Dublin Demnity
So it's clear I drink too much. Pretty much every night last week involved thorough intoxication, generally with a good reason (DJing and thus the drink was free / Teewye's birthday / hair of the dog / because I felt like it), THEN we went to Dublin for the weekend. Dublin was good, though I was kind of dragging myself through Saturday night, in which we went (well, slackhack and her pals and our host Maeve and I went; _moggy_ had sensibly flaked out) to a local bands festival type affair in a gig-pub (co-owned by Huey Fun Lovin' Criminal for what that's worth, and fabulously old school rock'n'roll inside, all black and red with devil head masks and skull motifs everwhere). As has been confirmed repeatedly, every cliche about Irish friendliness and talkativeness is true. The toilets of this pub had the usual Nigerian man offering to dry your hands and spray you with produce, but here every other person to come in engaged him in cheerful conversation - and at one point I saw him deep in earnest debate with some drunken Dubliner about the legacy of Ken Saro-Wiwa. We enjoyed the antics of The Things (aka De Tings if you are local obviously) who did a splendid Cramps/Stooges thing with a bizarre hint of angry disco in some of the songs. They were clearly wired as all buggery and were definitely For Real; so much so, apparently that they're generally too fucked to pull their fingers out and be anything more than Big On The Dublin Scene which is a shame because when they hit their stride they are an almighty charismatic loony-rock rush. Later there was a duo called Stasi who clearly thought they were art terrorists. We thought they were knobjockeys. By this point it was getting very late (pubs never shut there it seems) and I was getting well boggled by the locals' propensity to continue talking seemingly lucidly 12 hours into a solid drinking session, so left to sleep.
On Sunday we did some tourist things, then in the evening went to the most down-at-heel chinese restaurant I have ever, EVER seen. Just staggering. It was down a run-down market street; you have to push through an inexplicable group of tall African men smoking weed round the doorway to get in, then up a stairwell with plaster falling off the wall and marker pen graffiti along the lines of "SIOBHAN KELLY SARA ... SLAGS" and "BLACKS SMELL OF FISH - NIGER!" (that last is an exact transcription) into a complex of rooms that all seem to simultaneously function as dining rooms, living areas and store-rooms. The staff (some of them extremely dangerous-looking) ran around finding chairs and tables, then we sat down and perused the menus. Beer was not sold, though apparently it 'sometimes' is - we suspect the size of our group (12) put them off selling us booze as we might be rowdy and/or consipcuous. We just ordered one meat dish, some rice and one or two snack dishes each, but by God that was too much. More than twice too much in fact - yet it cost us less than 15 Euro each including drinks and tips and was for the most part very good indeed (bar the 'Deep Fried Guts' which someone ordered "for a laugh" and which really were intestines, and tasted like what I can only guess faeces tastes like). I have a photo of the table once we'd finished eating, I will paste it in when I've transferred it through the appropriate wires. Then we went to a bar and did Rock Karaoke. I discovered a Doom Metal baritone voice I never knew I had; my take on 'Sweet Child O Mine' was the surprise hit of the night... then before we knew it the weekend was over and I had to start thinking about the reams of work from which I am now prevaricating by typing this waffle. But Dublin is awesome, our hosts (and slackhack's friends) were a delight and next time I want to go for longer... there now, see, my liver cries "NO!" but the brain says "go!". Bah.
On Sunday we did some tourist things, then in the evening went to the most down-at-heel chinese restaurant I have ever, EVER seen. Just staggering. It was down a run-down market street; you have to push through an inexplicable group of tall African men smoking weed round the doorway to get in, then up a stairwell with plaster falling off the wall and marker pen graffiti along the lines of "SIOBHAN KELLY SARA ... SLAGS" and "BLACKS SMELL OF FISH - NIGER!" (that last is an exact transcription) into a complex of rooms that all seem to simultaneously function as dining rooms, living areas and store-rooms. The staff (some of them extremely dangerous-looking) ran around finding chairs and tables, then we sat down and perused the menus. Beer was not sold, though apparently it 'sometimes' is - we suspect the size of our group (12) put them off selling us booze as we might be rowdy and/or consipcuous. We just ordered one meat dish, some rice and one or two snack dishes each, but by God that was too much. More than twice too much in fact - yet it cost us less than 15 Euro each including drinks and tips and was for the most part very good indeed (bar the 'Deep Fried Guts' which someone ordered "for a laugh" and which really were intestines, and tasted like what I can only guess faeces tastes like). I have a photo of the table once we'd finished eating, I will paste it in when I've transferred it through the appropriate wires. Then we went to a bar and did Rock Karaoke. I discovered a Doom Metal baritone voice I never knew I had; my take on 'Sweet Child O Mine' was the surprise hit of the night... then before we knew it the weekend was over and I had to start thinking about the reams of work from which I am now prevaricating by typing this waffle. But Dublin is awesome, our hosts (and slackhack's friends) were a delight and next time I want to go for longer... there now, see, my liver cries "NO!" but the brain says "go!". Bah.