When you were young and the Yanks and those ‘ovah’ from the UK would come home for weeks on end, sporting the sort of clothes and the richness of tan that we only ever saw through the pages of National Geographic magazine, there was always a welcome hiatus when they left. Endless days and nights of chatter interspersed with endless cups of tea served in blue willow delft which for the rest of the year resided in my grandmother’s dresser, monotonous trip to the shop to get pounds of ham and tomatoes to create exotic summer salads all munched down between hundreds and hundreds of mentions of life ‘ovah.’
I reached a point when even my young mind just wanted it all to stop so that we could go back to a life where I didn’t have to always have my hair combed, where we ate proper dinners and not salads and where we could drink tay from mugs. Where we could say “ok folks, we’ve had our fun, let’s lay down the pretence on both sides and nobody gets hurt. We’ll take out the mugs we really drink from and you tell us the real story of ‘life ovah.’ And none of this ‘you’re part of the community’ rubbish.” Do ya read me, ovah?
Every year in Galway, there is such a point. Although most people are loath to say it, there is always a mighty relief when the races ends and when we can once again reclaim the city for ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, the arts festival, film fleadhs, and races are a month of constant flux and much welcomed and appreciated, but we have reached the point in the summer where you say we want Galway for ourselves for a few weeks, where traffic is not manic, where people are behaving sensibly, where confirmation suits are not the de rigeur expression of sartorial elegance, and where we all want the breathing space to enjoy it all for ourselves before the students and the oyster shucking starts again in September.
In one sense, August is like the Friday of race week, a nice gathering for locals after the hype and hyperbole of the week that has passed before. A chance to sit back and take stock of the fine summer we’ve had without planning for trips to Ballybrit or taking in welcome gratuitous nudity at arts fest show. August is a blank month when everything stops, when politics and the courts slow down or disappear altogether, when the whole country takes a ‘devil may care’ attitude to issues that are enraging us for the rest of the year. Sit back this August and inhale the calm before we get embroiled in debates about the Seanad and the Budget in 10 week’s time.
In one sense, we are in a very privileged position to even have the need to sit back and take a breather. Any inconvenience caused by the influx of crowds is offset by the massive commercial boost given to the city coffers. This in turn allows business and organisations alike to create the sort of Galway that makes us all want to make it our home for the rest of the year.
The arrival of thousands of new faces into town acts like a massive cleanser, adding to the mix, the wonderment, the buzz, as the Galway cycle goes on and on, bewitching thousands more every year and feeding the myth.
It’s not often the Galway machine slows down. Enjoy the time out while you can...
