The Darkest Of Times: Random Thoughts On Irish Pub Culture

"Pause for a moment, you wretched weakling, and take stock of yourself."
- "The Cloud of Unknowing", anonymous Christian mystic, Middle Ages *

By Charley Brady

Whether or not I send on this week's column, if it can even be loosely described as such, I don't know yet. As I sit here at five in the morning I just want to get a few thoughts out on paper.

It's strange that we feel the need to do that, some of us. I don't know why we do, really. It's probably a pointless exercise. Yet there is something in seeing thoughts poured onto the blank sheet that helps you even in the darkest times, especially if you are not so good at articulating those same thoughts in normal conversation; and for me on a personal level these are the darkest of times.

I've probably spent too many years as part of the pub culture. As a loner by nature - although well able to wear the mask of 'normality', whatever that is, when it suits - I find it endlessly fascinating to listen to the banter that goes on in drinking dens. Yet listen closely and you will often hear a kind of despair in even the most innocuous of conversations. Worse, what may on the surface seem to be innocent banter can, when you get right down to it, be more like casual cruelty. That's something that humans are very, very good at.

Watch how often one particular member of a drinking group will be isolated from the herd and made the butt of the jokes for the duration. It's an engrossing thing to see, especially when looked at from the outside. As I said, this is something that human beings are very good at. We're past masters at causing each other pain. In the past I've been no exception; but with a growing awareness of the awful creatures that we are, in recent years I've always kept a wary distance while on the surface being as friendly as ever.

It's all a game, really, albeit an often depressing and non-productive one.

The old cliche is often thrown around that there is good in everyone. I just think that there is bad in everyone. Don't jump down my throat, now. It's just my own observation. In over a half century of life I may have met less than twenty or so genuinely good people. That's a Good that you don't even have to put inverted commas around. It's also a terribly small amount, I think, and pretty damned sad.

I wish that more people who, for whatever reasons (and it's not always as simple as just consuming alcohol), find themselves a regular part of the pub culture would remember that you never make friends in a pub. You make acquaintances, sure, but when the chips are down you never make friends.

When you stop and think of it, that we can even talk with a straight face of a pub "culture" is wholly laughable. Culture certainly doesn't come into it.

Now I'm talking here about the extreme edges of drinking. I am not talking about those who enjoy dropping in for a friendly chat with a few regulars for an hour or so, or those who organise such things as table quizzes and outside football events. These are people who genuinely use the public house as a sort of hub of the community.

With the continuing mistrust of the Church as a whole it may even be replacing what was traditionally the community centre.

At least in my local you can drop in and have coffee for an hour or so and never find yourself charged for it. So there is a good side to it, of course there is. Serious drinkers, though, simply don't want to be in the company of non or even moderate drinkers. It's easier to disguise your own problem if you surround yourself with like- minded individuals.

Where I live the pub goes hand in hand with really serious gambling. By that I mean ordinary people who will bet on the horses every single day. It's one of the vices that I actually don't have - yes, folks, I somehow managed to get through life without developing a weakness for either gambling or drugs. For someone with as addictive a personality as mine that's really been a bit of a miracle. Although, of course, it can be argued that alcohol IS a drug.

Of course that puts an end to any meaningful conversation, that's for sure. There have been times when I have just been longing to have a conversation about the Arts, be it literature, cinema or theatre. I'm lucky that I'm just dismissed as an oddball, but heaven forbid that this is brought up in lieu of "who won the race" or "who won the match".

Now please understand: I am in no way judging those whose relief from life's pressures is through those things, it's just that I don't understand it. Sure, you could say that I should just find another outlet if I want to keep my few remaining brain cells working. Yet there's the Catch- 22. I dislike people in general and mixing with them-beyond the superficial - in particular. So all in all I'm better off on my own.

There is a guy that I enjoy the company of occasionally. I met up with him in Galway a couple of weeks ago and he said something that I found kind of sad, really. A non- drinker, he was having his usual pint of Rock Shandy (a mixture of lemon and orange) and John, a farmer's son remarked, that he sometimes didn't feel quite Irish because he never had liked the taste of alcohol. Of course what he was drinking cost far more than a pint of Guinness or a measure of spirits would. We don't like non- drinkers in these parts, pardner. They make us uncomfortable

When you stop and think of it, what he said is pretty extraordinary. It also shows how ingrained the very concept of drinking is in Ireland; and we normalise this at every turn.

Even when we had Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip here recently, no one would have been happy but that we had to have a photo opportunity of them in front of a pint. By the way, Philip looked as if his tongue was hanging out for one, but his missus was hurrying him on. She probably thought that if his tongue were to be loosened he would be even more indiscreet than he normally is; if that were possible, of course.

