Stocious Shenanigans and Drunken Dublinian Debauchery
28 years later
[Editor’s note for language learners: there is a fair bit of Irish slang in this one, so don’t worry too much if you don’t get it, and I wouldn’t recommend looking it up unless you really want to try using it. I’m not sure it would be a good idea to go to Belfast and say to someone, ‘fancy a wee bit of shifting?’]
This is a story of free-flowing Guinness, bicycle accidents, missed ferries, being threatened by Irish republicans, and arriving home three days late[r].
What’s that phrase in French people use – plus ça change? The more things change, the more they stay the same.
To wit:
Dublin, 1996: my first visit. I had very little money to my name. Still squandered much of it on food and drink.
Dublin, 2024: another visit. I had very little money to my name. Still squandered much of it on food and drink.
In contrast:
October 1996: my body could handle it.
October 2024: it cannot.
Five days after returning my body was still crying out in pain, the recovery slow and tortuous.
The occasion was my dear friend Brian’s 40th birthday festivities. Along with his wife Kristen, we taught together in Kyrgyzstan in 2009. There were four of us in town: Brian’s long-time best friend of the same age who made the trek all the way from Alaska; his not-yet-40-year-old German friend from where he lives now, in Bavaria; and me, the grandpa of the group, on the right side of 50, barely.
There aren’t too many details to share from this trip, but to briefly list what we got up to:
1 Friday – our pub crawl started at 3pm and ended over 12 hours later. At least 12 pints of Guinness were consumed, probably more.
2 Saturday – in our my delicate condition, a massive fry-up (bad news for my cholesterol); a trip to the Guinness storehouse and brewery (the old hair of the dog, as you do); axe throwing, Viking style; a hearty dinner with red wine (civilised); cocktails at a speakeasy (refined, highbrow); and a couple of Guinnesses as a night cap (necessary). A quiet day/night, comparatively.
3 Sunday – a late morning Irish whiskey museum tour and tasting (why not?); lunch (more bad cholesterol) and more Guinness on into the evening.
4 Monday – back to Vienna. My body ached for days. It may not sound like much, but it’s more than my delicate constitution can handle.
Let’s rewind to 28 years ago – a group of elderly American ladies are 100% to blame (and I thank them for it!)
Well, now. I was studying in London with my good friend Todd. We took a long weekend trip to Dublin by coach and ferry – we were students, it was cheap. This is what you do.
For the first couple of days, we didn’t get up to anything too scandalous. We were saving our Guinness brewery tour for the final day. Bad idea. Excellent idea.
Honestly, if that last day had featured a simple trip to the Guinness brewery for the self-guided tour and a free sample, it would have been a lovely, perfectly pleasant time.
Fortunately, it turned into something more epic.
On that final afternoon, your typical hazy, grey, drizzly Dublin autumn day, Todd and I borrowed bicycles from a friend/failed love interest, Eileen and her sister. We were to meet them back at our rendezvous point with plenty of time to grab a bite to eat and head back to the station for our ferry and coach to London. We had a busy day of classes to get back to.
We didn’t make it.
Well, we did – three days later.
We’d finished our brewery tour and were enjoying our complimentary pints. We had heaps of time and wanted another pint for the road, but back in those days you couldn’t buy any at the brewery.
As we were polishing off our pints, a coachload of middle-aged/elderly American ladies who had no interest in drinking their Guinnesses turned up. They saw us enjoying ours and before we knew it, we had a stack of vouchers on our table. Not wanting to let all those vouchers go to waste, Todd and I started pounding Guinnesses (as you do).
You may well know that Guinness isn’t high in alcohol – a measly 4.2%. But all that nitrogen can be quite filling, and we were drinking on empty stomachs. I’d say we were bladdered by the time it was–
‘Shit! We really gotta get going, we’re gonna be late!’
We drank up and hopped on our bikes.
Wonderful timing. It was drizzling harder now (as it does in Dublin), and it was around 5-6pm, during rush hour. The traffic was awful, and we had to zip back to give Eileen and her sister their bikes and make a dash to the coach station.
I zoomed on ahead, dodging cars and people. At one point I turned around and saw nothing. No Todd.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’
I turned back, going the wrong way in the face of the traffic and a couple of blocks later found Todd sprawled on the pavement, his face a bit scratched but otherwise unharmed.
The bicycle on the other hand was banjaxed…oh deary me, what would we tell Eileen?
At this point, we realised we weren’t making our ferry. Need I remind you that this was in 1996, the pre-mobile phone era, so we had no way of getting in touch with Eileen.
Todd’s bike was unrideable and so we made our way slowly back to the meeting point, near Trinity College.
