I drive down Henry Street and for some reason decide to pointlessly pootle in circles around the town centre.

Sitting alone outside Tigh Neactain, watching Sunday strangers throng with cameras, up pops the Artist Formerly Known As Snarly. 

We wander across to the Quays, where we talk of religion, fly fishing and zombies in dreams.

Then I wander up to God knows where looking for the Devil knows who, and stumble into Dalooney outside Tigh Coili, who persuades me to have a pint.

Half of me is still in Connemara, half of me still on the road, half of me in bed asleep and the other half suddenly holding a pint that somehow makes sense in a world with too many damnable halves in it.

But I’m driving and have to call it a day, so I walk over the bridge and bump into The Waistcoat, who thrusts a can of Apples into my hand, and feeling bad and reckless and boring and mediocre I sit and chat as we reminisce of 80’s London and great travels and watch the river flow past.

Then, knowing that this is one of only 3 occasions in my long life when I have driven whilst possibly over the limit, I drop the car back to Salthill.

Her bedroom curtains are still closed, so I go into the house, have a blissful peeper, and head off, again, into the city, feeling like Martin Sheen going into the jungle in ‘Apocalypse Now!’

Deadly black clouds are hanging huge and low. Me no walky, no be soaky.

Get a bus? But no, there’ll be an age to wait, but look at that cloud and ennyhoodyhoo, why are you going in when you haven’t any money you fool and look -Yahoo! - there’s a bus!

‘Tis a sign.

‘Tis meant to be.

‘Tis written.

Amen.

Quay Street again, where first I gorge myself on heavenly piping hot salty vinegary chips from McDonaghs, and then head towards the motley crew of eccentrics, musicians and gobshites (myself included) hanging outside Coili's.

Dalooney and the Waistcoat show great generosity with the drink, and I know I’m being Galwayed, but I don’t care, because at that moment I care about neither future happiness nor past pain.

Herself texts to say she is coming into town to pick up her car, left in town the night before, and would I like a lift home?

Finding myself incapable of texting properly, I realise that thanks to the beauty of Connemara and the kindness of friends, I've managed to get Galwayed.

Oh yes. Hallelujah! You know when you've been Galwayed.

Back home, wrapped entirely in the synthetic warmth of the Chelsea blanket, I sit mouth agape, dribbling staring unblinking at a procession of godawful Sunday evening white chocolate TV dramas.

 

©Charlie Adley

06.07.2009

When hitcher becomes driver, there are new rules for the road!

What goes around comes around, but the way this idea is manifested in reality is often complex.
Most of the time the karmic cycle works not in any straightforward, but rather a most mysterious way.
If Johnny steals your cake, it's very unlikely that somebody out there will steal Johnny's cake. More likely, that particularly fateful roundabout will spin for thirty three years after you lost your cake to Johnny, until just when he needs it most, he will lose his mobile phone down a toilet.
Karma is not a linear phenomenon. As water passing through concrete, fate balances through æons of random and apparently inconsequential event.
But sometimes, just sometimes, it all comes together in a simple and poetic way.
A few weeks ago, I was driving from Galway City to visit a friend in Clifden.
The strains of the pre-Christmas rush had already created golf balls of lumpy tension in my back muscles.
My own needs and those of others were whirling around my tiny brain like a load in a tumble dryer, rising and falling, swirling incessantly.
All I needed was time to sort out my head, and no finer opportunity to do that than whilst driving through Connemara .
That's what I love about my hills. As soon as I am among the Pins and the Maamturks, everything somehow makes more sense.
The wind was blowing hard, driving the cold winter rain sideways. Flashes of blue sky disappeared and revealed themselves, as black white and grey clouds shot past each other on three separate levels of sky.
Just past Ballynahinch Lake I passed two farmers hitching at the roadside.
'Twas a dirty old day to be outside, and clearly the lads wanted a ride to Clifden for a bit of shopping, and a nip of festive cheer.
As I waited for them to walk up to the car, my mind imploded on itself.
Oh no, what have I done?
Why did I stop, when I needed this time and space to myself?
Why did I stop? Perchance because between the ages of 15 and 35, I hitched no fewer than a quarter of a million miles. I hitched to school and back; to countless pubs, clubs and many many jobs. I hitched all over the motorways of England, until there was barely a mile I had not covered. I hitched half of each year as a teenager, all over western Europe, and then in my 20's I hitched the east and west coasts of America; the Hulme and Princes Highways of Australia.
Over two visits and nine months, I lost myself and my inhibitions in New Zealand, for weeks on end achieving a rare and blissful 'On The Road' state of hitching nirvana: just 'going with the lifts'; that is to say, when they ask you where you are going, you just say:
'Wherever you are going, if you don't mind'.
Once they understood that I was merely suffering from an overdose of freedom, and neither a psychotic killer nor an obsessive weirdo stalker in search of rare satanic walnuts from the bad witch's mud bath, many people took me along with them.
During those weeks, I developed a trust in humanity alongside a faith in the process of 'journey' that has influenced me more than any other single phenomenon, person or place in my life.
So that's why I stopped for these two lads, and as they clambered into my car I sensed their massive physical presence.
Inside their sodden Day-Glo oilskins, I saw flashes of human hewn from granite; burly creased yet comfortable bodies packed with years of bacon and pints of da Harpic; faces mottled with clumps of white hair sprouting from inside ears, outside noses, even some on top of their heads.
Himself in the back tried to climb on top of a box filled with cassettes, and while I was waving my arms around trying to explain that he might want to slide across and sit on the other side, I saw out of the corner of my eye himself in the front about to settle his massive bulk onto the full plastic bottle of water that was just waiting to be squashed on the passenger seat.
Having sorted out safe landings for them both, and made sure they were safely belted in, I was showered with friendly and effusive greetings:
"Sh-cholar and Gentleman so ye are!" "Fair play to ye sir, Gentleman and a Sh-cholar!" "Not from around here then? Where are ye from?"
After 14 years in Ireland, I have been asked that question 83,459,869,803,929 times, and wanted to answer and engage in another such conversation as much as I wanted to choke to death on my own ligaments and entrails.
At that moment, all I wanted was to give these lads a ride, help them out, but also I desperately needed another 20 minutes of space, time and awareness of the beauty of the countryside.
Maybe it's because I am all grown up, or maybe it was goes-around comes-around karmic payback for all those decades of being a lift, but I decided that I could be successful if strong, tactful and assertive.
Surely there was a way to achieve all I needed, give them what they wanted, and still remain polite?
Speaking slowly, calmly and pleasantly, I felt a strong deep voice rise within me:
"Gentlemen, you are very welcome in my car. I am delighted to drive us into Clifden, but I'm not really up to chatting. No offence at all, but I have a lot of things on my mind, and I need a few minutes to sort myself out before I arrive in Clifden!"
"Sure! Not a bother! Fine, fine, go ahead, so!"
And so we drove on in silence. It was a good silence. A respectful silence.
I had managed to be fairly rude without causing offence.
Once again, the spirit of the road was working for me. For once, the karmic comes-around goes-around was working in a straight line of exchange through hitching.
As I dropped off the gentlemen - for that is what they were - I wished them a happy Christmas.
Himself in the front seat turned to me, and offered as enigmatic a chunk of Connemara wisdom as I could ever hope for:
"Ah well now, ye said ye have a lot on your mind. Sure, and isn't there a lot of that about!"