I am in sunny, sunny Galway in sunny, sunny Ireland. By sunny I mean grey and pissing down with rain. Its odd how somewhere can still look so pretty when covered by dark clouds, but everytime I’ve visited Galway it feels as though it could be singing that dire Travis song out aloud, and yet it never stops me loving the place. Edinburgh is the same and in fact many places in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Northern Ireland who all manage to have constructed their landscapes on the basis that the weather hates them, that the environment has chosen it as its pissing ground and made sure it still looks like the sort of place Americans would say ‘quaint’ about. England has never managed this. England knows full well rain will happen most of the year, that summer is merely a concept and that a nice day is one where you don’t have to go outside. Sure I’m generalising and in recent years all the UK and Ireland have had an actually warm summertime, and there are places in England that are as picturesque as a, er, picture, but I’ve also gone to Leicester on a rainy day and thought ‘really?’ Wondering who on Earth decided that horrible modern redbrick structures or grey blocks would look like anything other than a suburb on the outskirts of Judge Dredd’s Mega City A, desolate in the ghostly post apocalyptic terrain, echoes of life having been there once.
Sorry, not sure where that came from, though it seems to happen whenever I am anywhere I like being that I just point out the flaws of home. Galway really is one of my favourite places on the planet. It somehow manages to combine a buzzing, fun atmosphere with cobbled stone streets, quiet pubs and a Spanish Arch. Its as though it’s a party, but a secret one that only certain people get invites too which makes it considerably less full of bellends than most. Even more so than normal this week as it’s the Galway Comedy Festival which means many of my comedy chums are gathered here for the next few days. Last night I popped along to see Tim Minchin’s awesome show at the Radisson which was superb as usual, and even more so as its so rare to see him play to only 450 people anymore, and today I fully intend to sneak along to Dylan Moran then see Rich Hall, Mike Wilmot and the Rubberbandits at Full Mooners tonight all whilst drinking lots of Guinness. Actual nice tasting Guinness. Guinness you can have more than several pints of without feeling like you’ve ate a brick and worrying about when you’ll have to shit that brick out.
I’m not just revelling in the secret party, I am meant to be doing stuff here as well, but I’m just performing Comedy Club 4 Kids at 2pm everyday, and its Halloween weekend so it really doesn’t feel like work. So far yesterday I spent 5 minutes explaining to the kids that as the clocks went back anything you do in the hour doesn’t count, as its erased when they go back to 12, encouraging them to set fire to their curtains or stomp mud through the house. Then Maeve Higgins made a dad wear a dress and made the most disgusting meal ever on stage. Much like every trip I’ve ever had here, work is very much fun. There’s no free wi-fi anywhere, which caused initial disappointment . I still don’t understand how anything that is essentially just floating about the skies can’t be for free. If a hotel is paying for Wi-Fi already then it’s not going to cost them any extra to let me borrow a bit is it? I mean, surely it’d be like charging me to use their air? Only air that I can illegally download music from. Which would make the world a horribly noisy place and getting planes a really dreadful experience as you float through many different genres all at once. But now over that concept, I realise that no one here can get hold of me, I’m not twittering my every move and I can actually relax a bit.
I realise that all this blog is, is boasting to you how much of a lovely time I’m having. Sure there have been things that have made me angry. L nearly cried last night when €5 and several different button combinations on the vending machine still wouldn’t let her have salt and vinegar crisps, instead firing three packs of cheese and onion and two false hopes at her, but this is merely the karma for having such a good day overall. I’m partly sure this may even be Ireland’s way of preventing us from having a heart attack from too many crisps. Though we did eat all three packs of Cheese & Onion so it has a weird way of showing it. Look, I’m just saying, its awesome here, and maybe it is just that every now and then you need to indulge in a slower pace of life, a change of scenery and the luck ‘o the Irish (which doesn’t seem to apply to vending machines). Or maybe I need to go home and cut off everyone’s Wi-Fi? We will see…..
