Eoin Butler: writer, journalist and Mayoman of the Year
Tripping Along The Ledge
Blog
Stradbally, September 5 2010: 4.12pm.
They didn’t show the All-Ireland hurling final at Electric Picnic for some reason this year. So on Sunday afternoon, my friend Conor and I made the long trek back to his car, which was parked in a stubbly field somewhere about three miles away, to listen to Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh’s commentary on the car radio. The man is a poet and the contest sounded like a classic. At half time, of course, we had to create our own entertainment.
September 7th, 2010.
September 8th, 2010 at 12:30 am
Are ye divining for water there?
A few years ago a group os us went to a hippie music festival (can’t remember the name) one weekend somewhere in Leitrim. It was like the Craggy Island carnival or something (Tunnel of Goats, Ladder of Death) and rained solidly for the whole weekend (this was 2007, the summer that wasn’t). One of my friends had come over from England that weekend and we sat, grim-faced and in full raingear, in the tent as the rain beat down determined to Enjoy our Holiday, a la Withnail and I. “I look like I’m about to go fix a man-hole cover or some electric cables” my friend muttered as she fixed on her headtorch and adjusted her rain trousers over her hiking boots.
Music was, how shall I put it, eclectic. I remember there was one group who looked and sounded like Dexy’s Midnight Runners, violins and dungarees and all, and a guy dancing around buck naked except for his wellies.
By the Sunday we conceded defeat to the mud and rain and headed into Carrick-on-Shannon to get the bus back to Dublin. There was some sort of Gaelic game and the busdriver cranked the commentary up as loud as it would go so we could all hear MoM in full flow as the bus made its way across the Midlands. My English friend, who hadn’t slept in about three days at this point and was on a massive comedown, was less than appreciative of his lyrical flow: “This. Is. Torture”. She hasn’t come back to visit since.
September 8th, 2010 at 8:51 am
Did yee find water?
September 8th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Are those car aerials?
September 8th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
@ Lisa – yes he was divining.
@ Massey – But he divining for Bulmers. He figured this proved those rods worked.
I then debunked his theory by successfully divining for a packet of crisps I’d left on the ground.
@ Paddy – not sure what they were.
September 9th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh has the most phenomenal memory of anyone i’ve ever met. He can remember all the lads who played in 1981 for example.
September 9th, 2010 at 10:38 pm
@ Raptureponies – To be fair, Jimmy McGee can remember entire line-ups from obscure national league clashes in late 1940s. Well, unless that Jogging Jimmy’s Memory was rigged. Which I sincerely hope it wasn’t.
September 9th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
I remember I was at this ATP concert at a former Butlins camp in Kent when Munster were in the Heineken Cup. My friend br a oughtfew of us to the most weird, almost-derelict, English sea side pub I’ve ever been in outside of my nightmares.
We were all completely banjaxed on all sorts and one of the lads was shivering hiding under the table. The barman looked over and said “Concert good then, fellas?” Classic English understatement. On the way back from the same festival our train stopped at a platform and the man in the seat opposite me looked out the window and said reflectively to his friend “there’s a yellow line at the side of this plaform” paused, then said “there wasn’t one at the side of the previous platform. Interesting that”. The English. They’re an exotic species to me.
September 9th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
that should read ‘brought a few of us’. Fuck this keyboard and the laptop it rode in on.
September 9th, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Gone totally off topic here but one St. Patrick’s Day about five years ago, a whole rake of us were in Conways pub on Parnell Street. The whole night my friend Duncan kept trying to engage my friend Adrian in some sort of drunken mess fighting. He kept hitting him sly jabs and slaps the way they’d always used to. But Adrian wasn’t into that shite anymore.
Long story short, Duncan kept at it anyway and eventually around closing time he just took it too far, pushed Adrians wrong button. Adrian grabbed him by the neck, swung him around and threw his (Duncan’s) entire body over his own (Adrian’s) head, down onto a table that had about forty half full pints on it and knocked the table over.
At least two dozen people were covered in beer. There were about forty broken pint glasses on the ground. The table was probably broken (I don’t remember). BOth lads were on the ground, chairs everywhere. The barman came around the bar, down to us and said:
“Lads, if ye do that again, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
What a country!