Race Week is pure Galway, and Galway is the essence of Ireland!

Dublin, like many capital cities, fails to mirror the quintessential personality and culture of the nation it sits astride.
Having lived on three continents, I have seen for myself how there are many great cites which are not capitals, that somehow manage to sum up the essence of their country.
There are some cities that define countries. New York City is the heartbeat of the United States. Paris is La Belle France, and London is yer full English Monty.
Then there are yer second favourites runners, much-loved places of art and inspiration like San Francisco, Liverpool, Melbourne and... Galway?
I think not.
Galway City is only Dublin's poor relation in economic and demographic terms.
To this Englishman, Galway City is pure Ireland, and Race Week is the triple-distilled spirit of Galway City.
So Race Week is Galway, and Galway is essentially Ireland: ergo, Ireland is Race Week.
Around the world, magical festivals rip asunder all that claims to be normal, offering a brief and unique insight into the heart, guts and ailing grey matter of their host city.
Nassau has the explosion of colour and style that is Junkanoo; New Orleans simply could not exist without Mardi Gras; Pamplona hosts all that is Basque with San Fermin and the Running of the Bulls.
What does Dublin have? Please remind me.
The other day I was watching the weather forecast on RTE1.
Lo and behold, there's a massive band of rain occupying half of the country, obliterating everything west of the Shannon.
Gerry Murphy, a nice clean young man who has finally managed to overcome his nerves, but still cannot control his
'... We CAN expect We CAN expect We CAN expect',
explains how later in the day, as this band of rain moves east, we CAN expect widespread rain everywhere.
Everywhere? But like, er, derrr... the map on the tele shows half the country bathed in sunshine.
The rain is all over Dublin, therefore it is everywhere.
The psyche of this nation might be geared to Dublin.
But is Dublin the essential Ireland?
Maybe it once was, back in the dark days when it doubled up as the Irish capital whilst also carrying the dubious cachet of 'Second City of Empire' (for less ancient readers, that's the British Empire I'm on about; not the one that struck back in the second movie).
But right now, here, today, Galway City represents all the good and bad that is 21st century Ireland.
Galway has a rapidly growing population and shrinking green areas; a city centre with pubs you can stumble between, shops that still sport family names surviving alongside the multinational franchises; more buskers than silk shirts in a Haughey closet, and even more hyper-rich home-grown characters.
Galway has growing industrial estates and growing unemployment; rising inflation and thousands living below the poverty line; a Gaeltacht as well as a population that includes 10% born elsewhere (that's me folks!).
We've got 19,000 students, 786 different types of weather, 43 tons of vom on the streets; swans, herons, gannets, and wild salmon that leap out of our city centre river.
And we have water you cannot drink.
But the horses can. The gee-gees are lapping up their lovely clean cryptro-free water in the drinking troughs of Ballybrit.
Can you get more Irish than that?
And, yes, we have Race Week. And just to rub your Pale-faced nose in it, we slip the biggest social and sporting week in the country's calendar right onto the end of the nation's biggest Arts Festival.
Galway is the quintessential Irish city, and if the Film Fleadh and the Arts Festival are the sparks that fire up this city's engine each year, Race Week generates such a blazing inferno that it keeps us hot to trot all the way to next year.
Race Week is mad, bad, wonderful and horrendous.
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 clang and rush, while chefs, barmen and barwomen sweat buckets; hoteliers hop; gamblers and cards sharks are a-pumping; prossies a-jumping; and priests must go insomniac with the overtime work; our 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 chugga-chigging in the air like it's all a bad dream of a Vietnam War flashback.
Or is it a film set?
Spot the difference: Galway during Race Week and the set of Apocalypse Now.
Wow. Might just take a moment.
Horror. The Horror.
The Mystery. The marvellous madness.
Race Week - it just doesn't get more Galway than this, and Ireland just doesn't get more Irish than this.

****

Take a tip from an old hand at Race Week. When Galway goes into fifth gear, you can hold on to neither your money nor your clothes.
But you can at least, goddamit man, at least try to hang on to your mind.
So grab a fact and stick with it, and it might just keep you sane.
To help you along the way, here's the First Annual Race Week Survival Kit.
Kind of a wee 'cut-out-and-keep' collection, courtesy of Double Vision.
All you have to do is choose at least one of the facts listed below, and force yourself to remember it, or them.
I promise you, with my hand on my heart and my cute hazel eyes staring at you as if I really care, that at some point in the coming week, you will feel like you are losing it altogether:
Whether you're watching your nag run backwards at Ballybrit, or you're stuck in a five mile traffic jam; waiting forever at the checkout in a supermarket or at a restaurant table; whether you're sitting in Accident and Emergency, or, especially, if you're working in Accident and Emergency, hanging onto and focusing on one of these free and fascinating facts might save your sanity.
Pick one and you'll be safe as houses, guv'nor. Look at me. Am I honest or am I honest? Would this face lie to you? Oh, come on, I deserve better than that!
Now here come the facts.
Did you know that -

http://doubledoublevision.blogspot.com

I love film - it's cinemas that I find difficult!

