Blood and Vomit:
The Yearly Nightmare that is St. Patrick’s Day
Dear God in Heaven, it’s almost upon us again: St. Patrick’s Day, that appalling celebration of everything from serpents to leprechauns that is and always has been the Bane of the Serious Drinker.
You will certainly get drinkers out on Sunday March 17th but they really aren’t imbibers as I understand the concept. These clowns are only out to get well and truly bladdered; and God help them but it won’t take much because they’re not used to it.
I love pub life which means that I’m in a bar perhaps as often as six times a week. But rarely and certainly not in recent years have I been carried out of one.
I enjoy a pint. Simple as that and I make no apologies for it. The kind of utter gobshites and unreconstructed wankers that will be let loose over the weekend are the twice-a-year-drinkers. (The other horror show being Christmas.) These people shouldn’t be let out. They should just be kept in their cages. They spoil it for everyone else. Even more hideously they generally drag along their ill-behaved brats with them. Now I’m not a brat friendly person at the best of times but I really start frothing at the mouth on Paddy’s Day.
Having gotten their ghastly offspring ‘excited’ by a parade that would put any normal person to sleep they then proceed to shovel large amounts of sugary drinks and chocolate into the obese gobs of their dreadful sprogs, all of which leads to a very simple equation:
SUGAR + CHOCOLATE SQUARED==ODIOUS LITTLE SHITS RUNNING AROUND BARS AND RESTAURANTS WHILST DRUNKEN PARENTS LIE INTOXICATED.
The serious drinker will always stay away from bars on St. Patrick’s Day. As the day turns into night it just gets worse for the tenders behind the counter. You’ll have idiots that they have never seen all year screaming:
“When you’re ready! When you’re ready!”
And do you know, there is no sense to it. They can see that the guys behind the counter are working flat out. If they were octopuses they couldn’t be firing over any more drinks than they are doing. They manoeuvre around each other and there is no time for finesse and certainly there is no demand for it from the customers. All they want is drink and they want it served five minutes ago.
“Is there any fear of me getting a drink? I’ve been here twenty fucking minutes!” There’s another thing. It’s never ten minutes or five minutes; it’s always twenty fucking minutes.
Or you enter a bar that is normally OK but this time it’s like pushing into a wall of rancid heat. The noise seems to wrap itself around you and immediately you can see people with their arms in the air, soggy cash notes waving frantically. “When you’re ready! When you’re ready!”
And then there will be the inevitable eejit who lets out an ear-splitting: “Ya boy ya! Yah-HOOOOOO—yah!” He’ll then beam around him as if he has just passed a witticism of Wildean proportions, as barmen and customers alike look at him and dismiss him for the clown that he is.
“Sure we’re motoring now!” he’ll be yelling at no one in particular.
Another one that shouldn’t be let out.
This thing, the Patrick’s Day ‘craic’; I just don’t get it. Maybe it’s OK in other cities like New York or Chicago. Maybe they’re more civilized there, I don’t know. I’ve neither gone to one of their parades nor had a desire to do so. All I know is that in Dublin or Galway or Limerick or Waterford it will end with a lot of vomit down the shirts of a lot of twice-a-year-drinkers. And of course there will be a lot of blood because people who can’t hold their drink tend to think that they can fight.
Is there anything good about St. Patrick’s Day? Well, I haven’t checked if they’re open yet but maybe it will be a good day to visit the cinema. Who knows, all the attention-defecit scumbags who can’t sit down for two hours without taking their miserable little mobile phones out or talking in loud voices just on the off-chance that someone is in there to actually watch a movie—maybe they’ll be out getting bladdered and annoying someone else. So it might be good for that.
It’s also good that it gets a lot of our freeloading politicians out of the way for a while. They’ll be poncing around the White House and the Statue of Liberty laying it on thick for any Irish Americans who are stupid enough to think that this kip is a country worth coming back to. But at least when our lot are over there breathing out hot air they’re not over here doing even more damage than usual.
Do you know, I can’t really think of anything else Paddy’s Day is good for, although I’m sure I’ll hear from the usual little drones who think that it is a wonderful ambassadorial opportunity. Well, of course it is. Maybe Enda Kenny will even get his mug on the cover of the American Time magazine this go-around.
But that is going to make exactly fuck-all difference to you and I. So again, what is it good for?
This advertisement for St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland has NOT been brought to you by the Irish Tourist Board.
That sums it up very well Charley. But perhaps these goboons are green with envy that it was a Welshman and not an Irishman that rescued us from snakes and Druids and gave us the iconic green symbol for our national airline and supermarket products.
Rescued us from snakes, Michael? You obviously haven’t been following the continuing fortunes of our politicians!
Never mind! At least this week they’re all off somewhere else, doing what they do best: soaking up every freebie being thrown at them.
Now, what would Guinness do without St. Paddy’s Day? Arthur’s Day has not caught on yet, they are working on it but it still has a long way to go to rival St. Paddy’s Day. How are they going to sell the dark stuff here in the land of Bud Lite without a St. Paddy’s Day to get all the “homesick” Irish that have never set foot on the Island to lift a pint or two? Don’t forget that there are over 30 million Irish here in the USA and that adds up to a lot of pints. Also, don’t forget that we invented the St. Paddy’s Day parade, green beer, green rivers and corned beef and cabbage. So, while the Irish at home in Ireland were on their knees praying in church we were out partying. Which, I see, is now the norm in Ireland as well. As usual we took a good idea and made it better. As for myself, I would much rather have a pint in my hand then a prayer on my lips any day of the year. The pint gets me much closer to God then any church has ever done.
Like I intimated, Kermit, I don’t work for the tourist industry, it’s just my opinion. I do love and heartily agree with that last sentiment of yours though!
It’s good for us tenders who can have a quiet pint on the bank holiday Monday. You forgot the ethnic minority that are the travelling folk…..
Judge17, Judge not less you be judged. God, I’ve always wanted to say that.
The travelling folk…there were about thirty of them out to cause trouble here in Oranmore where I live yesterday. If you were behind a counter when this happened then you would have my sympathy.
I’ve always wondered why it is we, the normal work-a-day folks, who have to bend over and be put out because these characters who class themselves as ‘Travellers’ (who incidentally never seem to travel anywhere) seem to think that it is their given right to scream ‘discrimination’ just because they have been refused in a bar.
Listen, I wish that I could have the right to scream the same thing if I turn up wanting to fight someone. But if I turn up with a tattoo of guns on my neck then I would think that the guy behind the counter has the right to be just a little wary.
Back in the day when I was tending bar myself I always found that once you served one traveller you might as well have put a sign on the window saying: “Bring the whole tribe with you. We’ve found some suckers.”
What I will never understand is why, if they have found a nice place to rest their weary bones, they can’t just leave it at that. Hell, if they behaved like normal human beings then they would be welcomed with open arms in a year where pub takings are down.
But no, they can’t do that. They have to, as soon as they are served drinks, start a row with someone. What the fuck is that about? What’s wrong with just being nice to the guy who is serving you drink? What’s wrong with just being pleasant and enjoying the evening and knowing that you will be welcomed back with open arms so that you can spend some more loot?
But travellers don’t think like that. They’re always out to prove some frigging non-existent point that they are different.
Well, if different means taking a slash hook to a funeral then yeah, I guess they are different.
Judge 17, I hope that you are enjoying the day after. Chances are that you are just having a pint with no need to prove what a big man you are by starting a row.
Thanks for the comment.