By Declan Burke
What is always liable to catch people off guard about travelling from Galway to Waterford is actually how hard it is to get there. Getting to the occasionally sunny south east involves travelling through such centres of inbreeding as Oola, Boher, Cahir and Gort. Such a journey is not aided by roads that are as far from Autobahns as you can go without careering over dirt tracks and is invariably made worse when there are 5 people squashed into a car and with nothing to do but play 20 questions.
So, you may ask, what would tempt anyone to make such a journey? Well in this case it was an event dubbed the Flee to Spraoi; a weekend of merriment and intoxication that was being hosted by Jennifer (who happens among other accomplishments to be my girlfriend) in conjunction with Spraoi, a street theatre and music festival that counts as one of Waterford's few contributions to culture (after the "blah" of course, it’s pretty much a bap but don’t tell them that).
Travelling down to Waterford from Galway was Ms Bones, Peter, John, Pat and my good self while waiting for us with Jennifer was one Dangle Roughly. We'd all been friends for years through college with the exception of John, a Dub who showed up in Galway at the start of the summer with a guitar on his back, an inexhaustible supply of crazy stories and a thirst for drink. Unsurprisingly he gelled with us immediately.
The Irish summer being what it is Waterford was completely rained out when we arrived on Saturday. Confined to the house, we had to make our own fun, a task made remarkably easier when you’ve just stocked up enough beer to host a George Best memorial drinking competition. Jennifer helped matters by cooking an amazing meal, supplemented with some fine banter (there’s no bias here by the way – among many other things Jennifer is a great cook). Now that we were drunk and well fed, Pat produced his secret weapon: a game called Snatch. The best way of summing the game up is to imagine if Scrabble had been invented by a thieving bastard. The object of the game is to make words from lettered tiles upturned one at a time, but said words can be stolen by other participants to make new words. Needless to say as I was pissed and wrecked I didn’t excel and instead I retreated to bed.
Now the thing with parties involving my Jennifer is this: don’t expect a good night’s kip. Built by the American military to out party the Soviets in the 1980s, Jennifer doesn’t suffer faders to any great extent. As such John and she spent the whole night boozing and singing songs by Bob Dylan and Bright Eyes. Sleep I did not get.
Waking up more refreshed than I should have, and having a kickass fry up to boot; Dangle, Pat, your good narrator and Ms Bones headed into Waterford to enjoy some of what Spraoi had to offer. As one might imagine for a street festival given the appalling weather, a number of the activities were either cancelled or being staged indoors but one of the shows we did get to see made the trip into town worth it. The show in question was the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, whose repertoire extended from jazz standards to rock classics to classical music and in some great places a mix of the whole three. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard “Wuthering Heights” and Handel’s Messiah on a Ukulele.
Once back at the house, it was time for that rarest of beasts: a gazebo barbeque. After consuming a number of barbecued fatted calves John made a disturbing realisation: "after this crate of beer, and the other two crates beer there's only 2 crates left!". In the panic that ensued we returned to Tesco and made off with substantial supplies to last the night. Once this was accomplished we decided that it was time to see what Spraoi could really offer. It was time to go bushing at the festival parade in true Galway style: avec Buckfast.
Buckfast, or as I prefer to call it hobofuel, is the perfect drink for these occasions. Despite making you pissed as a fart, Buckfast’s diabetes inducing sugar content gives you the energy to stay alert and active all night (whether you’re compos mentis is another question). Being a champion of the stuff, I had over the past number of months converted Ms Bones to its tender pleasures. With a bottle of the brown stuff to hand, we all trundled down to the quays to watch the parade.
Hobofuel or no hobofuel, the parade was brilliant. Having a western theme it was chocked full of every cowboy and Indian film cliché around, with salons and honky tonks, drunken sheriffs etc. Once the parade was over (and we had hidden our drunken antics from the tallest guard I’ve ever seen) we then followed the crowd to the quayside where we were treated to a first rate fireworks display while liberally imbibing alcohol. One of the few drawbacks of al fresco drinking is that you’re vulnerable to intrusion from randomers. Deciding it was a good idea to start baiting the locals, Peter and John were set upon by semi-feral children brandishing cans of silly string. That they escaped with their lives (their dignity was forfeited long ago) can only be a matter of good fortune.
Once we had regrouped, we then set off to Downes pub, a bar that is rightly considered the best in Waterford. With logic firmly put to bed, conversation hinged on smut (thanks to Dangle), Joyce’s Ulysses, Waterford hurling among many, many more all of which were fuelled by Downes unique No 9 whisky in addition to the booze we smuggled in. However, with all this craic and energy, momentum was building up that was propelling the night beyond the confines of the pub. With heading back to the house ruled out, we decided to try the Spraoi Festival Club.
However there was one small problem with this. Due to our wastrel antics by the time we got to the club, they had closed the door and weren’t letting anyone else in. For most other people this would provide a sufficient barrier to entry. Luckily for us, Jennifer considered this to be a trifling matter and after 20 minutes of arguing with the security staff we all got in.
The club turned out to be absolutely hopping once we were inside. Playing on the main stage was a band called Torann who played thumping rhythmic drums creating a sound that could best be described as rave via the medium of tribal drumming. They had the crowd, us included, dancing like savages to the extent that John felt compelled to take off his jacket and top and go searching for women. The rest of the night was spent dancing like a loon to 80’s music in a DJ lounge upstairs, manned by a local Thin Lizzy fanatic.
Getting home after the club was a less enjoyable task. Waterford' taxi fleet is not particularly large and Jennifer’s house was too far on unsteady, danced-out legs. In our attempts to hail a cab we encountered nothing but chip shop queues and in one memorable instance a couple of rent boys coming out of a park (well that’s what Dangle claimed they were). Only once Jennifer had sufficient strings pulled and had favours called in did we all finally get a taxi home.
When we woke up on Monday there was, as perhaps the American Military would say, a lot of “collateral damage”. John perhaps was the worst of our number as, due to alcohol intake that can only be described as heroic, he had fallen to sleep in a bathtub after I had dragged him off the pavement outside with no memory of the festival club (or his attempts to crack on to a certain Ms Bones ***cough cough***). However the patented Irish hangover cure of a fry up helped restore matters somewhat and the rest of the morning/afternoon was spent piecing together whatever recollections that existed of the night before.
And that was that. The Flee to Spraoi had run its course. We had learned that Waterford could be a fun place if you tried hard enough and that it was possible to survive a weekend of insanity even if your dignity (and/or immune system) didn’t.