We sheepishly handed the bicycles over and apologised profusely, offering to pay for the damage.
Eileen, bless her, would hear nothing of it. She almost certainly said, ‘The state of yous, honestly!’
We didn’t bother going to the coach station. We’d missed our coach to the ferry terminal and the only option was to take one the next morning.
We were going to miss our three classes the following day, but after that we had a light classload.
Are you thinking what we were thinking?
‘Fuck it, let’s stay another few days!’
So we did. Kind of.
We stayed that night in Dublin but decided to get out of town the following day and make our way up to Belfast, to surprise my grandmother.
‘Jaysus Christ, what are you two bloody well doing here? Look at the hack of you!’
After indulging in a sumptuous fish supper from one of Northern Ireland’s finest chippers on the Belmont Road, and then barely two hours later stuffing our gullets with an Ulster Fry (no cholesterol worries back then, for sure), I wanted to show Todd Belfast by night.1
Except that I had no experience with Belfast by night. Even though I’d visited hundreds of times, I hadn’t had a proper night out before. We were usually there to visit family and except for a few pints with my uncle and cousins after Linfield or Dundela FC matches, I’d hardly experienced any of Belfast’s prime watering holes.
What else to do but head to Botanic Avenue, near Queen’s University (my mother’s old haunt back in her youth). Not much was happening at first, and we were both about to burst after stuffing our gobs all afternoon.
We hit a few places and eventually ended up at Lavery’s. It was jam-packed and a raucous good time.
Time for some stocious shenanigans
Todd and I were well and truly steamin’ by the end, dancing, snogging, goodness knows what else (courting, as they call it in the North). I vaguely remember a massive singalong to ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ and then stumbling off with Anne and Briege, a couple of students from Queen’s. I was enamoured with Briege’s name, an Irish form of Bridget/Birgid, and also a popular Catholic name.
What does religion have to do with anything?
When you’re in Northern Ireland, a lot.
My mother is Protestant and though she married my father, a Catholic, I was very much of the Protestant persuasion. I cringe now when I think of the ‘Ulster Says No!’ hats I wore as a kid. (I won’t reveal some of the other stuff I had.)
I was besotted with much more than Briege’s name. Enough so that I was able to ignore the anti-RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary, the mainly Protestant police force) signs and the anti-Queen posters and the ‘Fuck the UVF’ (Ulster Volunteer Force, the Protestant paramilitary equivalent of the IRA) paraphernalia.
At one point, we were joined in the living room by Anne and two other flatmates and a heated political discussion ensued.
It was clear they not only hated the Queen, the RUC, the UVF and the British, but all Protestants. It was a drink-fuelled rant, no doubt, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
I played dumb. I told them I was Jewish (‘ach, catch yourself on!’), and luckily for me, my dyed orange hair (my Granny’s idea, btw) didn’t raise any suspicions. Todd was Jewish, so I was only half lying.
They lectured me about the evils of the British and this went on and on. I had to bite my tongue if I wanted to make it out of there alive.
‘Shit! Where’s Todd?’
‘Who’s Todd?’
I had lost track of Todd, again. We got separated when Lavery’s closed. It was nearly morning now.
I knew my Granny would be waiting up, terrified. She was the worrying type, always concerned about me ending up with the wrong crowd in the wrong part of town. It was 1996 – this was two years before the Good Friday peace agreement and, need I remind you, the pre-mobile phone era.
Thankfully, one of Briege’s flatmates came through.
‘Todd? The American fella? I think he was shifting with Emma at Lavery’s, he might be round hers.’
‘Shifting?’ That was a new one for me.
‘Yeah, like a wee póg.’
Right, clear.
What were the chances of this?
Briege rang me a taxi, and I went to Emma’s house.
And sure enough, I barged in on them, uh…shifting.
‘Todd, sorry, we gotta go.’
He took a quick selfie before selfies were called selfies (on an old-fashioned camera – the picture didn’t come out) and we jumped in the taxi to my Granny’s.
And boy oh boy was she freaking out.
‘Are you two stocious?!’
She was certain the IRA had got a hold of us. She was worried about my orange hair, even though it had been her idea.
We eventually made it back to London, finally catching our ferry out of Dublin on time.
As painful as it was a few weeks ago, it was well worth it.
As mad as it was all those years ago, it was definitely well worth it.
Many people in Northern Ireland call it a chipper, not a chippy, as they do on the mainland.
Hell of a story Daniel. I cannot wrap my head around going out on the pull in Northern Ireland pre the GFA. Fearless!
I COULD NOT LOVE THIS MORE