August, where the hell were ya? We were looking for ya for, what, must be weeks now. Waiting for this bank holiday to come so that the madness can stop, so that we can take a breather, sit down, relax without having that subliminal urge to get up and be somewhere at something where everybody else will be because they sat down and got the same urge to get up and go as well. Well now, after a month of non-stop events in the city, my get up and go has got up and gone.
And so it is with a great fondness bordering on love that I anticipate next week when the crazy month of July and the events it brought with it, come to an end. It has been some whirlwind, the sort of time that any place in the country would give their right arm for. Events of breathtaking scale, of ambitious madness, of vivid imagination. Events that were held without set hours or schedules. It was a case of build it and they will come and that is exactly what happened in Galway. Boats came in at crazy hours and we were there, Macnas braved the torrents in the streets and we were there and this week, millions and millions are being gambled in Galway when everyone told us we had no money.
So next week, I want to chill — I want to look out the bay content in the knowledge that if I blink I won’t miss a fleet of V70s coming across the waves...or that I’ve missed out out on a must-see premiere at the Film Fleadh...or that God will grant me the wisdow to realise that no matter how I try, there’s no point in trying to look good when the Coronas and Bressie are in town. And now, having answered the questions ‘are ya going racing’ a thousand times in both the affirmative and the negative, I long for Monday when I can put all that behind me.
What a month we’ve had but now we just want to sit back and relax and let our aching limbs and livers recover. We don’t want to be stuck in the middle of 150,000-strong crowds anymore. We want the wide open spaces. We want to sit in the square at 6am with just the birds and the brownbag holders for company. We want to look up at the knitted fountain and wonder how what would the sheep have thought...
Don’t for a minute think that I’m being ungrateful for all the crowds or all the fun it has been. It has been a ball but there comes a time when you just want to enjoy Galway for being crowdless, that sweet time around 10 each morning when the shops are being stocked and the crowds have not yet filtered in and you can wander through the streets marvelling at just how beautiful a place it is we live in. This summer, we’ve all done our bit at showing the rest of the world how true this is...but come next week when for the first time in a month, there won’t be a festival running or a deadline to be met, let us enjoy it. Let this be our time in our city.
