In the Cúirt of the crimson King

The train is keeping my hangover nice and warm. The poker school on the left swears at the top of its pissed voice and the little girl opposite has just banged her dolly’s head on the sticky tabletop for the four thousandth time.

There is no bar. A sandwich costs !4.95. Pedro the tea trolley man has no change, or lids for his coffee. I fall asleep, coffee slopping onto my Levi’s.
Later I lean on the hot wall of the City Museum in Galway as a throng mulls about eating, drinking and smoking. Through the Spanish Arch darts Nell McCafferty. Grasping her tiny hand I enquire how tricks are. “Fine as soon as I open this,” she says. So now I know who’s opening the 22nd Cúirt Festival.
This she does inside, a moment later, informing a sweltering crowd of the fact with a resounding cry of, “Brace yourself Bridget.”
Still later in the Town Hall Theatre I watch my host, the inimitable James C. Harrold, City Arts officer, introduce Ian McEwan and M. J. Hyland. McEwan, slight but authoritative, reads from his new novella On Chesil Beach, grabbing the full house’s attention from the off. It tells of a disastrous honeymoon night back in 1962 (before sexual intercourse began). The fears, aspirations and fumblings are piquantly evoked, but where’s the beef? Miss Hyland’s oeuvre has been commended for its “spare directness and subtle brilliance.” Over refreshments later, McEwan said he thought The Dead Joyce’s finest achievement. Ms Hyland was between us as I ranted calmly at him about Ulysses so the remarks she addressed to me were partially inaudible, although doubtless subtly brilliant. She was at any rate, sparely direct enough to leaf through my notebook. McEwan follows Leeds.

THURSDAY
In green jacket and salmon pink shirting, here was the Tayboy of the Western world himself, Paul Durcan.
Grave-faced he took us on a journey from womb to tomb. Leading the capacity audience by the hand up the garden path to an enchanted place where the bus conductor takes no fares but expatiates on the way of cucumber with its mate in a greenhouse broad as a bus and octogenarian blimps roar banalities at four times the poet’s normal volume. This is a class act. Lastly, movingly, he invokes Nessa, the whirlpool in which he almost drowned. When he leaves, the crowd is not drowning but cheering.

FRIDAY
I sit with many other culture fans on a stone wall on this sunny morning at the Claddagh Basin where at pier’s end the enigmatic James C. introduces the poet Tom Paulin. After reading from McNeice, Mr. P. unveils a plaque of the text of McNeice’s ‘Galway’ written on the eve of WW2. Shortly afterwards James, the Lord Mayor and others shift on to introduce Fr. Walter Macken, son of Walter, Galway’s most beloved novelist, who unveils the second plaque of the day to that worthy. “The father is father to the father,” says somebody. Then all fall to ingesting chicken wings and the finest wines and I manage to scrape most of the swanshit of my Levi’s.

SATURDAY
My programme explains how to pronounce names phonetically: (cull-UM toe-BEEN) and so on. The festival club in The House Hotel is full of punters of a non-literary persuasion whom I divide into (pub-BOHRS, ah-SOHLS and juan-KERRS). However many of the great and good are also present and I spot Mr. toe-BEEN chattering to poet James Fenton and novelist Ann Enright. As I head for the bar, Poet in Residence Michael O’Loughlin (a man who makes Machiavelli look like Candide) drifts by hurling some sort of jibe at your reporter. Too feeble to come up with a rebuttal, I slink to the bat. I wave at tough guy detective novelist Ken Bruen and as I do so my sleeve is tugged by Irvine Welsh who reminds me of what a great band Sparks are at about 20 million decibels.
While the stranger who bumps me is shouting that he would gladly pay tonight’s musicians three times what the management does to shut the fuck up (I expect the Guinness will come out of my Levi’s) I spot my lead guitarist of 30 years ago. “Can I interest you in a pair of zircon encrusted tweezers?” he asks, but I settle for a pint. Then the bar runs our of Guinness and I remember no more.

SUNDAY
At the Bardic Brunch I am joined on the Balcony of the King’s Head by our own O. Tyaransen whose head prevents him partaking of any of my bacon, egg, beans, black and white pudding, fried bread and sausage. He commences to reduce the European lager lake, Little John Nee strums his uke and gives us his punk classic ‘Anarchy In The Cheese Factory and Irvine Welsh reads from his latest The Bedroom Secrets Of The Master Chefs so well that I go out later and buy it.
All is silent as I ascend the podium to accept the Nobel prize for literature when I awake to find that I am in fact at the Town Hall Theatre and Tim Robinson is talking in my sleep about Wittgenstein. Thus is too deep for me. Whereof we know not, thereof we may not speak. Instead I let my mind wander over many excellent things space has prevented me detailing. Dermot Healy’s spellbinding account of a provincial town closing down for the day. His namesake John describing how the Filth tried to fit him up for bottling a fellow wino in his street fighting years. James Fenton looking like a strange amalgam of Alistair Sim and Alasteir Crowley but reading like an angel.
Damon Galgut’s breathtaking story of a missionary’s moment of truth and Colm Toibin’s wonderful Alan Bannetesque reading of his short story of an octogenarian mother’s stoic acceptance of her son a paedophile priest. In the Club later, somebody asks me to pronounce ‘Cúirt’.
I pronounce it excellent.