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February 21, 2005
The Spectacular Lough Gill 30th Birthday Cruise
I’ve been trying to write this for a couple of days now, but my brain has been refusing to co-operate, owing to a hangover and sleep-deprivation.
On Saturday afternoon I loaded up the car with a friend and his CD collection then we headed out, following the birthday boy’s directions (as I’ve not asked if I can name him, he’ll be referred to ever more as the Admiral, and besides, it completely suits him). Driving to Sligo was great, on suprisingly excellent roads except around one particular village that clearly offended some EU bureaucrat sufficiently to be deprived of structural funds. The Admiral advised us to look for a turn beside a white B&B by the name of O’Hara’s, which lead us to believe we’d see a B&B sign, or at least an O’Hara’s sign. Cleverly, though, the B&B just looked like a house. We followed the turn just in case, and wound up staring at what would turn out to be the Admiral’s house for ten minutes, before going back down the road to the B&B to ask if they were, in fact, a B&B and did they know where the Admiral lived? They were and they did.
After stre-e-e-e-etching we made ourselves known to the party inside. A quick glass of wine later, we were on our way to the Admiral’s Yacht. Or: The Admiral’s Temporarily-Borrowed-from-his-Parents’-Friends-Yacht. It was gorgoeus. It seated fifty in comfort inside, complete with a small bar, excellent sound system, and three-man sober crew to look after the loud drunken people.
We arranged ourselves and got started.
Brief drunken memories presented in no order:
- a gang of us surrounding E.’s new girlfriend in a massive crushing “group hug”
- a demonstration of how E. giggled like a girl on being tickled (we had no idea)
- being introduced to the kids of a former teacher of mine, brother to the Admiral’s father, to find out that the Admiral had told them many stories about me. I warned that they were all lies; “So you’re not that nice, then?” they responded
- craving vegetables after being fed on extremely large amounts chicken wings and cocktail sausages provided by the Admiral’s folks
- looking around and realising that many people I knew in college had managed to get real jobs as journalists or designers or what-have-you
At some pre-determined point the Admiral was positioned in front of a giant cake in the form of the numbers ‘3’ and ‘0’ and some gentle speechifying was done. Afterwards he asked each and every one of his guests to record their defining memory of him. He’d brought a portable recorder just for this function, and we did our best to oblige him. I wound up remembering something obscure from years back, which I dutifully shared and he immediately recalled. That was it from me for the next fifteen mintues as I turned things over in my head that I’d completely forgotten ever happened.
We left the boat to walk back to the house through a near-magical, perfectly calm, moonlit (and freezing) scene along the shores of Lough Gill. Big issues were discussed. No conclusions were reached.
They tried to feed me yet more meat on getting back to the house. I finally made up a bed for myself at around 4.30, If I have half as much fun when I turn 30 I’ll be a very happy man. And I never once had to deploy any karaoke, counselling or negotiation skills.
Posted by Oliver at February 21, 2005 04:43 PM
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