It's 'F' time in Galway City again. With the arrival of the Film Fleadh we hit Festival Season so welcome, all you fans of film. My love of film reigns supreme among the Arts, but it's my relationship with cinemas that gives good tale.
Back in 1982, when E.T. was released on video, nobody was going to the cinema. Mega-Plexes had not yet been invented, and cinemas were decaying single-screen theatres with ancient seats, sticky carpets and crappy sound.
Everyone just wanted to stay home and watch videos.
Unfortunately, I chose this abysmal period to find a job with the famous screen advertising company, Pearl and Dean, (...the tunnel, those flashing lights and the 'ba-bapbap ba-babap ba-babap baaaah!).
It was my job to head off to the southwest of England and Wales and try to sell little local adverts to little local companies. You know those 15 and 30 second shorts, showing the interior of a restaurant, garage, clothes shop that bear absolutely no relation to the one being advertised at all, followed by an obviously different, usually deep male voice that declares:
"Shirley's Boutique, Union Street, just around the corner from this cinema!"
Nobody wanted to advertise at the cinema, because nobody was going to the cinema, but my real problem was not the fact that I offered a shoddy product from an ailing industry, but more that I am not a total shit.
I cannot sell something to somebody, if I know it will do them no good whatsoever.
Picture a tiny Welsh valley community; half way up a mountainside hangs a row of old mining cottages.
"But why would I want to advertise at the Picture House? I am the only baker in the village! Everyone knows where I am!"
Indeed, sir, and although I cannot say it aloud, you have the same face as the rest of the village as well.
Visiting the local cinema manager whilst in town was seen as a simple Public Relations exercise, and in one far-flung west Welsh town, I noticed that the manager's name was distinctly Arabic.
Visiting in the afternoon, I met his wife, a local woman brimming with vitality and a certain hippy charm. Himself was apparently Moroccan, and would be back later. Why didn't I come back that evening, and have dinner with them?
What a lovely invitation! Working as a travelling salesman can be a terribly lonely affair, so I accepted, and enjoyed a great meal and a few bottles of wine.
Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' was the movie of that moment, and I confessed to having not yet seen it.
"Well let's put it on then!" said himself, with a distinct twinkle in his eye.
So we sat, the three of us, alone in his cinema, watching the rock movie, polishing off a plate of home-baked biccies.
Half way through the film, I realised that those cookies weren't just chocolate chip, and enjoyed anew this suddenly epic and brilliant piece of film-making with extraordinary enthusiasm.
Citizens of that rain-lashed Welsh industrial wasteland town were that night serenaded by a singular Adley chorus, as I stumbled hotel-wards through the dark drippy streets:
"Hiiiiigh don' neeeeed noooowww wEddge-yoo-kaaayyy-shuuurrrn!
During that period of employment, I sat one memorable Saturday afternoon with a large group of friends, imbibing way too much alcohol. Pumped up on hubris, I suddenly declared that I could get us all in to the cinema for free.
Off we went, as a raggledy-baggledy drunken army, to the ABC cinema at Edgware Road.
Waving my arms wildly outside the cinema, I shepherded my tipsy giggly flock, explaining that they had to wait there, so that I could keep it together enough to speak to the manager, and do the deal.
Like the Usual Suspects, they all lined up along the huge plate glass window, looking in and waving in that particularly embarrassing way friends do when they know you are trying to keep it together.
Once inside, I took a moment to breathe, groom my hand through my hair, pull up my jeans, tuck in my shirt and stride, purposefully, as a man who means business, towards a door that looked like an office.
Ka-booomph!! Ouch! Bloody Hell!
The worst part of what had happened was how long it took me to realise what had happened.
To my friends lined up outside, to all the staff and punters in the cinema lobby, I had just walked at full speed into a wall-sized mirror, but my alcohol-addled brain just couldn't work out who was this fat bastard geezer who was blocking my way. He wouldn't bloody budge, and he had head-butted me, and as I flailed my arms in an effort to hit him, he somehow managed to punch me back in exactly the same place that I punched him, at exactly the same time.
Finally falling backwards, the terrible truth hit me as hard as had my imaginary opponent.
My head hit the carpet, and I rolled over to see that each of my friends outside was also at ground level, having collapsed in hysterical uncontrollable laughter.
Oh yes, I love a good film, but those cinemas can be a real challenge!

