There are a number of times in life when a man truly feels like a man, for instance, eating particularly hot food without shedding so much a tear, drinking alcohol while watching any sporting event, even ping pong. Fixing or hanging things, anything, even if incorrectly, says I am a man, as does wrestling a wild animal…successfully, if you are in such a situation or for many men doing something as simple as breaking glass tends to raise their testosterone be-it a glass bottle, a picture frame, perhaps with an ex encased within or, in P D’s case, his own window!
Like most small towns Cobh has many little Drinking taverns whose daily topics consist of the customers who frequent the bar and their everyday antics, the content of the newspapers that somehow make it past each foaming head and through each fried food soaked finger to last the day and also great sporting injustices of the 20th century is a popular subject matter.. J D’s bar was one such establishment and P D was no stranger in a semi coherent chat with its classy clientèle. P D had a set Saturday routine you could not just anticipate but actually set your watch by.
P D’s Saturday morning: Up at eight. Full Irish breakfast in to the frying pan and subsequently in to his Santa shaped belly. A wash of his lightly bristled face, and up over his forehead to shine his scalp in one sweeping motion. All this before brushing the hair that clung to the sides of his hat holder, desperate not to become another victim, laying amongst its friends as a temporary carpet on his bathroom floor. He would then iron the collar of that days shirt which would hang respectfully out over his cosy woollen jumper while the remaining 95% of shirt hung, hidden and wrinkled below. Half ten and a dash of brut to complete the man, and out the door.
He would proceed to get onto his blue 1999 c mope-head which had its own anti theft device which consisted of P D taking off the front wheel and leaving it behind the bar . He would point ‘Betsy’ in the direction of J D’s and depending on wind-speed, like a balding cat on a hair drier he would arrive at eleven O’ clock. Stepping into the bar, wheel in hand he would be greeted with the waft of beer and shampoo, yawns and exaggerated and enthusiastic stretching which were heard up and down the bar by the early birds who probably did have some sort of worm. P D would get a quick pint bottle of Bulmers to cure Fridays lingering hangover before turning to Murphy’s Irish stout to encourage Sundays illness to begin.
Headline stimulated conversations would begin after a few drinks and would then transcend into verbally challenged arguments and one man debates about horse racing, betting and about those conmen running our country. P D often instigated lively tête a tête s about Gaa and politics and the politics in Gaa which would rile the rest of the cast of Saturday in J D’s. The more they drank, the more they would all argue, which would in turn have them say throughout the argument ‘I need another drink’ and born was the vicious circle. Every Saturday was like this but one Saturday particularity stands out in the minds of the casual drinkers, drunks, tourists and gossip mongers associated with this bar.
P D had a habit of drinking his fill, and then being the only man in the world to sleep standing up oblivious to accident. Upon waking from his Murphy induced coma, invigorated from his involuntary forty winks, he would simply continue on drinking until closing time. A day of fluttering, banter and big time boozing came to an end and P D decided it was safer to get a cab than chance the perilous back roads of Ballybrassil on Betsy. A slight stumble and and slur of his address later and he was in the cab heading towards his home and his bed. The talk in the cab was a little, but a lot, according to the cab driver. P D was on repeat and with neither a pause nor a stop button within his grasp, the driver drove on auto pilot while his mind was eating pizza. As the cab eventually pulled up outside P D’s house, some inaudible words druelled from P D’s lips as he opened the door and got out. Leaving the door open and not paying him, the driver assumed what P D said was that he will go inside and get the money and he begun to wait,with his headlights leading P D’s path to his front door which his eyes followed but legs refused.
At the door the driver saw Paul doing what he recalled as the ‘I cant find my keys, Macerana dance’. After five minutes checking and rechecking, scratching and checking again, the perplexed look on P D’s face turned to a look of ‘I have an idea here’. With an apologetic whimper of a wave to the cabbie who was by now chewing his steering wheel in frustration, P D knelt to the soil out of the glare of the headlights. After a few seconds of blindly fumbling in the foliage, he arose to his feet like a flip chart of the stages of evolution before hurling what, from the sound it made crashing on the kitchen floor, was a boulder, through his window, and with no fear of self harm dove through the window after it like an acrobat through a flaming hoop. There must have been shards of glass impaling, if not his flesh, his clothes, but P D was oblivious. Entry was gained, the light went on and as the cab driver waited impatiently for his fare he spotted glimpses of P D inside the house. So out the door came P D………… What? He what? He didn’t? He did what? Are you sure?
What happened next is what can only be described as one of the worlds best subconscious, comedic moments of drunken genius/madness. You would have expected P D to resurface, cash in hand out the front door nursing a few cuts from his glass breaking triumph but no.. To the disbelief of the cab driver and the people who the cab driver has told since(everyone) P D, on his bloodied hands and knees began, for no explainable reason, clambering back over the broken glass like some old aged action man and out the same window he smashed not five minutes previous. With no thought of using his front door to avoid the chance of stitches, and with only the thought of paying up what he owed, P D tumbled from the window sill and delivered the fare which by now was secondary in the cabbies mind. For now, the cab driver struggled to, firstly understand what he had just seen and secondly, keep the laughter from within, bellowing outward causing a severe belly ache. Whenever the sound of glass breaking is heard, money in his mouth, determination and confusion on his face, climbing back out over sharp splinters, P D comes to mind and I make sure my house keys or a big rock are close by!!!!!!!
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