I know it's been forever since I last updated, and for that I am sorry. Life has been getting in the way just lately, with nights spent at San's when I locked myself out (yes, again) or weekends spent in Hull with Tom. I did actually write an entry about the Wednesday night in Ireland, but I accidentally navigated off the page and lost it all. I know it was weeks ago now, but I figure if anyone is reading at all then you won't mind what I write.
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Wednesday (the first) night.
The flight to Cork itself was short and unremarkable. I stared intently out of the window on the descent into Ireland, trying desperately to see if I could spot the Spire that I had read about. [Dave] found this very amusing when I told him later I hadn't seen it, since the Spire is in Dublin and not Cork so he would have been very surprised if I had seen it.
Dave met me at the airport without a hitch. Among the crowd of friends and relatives looking for their own individual passengers I saw him, waiting for me. It makes a real difference to arrive somewhere to see someone waiting for you. We stepped out of the airport into the night and pouring rain and waited for the bus into the city. Dave said he felt bad that my first impression of Ireland was to be waiting for a bus in the rain. But the truth was, my head was reeling and buzzing. Ahead of me was a week, if not of adventure then certainly of good times and new experiences in an unexplored city. The truth is, I hardly noticed the rain.
On the walk from the bus station to Dave's house we stopped at a bar for a drink -- a recurring theme of the week is stopping at bars, although the last night I think was a record. We sat at the bar and talked and I had a feeling not so much of being somewhere new, but of somewhere known to me, but forgotten. It felt like I'd been there before, in some half-remembered way. It's difficult to explain. The feeling wasn't of deja-vu, an odd disquiet when something echoes a dream, but rather more was just familiar. Perhaps it's that sometimes one bar is often much like the next, whether it is in England or Ireland or North America. Maybe it was that Dave and I already knew each other, have known each other for several years, but have only spoken on the phone twice and never met before.
All the same, the bar was what you'd expect on a dark and wet night in the middle of the week. A few friends were sat in a corner talking and drinking, the bar tender was polishing glasses or reading the newspaper, when he was around at all.
I don't much remember now what we talked about. It wasn't anything life changing, and if it was important or personal I didn't feel the need to record it in my notebook. Maybe we discussed past relationships, current friendships, the state and direction of our respective lives. Maybe we talked about films or tv, I couldn't tell you.
After one drink we continued our short walk back to Dave's house. I don't remember it as a short walk. I remember the dark and the rain, and constantly looking around me at all of the streets and houses. So in my memory the walk was both short, because it was almost no distance at all -- even when you don't know where you are or where you are going -- but at the same time it seems much longer, since I was seeing everything for the first time.
We got to the bar where we had arranged to meet friends -- other diary friends, namely [Cat], Dan, [Joe], Naomi and [Tara], along with Cat's friend Anne, who doesn't have a diary and most likely won't be mentioned again. Probably ever.
The bar was the Bodgea, described in my very-short Cork guidebook as Dublin chic comes to Cork. Since I have no idea what Dublin is like I don't know what that means, but the bar was very impressive. A huge place, with impossibly high ceilings and a sweeping expanse of floorspace, and huge lampshades hanging from the lights. A bar like that you might find in London, but there would no doubt be a door charge and a dress code and you'd need proof of earnings before being served. In Cork it was none of those things, just a very cool bar with people enjoying their night.
Dave and I walked in, and I was immediately struck by the size and scale of the place, along with feeling intensely nervous about all the people I was about to meet -- people whose diaries I have read and have emailed and chatted to, but never actually spoken to any of them. We looked around but couldn't see our friends, so we decided the best course of action would be to head to the bar, get some drinks, and then armed with a couple of pints try to find them. I think I just wanted a drink.
In what may be a recurring of my stay, Dave ran into some other friends of his on the way to the bar (he had already known the other customers in the earlier bar), and while he stood talking to them Cat spotted us, and came over. We hugged briefly, then I told Dave I was going to the bar to get our drinks and where we would be. And that's exactly what I did. I was introduced to everyone at the table, who were far less scary than I had expected. Since there are my Thursday-morning thoughts and deconstructions of various people I won't go into any real detail about them -- also because any commenting here might reveal their individual identities in the Thursday morning entry. It's enough to say that everyone was very welcoming, considering that I was practically a stranger to them I was pleased to find that I was firmly treated as a friend.
I commented to a couple of people in the course of the night that I felt I had the attention span of a cat. I was constantly looking about me, there was different conversations going on around the table -- that each required my full attention if I was to decipher what was being said through the accents and the general noise of the bar, there was different things to be seen, and naturally different people I wanted to talk at great length to about everything in the world. This is starting to sound like I had drunk too much, if you imagine it as a blur of colours and noises and accents and conversations and music and body language I would study when I couldn't hear what was being said. I was drinking probably too much too fast, but I was nervous as hell and trying to project myself as someone interesting and at least a little outgoing or confident, rather than the moody and pensive individual most people know me as. Not that how I was projecting myself wasn't real, but more a side to me that has to be consciously projected sometimes rather than being allowed to show through naturally. In the circumstances, it made sense.
All too quickly the bar was closing and we were going to an alternative club -- by all accounts the definitive alternative club of the city. Dave had to go home because he'd been up early that morning, but left me in the capable charge of the others -- once armed with the knowledge of his address, if not exactly how to get there. "It's near a bridge" I said, and everyone laughed. Cork is full of bridges. I may as well have said he lived on a hill, and now I think of it, I probably did.
The club was good -- although not as good as it used to be in its previous incarnations at different venues, as many people told me. I couldn't get the girl behind the bar to understand my accent above the music and resorted to trying to point at what I wanted from the fridge. Instead of a bottle of beer I got some white wine cooler thing. Luckily for me, Cat took pity on me when I moaned to her about it and took it off my hands and bought me a beer in exchange.
As with many nights, the later parts become less clear. I remember Tara good-naturedly dragging me back onto the dance floor whenever I wandered off, and at the end of the night Tara and Dan took me to a kebab fast-food place -- it seemed strange, because although kebabs are almost compulsory in England after a night out we don't have -- to my knowledge -- any big places dedicated to kebabs like Abrakebabra was. Sometimes I really feel almost like a stray animal, like when Kyle took me in when I was down and out in Salt Lake City, or this night when I was in new country with no idea how to get home on my own and no money left. Tara and Dan looked after me, got me food and let me share their cab ride home.
I only regret I didn't get the chance to see either of them again after that first night, but I hope there will be other opportunities.
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