I love the sounds and silences of Galway!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

Driving home from town last Wednesday, I had a bit of a moment. Summer just didn’t want to leave. The car windows were open, wafting me in a balmy 26°C breeze. The Cranberries were blasting out of the speakers, and all of a sudden the present was gone from me. I was lost; abandoned in a reverie of times past.

Paul McCartney realised 50 years ago that the pop song offered its fans an encapsulated moment in time. Whenever they heard that tune, however many years in the future, they thought of that first dance.

My moment wasn’t quite so romantic. Listening to The Cranberries’ ‘Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?’ whilst driving under blue skies, my mind disappeared back to Ballyconneely in 1994, when Dolores O’Riordan and her band were hitting the big time.

Ensconced on a barstool at Keogh’s pub, I’m sat beside two gentlemen, sadly no longer with us, but then the core of what I call ‘The Brethren of the Bar’. Before the smoking ban, every pub had its own contingent of older fellas who constructed endless conversations through empty Tuesday afternoons, and every other afternoon, come to think of it.

These lads were staring at a photograph in a redtop tabloid newspaper. As I recall, it was of herself, Dolores, on her wedding day, revealing a slightly risqué visible panty line, or somesuch. Whatever it was, it titillated these two fellas. One leaned back, scratched his hairy cheek and smiled, declaring:

“Sure, she’s nothing but a hoor.”

New to the village, I was eager to arrive quietly. Not wanting to appear rude, I tried not to laugh out loud at yer man’s opinion, but instead ended up snorting Guinness out of my nose, simultaneously managing to offend himself and make myself look a prat.

The Cranberries were Ireland’s sound of that distant Summer, and once again for me this year, when Summer happily refused to budge.

With the warm weather eating into Autumn, I’m enjoying the sounds on Galway’s streets. Walking up High Street on a sunny day, the harpist lass plucks her gossamer tunes making me feel all ethereal and lucky to be alive. Just up from her, on Johnny Massacre Corner, there’s the Mumford and Son’s style lads, be-hatted be-bearded very pleasant and quite fun, but not something that gets my blood pumping. 

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.