If It Is Broke, Why Fix It?
The country’s dead broke, but so is everything else, and therein lies the rust, the rub, and the charm.
Me, I got problems. Got a broke tooth, got a broke dishwasher, clothes dryer, jet shower that never takes me over one Irish moon, broke phone, broke pipe, broke bank account – two hours of pushing broom, ain’t got no cigarettes.
So I went into village of Ballyduff, just to pass the time.
What did I see?
Well the signs were all pointing the wrong way, as they do all over Ireland — always, always pointing the wrong way. Seems the young ones like to twist them so. So I started a–twisting every last wrong sign I could find, this my gift to a country lost its bearings.
The people were pointing at me as if I was off me rocker, these the same people furious about the central government — cough — having no directional bearings. Nobody whatsoever had been bothered that the directional signs into their village had been pointing to nonsense land for oh, two or three years.
I went to the village, I went to the pub. This one is called Tobins and it is very old. Very old. A friend in there had been shooting magpies all morning, because what else are you going to do in a country with no bananas.
Fair enough, but the door was broke, and so was the loo. Everybody knows that the best drinking time in rural Ireland is right after church, and explain that please. But things seemed untroubled until I attempted to pay. I mean Tobins is one of the most peculiar points in Ireland, a time warp no sci-fi guy could create. There ain’t no time in Tobins. In fact, the clocks go backwards when they work.
Your hosts are Ritchie, 89, and Denny, 85, Tobin — and they are not break dancers, mind you. Actually, Ritchie runs things with an iron hand, except when he drifts away for a century or two.
So I attempted to pay for the drink for the wife and myself, manly like. This caused consternation and tarnation in the brows of Denny, who is quite happy to leave the serious business of finance to the big brother. But Ritchie was indisposed, so Denny was left all alone with the till.
He pressed a button and a drawer popped open with quite a bang. Looks of shock ranged the dark silent bar. Now we had another problem. It was called The Closing of the Drawer. Denny, being only 85, gave it a go. But the fecker wouldn’t respond. So he started lifting it to the rib bones and dropping it over and over again. Then it worked.
Me, I was videotaping the whole thing with the lens cap on.
So this is what I like about Ireland.
I enjoyed the blog and in particular this post! It’s bonkers but I believe every word.
Hey David, thanks for the article. My family used to own a pub in Ballyduff called Tobin named after my great grandfather Richard Tobin. It sounds like the exact place you are talking about, however, I had heard that it was no longer a pub. Is this the place of which you speak?