St Patrick's Day

Saint Paddy's Day, Glasgow.
March 17 (same as Straya, ey!). Glasgow has the largest Irish pop in Scotland, and it's right up there in the rest of Britania, too.

Since leaving the nurturing and educational bowels of Queen's College, I have failed to perform to the levels of previous St Patrick's Days. Gone are the days of Golly hacking the college phone system in the early hours of the 17th to put out the call for 10am attendance at Pugg Mahones. It doesn't help if you have an essay to work on in the morning and an Exploring Scottish Culture lecture from 2 til 4pm. Perhaps my previous St Paddy's Day performances can justify my desperate need to run- actually wait until the lecturer wasn't looking and then sprint out the door- half way through an enlightening rant on... was it Communism or Universal Suffrage...? Whatever.
Jess, Niki and I ran out of number 7 University Gardens, and rolled into Jinty McGuinty's on Ashton Lane. Lo and Behold! Dreamboat was working behind the bar. He was also the delicious barman who witnessed the debauchery of the-day-after-the-Australia-party-cocks-on-face incident. Lo and Behold! he recognised me, and nicely enquired about getting the pen off my face. Noice.
Guinness. Buddies. Paying Niki out. Irish wooden flute (which I'm told is significantly more expensive to percure in New Zealand than your pedestrian flute of metal).



We moved on from Jinty's in search of more leg room and out Irish Hostess Gen. A wee dram at Ishka Baha, the Gaelic bar a little closer to town. Look at the link then get back to me on your thoughts on Scottish Gaelic (pronounced 'gah'lic', as opposed to the Irish 'gaylic'). There was a dog in there. Rad. Tromp down Sauchiehall St. Some hideous chain Irish pubs provided the lubrication necessary to make it down The Strip. Gen cracked the shits at one bar because they poured the Guinness in one. 'No. Disgusting!'. Burgers. Delicious. One pound fifty sugar taurine caffeine things posing as Jagerbombs. This time Lyall heckled the bar staff over the 50 pence discrepancy between advertised bomb price and actual bar bomb price. 'That's disgusting!'. We ended up at an Irish pub in town which was pretty happening. The much more exciting, prettier, likeable distant relative of our Elgin Street Irish cesspit, Molly Malones. More Guinness. So much more Guinness. Lily and I took a detour into the Walkabout bar to balance out the Irish Drunk with some Australian Drunk. However, as years of Irish-Australian relations have shown, this is not a balancing act but more a hideous multiplication. Oh that Coopers Red was good though!
We ended at the Flying Duck where Ben joined the throng, which not long afterwards dispersed. All in all a successful evening. Not as Irish as I had geared it up to be, but a whole lot more authentic than any previous Puggs Guinness I've had!