****

Just in case Galway's water debacle is not over when you read this, a wee plea from me to you.
A close friend of mine and I went recently to the excellent Kashmir Restaurant. Indian Sub-Continental cuisine in Galway has improved beyond all measure in the last 15 years, and we enjoyed a splendid meal, top notch food and service.
But what was this ¤3.95 for a bottle of water? We had asked for some water, and given Galway's bug in the bog, the restaurant had to serve mineral water, and as they paid for it themselves, I expected to be charged, but only the cost price which they paid for it.
Instead they slapped a whacking great big greedy profit on it, and when I pointed it out to our charming waiter, he went behind the counter to ask his superior, who merely shook his head.
On the night I let it go, but now, I urge you all, if you would normally be happy drinking tap water at your table, refuse to pay profit prices for bottled water in Galway restaurants. As Johnny Rotten might have sang:
"Making profits from holidaymakers in other people's miser-eeeee...."

'Gone With The Rain' - how YPS stole Ireland from the Irish !

 

Sure, 'tis mighty the way we're hitting the headlines nationwide! 

Galway Galway Galway, that's the news these days. 

If it weren't for that microscopic parasite burrowing into our guts, there'd be rakes of tourists cluttering up the place, making it impossible to get things done. 

Now that they are staying away in their droves,

(and let's be honest, who can blame them? Who wants to be the Daddy that little six year-old Seany looks up to, as he agonisingly twists his tiny body in contortions of dry retching: "Daddy, Mummy says you huhuhukakakakfleeaaarrrgghhhhhh you you knew the water was bad in in in Gaaaaaaaaaaaalwweeeeeeeey, ga gaGalway. Did you know Daddy? Did you? Did you?" )

there is plenty of time to paint the entire city and county yellow. 

Yes folks, our old adversary Yellow Paint Syndrome is back with a bubonic vengeance. 

From what I understand, the 'crypto' bit of cryptosplitsoredabum means 'hidden' or 'obscure', and although little could be less obscure than the colour in which you paint your buildings, the insidious effect of diseases like YPS is that they remove elements of your country's culture that might never return. 

Even though I have spent 15 years going on and on about what I, as English Yiddish Atheist do and do not love about Ireland, I am as wary as the Irish about outsiders who tell you what your own culture is really like. 

So when I recall arriving in an Ireland where pink and blue farmhouses dotted the land, it might well come over a tad too Chocolatey Boxey, but there were and are whitewashed cottages with red, green or sometimes yellow trim. 

Now Ireland is yellow, and the only damage limitation left available is which shade of yellow. 

YPS has hit Salthill hard, and recently the Waterfront Bar was smothered with a yellow so disgusting that it sears the retinas off my eyes and sends me on my way

Hang on in there Lonergan's Atlantic Bar, and your neighbours Killoran's bar, which is immune to attacks of YPS because it's real and right and already yellow.

I am mourning the loss of part of traditional Irish culture which is not mine to mourn, but also as a bipolar freak I am a blue person inside a red person inside a nutter, and yellow is where everyone else lives. 

Yellow is a nice colour, (and this yellow of which we speak is pretty close to 'magnolia' - oh yeh baby I know you know it is) and 'nice' is a word that my schoolteachers told us meant nothing. 

Another word was always better, and yellow is that to me. 

A harmless, safe, anodyne and completely boring colour, unless natural, on primrose or sunflower or flag iris: anything, in fact, but an Irish wall. 

Maybe YPS, this need to homogeonise, is deep-rooted in colonial fear, from not wanting to stand out from the crowd, and maybe that is hogwash. I just wish it would stop. 

We do not know what we have lost to YPS. This might seem a strange bugbear, a somewhat neurotic bête noir, but YPS is a crypto-cultural disaster. 

Before we notice, in front of our eyes the changes to blandness continue apace, and pretty damn soon all we'll have is hundreds of Subway takeaways inside yellow buildings.

Welcome to the Galway Diet! Have a drink, drop a dress size!

