Of Pen And Drink

"Out of the way — some writers are coming." The speaker was a lady official of the Festival Committee; the place, the staircase of the Great Southern Hotel, Galway (where the event was about to be launched); the obstacle, this reporter and his writer chum, a boggle expert and former Gort man of great cunning. Leaping lightly aside and tugging my forelock, I allowed these paragons to pass. After all, I was getting my tickets for nothing and I know what side my bread is buttered on.

Soon self and chum had joined the throng in hoovering down such red wine as was to be had and falling into a light doze as the speeches broke out. I thought about Mahler. I thought about Bach. Heck, I even thought about Smetana. After all, he knew what side his bride was bartered on.

Then thanks be to Jasus I spot my dear driver and his recently acquired wife whose thankless task it will be to put me up for the next week. They give me the glad news that the Festival Club is open until 4am every night and that all the readings are in the Town Hall Theatre, which will save missing them by getting lost as in previous years. We then push off to some bars and the Festival Club and eventually out to Prozac Connemara for the crash.

Now Carmen Callil and Colm Tóibín have selected the best 50 novels in English published in the last fifty years and stuck them in a book. And so nothing will do The Irish Times but to organise a debate about their selection between themselves and Eileen Battersby and a young gentleman from Waterstones whose name I didn't catch.

As it turned out, it was all too amicable. Colm and Eileen displayed lots of enthusiasm and the others did their best. No blood was spilled, although Ms. B was at a loss to know why Lord Of The Rings didn't feature, especially as she loved it so much that she called her dogs Bilbo and Frodo.

At question time someone asked Ms Callil why the Alexandria Quartet had been omitted. She said that on re-reading it had seemed to her that it lacked its original resonance and freshness. I guess the same argument could be advanced against the selected Agatha Christie novel, but said nothing. As I hadn't read the book and it hadn't occurred to anyone to display a list of the titles behind the lectern, most people in the crowd didn't know what the selections had been. When I picked up a copy later, it turned out that no SF had been included. Later I learned that this was on the grounds that Science Fiction is all crap. So that's all right then. Or if you think it isn't, you can write in to say so nominating any six omissions on the form at the back of the book (The Modern Library, Picador, £12.99 UK) and get them included in the paperback.

The pudding dished up in Prozac is after the manner of the old Model T Ford. You can have any colour you want as long as it's black. As a restorative after the nuclear winter of hangover following a night in the Festival Club, along with a few gallons of milkless tea, it has few equals. Or at any rate no alternatives. Mine is cold by the time I get to the table and my driver, having some work to do, has departed.

So it is that his wife and I find ourselves strolling about noon along a featureless Beckettscape towards the bus from the airport those little planes use to fly to Aran. The old stomach is not feeling so good, nor is it helped by treading suddenly on a dead cat whose condition I soon begin to envy, but trouper that I am, faithfully record it.

There is no doubt that among places to die, the airport bus coming into Spiddal is one of the least attractive. The pain in the chest was truly terrible and the old ability to breathe rapidly deserted our hero, who was by now a very sick crocodile. I was just trying to remember the old trick of biting through the major artery at the back of the tongue (you drown very quickly in your own blood) when amazingly the whole thing just sort of faded away.

Subsequent enquiries revealed that this sort of thing is absurdly common among writers and, ludicrous as it may sound, results simply from drinking and smoking too much.

"Is that Ben Kiely?" The speaker was a fresh-faced young novelist. The place, Brennan's Yard, home of festival late drinking. It was 2am. The person indicated by the young man, his face a cameo of pathos, was Colm Tóibín. The person addressed was this reporter. "No," I replied. "Ben would be asleep by now. That's his stunt double." How we laughed. Except him.

An hour later the club is very smoky and noisy indeed. Pat McCabe is pounding the piano which, as I observe to C. Tóibín, only goes to bear out Walter Pater's observation that all art aspires to the condition of music. Or perhaps muzak.

A man tells me this joke. The drug squad call around to see Bob Geldof. "Yeah?" his Bobness enquires. "We're looking for magic mushrooms," say the DS. "You're too late," Geldof replies, "she's at school." How we laugh. Except me.

