Surely Irish life is being diminished by a gradual disappearance of the rural pub. According to Drinks Industry Ireland, last month 1,829 — more than 20 per cent — have closed since 2005. In Roscommon, for instance, 72 pubs closed over those 16 years.
It included our own pub, the Arch Bar in Ballaghaderreen, closed by my late brother Pearse as soon as he could. Running a pub in rural Ireland can be a challenge, with the long hours and them being closed just two days of the year back then — Good Friday and Christmas Day.
Good Friday in our house was like living in the middle of the Michael Jackson Thriller video. Without the music. In daylight. Under siege. Hungover regulars, zombie-like, banging on the doors, throwing pebbles at the windows, pleading for just one drink. The drink to end all drinking.
And all the time their would-be affectionate diminutives getting “-eener” in that west of Ireland way. My brother becoming “Pearseen”, with my own name a particular challenge but emerging as “Patsheen”.
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One Good Friday my poor mother was caught at a window by a particularly distressed and well-liked regular. Always polite, he begged: “Chrisalmighty Mrs McGarry, just a naggin of Powers”. She was stricken. “I told him last night not to come near this house today,” she said. “What can I do? If I give him anything there’s all the others,” she pleaded.
And there were. Among them JP, already well into the seventh stage of a hangover — shock, denial, anger, bargaining, guilt, depression, acceptance. Asked once where he would end up after death, heaven or hell, he said, “I don’t mind. I’ve friends in both places.”
There was no doubt where he spent most Good Fridays — hell!
When any of us had to leave the house on Good Friday it was planned like a military campaign, with lookouts at upstairs windows directing operations.
But, there were compensations. The quietest part of the house on Good Friday was the pub itself. As a small boy I would go in there on Good Friday, climb up to the top shelf where the liqueurs were kept, and take a swig out of a bottle of Drambuie — that sweet, amber, honey-based drink.
I sneezed all the way down. It always made me sneeze.
Pub, short for public house, from Latin publicus, ‘of the people’.
