It’s been a while, too long. So like the couple from Date Night we were away off into town. After a day of chauffeuring the kids to all their social engagements, it’s our time. Sometimes it just feels like too much effort, far easier to assume the position, lounge in the couch groove in track suit bottoms with a glass of wine and a packet of Kettles and give out about the plasticity of the presenters on X Factor. Stuffed, plucked and buffed they are. All shiny like the wood floors the nuns made us buff, as kids, in my old primary school, Scoil an Linbh Iosa. That smell of lavender wax still brings me back to times-tables and conjugations. Quay Street Halloween weekend, on the other hand, was as far from X Factor as you’ll get, a cacophony of hoots and hollers, all manner of shapes and sizes and crooked non-veneered teeth. Standing outside Neachtains we take in the sights, sounds and smells. A team of fully grown oompa loompas make their way to the nearest watering hole. Witches, zombies and the beardy guy from The Hangover, complete with strapped on baby, soak up the atmosphere and the pints. There are wigs, warts, wands, beaks, bodices, ghouls and goblins, truly a night for abandoning the self, a chance to go out and play dress up. Free the Id, I say. My equivalent of dress up was, however, merely longer earrings and higher heels. And a bit a’ lipstick. Pathetic, yip, I know. I don’t get out much. A lady beside me at the bar is decked out in Miss Havishamesque wedding dress with what appeared to be the end of our garden stuck to her front and back, a plethora of twigs and branches that Eanna Ni Lawhna would have been proud of. I am concerned she is standing quite close to the fire. So is she. The clue ‘Fund’ hangs from her waist. Miss Hedge Fund cautiously moves away from the fire and says to her friend ‘I’m headin’ and takin me bush with me’. And so she did. Behind me a zombie orders two pints of Guinness and a vodka and Red Bull. At the bar there is a raven. She lifts up her beak every now and then, complains about the heat and takes a sup from her drink. The taxi driver who drove us home told us of how he had lived in eleven different countries, from Niger to Syria, Italy to Morocco and is now well and truly settled in Ireland. Despite the weather, despite the economic challenges we are so lucky, he reckons. It remains to be seen. Last weekend, in Galway at least, very few gave a jot about Greece or impending budgets. The place was hoppin. We’ll have more a’ that, thank you very much.
