I'm again in my beloved City of the Tribes. I truly love Clare, but my heart is never too far away from Eyre Square and the Spanish Arch and that special craicery of old Galway.
I get to the Crane later in the evening but, amidst the creativity of the excitements of the Galway Arts FestivaI, first of all visit a few of the older pubs in which I used be what you could call an occasional regular.
Galway seems to be fundamentally unchanged, though a tad busier and faster than it used be, but the old pubs are still disappearing quietly away.
The first one I try, near the Jesuit Church, has closed down altogether, and by heavens the second one, where the last of the old shawled ladies used drink their mulled porter, is now a laptop dancing club of some kind! There's change for you!
I eventually find a surviving haunt of old and sit up to the bar and order a pint of Guinness because the beautiful Dutch Nation is doing the driving. She is meantime visiting the art galleries on Merchants Road, such as Kennys, which are all blazing with the festival offerings.
There is a man at the bar that I vaguely remember. He is in the same boat. We revive the connection slowly and, after a while, I begin to ask him about the howabouts and whereabouts of the characters I had shared yarns and pints with along this very bar only 12 or 13 summers ago. It was a salutory experience, a bit sobering.
"How is Mickie these times?"
"Mickie John. Lord above he's dead for years. Went as quick as lightning in the end."
"What about Johnny that worked in McDonagh’s and played the harmonica?"
"Gone too, maybe seven or eight years now."
"Stevie?"
"Died last summer the week after the races."
I reflected a little bit grimly about the pace of real mortal change. I was more than a little bit afraid to ask about anybody else I had known from there.
In my mind's eye I saw them all as a vital, laughing, merry element of the recent Galway streetscape of my years there. We sipped silently.
But there was one great character I just had to inquire about --Tony the Shoe -- who had always been the life and soul of all the nights I ever was there.
And, pardon me in advance, just for the sheer artistic power of it, despite the bawdy element, I just have to quote him directly. There are occasional moments, especially at art festivals maybe, when vulgarity is not vulgarity at all.
"Tony the Shoe?"
"He was awful sick in the early part of the year and everybody thought he was gone for sure. But then, first time in months just last Saturday night he was looking rightly.
“Danny asked him how he was and do you know what he said? He said, 'I'm weak enough but I can still fart, fight, f*** and follow a melodian!' That's what he said."
Again forgive me, but artistic expression comes in many forms.
I did not ask about anyone else, and in a little while was back on the throbbing streets, later to be taken over by the flamboyant Macnas street monsters who parade the city at the climax of every arts festival.
The darkness fell and the huge creatures of gauzes cunningly stretched over willow frames again worked their magics on the eyes of hundreds of children and adults cramming the pavements.
Lights and torches blazed, the old Claddagh rang with joy, the Spanish Arch flaunted its historic shadows, the special zany atmosphere of the Queen of all the Irish cities hung over it all. Special. I forgot all the old ghosts.
Like everybody else there, young and old, I followed that melodian!
And a unique while at home just before that...
I have the joy of meeting a very special young American lady I'd never met before in the ordinary way but had written about before she was born.
It was a strange experience and joyous because away back then a decade ago, months before she was born, I was talking on the phone with her mother, one of my best friends, and I kinda saw the baby and even described her here on this page. She is almost exactly the way I saw her then!
She has the strong fey sort of face that marks out a child from all others, incredible eyes between brown and green that see through you, wings of lustrous black hair either side of mobile sensitive features.
She is not yet 10 years old but there is a wise presence there already. This one will do great things soon, maybe, even probably in the arts.
She looked at me gravely and she said, "Thank you for writing about me" and she stole away my heart. And she hugged me. I won't ever forget that.
And I meander down to the White Strand to see Dusty the dolphin again...
I wrote here about the tame wild dolphin Dusty a few weeks ago and was drawn back to see her again.
There she was, playing happily, with swimmers and bathers drawn from all over Clare and beyond, and for heaven's sake, if you are on an Irish holiday, make your way to the White Strand outside fabled
Miltownmalbay in Clare for a special treat. What struck me most was the way she modulated her play to suit the company she was in at any given time. Further out from the beach she played quite vigorously with the strong male and female swimmers with their wetsuits and flippers and snorkels.
But, ever and anon, she would come in to join the small children in the shallows off the beach. Her stomach must have been touching the sand as she played with them, gentle as a granny, moving slowly past the eagerly touching hands, the dorsal cruising in and out amongst them.
It was entrancing. It was beautiful. If you are within a hundred miles, especially if you have children, dare not to pass the White Strand's daily magic.
And, finally for now, I'm at the Limerick Street Market last Saturday morning...
"Men, look at these, the finest secondhand working trousers you could buy, two pairs for a tenner, laundered to the last, as good as new, better even.
These are Garda (police) trousers, and you all know that the Gardai never have to work at all. The only bit of wear these trousers have ever had was around the backside from all the sitting they did in comfortable chairs in the station or in patrol cars.
And all they ever served was less than six months because the men that wore them got so fat from the easy life that they had to get bigger sizes!
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