Sometimes Galway needs a lie-in – just like its citizens!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

Galway City is a grumpy beast early in the morning. Stuffed full of pork products from their B&B breakfasts, groups of Germans and Americans squeeze between crammed rows of growling delivery trucks, chuck-chuck-chucking out diesel fumes, fouling the damp misty morning air.

Bewildered by the ugliness of the scene, the tourists wander around, wondering what all the fuss is about.

“I am thinking how everybody said Galway was great, but this is just, how you say? Gross?”

Be patient. Galway City doesn’t burn the candle at both ends. If you want to drink eat and dance until dawn then you have to give the city time to refuel, rest, have a shower or four and flush its innards out.

You wondered what that smell was? Well this city’s the recipient of every type of bodily function, and it has to relieve itself too. Just like its inhabitants at this time of year, Galway’s a bit stinky and doesn’t like to get up in the morning.

You wouldn’t turn up on your friend’s doorstep first thing after a big night out expecting them to be full of life and smiles and energy, so take a walk to Black Rock, kick the wall, marvel at the astonishing view of the Burren and by the time you get back to town the place’ll be spick and span, shutters rising and door’s opening, everyone getting ready for action.

With its year’s peak so close we should spare a thought for Galway City, its energy almost spent. Our city absorbs what we feel in our knees, livers and wallets, but it needs to take one more deep breath, another round of greeting smiles and split shifts for the Bank Holiday Weekend and it’ll ease just slightly. Then it’ll be schools, Halloween and … and we won’t go there.

Well done Galway! Your bars have

filled with song, your theatres and tents brimming with music and drama. Your cinemas were home to packed houses watching world class movies during a captivating Film Fleadh.

Your walls have been hung with art, your floors with installations. Your streets have been filled with the cacophonous delights of a busker every five yards, while your pavements have been smoothed and squashed under the weight and purpose of hundreds upon thousands of human feet, flying bodies of acrobats, jugglers, actors, poets, tightrope walkers, Nora, Pat, giant insects, human pizza and a million rats.

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