Tired but happy, home from the rugby.
Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006Well, poor old Wrinkly Paddy, I’m afraid, is in an awful state. His toes are all black-purple, and his foot is as swollen as a priest in a playground. He didn’t go to the game in the end because he was afraid somebody might stand on his foot, and to be honest, if you saw the crowd of muck-savages trying to force their way into Lansdowne Road, he has a fair point.
But anyway, it didn’t deter the Duck of Death and me from heading into town early. Mulligans of Poolbeg Street, to be exact. Because the Duck is based in Norway at the moment, where beer costs about eight hundred euros a spoonful, he’s been on an involuntary detox, a sort of like-it-or-not rehab programme, but I’ve seen this kind of thing before. Once back home, the Duck immediately launches into retox: his own private Dehab programme, and I have to say, by the end of the night he was pretty dehabilitated.
Being in Norway didn’t stop him having sixteen spare tickets for the match which he had to get rid of pretty damn lively, so we all phoned around and came up with an assortment of knackers, grow-badlies, goose-milkers, heron-stranglers and rockhoppers who all descended on Mulligans like shuffling zombies across an urban wasteland.
The match was probably pretty good, but as I wasn’t watching it on the telly, I couldn’t tell. O’Gara had a great game and so did Best, but the really nice thing, for me, was to see the first ever tinker playing international rugby for Ireland. And it was great to hear all the support in the ground too.
Give out the ball, Boss!! Good man, Boss! Fair play t’ya Boss!
Social inclusion at its finest.
The Duck, Wrinkly Joe and myself had seats on the South terrace in the open rain. Seats, now. Think of that. In the pissing rain, with cold water pooling around your arse on your cheap bucket seat. Aha! But the Duck was ahead of us and whipped out three plastic bin-liners that he got from the barman in Mulligans. Wrinkly Joe and I tore ours open and pulled them up over our waists, keeping knees and arse dry, but Duck went one step further.
Do me up, he grunted, his arms buried by his side and the bag up to his chest. I grabbed the top of it and hauled it up towards his shoulders as he wriggled into it. A slinky black plastic cocktail dress.
Would you like me to leave a little cleavage? I asked, helpfully.
Pull it up all the fukken way Duck growled, Watch the fukken blind side Leamy you fukken gabhal!! Up a little more. The fukken blind side, oh Jesus fukken Christ! That’s grand. Thanks.
It was cold and it was wet and we were looking up the pitch, so I can’t say we had the best view of things, especially through a wall of airborne water. But we did have whiskey, and that was the main thing. God bless the hip-flask!
Later in the pub, everybody agreed on one thing: what a bollix of a day. And on another thing too: yes, I will indeed have another. Thank you very much.
The two rock-hoppers seemed to enjoy it too, and as they jabbered away in their incomprehensible tongue, all I could make out was Oileain Pacific Theas. Clearly they intend to support their southern soul-brothers.
When we got home, we forced Paddy out of bed because we wanted to pour a little tequila on his foot. In the interests of research, we needed to find out if it was true what they all say about us: we’d lick it off a sore leg.
Stumble it!
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November 21st, 2006
knackers, grow-badlies, goose-milkers, heron-stranglers and rockhoppers
Fantastic descriptions, feckin hilarious.
Sounds like you had a good laugh. Isn’t it odd how often having a good time on occasions like that turns out to be little to do with the reason you actually went there in the first place?
November 21st, 2006
Well now, Kav, to be honest with you, I kind of had half a sneaking feeling that there might be a bit of fun apart from the football.
November 21st, 2006
I’ve never heard the like. God almighty, what next? Portable music players?
November 21st, 2006
’tis the devil’s own game…
November 22nd, 2006
’tis, but what the fuck. ’tis all that keeps us goin’, sad poor old fucks that we are.