A Different View
Closing Time – the yardstick by which we measure our passing day
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Leonard Cohen may sing about it, but for the most part Closing Time is a uniquely Irish concept – because like many of our most familiar phrases, it never means what it says.
Closing Time – and we’re talking in the context of pubs – would suggest the time that a bar closes. But that’s far too simple an explanation.
At the very least, closing time is the time the barman stops pulling pints; you now have anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour to actually get out.
Interpreted in its most liberal way – and here we’re talking for the most part about rural Ireland – it’s an indication of the time you should set out for a few pints.
In other words, if closing time is half eleven, you’re time enough heading out around half ten because no one in their right mind would be bothering with an earlier start than that, if you’re going to survive to the actual time the bar closes which could be any time from midnight to the time other people associate with going to work.
Closing time to a younger generation is ‘shot time’, the ten minutes of the evening set aside for several fast rounds of After Shock to see them move seamlessly into that portion of the night when they take on the appearance of passengers on a ferry during a very stormy night at sea.
The irony here is that they too only surface shortly before closing time, because they’ve been in someone’s house all evening collectively attempting to rescue Russia’s GNP through their consumption of cheap vodka.
Now, more than ever, if you go into an Irish pub at tea-time – and this is presuming they’re even open – you’ll find a crowd that would fit comfortably in a phone box (if we still had phone boxes).
But return to the scene around eleven on a Friday night and it’s like the last days of the Roman Empire, with pints flowing as though every day was Arthur’s Day.
Closing time – like a credit card in the wrong hands – is seen as a target as opposed to a limit; it just gives you a better indication of when the fun might start.
I was out for a few pints with a mate of mine recently – just a few; we’re not the spring chickens we used to be – and by 9.30 we both knew we’d had enough to be happy and not enough to be fools.
So we decided to call it a draw and head for home – with a lingering feeling that there might be something wrong with us, as we headed in the complete opposite direction to the rest of the entire population of Galway city.
You nearly felt the need to tell people you were just going on somewhere else, in case they thought you were contravening the age-old Irish code….never leave before you’re firmly told you have to.
“What time is closing time?” we ask, as though the end of the period during which it is legal to sell alcohol has to be the yardstick by which we measure our leisure time.
You go to almost any other country on the planet and you’ll find people who come out for a drink or two around eight o’clock and then happily head home an hour later, none the wiser as to what time mine host shuts up shop.
But Irish people measure their capacity by working back in pints from 11.30 – so if you think the others can drink more than you, you’re happy to give them a head start just so you can all reach the same level of anaesthetisation when it’s time to go home.
We wonder when summer drinking time is coming in, so that we can stay out longer – when it reality it simply means we come out an hour later than we do in winter.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.
Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.
Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.
And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.
Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.
Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.
And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?
Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.
Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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