Tullamore, Wed 3rd Of Oct.
A harsh wasteland practically bereft of life. What life remains is bleary eyed and exhausted. An uncharacteristic stillness hangs in the air. This is Tullamore the week after the National Ploughing Championships.
If you caught any of the TV coverage of the National Ploughing Championships last week you’ll realise that it’s the biggest gathering of the ugliest examples of humanity, or a loose form of humanity, you’ve ever seen in your life. Hundreds of thousands of the most disagreeable looking people who themselves look like they been on the receiving end of a plough thanks to their simian like furrowed brows standing in a field looking at diggers.
If you sense a prejudice towards these people on my part it’s only because, with the town suffering from a weeklong ploughing hangover, only about thirty people were in the Bridge House to see the wonderful Adam Hills on Wednesday night.
It may also have had something to do with the fact that Liverpool, Chelsea and Celtic were all playing in the Champions League. Indeed the funniest thing that happened that night involved Brazilian goalkeeper Dida and a drunken Glaswegian. Dida’s antics far surpassed those of his compatriot Rivaldo. Dida’s cheating in the goalmouth made Rivaldo’s playacting at the corner flag look no worse than … well your average Robert Pires dive. I hope we can look forward to crowds taunting Didier Drogba and …eh most other Chelsea players this season by singing Di-Da to the tune of an ambulance siren every time they feel they the need to have a little lie down.
Dermot Whelan, Adam Hills, myself and about thirty people were not aware of all this going on as we were upstairs in The Bridge House having our own little private party of sorts. At one point Adam took the entire crowd to a window in the backstage area to wave at a woman in a flat across the road. It was that sort of gig.
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