I cringe every time I hear the radio commercial that feebly tries to reassure prospective tourists that Galway is a safe place to visit.
Please come, and we promise not to poison you. We provide bottles of safe water for you to wash your teeth with, so you and your family will have a wonderful holiday.
Although clearly well-intentioned, it's all coming from the wrong place.
Deep in the pit of the Adley belly, lurking in the vile bile, marketing skills thrive aplenty.
To me these skills feel a little like a tape worm. I know they are there, but hold them in contempt. It hardly takes a genius to see that with our very special little watery crisis, we have to think outside of the box.
This is water, people, not a sea view. When tourists draw up a wish list for their weekend away, believe me, water isn't on it.
You won't sell holidays, hotel rooms and coach tour stop-offs by showing off about how the water is safe because it's in bottles.
Thinking 'outside of the box' requires lateral thought applied in a manipulative way. You know where you want to get to, and you found out that straight on is not an option.
So you think in a way that you hope your target audience is not expecting.
Thankfully, at the time of writing, nobody has yet died from the recent outbreak. If there is a god or karma, I who have not yet suffered from cryptosporidium will now doubtless be stricken gastric, for speaking out as I am about to, for the good of my adopted city and county.
Forsaking my health to the vagaries, cruelties and compassion of the Fates, I'm thinking out the box on behalf of Galway City's pubs, clubs and hotels.
We've established water is not part of a tourists' wish list, so what is?
Da craic. That's always there, especially in Galway. Havin' da craic, looking good, having a bit of a dance and a few shcoops or seven or eight blue sugarvodkas.
That's where the money is folks, and right now Galway is in a unique position to offer all of the above list, with spades and diamante knobs on.
People want to look slim and drink, and sure, hasn't Galway always been 'Drink City'?
So let's run a radio commercial, but let's be thinking more along the lines of this:
"Right now, in Galway City, the 100% natural way to drink more and lose weight! Come West and have the time of your life, enjoying the Galway Diet!
The Galway Diet doesn't have huge lists of Do's and Don'ts!
The Galway Diet stops you having to go to the gym for exercise!
The Galway Diet lets you eat everything you like, because you will lose weight anyway!
Using only completely organic bacteria, the Galway Diet frees you up from the inside out!
At last you will lose all those heavy internal blockages!
The Galway Diet removes all that old baggage you've carried for far too long!
The Galway Diet lets you move more freely than you ever thought possible!
The Galway Diet is not G.I. It's not Carb Free and it's not Protein High!
Out here in the West life is simple.
Out here it's just H2O for Size Zero.
Come to Galway, have a drink tonight, and drop a dress size tomorrow!"

***

Alright, settle down, I know it's not all about dropping a dress size. Anyway, I can't stand the Size Zero look; scares the pants off me, to be honest.
Mind you, speaking as a bloke here, sometimes women just confuse the hell out of me.
That bastion of testosterone, tit talk and all-things male, FHM magazine recently asked 2,000 men with an average age of 30 about their attitudes to parenting, home life and the way they saw their role in their relationship.
Astonishingly, 7 out of 10 men revealed that they had rejected the traditional male role as fulfilled by their fathers. Instead they preferred the idea of sharing the parenting, housekeeping and earning on a clear-cut 50/50 basis with their partners.
As this colyoom has been saying for some time, Brothers are doing it for ourselves.
Trouble is, the Sisters are still evolving. Just when we finally start to become the men they asked for, women are now having doubts about just what kind of women they want to be.
The FHM survey revealed a great deal of turmoil within the subjects' relationships.
50% of those men asked admitted that while they wanted to spend more time with their children at home, their partners were putting them under significant pressure to earn enough to allow the mother to stay home on a full time basis, and a further 38% said the same, except their partner was willing to settle for a part time job, as long as the man stayed in full time employment.
From what I remember of Women's Lib, and the Feminist Revolution, its major tenet was the 'Woman's Right To Choose', which I always took to mean her absolutely undeniable right to have both a career and a family, or one or neither.
Don't remember any sub-clauses about men having to subsidise this dream of independence.
And while we're at it, can anybody explain to me why men should be deprived of these choices? Are we not equally entitled to the same basic freedoms?

****

Whichever way you look at it, Mums and Dads get very tired. Indeed, for some poor souls, parenting is just too much hassle.
When I say 'poor', I mean of spirit in this case, because young flash, financially flush and highly strung couples in England are now paying somebody else to do it.
That's right, for £2,500 you can pay somebody to sort the whole thing, (apart from the messy bits between the sheets, and later in stirrups...).
Keely Paice, the enterprising woman who founded Baby Planners, reveals how she takes the strain out of giving birth:
"We will organise everything from sourcing the best baby carrier to creating the baby's bedroom and arranging Parent Confidence Classes... we will hire the best maternity nurse, shortlist nannies, advise on feeding patterns and help establishing routines."
How do young couples afford this kind of hoo-haa?
More to the point, what desperate and special hell might be represented by a 'Parent Confidence Class'?
cadley1@eircom.net
http://doubledoublevision.blogspot.com