I’ve a great grá for this time of the year. Here, on the other side of everything. Here, with most of the Galway year behind us; the Races, the arts festival, the summer influx of event aficionados.
Like the circus lifting its tent in the dark of night and skulking its way out of town to the next town, the Galway season has been welcomed, has promised, has delivered and now is wrapped away for another while, to allow other categories of people to begin their experience of life here in the west.
Like the circus, there is a circle of flattened grass, of lingering diesel, a few sprinkles of the magic dust still lying in the corners to remind us of what has just passed; just enough to whet our appetite for it once again when it comes around next year.
They used to say that when the Galway Races were over, that you could start planning the downward climb into winter, but it is not such a straight road anymore.
It is at times like this that I ponder the year, not so much at its end or beginning. Here, with the daylight shrinking a tiny amount each evening, with the harvest about to produce its yield, my mind takes to wandering and wondering. And I find myself back in the thought process of my teenage self awed by the possibilities of this place.
Especially now, after the traumatic years we have endured, there is a new zest for progression. A restlessness at the fleeting nature of the years. The lockdown years and the arrival of European war have primed the spring for people’s personal and professional ambitions. There is an unease in people; perhaps it is a delayed trauma of uncertainty and fear and impatience with what went before.
Here in Galway, it is a new beginning for so many. Every year, it is a springboard for the thousands of students who come to study at our oft-name-changing third level institutions. (I am loath to guess the current monickers lest they have changed again by the end of the column ).
This is the first batch of new students who arrive totally unaffected by postponement of courses and graduations. They are eager to spread their wings and we hope to have a city that facilitates that.
For the past few weeks, we have been welcoming hosts for those who have sampled Galway under the guise of art, culture or sport; and now we must be equally willing to extend that hand of friendship to those who are beginning a lifelong love affair with the city.
Fáilte romhat.