An extremely personable young lady in a crimson cloak represents herself to me as Little Red Riding Hood. Of course even an old naif like moi knows that this is nothing but a great big fib. "Who am I?" she wishes to know, fluttering her eyelashes at me from under her hood. Naturally I am far too much of a gentleman to leer "The big bad wolf", and besides I notice that her companion looks as if he can snap me like a twig, so I bat my own eyes and say "Grandma".

Soon I am bawling "Dead Flowers" with Mr. McCabe, who gets the piano fills more or less but doesn't know the "In my basement room / with a needle an' a spoon" verse. Though I must say he belts the "Take me down Little Susie" section very creditably indeed at that.

Mr. G. Friday and Mr. M. Seezer have been debating music publicly in the Róisín Dubh pub earlier, while myself and a young acquaintance of the French persuasion have been listening to the poet Montague, whose best poem I thought was about his cousin smashing a piano.

My absence from said meeting of minds has been noticed by Mr Friday, who has been evidently refreshing himself somewhat liberally since he greets me as follows: "Where were you, ya cunt?" I explain that I was doing my bit to hasten European unification. "Followin' your dick as usual," he shot back. "Au contraire, Monsieur Vendredi," I countered. "As Tennessee Williams has rightly said: 'Following my heart, following my frightened heart'." And old romantic that he is, he clasped my tiny hand in his huge one and made again for the piano. Since this was now surrounded by goggling gals, I escaped to the back of the shop.

Here I notice that J. Cooper Clarke has arrived, and ever mindful of this publication's commitment to keeping Ireland safe for rock and the other thing, I ramble over for a word with the old sage, who looks more like a slightly more wasted Keef than ever. The cartoon woody topknot is still the preferred method of barnet festoon, while the shades are redder even than the eyes. He tells me in that overwound walkie-talkie toy manner of his that he has recently eaten "A fackin' loverly bit o' cod dahn the chipper" — a fact borne out by fragments of same still clinging to a set of gold-spangled choppers S. MacGowan might envy. Pausing only for the obligatory photo opportunity, we parted with effusive expressions of mutual esteem. Except him.

The rest of the evening is a merciful blur.

If there is a more pleasant way of putting in an afternoon than sailing up the Corrib with a young lady companion and plenty of whisky for the purpose of listening to poetry read at Annaghdown, I've yet to hear of it.

This poetry turned out to be first-rate stuff from Ken Smith, a Yorkshire Vonnegut lookalike who writes about vodka (on which he turns out to be quite an expert later) and also some rather naff stuff from some Aosdána dude whose name escapes me. After lending my committee hand by carrying tables, obtaining sandwiches, helping writers to tea etc., I found myself in the back of the car being driven to Spiddal for dinner and being made to translate Baudelaire's L'Horloge to the amusement of driver and spouse.

Back in the Town Hall, having missed all but ten minutes of John Cooper Clarke, comes the highlight of the festival for moi. Because after a splendid set by Martin Stephenson and Brendan O'Regan, Cooper Clarke re-emerges strumming the old axe, snarling "I can't facking play this" and then, against a Sweet Janesque wall of sound, cranking out an extended "96 Tears" that brought tears to your old uncle Tommy's eyes. Oh reader, it has been truly remarked that, parfois, la vie est belle.

Other highlights too difficult to work in include: Tom Murphy in debate with the indefatigable Pat McCabe, putting smacht on entropy and explaining that his ideal reader is God because He might learn something. Ben Kiely explaining how the exertions of a pair of lovers nearly destroyed a field of turnips. Patience Agbabi's tampon rap ("Stick 'em on, stick 'em in, stick 'em up") and just possibly the interview James Joyce (not that one) got me to do for Finnish TV about Finnegans Wake, except I can't remember a thing about it.

Thanks to: Everybody on the Committee, driver and wife for hospitality, Charlie for the crash, Justina for the medicine, Jenny for the ticket, and Annie for the days.