Oktoberfest weekend
Insaaaane weekend.
On Friday morning, Tee came back from Kansas (my Toto jokes had been wearing thin) and slept at home for a few hours. That evening, we met at Oktoberfest in George's Dock. She was very pretty in her Bavarian dirndl dress. I got talking to her work crowd. Mackers showed up later and started making moves.
We stayed till we got kicked out and piled into a taxi to Harold's Cross where Esther, one of Tee's work friends, lives. Along the way, the rest of us got talked into getting out there and not continuing to Tallaght. And so it began. Someone put on Dolittle, an album I haven't heard in ten years. Crackity Jones is still very exciting and Number 13 Girl has the best outro ever. We crashed in the spare room. The next morning, we re-watched Grabbers. It moved too fast.
On the way into town, we stopped in Mount Jerome so Tee could visit her mum's grave. She was still dressed in a Bavarian peasant costume. Some grannies stared.
After breakfast in a cafe on Talbot street, where a homeless guy took up position as the greeter, holding the door open for old ladies, me and Mackers went for a stroll. We headed through Trinity and reminisced. I remarked on how I had fit in from my very first day. There had been an air of sophistry that I adored, and the place was welcoming and natural in a way that school had never been. We ended up in the Pav and talked about the Embarcadero in San Francisco.
Tee was so knackered from lack of sleep that she insisted we book a hostel so she could get a few hours' kip, and the idea was that we'd stay the night. She organised it and I heard no more for a few hours. Me and Mackers had huge burritos.
After a spot of shopping, he headed off and I met up back at Oktoberfest with a refreshed Tee and her brother and his kids. They're teenagers and a little difficult at times. I asked the bloke what music he was into, and he said, "Whenever I listen to music I'm usually listening to anything."
Next was the Bison Bar, the whiskey place next to the Workingman's Club. They had bronco seats, drink discounts for reserved groups, and a friendly barman. It was our Polish friend Tad's birthday and everyone was wearing masques. It was hard to get away after a single pint, so we were late for everything else to come.
Next we hit up McDaids off Grafton St, the place where Brendan Behan used to drink and write. It was one of Tee's workmate's birthdays. I got talking to an engineer who was going to be working on the Luas linkup - nerd boner. We found the place a little hard to find. Tee wanted us to take a shortcut through a hotel, but it took us several minutes to realise that we were in the wrong one.
Finally it was time to head to the thrilling denouement - my sister's boyfriend's 30th in the always-odious Dicey Rileys. There was a nerve-racking few minutes spent screwing around answering phonecalls from people with ear-shatteringly loud backgrounds and pushing through sweaty, elbowy crowds. Finally I found my family. It's always a bit weird seeing your parents in a nightclub after midnight. My mum was her usual ebullient self, my sister was her usual bossy self, my dad was his usual quiet self, and my brother was his usual mercurial self.
We tried to get one of those Brazilians on tricycles to bring us to Busaras, but he didn't know the location of that, Gardiner Street, Amiens Street, Talbot Street, or Connolly station, so with much amusement we set off walking. He caught us up, claiming to have figured out what we were looking for, and off we pedalled.
As we approached the Custom House, he went straight on, and Tee asked him to turn left too late. He swerved back into the traffic right as a Garda SUV was drawing level, and we got busted. We awkwardly paid him as he was getting fined.
Our hostel was a dive which reeked of damp. You could have collected hundreds of fungus samples from the wooden chairs alone. Thankfully I had a restful night though.
Our phones having died ages ago, we didn't know what time it was the next morning so we showered and did a runner. As we came around the corner onto the quays, there was a queue formed outside Liberty Hall. On a hunch, we asked an Italian girl what they were queuing for, and it turns out it was Open House day where lots of buildings around the city were opened up to the public. We grabbed danishes and tea in a cafe on Middle Abbey Street with guys cheerfully pneumatically drilling away right outside the door and headed back to line up.
