Summer heat sucks at your eyeballs and the air snaps. There's a perfect Highveld thunderstorm seething on the horizon. So, where better to spend a day like this than in a shopping mall fake Irish pub?
They're all called something twee and ancient, which they are if you have the attention span of a Jack Russell terrier. The "One Eyed Blarney Buggerer" is a venerable institution. It started out as a furniture store in 2002, was recently renovated from the linoleum up and even predates the expansion of the car park. In Joburg that's old.
I've had the privilege of being dribbling drunk in Ireland that has left me with a recurring malarial craving for Guinness. I've heard it called "The Blonde in the Long Black Dress" because it goes down so nicely and "Rrrralph!" when it comes up again, but I do love the stuff. I order as I walk in, hoping that the barman knows how to pull a decent pint, noticing that the "Blarney" goes in for the old irish tradition of employing an Afrikaans university student behind the counter.
Just to add to the feeling that you're trapped inside an Irish joke, today they're having a karaoke competition. Now, any sad sod who'll get up in front of his soon to be ex-mates and scald out a few verses of Roy Orbison, "Cry-y-y-ying o-ho-ver you" is probably immune to anything I say, but please. See a doctor. Shoot yourself. Just. Shut. The. Fuck. Up!
Karaoke singers appear to be otherwise sane citizens, cursed to be screeching, "Heathcliff!" like Kate Bush, wandering the moors (see car park above) from bar to bar in search of someone who's not too embarrassed to have a drink with them. Old friends who have shared acne, pregnancy and divorce abscond during the second chorus and they're left by themselves trying to sing all the Beach Boys harmonies simultaneously. Till some stranger (me) walks in with his arsehole magnet jammed full on.
The local with the flair for Elvis heads straight over. He surmises that serenading me is not a good opener, so he cuts straight to the mandatory Irish joke...
"Two Irish farmers (apparently with the same Roodepoort accent) are on a tractor ploughing a field. At the same time, a bloke driving his new sports car along the country road decides to see how fast it'll go. As he reaches top speed, he meets the Irishmen leaving the field, gate open, not looking out for traffic, blocking the road with their tractor. He swerves, crashes through the fence and his car explodes in the ploughed land.
"Jaysus," says one farmer, "Did you see that?"
"Sure," replies his mate, "It's lucky that just in time we got out of that field!"
I think Irish pubs were invented to give new life to old jokes. And now they've helped out a website too. See you all soon and in the meantime, may the road rise up to meet yer...
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