Galway's Something There To Remind Me

 On the train. The carriage is loud. People are happy and they're chatting away. Loudest of all is the young man with the Eurotrash accent (approximately German/American with a quizzical intonation). He looks like D'Artagnan with an inflatable neck pillow. He is young and handsome and confident in his second language. He is also spectacularly boring. Everything he says is generic and vapid. He is opposite two blonde girls he does not know well, and he is hammering home bland truisms like the world's least riveting riveter. It's working: the girls are leaning forward, listening and occasionally laughing. They have mistaken his loud confidence for charm. He will be boring himself into their knickers by nightfall. Or knicker-fall, which ever comes first. 

Oh, he's Belgian, so now I don't know what to think. I LIKE Belgians. They've given us Jacques Brel, Angele, loads of brilliant beer and "Daughters of Darkness". The girls are both gorgeous, of course, and I find myself jealous of the young, while acknowledging I was probably just as cockily dull when I was twenty and did very well out of it. 

The toilets at Huston Station in Dublin are a festival experience. You walk up hollow steps to a prefab and are slapped in the face by warm, sharp urea. The toilets are unflushed and the graffiti wanting - uninspired "dick" and "faggot" content is scrawled across the walls. As I'm washing my hands, damp toilet paper quietly adheres to the heel of my shoe, and trails behind me like a soiled wedding train. 

We head to the IFI. We always do when passing through Dublin. I have a pint of Madri and listen to 90's hip hop, then nip to the shop and pick up a bluray of The Island of Lost Souls. The perfect pit stop. 

The view from the window of the Galway train is either of cows or golfers, or golfing cows. The Belgian guy - his name-tag(?) reveals him to be called Yuri Baert - had to move out of his seat at Tullamore as it had been pre-booked by someone else, because trains do that sort of thing nowadays. He has been silenced. I am pleased, as I am jealous of his youth, his linguistic skills, and the fact that his strategy - boring the ladies into submission - has not worked here, though it will work in hostels all around the country. My own sparkling wit cannot even surpass my accent - the Irish speakers of the West Coast are not keen on the English, and I get so tired of explaining how I'm not actually English, because I so clearly am - from my self-deprecating jokes and parched little voice, to my inability to join in proscribed fun. I'm so English even the English aren't like this anymore. I'm like some awful Ian Carmichael character, rocking back and forth on my heels, a mirthless smile drying gently. 

My train ticket is labeled "flexible adult". Palpably mis-sold. 

I continue to write my long short story "The Devil's Punch Bowl". I think it's good - certainly in parts - but will need a lot of editing. It would seem to be my version of a tale as old as time. And I'll say no more about it until its finished. I will have a lot of typing to do when I get back. And a lot of editing. 

We had a frisson of excitement as we got to our seats and saw our names lit up on the LED. No, we don't get out much. 

It's the Arts festival in Galway, and the best art we see is Ana Maria Pacheco's "Remember" sculptures. Enormous wooden statues with onyx eyes and fiddly little teeth, in a series of faintly horrific and often horrifically comic tableaux, meditations on the exchange of power and the nakedness of the powerless. That's a terrible description, but this is a multi-sensory exhibition: the lighting is beautiful, the forced shadows, as much a part of the diorama as the nails in people's heads, the pale clawing fingers. The smell of the wood too, is a massive part of the experience, a musky incense. Its been a long time since a piece of art hit home as much as this: it was like an arrow in the heart. Susan and I went every day of our trip. 

It was hard to find but worth finding, hidden away in an old Post Office, behind some macho street theatre guys. Even street theatre is macho and punk and hard now, performed by muscular men with tattoos, grunting at the crowd through head-mics and joylessly trying to get terrified children to join in. Afterwards, you'd see them hugging their agonised limbs, heads down, staring at the floor. At no point did it look like fun. It was more like mortification of the body. Maybe they held religious views. 

We repaired to The Kings Head, a warren of spaces, catering to tourists in the main, but too large to completely fill, so there are quiet spots to sit and sup and chat. It was here that they played Future Islands "Seasons" and I started crying, clearly some sort of emotional collapse, triggered by my complete inability to make any headway with a rogue priest in Cavan. Still, nice pub. It was allegedly built with money a local man earned lopping off the head of King Charles the First. They couldn't get an Englishman to do it, but I expect the Irish were queuing up. 

We went to see some contemporary dance at a tiny, cool theatre called An Taibhdhearc (me neither). "Sartori" and "Unfolding", which is two dance pieces and not one great 80's band. It was phenomenal, the lighting extraordinary, and absolutely part of the choreography. The theatre was a literal black box, the stage a modest shelf behind a black curtain with two golden peacocks painted on it. It was an exact endorsement of the thesis I set out in my film "Goat Songs" - theatres are places of magic, actual literal magic. This might be an irksome idea to the crafts-people, the dancers, directors and stage managers who work hard to make it all happen, but that's absolutely my point. Magic is always hard work. There is always a cost. It taxes you. But the effect is effortless. The effect takes flight, dazzles, denies its own physicality. 

Not denying the physicality were the two eleven year old boys in front of me, who couldn't believe their luck when two of the dancers took their tops off in the second half. They were very moved. It was palpable. A couple of Nijinskis in the making there, no doubt. 

The last night of the trip was excellent. We went to a restaurant called The Universal. Susan had lemon sole, and I had lamb that actually got better with every bite. There are Michelin starred restaurants in Galway, but this was exactly our sort of vibe: relaxed, cool, open, great food, good service. The music at the correct pitch, and art on the walls. We'd found our Bohemian enclave. I demolished a cheeseboard on my own (you can keep your pineapple napalm - honey is the only condiment necessary or appropriate to eating cheese). We drank a very strange, slightly bitter, burnt orange tasting Beaujolais that, despite the description, was delicious. The next day our foodie hotelier tracked it down for me. It was a Foillard Beaujolais Villages, described as having "red and black fruits and menthol(!) aromas". The sinuses cleared right up. 

Afterwards we went on to Walsh's Bar, which is a sort of platonic solid version of an Irish pub, from the ridiculous intuition of the server, a multi-tasking dervish, to the gently rowdy bearded lads, straight out of central casting (one of them was a red head, of course) with a line of Instagram perfect Guinesses on the bar before them, and each laughing and slapping their thighs after every sentence. There was live music - a bloke with an acoustic guitar, which in Belfast would be an instant RUN AWAY. But he had a fine voice, impeccable picking technique and played the exact covers I wanted to hear. I didn't know I wanted to hear "Romeo and Juliet" by Dire Straits, but I did. He was also QUIET, so we could talk, which is not something that happens anywhere in Belfast anymore. Even my preferred bolt-hole The Black Box is deafening by eight o clock. Elsewhere on Hill Street - the broken ankle mile - every tubby prick in a beard and plaid shirt is amped up like Ed Sheeran at Wembley - and doing the same set. Sort it out Belfast - it can be done. 

I loved Galway. And next time I'm there I won't be trying to organise the burial of my mother's ashes. Which will lend it even further gloss.