I'd never been in Liberty Hall before and was a bit surprised to learn that they're planning on demolishing it. It's far from the ugliest building in the city - it's not even the ugliest building from the 1960s - and I think it has a certain charm. They had photos from the 1960s of its original glass before the IRA spoiled it for everyone by blowing out the windows. Following this they put a tinted covering over them which ruined the original transparent effect and the tower was never the same again. Brian Dobson was in our queue.
We had an all-too-brief five minutes on the roof, and my phone was dead so no photos anyway. I loved the south-facing view where you could look right down on the DART line. It reminded me of the London Eye where you can see Charing Cross Station and the railway viaduct leading into it. In the distance the treetops of leafy suburbs peeped out from between church steeples. The sky was clear, the sun blazed, and everything looked beautiful.
Next we had coffee on the boardwalk. A blind guy powered past with a cane. The Indian cafe owner guided him between the chairs. About ten minutes later he passed again, and got stuck in a corner. He got agitated and knocked over a chair. Tee went over and led him out. Waiting for the pedestrian light at Millennium Bridge a while later, he powered past us again. He must have been lapping the quays.
We visited 25 Eustace Street in Temple Bar, a house with original 18th century furniture. It was bruised and worn-in and thoroughly homely. I speed read a book called Facts About Finland. It was published in 1970.
We lunched at The Green Hen, a classy French restaurant on Exchequer Street. Our very young waitress reeled off the day's specials like a pro, a dizzying list of French culinary terms. My rillettes of lamb were succulent and the raspberry bellini was pungeant.
We browsed useful kitchen articles in Designist on George's Street and I played an electronic drumkit in Waltons. It had been about ten years since I last went into a music store just to play without intending to buy anything. I used to spend entire afternoons doing that back in the day. The demo beat had a plastic-sounding snare.
We rounded off the evening with hot whiskeys in the Library Bar and I read the paper. That evening, I watched We Need To Talk About Kevin and was roundly put off ever having kids.
On Friday morning, Tee came back from Kansas (my Toto jokes had been wearing thin) and slept at home for a few hours. That evening, we met at Oktoberfest in George's Dock. She was very pretty in her Bavarian dirndl dress. I got talking to her work crowd. Mackers showed up later and started making moves.
We stayed till we got kicked out and piled into a taxi to Harold's Cross where Esther, one of Tee's work friends, lives. Along the way, the rest of us got talked into getting out there and not continuing to Tallaght. And so it began. Someone put on Dolittle, an album I haven't heard in ten years. Crackity Jones is still very exciting and Number 13 Girl has the best outro ever. We crashed in the spare room. The next morning, we re-watched Grabbers. It moved too fast.
On the way into town, we stopped in Mount Jerome so Tee could visit her mum's grave. She was still dressed in a Bavarian peasant costume. Some grannies stared.
After breakfast in a cafe on Talbot street, where a homeless guy took up position as the greeter, holding the door open for old ladies, me and Mackers went for a stroll. We headed through Trinity and reminisced. I remarked on how I had fit in from my very first day. There had been an air of sophistry that I adored, and the place was welcoming and natural in a way that school had never been. We ended up in the Pav and talked about the Embarcadero in San Francisco.
Tee was so knackered from lack of sleep that she insisted we book a hostel so she could get a few hours' kip, and the idea was that we'd stay the night. She organised it and I heard no more for a few hours. Me and Mackers had huge burritos.
After a spot of shopping, he headed off and I met up back at Oktoberfest with a refreshed Tee and her brother and his kids. They're teenagers and a little difficult at times. I asked the bloke what music he was into, and he said, "Whenever I listen to music I'm usually listening to anything."
Next was the Bison Bar, the whiskey place next to the Workingman's Club. They had bronco seats, drink discounts for reserved groups, and a friendly barman. It was our Polish friend Tad's birthday and everyone was wearing masques. It was hard to get away after a single pint, so we were late for everything else to come.