There were no such worries with Obama. He looked as if he was going to down it in one if decorum had permitted it. Yeah, he's got Irish roots all right. His wife was no slouch either, if you were watching carefully.

As to the aforementioned John I asked him why he never drank, quite apart from not liking the taste. That doesn't stop some eejits, after all. He replied that he could never understand it when he heard others of his age group (the twenties) talking about what a great night they had and how little of it they remembered. Well, when you put it like that...

As to not liking the taste, I know I'm getting to be an old grouch when I see gangs of youngsters downing shots, followed by pints, followed by more shots. Now come on, these are not people who like to drink. These are people who like to be drunk; and like their elders it is always a means of hiding something else.

I'm not excusing myself here. I have often drunk to excess, not just because I like it but also to escape from the inside of my head for a while. It can be quite a weird place to live, that old head of mine. So I'm no better. No worse either, I suppose.

A while back I came across an interview with the wife of the late Peter Cook. For those of you unfortunate enough not to know Cook, he was an absolute genius of cutting edge comedy; an alcoholic genius but a genius none the less. His wife asked him once why he drank so much to which he simply answered: "Despair".

In that one melancholy word I felt as if I understood him completely. Despair.

Last week someone asked me if the Irish were ever likely to take to the streets in the manner of Greece these past weeks. The answer, of course, is never. We're no longer good at that kind of thing, the Celts; and it is of course in the interests of our masters that we stay compliant. We'll moan about the government and how it's just come up with a new way to rip us off and keep us demoralised this week; but beyond mumbling in to our drink we will never do anything about it.

Try to organise something like Greece? It would have to wait until we had finished this round; or maybe the next one. After that the weather would be too hot or maybe it would be too cold. There would always be some excuse not to do anything. Never mind, we can always fight amongst ourselves at the end of the night. Heaven forbid that we should fight against the ones that we should really be fighting against.

A politician that has come up in conversation as being absolutely hated appears in the bar and wants to buy a few drinks, the sheep will bah all over themselves in order to accept and be seen to be on their side. Pitiful.

It's a Celtic thing, this. Fight with each other but never with the real enemy.

Look at Scotland a couple of decades back: Thatcher decides to try out her poll tax.

Not in England, though. Let's try it for a year in Scotland first. What happens? Scotland just lies down and bites the pillow while old Mother England is astride it. Sure, a few people decide to go to jail - a handful - because they see the injustice in it but in general it is just accepted and in due course this unfair tax is Britain wide.

Ireland is no different: we have been rode into the ground for years by Fianna Fail and now the new bosses are shaping up and already doing the same thing and there will never be a thing done about it. So let the suckers have their booze and their gambling is the attitude of the ruling elite. At least it keeps them off the streets; and with the consumption and the taxes it's an added bonus. As the singer Marilyn Manson put it, "Fear and consumption". They are two things vital to any government.

Serious drinking also masks something else. What some people find in their religion others find at that moment of total aloneness. Not being lonely, that's a different thing and something that I'm not sure I've ever felt. No, this is that feeling of being totally alone and with it that almost sublime moment that is reached which is like a premonition of one's own death. Sounds pretentious? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps more people feel it than wish to talk about it.

Despair is what I feel when I look around me at the serious gambling problem in Ireland, one that actually has gotten worse with the recession for various reasons. How to tackle this conundrum? Oh, yeah: let's give Tipperary TD Michel Lowry the go ahead for his long planned casino in the middle of nowhere.

We'll leave aside the plain fact that in any normal country Lowry would be banged up and serving time rather than strutting around and preening his loathsome self.

Millionaire businessman Richard Quirke is heading the 460-million-euro development near to the one street town of Two Mile Borris, which sounds like something out of the Gulag Archipelago.

It'll have a 500-bedroom hotel; all weather racecourse, greyhound track, golf course and heliport as well as the casino, natch. Fun for all the family! LAS VEGAS COMES TO IRELAND! scream the headlines as if this was a good thing; and just in case you think that it WON'T be the far side of tacky, it will also have a full sized replica of the White House to be called... the Oval Office. Wow, how the hell is that for sophisticated?

Jesus wept.

OK, maybe it will be good. Maybe it will bring in jobs galore. So why does every thing about this scream "future white elephant" at me.

Ah, the heck with it. I'm even beginning to give myself a headache with my grouchiness. I take it all back. The country is full of social drinkers and social gamblers. Where's the harm? No harm at all.

I'm feeling much better so maybe I will send this in after all.

Shut up, Brady, and try to see the good in things for a change. There's good things out there, isn't there?

Isn't there?

Hope to see you all again next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

* With thanks to Don DeLillo's magisterial novel, "Underworld", where I came across this.

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net