I want to rock and roll all night, and party every day

This week at work was totally wretched, so I won’t waste my breath talking about it, or my energy reliving it. I think I left off last time talking about the Ojos de Brujo concert in Dùn Laoghaire (it’s pronounced Doon Leary – pronunciations in Irish make even less sense than in English, if that is possible). It’s really pretty, much more so than Dublin. If only I hadn’t forgotten my camera I could have posted some pictures...not that I’ve posted any of Dublin yet anyway! (soon soon, I promise) There’s a picturesque harbour with lots of little boats, some cute cafés and of course pubs. It reminds me a bit of Port Douglas actually, but less touristy (thankfully).

Anyway, the Festival of World Cultures was on, and every single Spanish person in Dublin was pretty much at this concert (it was free). We’d brought some beers, like everyone else there, but were made to tip them out onto the grass by an overzealous garda. While technically we were breaking the law by drinking in a public park, really it was a bit ridiculous as EVERYBODY was drinking and having a good time, nobody was drunk or fighting or anything. We were just enjoying some beers at a show, but the gardaí weren’t going to give anyone any leeway whatsoever. This in a country where the pubs close at 23:00 because the citizens start drinking at 10:00 and don’t stop until closing time.

Anyway, enough about that. The concert was great, out in the open air (it didn’t rain); we were dancing and generally going crazy.

Afterwards Eoin was going to check out this other guy, Declan O’Rourke, who was supposed to be playing outside some pub. That sounded good, so Eoin, Alan, Barry, two friends of theirs and I made our way to the pub where he was supposed to play. Declan was amazing – what an incredible voice, and he writes the most beautiful lyrics:

Galileo fell in love, as a Galilean boy
And he wondered, “What in heavens...who invented such a joy?”
But the question got the better of his scientific mind
And to his blind and dying days he looked up high and often sighed and sometimes cried...

“Who puts the rainbow in the sky?
Who lights the stars at night?
Who dreamt up someone so divine?
Someone like you and made them mine?”

and with the melody those words are made a thousand times more beautiful. Plus there were only about 50 people at that gig, as opposed to the hundreds at the other one, so all in all I enjoyed it much more than the Ojos de Brujo, even though both were good.

After Declan’s mesmerising performance we danced the night away at the pub and finally caught the night bus home at about 02:00.

Right. Now skip forwards almost one week to last night (Friday). I was feeling lousy at work so thank christ I received a text from Alan who was having an impromptu shindig at his place. Being able to look forward to some fun times helped me get through the day, and by 17:00 I was so ready to relax with a couple of beers and a bunch of mates. (Side note: the downside of working with almost all Muslims is we never go for after work drinks on a Friday!).

Thankfully Alan’s place is only 10 minutes walk from my place (not that my directionally-challenged brain could remember how to get there, so I had to ring him and ask for directions, how embarrassing). When I got there the party was already in full swing, so I sat down with some French people and co-incidentally began talking to the only Italian in the bunch. Fascinating guy, an electrical engineer with a passion for abstract art. Pretty soon we were joined by Maria and Eric, a fun Polish couple. Maria invited me to go and visit her city in Poland with her and she’d show me around. We may even be taking a trip to Paris together (depending on my financial situation, which at the moment is quite dire). I can’t wait, as exploring a new city is always better if you have someone to be excited with. Maria also gets almost as excited about things as I do, which is quite fun, but we can get quite loud as you can imagine!

I had lots of fascinating conversations touching on just about any topic you can think of, drank some beers, ate a lot of potato chips, and danced to everything from the Beatles (yay) to 50s backbeat to blues to hip hop to rocking guitar tunes to psychadelic experimental crazy stuff (including a mad wicked version of the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”). It started off as a raging party but by 03:00 or 04:00 we were wittled down to five or six people listening to the crazy psychadelic music and talking. It was such a great vibe and none of us wanted it to end, but finally at 05:00 we decided to call it quits and go to bed. Robbie (the Italian guy) did the gentlemanly thing and walked me home, although Dublin is pretty safe, and I’m sure I would have been okay on my own.

Today I had all these plans to hop on the Number 44 bus to Enniskerry and visit the beautiful Powerscourt Gardens, but as can be expected I got up late and lazed around listening to my new Declan O’Rourke CD (which I so cannot afford at the moment). It’s quite a nice day outside so I might go to the park later and write, and/or have a snooze. To all of you who have been urging me to, rest assured, I’ve finally started writing again. I always meant to, but I never got the motivation until last week at Alan’s place, I said that I had always wanted to be a writer, and Eoin said, “Well, just fucking do it”. So I’m going to just fucking do it.