The Drunken Poet was busy on October 31st. Irish backpackers mixed amicably with the locals, who comprised longer term emigrants huddled over the best attempt that the Southern Hemisphere can make at a pint of Guinness.
Siobhan worked the counter like Peigin Mike in ‘The Playboy of the Western World’ with a “welcome kind stranger” for every new face that crossed her threshold. It was Halloween, but that wasn’t why the Irish had gathered. An all girl Dixie Band were knocking out the hits of Dolly Parton and that was keeping the attention of those who hadn’t come to sample Arthur’s finest.
The Irish Diaspora are big on their festivals and traditions. St Patrick’s Day gets celebrated with the drunken abandon of a sailor on shore leave and Christmas is often marked by sweating paddies cooking Turkey and Ham in tropical conditions.
Thankfully, Halloween is not something we emigrants are proud of. It is a largely Irish festival, derived from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, but like most good things in life, the Yanks have ruined it. To the rest of the world, it is now an American holiday, with oversized pumpkins and sugared up kids in superman outfits.
Australians seem to ignore it, partly because they are smart enough to see a Disney themed festival coming and also because the sun kind of gets in the way. Daylight savings arrived here in October, providing an extra hour of sunlight each evening just as the locals took the winter covers off their BBQs. The simple truth is, kids don’t look scary enough dressed as Dracula when the sun is blazing down.
It wasn’t like that when I was a nipper of course. The clocks in Ireland went back at that time of year with a ghostly suddenness, pitching the country into a seemingly endless winter. Halloween offered an eerie introduction to winter and with nothing else to do until Christmas, we embraced it with the abandon of death row prisoners.
My happiest memories from back then are from the days before I was let out of the house after dark. My mother would buy citrus fruit (as rare in Ireland in the 70’s as in Berlin in May 1945) and nuts that only seemed to be sold at that time of year. We’d crack our teeth on the plastic ring hidden in the Barnbrack and be half drowned by my older brother when playing ‘bob the apple’. He was adept at convincing you to dip your head into a bucket of water, before holding it down once it was in. Many years later my brother emulated this trick with a young lad called McNally and a regularly flushed toilet. My brother spent a lot of time in the Middle East in the early eighties and sometimes I wonder if he was there to teach the CIA how to ‘waterboard’ suspects. He was certainly a master of it at the age of ten.
My scary memories of Halloween (attempted drowning apart) came when I was old enough to wander the streets of town after dark in the company of other young renegades looking for cheap thrills. My problem was that I was desperate to be one of the gang, but had the toughness of Elton John. And I was afraid of fire and that’s what Halloween mostly involved.
Each street would compete to build the biggest bonfire, although how this was judged I never knew as nobody travelled outside their own street on bonfire night for fear of becoming fuel to the neighbour’s flames. Stories of small boys being hurled into infernos were widespread round our way and we stayed close to our lunatics as a result. For weeks beforehand, those lunatics would raid garages for old tyres, dismantle entire buildings just for the wood and gather anything that was combustible and not padlocked.
I always stood far enough back to avoid the exploding gas canisters and horizontally projected fireworks, but still went home smelling like a chimney sweep.
When I came back to Ireland as a responsible adult, I noticed that Halloween was in the early stages of being americanised. But we still maintained an element of the madness that had been a part of my childhood. The British celebrate Guy Fawkes Night on the 5th November. We Irish were never so keen on this festival, as a Catholic trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament was seen in Ireland as a sort of career ambition rather than cause to burn an effigy atop a bonfire.
However, the Brits love their fireworks at that time of year and that provides a ready supply to the Irish to celebrate Halloween five days previously. Fireworks are illegal in Ireland, but not in Northern Ireland. So enterprising businessmen set up warehouses along the border to tempt the would be pyrotechnic wizards from the South.
Alas, very few of these fireworks made it as far as Halloween, patience not being a virtue among the brain dead idiots who buy them. The first one would be let off around mid June, no doubt as a test missile and timed to coincide with that point when normal people like me are about to sink into peaceful sleep. From then until October, we would be treated to a nightly attack of random explosions notable more for their sound than colour, as Dublin became a benign version of Baghdad.
A last minute trip North would be planned on Halloween Eve, to replace the prematurely ejaculated stock. And that meant the night itself was an occasion for dogs and other easily frightened animals like me to don earmuffs and bury ourselves beneath duvets.
Many people ask me what I miss about Ireland and I have a well rehearsed list. Less often, I am asked what I don’t miss. After the weather and the obsession with property, I’d safely put Halloween third. Spend next years at the Drunken Poet and you won’t want to hear a cheap firework again.
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