Next we hit up McDaids off Grafton St, the place where Brendan Behan used to drink and write. It was one of Tee's workmate's birthdays. I got talking to an engineer who was going to be working on the Luas linkup - nerd boner. We found the place a little hard to find. Tee wanted us to take a shortcut through a hotel, but it took us several minutes to realise that we were in the wrong one.
Finally it was time to head to the thrilling denouement - my sister's boyfriend's 30th in the always-odious Dicey Rileys. There was a nerve-racking few minutes spent screwing around answering phonecalls from people with ear-shatteringly loud backgrounds and pushing through sweaty, elbowy crowds. Finally I found my family. It's always a bit weird seeing your parents in a nightclub after midnight. My mum was her usual ebullient self, my sister was her usual bossy self, my dad was his usual quiet self, and my brother was his usual mercurial self.
We tried to get one of those Brazilians on tricycles to bring us to Busaras, but he didn't know the location of that, Gardiner Street, Amiens Street, Talbot Street, or Connolly station, so with much amusement we set off walking. He caught us up, claiming to have figured out what we were looking for, and off we pedalled.
As we approached the Custom House, he went straight on, and Tee asked him to turn left too late. He swerved back into the traffic right as a Garda SUV was drawing level, and we got busted. We awkwardly paid him as he was getting fined.
Our hostel was a dive which reeked of damp. You could have collected hundreds of fungus samples from the wooden chairs alone. Thankfully I had a restful night though.
Our phones having died ages ago, we didn't know what time it was the next morning so we showered and did a runner. As we came around the corner onto the quays, there was a queue formed outside Liberty Hall. On a hunch, we asked an Italian girl what they were queuing for, and it turns out it was Open House day where lots of buildings around the city were opened up to the public. We grabbed danishes and tea in a cafe on Middle Abbey Street with guys cheerfully pneumatically drilling away right outside the door and headed back to line up.
I'd never been in Liberty Hall before and was a bit surprised to learn that they're planning on demolishing it. It's far from the ugliest building in the city - it's not even the ugliest building from the 1960s - and I think it has a certain charm. They had photos from the 1960s of its original glass before the IRA spoiled it for everyone by blowing out the windows. Following this they put a tinted covering over them which ruined the original transparent effect and the tower was never the same again. Brian Dobson was in our queue.
We had an all-too-brief five minutes on the roof, and my phone was dead so no photos anyway. I loved the south-facing view where you could look right down on the DART line. It reminded me of the London Eye where you can see Charing Cross Station and the railway viaduct leading into it. In the distance the treetops of leafy suburbs peeped out from between church steeples. The sky was clear, the sun blazed, and everything looked beautiful.
Next we had coffee on the boardwalk. A blind guy powered past with a cane. The Indian cafe owner guided him between the chairs. About ten minutes later he passed again, and got stuck in a corner. He got agitated and knocked over a chair. Tee went over and led him out. Waiting for the pedestrian light at Millennium Bridge a while later, he powered past us again. He must have been lapping the quays.
We visited 25 Eustace Street in Temple Bar, a house with original 18th century furniture. It was bruised and worn-in and thoroughly homely. I speed read a book called Facts About Finland. It was published in 1970.
We lunched at The Green Hen, a classy French restaurant on Exchequer Street. Our very young waitress reeled off the day's specials like a pro, a dizzying list of French culinary terms. My rillettes of lamb were succulent and the raspberry bellini was pungeant.
We browsed useful kitchen articles in Designist on George's Street and I played an electronic drumkit in Waltons. It had been about ten years since I last went into a music store just to play without intending to buy anything. I used to spend entire afternoons doing that back in the day. The demo beat had a plastic-sounding snare.
We rounded off the evening with hot whiskeys in the Library Bar and I read the paper. That evening, I watched We Need To Talk About Kevin and was roundly put off ever having kids.