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.