A pint of Guinness, please!

A story from my travels.

This post is going to be different than usual, I want to tell you a story. There is no moral or secret wisdom to uncover, there will be no encrypted message. This is just a story that I was reminded of the other night.

I visited Ireland a little while ago. I had made an Irish friend while working in New York and I visited his home near Limerick. I was absolutely enthralled by the unending, grassy hills that comprised the Irish countryside. An English friend soon joined us and we were shown just a thimbleful of the wonderful, natural beauty that Ireland had to offer.

The main reason I decided to visit Ireland, though, was not to see cliffs or castles. I went because one of my favourite indie bands, The Other Favourites, were playing the last night of their tour in Dublin. I am so happy that I got the chance to see them live. I live in Cape Town and they’re New Yorkers, I would never have gotten the chance otherwise. The concert was thoroughly enjoyable, the three of us sat upstairs in the bar come music venue and gawked at these incredibly talented singer songwriters. There was one listener who preferred to show his enthusiasm by heckling whoever was on stage. I remember he even yelled at them, demanding they play a song that they had never played before.

After a brilliant two hours of live music, the musicians drew a raffle. This may sound weird, but it was their last night of tour and their bags that were to be checked in the plane were overweight, so they decided to give a guitar and snare drum away in a raffle. It was lots of fun and the audience seemed enthused. Until, that was, an older gentleman came forward to receive his drum and an uneasy hush fell over everyone, a difficult feat at 10:34PM in a Dublin bar. It was the heckler! By his strange jeers, I had assumed that he was a local in this pub and hardly knew who was headlining that night. But he grinned from ear to droopy ear at his good fortune - he was one snare drum richer.

We soon forgot about that old heckler and partied the rest of the night away. The next morning, my Irish friend and I bade farewell to our English mate and we hopped on a flight headed to Glasgow. We flew with RyanAir and as is so often the case with budget airlines, our journey was delayed. When we finally got to our seats, we waited yet again for one last passenger to board. As the crew closed the door to our airplane hours later than scheduled, the last customer stumbled down the isle, looking for his seat. It turns out that we were delayed because the cabin crew had no clue what to do with this old gentleman’s snare drum. My friend and I couldn’t help but fall into a fit of laughter. Evidently he had given the head flight attendant a hard time, too, because she had a royal scowl on her face as she glared at him bumbling through the cabin.