With my trips back to Ireland dictated largely by a combination of wanting to spend time with Helena and RyanAir’s price policy (check flights from Bournemouth and Bristol to Dublin, by the way – I’ve got two sets of return tickets to Dublin for around £20 each already), this time ended up with a Wednesday morning arrival, and three days spent finishing off the week writing before we actually had any fun. Well, apart from Korean on Wednesday night.
Eating Korean anywhere but Korea is always a bit strange, because it costs ten times as much and tastes about half as good. It’s fun being able to name all the different dishes and local beers, though (actually, the English descriptions of Korean dishes are rubbish, I’ve asked for a Korean language menu several times to make sure I get what I’m really after), and the restaurant we visited on Wednesday even managed to stock OB, the best of Korean beers quite impressively bad bunch (Hite tastes like the fermented product of a chemical company, and Cass is only slightly better, just in case you were curious…). We followed up the Korean with Twilight, which, frankly, the less I say about the better, as it was utterly awful. The first one – which we watched after the second on Saturday – was a little better, but both have a real ludicrous teenage drama feel to them.
Anyway, two days of work later, and it was time for BellX1, who are one of a few Irish bands who’ve really grabbed my attention since living out there. I expected a lot, especially having seen an amazing acoustic performance from guitarist David Geraghty back in April, and in all honesty they just weren’t up to the job, playing a really mellow first 30-40 minutes of the gig, before throwing in two big songs and then going back to being mellow again. Not that I mind mellow, but this was pretty uninspiring, especially next to the other set a few months ago (click here for my State Magazine review – I guess there’s only so much you can complain when you don’t pay to get in!). Luckily the rest of the night made up for things, with a bit of a Buckfast session (Helena says she’ll never drink it again after Saturday’s hangover… believe it when I see it!) and some fun in the pub with a lot of fun people I hadn’t met before until closing time. Nice.
On Saturday we attempted to go Christmas shopping, before doing it all on the Internet on Sunday (I love how you can do anything on the Internet these days…), and I spend the late afternoon going to the ‘Villa Pub’ in Dublin to watch the Tottenham game. The whole thing started up a few months ago when someone made a FaceBook group to try and get every Aston Villa fan in Ireland together, and started organizing meet ups, and while it was diluted a fair bit this time round by rugby fans coming straight from Croke Park, it’s a lot more fun to watch the game with people who… well don’t worship Manchester United and Liverpool, which seems to be the default situation in Ireland (and the rest of the world, sadly).
A good weekend all in all, especially once you throw in the selection of interviews I had on during the week (Basement Jaxx, former Moldy Peaches singer Adam Green and Geoff Ellis, the founder of T In The Park – Adam Green interview is print only so no link, sorry, but I’m planning on doing an interview themed blog entry sometime soon)
I have a good week of football and music action lined up, too. Roll on Christmas!
J x