Beware the Galway double: two nights out in one night!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

Just when I thought I’d learned all the tricks Galway can play with your plans, the city slips me a sucker punch that leaves me reeling.

I know how dangerous it is to meet someone for coffee at 4pm in Galway. I know that just popping out for the milk can sometimes take three days. I know that there is no such thing as ‘just one quick drink’.

Sitting at the bar of an Tobar in 1993, I discovered how dangerously different Irish drinking culture is to English. My excellent friend The Body turned to me.

“Are you going out tonight, Charlie?”

The question completely threw me. I’d spent the previous four hours of darkness drinking whiskey in a city centre pub.

What part of that wasn’t ‘out’?

Back in the day in England, we went down the pub at 7.30pm because it closed at 11pm so that we could have enough sleep to fulfill the Protestant work ethic, arrive at our jobs on time, brimming with energy and bulldog spirit.

Like many other Catholic countries, Ireland prefers to go out at 10pm, but that’s where the comparison ends. While the Spanish and Italians enjoy a late dinner, splitting their working days into morning and evening shifts with a siesta, many Irish eat early and go out to drink at 10pm, heading to bed when standing up becomes a little too troublesome.

Some will sleep until they wake up, and there’s the rub for me: I’m condemned to bloomin’ wake up early. Perverse and unnatural, this business of being conscious and active through the morning must’ve been drummed into me as a lad.

A few weeks ago I needed a night out, but felt a bit betwixt and between. Like the weather, like a slightly nutty scribbler, I didn’t know if I wanted the Irish-style social late night, with attendant sleep deprivation, or the early start English version, more of a solitary wandering anti-social ramble.

Deciding I wasn’t really in the mood for making small talk, I hit Quay Street at 6.30pm, aiming for the only certainty in my head.

Every Adley organic ramble has to start where the white flesh of fresh cod is magnificent. No good Galway night out can begin until you’re full of PJ McDonagh’s fish and chips.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.