Free-Bar Blues
Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007I know what we should do! said Wrinkly Joe. We’ll open the whiskey!
That was at five o’clock this morning when a taxi delivered us home, babbling and drooling after Gerry Soprano’s mega-housewarming-party, involving a free bar (free fucking bar!!), an eight-piece blues band, free grub (free fucking grub!!)
Open the whiskey? Are you mad?? I slurringly screamed at Joe.
Christ Almighty.
It all started on Friday with a phone call from Wrinkly Joe: We’ll be there about eight. Are you still coming? Tony has a bed for you and everything.
“There” was Mountshannon, a little village on Lough Derg. “Why” was because our friend - let’s call him “Tony” - was having a birthday party. There was going to be no “What”. We all knew it was going to be yet another day and night of music, brown mescalin, Wild Turkey and Latvian hookers. Goddammit, I am getting so sick of music.
Well, I said, don’t forget we have to go to Gerry Soprano’s housewarming bash tomorrow night.
We’ll take that as it comes, said Joe, but don’t you forget, we also have to watch the hurling match between Limerick and Tipperary.
Oh dear Jesus.
Tony’s party was, as you’d expect, a mad, disorganised, hedonistic outpouring of excess, gluttony, greed, lust and drunkenness. And hamburgers. With singing.
You’re probably looking for the barbecue, the nice bar-lady said to us as we wandered into the little country pub.
That’s right.
It’s out the back.
And it was out the back. It was in an open hay-shed which also housed a hearse.
A what?
That’s what I said: a hearse. God, there are times when you just have to love this country.
Howya lads, greeted “Tony”. Have a spliff and relax.
Now, there’s something strange about singing sessions in pubs, but it took Wrinkly Joe to point it out. If you listened to guys playing guitars and singing in pubs, you could easily imagine that no new song had been written in the last thirty years.
Why do they always play the Beatles and Neil Young - why is that? said Joe.
I don’t know, I nodded. Maybe no new songs have been written in the past thirty years.
Hmm, said Joe. That could be it all right.
We ended up, of course, back at the house, which was great, except that it turned out not to be Tony’s house in the strict conventional sense. That is to say, in the sense that he actually owned it, or paid rent for it. Not in that sense - no. And not in the sense that the real owner knew anything about him using it, especially for a party with a crowd of drunken louts. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t his house according to any of the tired old definitions of ownership.
What rebels we felt as we sang and drank throught the night. What a blow for freedom and self expression. What a crowd of drunkards.
The bed I was promised didn’t quite fit the traditional bourgeois definitions of bedness either, but then again, I never expected it to, accustomed as I am to keeling over on a couch at about seven in the morning, which is what happened. Not a floor? Luxury!
So that was how we prepared for Gerry Soprano’s all-night free bar and blues-band extravaganza. And that is also why opening the whiskey was probably not one of Wrinkly Joe’s better ideas.
Stumble it!
June 18th, 2007
Did you? Open it? You could have had a hurling match right there at the house and skipped the sporty one altogether. Efficiency see. Whisky oils the wheels of your weekend and no time is wasted standing around in cold fields waiting to get back to the bar.
Gin’s far more efficient though. It gives you great time-saving ideas, like “how ’bout just microwaving the egg rather than go through all the hassle of boiling it? Yeah!!!” Or, the next night, “I’ll just nip through this field of nettles and bulls as a shortcut home and then I’ll have time to boil the egg properly before passing out - and no messy clean-up.” Great for the ideas is gin.
June 18th, 2007
Well Bock, just to let you know that despite wrinkly joe’s prediliction for hard liquor early in the morning after an industrial intake of Guinness’s finest, he still managed to put in a tremendously heart felt and emotional performance rocking and countrifying the simple folk of Newbridge town. my god almighty…what a man…is this a mere mortal !
June 18th, 2007
Makes me wonder if it’s this kind of jiggery-pokery I’ll be up to in later years with my misanthrope friends…
June 19th, 2007
true or not, i enjoyed this.
especially this: …a mad, disorganised, hedonistic outpouring of excess, gluttony, greed, lust and drunkenness. And hamburgers.
made me want to go find a party.
June 20th, 2007
Hey Laurie, we’re your man……..!
June 30th, 2007
well…we do our best…..considering….
June 30th, 2007
.well…what do you expect….
June 30th, 2007
the fuckin spanish inquisition…? I’ll have you know I happen to know the said entrant to the wrinkly club quite well,in a roundabout kind of way,and I’d have to say…what the fuck did you expect…..and I’ll have you know you did better than that screaming bloke with the ear hair from bristol who drank all the tequila (ouch!)…..you should hear his tale of woe….. But,another day….
July 28th, 2007
Back at the house – the upside down house with the kitchen-cum-diner-cum-lounge opening on to the decked balcony, which looks out across the manor house where the Swiss stay to the greenious waters of Lough Derg; the holy dividing waters, the zebra-musselled waters, the pike engourging waters where, back in Da Valera’s Days of the Celtic Twilight, the Ennis boys raced to the islands before the toxic algae had them reaching for their leisure centre membership; no rent paid no permissions sought; the rancid floating debris lapping the strewn floor and couches, the less-than-impressed neighbours and Tony the Badger’s incoherent explanation – unaware, unimpressed, in the sense that I knew anything about him using it, other than cat-feeding duties… Shall we open it – the craniums (or, for the Latin scholars, is it crania) of the miscreants is all I want to open. The Badger is 50, the hearse reeks of scorched burgers and vomited Porter, Gin & Spliffage cocktails and the Felis silvestris catus has deserted to the Buglers up the Road – small price for a few hours of lust, gluttony and the lash for Wrinkley Joe and the Limerick exiles….
I know what we should do! said Wrinkly Missus. We’ll open the Dettol!
That was at five o’clock the following morning when the airport taxi delivered us from our tax-efficient Budapest pied-à-terre… Had it comin’ to ‘em - fecking Dubs was the helpful view of the BBQ pit of the Badger’s Retreat in the Village. It’s enough to make one want to drink the waters….
August 1st, 2007
Mr Ici: What a fine contribution to the genre. I’m thinking of making it a post all of its own.
September 29th, 2007
You think compliments will sooth the brow or meet the clear up costs, oh ye of the Mugging Meles meles. The offered brown paper envelope of a “own post” pay off, may seem like recompense, but such fine words will never butter my parsnips or apply any lubrication of any kind to my extenisve winter store of root vegetables… My riposte cleared the anger, the gestalt of it was self-serving, but to have inspired compliments (compliments!) threatens to shred the fragile I’m-over-it-and-have-moved-on compromise that I had patched together. F*ck anger management, the Tony the badger will pay - I’ll pursue him from Lakeside to Kerala - but he will pay….
September 29th, 2007
That’s another excellent comment.
I might put them all together and make a short play.
Well done!