St. Patrick's Day 2004

For years, even March 17, pubs around Australia (and I am sure around the rest of the world) have been adding large quantities of green food colouring to kegs of lager in order to sell more beer. Why green? It's not really a natural colour for beer (even American beer, and it is generally shite).

Apparently, the green is supposed to make it more Irish. Why Irish? Well, it kinda reminds people of the grass in Ireland see. And so we are drinking grass-coloured beer. Nope, no sense to me either. So why is it that we all seem to drink bucket-loads of beer (either green or black) on this particular day.

Does anyone who doesn't have a connection with Ireland actaully know? Does anybody with a connection to Ireland know? I will be the first to admit that I had abso-bloody-loutly no idea what St. Patricks Day was all about. As far as I was concerned, it meant green beer and Guinness promotions on the 17th, and then really cheap green beer for the next week while the uni bar tried to get rid of its stock of lager-o-grass.

The story kinda goes like this; Patrick was an English lad. Yes, that's rite, English. But after gaining his cloth, he travelled to Ireland to convert the pagans to Christianity. Seems that old Paddy was quite suited to this job, because he was pretty darn successful. And he was pretty inventive too.

Take for example the idea of worshiping symbols. Now I know that in the Christian church you aren't supposed to worship symbols, but lets leave small matters alone shall we. Upon seeing how devoted his pagan parishioners were to worshiping the sun (I must admit I can appreciate it, I kinda melt whenever they faint warm glow touches my skin!) Paddy decided to be a little cunning. He took their sun, and whilst they had their heads down in worship, he stuck a cross in front of it. When they looked up again, the sun had changed a little, but it was still all big and yellow and warm, so hey, just leave the big cross thingy alone. And so know we have the Celtic Cross. Pretty nifty huh! Just be thankful Bill Gates isn't nearly as clever as old Paddy!

So what does all this have to do with getting twatted on the 17th March each year. Well, Paddy, as men (and women) are want to do, died. Yup, kicked the proverbial (heh, little Bible pun there) bucket and off to the grassy clouds for him it was. And guess what day he is supposed to have died on?

No smartarse, it wasn't Valentines Day! That was when all the Mafia died in Chicago! So in deference to actually converting to Roman Catholicism and carrying on Paddy's good work, we all go out and imbibe in just a few too many drinks and thank the Lord that Ireland produced a really good beer. I mean, can imagine how shite Paddies Day would be if the Irish had of been responsible for Bud!

My Paddies Day

As with all other quasi-Christian holidays in the western world, the day is a public holiday. Now, the original premise of this was that you were given the day off from work so that you could go to church.

Ok, so that's not what happens in Australia, and suprisingly enough, it doesn't happen much in Ireland either. Well, not from the evidence I saw. Here, the place gets rammed with American tourists and kids vomitting in the streets at 3pm. Tasty I know.

What I find interesting about this is that in talking with the people from work who are actually Irish (yes, there are a couple amongst the Aussie and Kiwi temps :) it seems that its only been in the last 10 years that St. Patricks Day in Ireland has been a really big piss-up. Prior to that, it was in fact a quite solemn event. It took the bloody Yanks to give it a parade and piles of Essex birds flying to Temple Bar to make it into the pretty unpleasant site that it has become in Dublin. Thankfully, I missed a lot of it.

With a public holiday the next day, there is no better time to get into a few pints and stay out late. And so we did. Drinking a wonderful pint of Guinness at midnite on Paddies eve in Dublin was pretty damn sweet if I do say so myself. But the next day was planned to be pretty full, and so we retired early (2am). Apparently, this turned out to be a very wise move because at about 3am, shit got nasty. I was safely home snuggled up in bed whilst teenage kids went about blowing shit up, painting the town with vomit and generally being obnoxious. Ahh, sometimes, I do actually avoid the trouble.

After arising refreshed and hungover, we stumbled down to the parade. Now the important part of the parade is this. Wait for it.

I was within 50 feet of Miss Universe!

Yes guys, you should be jealous. Not that I actually got to see her, but just knowing that there were only 40 rows of people between me and the flimsy metal barricade that seperated us from her - I think all of life's experinces will pale in comparison to that.

So after basking in the aura that was Rosana Donaldson, we headed off to Croke Park to watch the Hurling and Gaelic Football Club Championships. Now, let's just say that for two sports that basically have a domestic following from a country of 6 million people ad virtually no outside support, I was expecting Croke Park, the home of the Gaelic Athletics Association (GAA) to be just a little bit..well....parochial.

Was I certainly put in my place. Croke Park is one of the best stadiums I have even been in, and is apparently one of the best in Europe. I was pretty stunned, and very impressed, even more so for the fact that it cost about €100million, and the government only gave them 30 of that.

Anyway, the games were fitting of the venue - I really loved the hurling and the Gaelic Football wasn't too bad either. The football wasn't nearly as novel for me, because it is somewhat similar to Australian Rules (they actually have an "International Rules" competition between the best AFL players and best GF players), but the hurling was sensational.Guys with hurleys (the stick bit) belting a little solid leather ball (slother) around a field bigger than a soccer pitch, all the time belting each other. Top quality entertainment! It was very fast, and the game was pretty close right up till the end.

Something that I should mention about the Croke Park experience was the fact that it was exceptional value. I mean, two great games, for nothing. See they were charging people €20 to get in, but apparently it was chaos because rather than the 20,000 people that they thought would turn up, they got about 40,000. So they just threw open the gates and we just wandered in.Grand!

Anyway, after such a fun time, the only way to finish off the day was with a couple of tasty pints of black. And so off to the Turk's Head it was. Now, keep in mind that this was Wednesday, and even though it was a public holiday, Thursday wasn't. So me being the responible person that I am, I chose to only imbibe in about half what the other, non-employed people, were getting into. Even so, I was pretty trollied by the end of it, and after much singing of republican rebel songs, I collapsed into a blubbering mess in a warm bed, awaiting the pain and shadiness that morning would bring.

And it came. Hard. Fast. With vengence. Bad stomach. Must not grumble like that, will scare the small children on the bus. Oh, what a beautiful thing St. Patrick's Day was. Pity I wasn't the next day.

Enough of your seediness, take me back to Ireland