Ode to an old friend that we may not see again for a time

Country Living with Francis Farragher

On the greater scale of things, my particular difficulty won’t rate too highly in the list of current woes that we’re all enduring, but a night last week as I scurried off to bed shortly before 10pm, I came to the inescapable conclusion that I miss my local pubs.

While not everyone might agree, I don’t think I’m in the category of drinkers who needs to be carted off for a drying out course and since Paddy’s Day passed off so dryly, there’s been many’s the day and night that not a drop has crossed my lips.

Here and there on the home front if there’s a film being watched on TV or a burger being cooked outside (there’s a fancy name for that sort of thing which I refuse to use), I am partial to a bottle of Tiger, Moretti or my favourite Italian tipple, Peroni. But alas, it’s just not the same as the pint out of the barrel accompanied by an exchange of some gentle jibes about the good life that we’re all living.

They might be a dying breed but I do think that there’s something special about old country pubs. The two that I’m familiar with, also combine their trade with undertaking businesses, so I take some smite of morbid conolation from fact that they’ll look after me both in life in death, although each of those experiences, will leave me – and those left behind – with a lot less shillings in our pockets.

A few weeks back, I heard a story about a couple of old codgers who for the last 30 years had never stopped ‘picking’ at each other in the local pub. Neutrals would often remark that: “They’re at it again.” However, it has since emerged that since the lockdown started, both have independently admitted to missing each other. They just can’t wait for the ‘sparring’ to start again.

There’s something too about the game of cards in the pub whether it be a ‘six’ or a ‘nine’ in ‘25’ or a game of Spot that often seemed to endure for the night with ‘the pot’ sometimes gradually edging up to €30 or €40 as the witching hour approached. Not big money . . . no big gambles . . . but fought for as if our very lives depended on it.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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