It's a Monday night and I've got a free pass - so I'm off "gigging" to see "The Streets" in Liverpool. As usual - public transport lets us down at the first hurdle. There is a bus replacement service from Chester to Hooton (where the F*ck is Hooton?!) and then a train into Liverpool. This is crap news for a Monday night and my mate Chris is not impressed.
His track record on public transport is not good.
"Tom - I've only got on a train three times in the last five years and every time it goes wrong." says Chris.
"Yeah - fair enough. There was nothing we could do about the train catching fire last time. That was out of our control..." I say. (This was a Just Jack gig last year).
"And at Christmas - there's nothing you can do about snow like that..." I add.
"I nearly died in that snow. I had to walk 2 miles in snowdrifts above my knees - just to get to the nearest pub in Hooton."
"Aha - so at least you're familiar with Hooton then. So that's good."
Either way - we sit on a bus last serviced in 1937 and chug towards Hooton. And soon we are gig-bound and the night is looking up. We follow a couple of thirty year olds in baseball caps and low-slung jeans up the Lime Street Escalators and bundle in to Ma Eggerton's pub just outside. To say the pub does a disservice to spit and sawdust is an understatement - but I have great affection for it.
We walk into a heated arguement at the bar. "F*ck off alright! I wanted the day off alright?!"
"You F*ck off! What's your problem eh?!"
And that's the bar staff. The bar manager and bar maid are close to a full on cage fight. I seem to remember a similar barney last time I was in here. The locals don't bat an eyelid as the bar maid storms out mid shift.
I order a beer and remind myself not to complain about the head on it. They could serve me a jar of tepid cat p*ss and I'd probably just grin and bear it. This place is proper 'ard.
The Streets delivers a quality set. We nod heads - bob up and down - wave hands in the air and stupidly - very stupdily - I down the entire bar-supply of vodka and red bull during the night. It doesn't quite give me wings - instead I am buzzing all night and wondering for the rest of the week why I seem to have used up my entire back-up of "energy" for the next seven days. Curse the Taurine! Curse it!
Come the weekend I am better. I take the kids to the Zoo and meet up with Chris again. I detour via the Tropical Reptile House for the first time in years. It's cool in there and we run around looking at the wild exotic birds that are allowed to wander freely about you. Declan tries to feed a box of raisins to the giant, near-extinct Galapogos giant turtles and pulls a mini fit when I take that option away from him. (I am not gonna be responsible for killing off the last of a species!).
Later at home we have the annual "cleaning of the car ceremony". It's a bit like the trooping of the colour. A fair deal of pomp and circumstance and tubthumping from me. The first layers of green moss fall away with a quick scrape but some of the meaner looking fungi have had a whole year to take hold and even Fintan's "cloth whiplash technique" fails to budge these hard-core dirts.
"I can't feel my hands daddy...my hands?!" Fintan cries out after an hour or so.
"You'll be fine - just stick them in the bucket again," I advise. But he's beginning to look a bit blue around the edges and it is about one degree outside. But crucially - not snowing or raining.
The day is capped off with England beating France in the rugby. I should savour this moment as mere days later - I am to suffer the great double excruciation of an entire Irish clan of in-laws reminding me that England just lost to Ireland in the Cricket World Cup. And then having to actually explain the Cricket rules to my wife.
"So O'Brien just scored the fastest century in world cup cricket ever - that's pretty amazing..." I tell my lovely Irish wife.
"What's a century?" she says.
"A hundred runs..." I say.
"What's a run?" she asks with genuine curiosity.
At this point I should give up - but I forge ahead. She asks another question.
"So are England Rubbish or are Ireland really good?"
This is very hard to answer - because Cricket is a complicated business and this is also a trap.
"It's complicated. An individual can play very well but the team still loses. You can play for five days and still draw," I tell her.
"But England lost. So Ireland must be better." I can't fault her logic.
I decide it's best to dwell on the Ashes victory instead. Much better.
Sarah checks her facebook and it's awash with Irish friends and family in delighted celebration. One comment reminds us that "cricket is just a protestant version of hurling" and my brother-in-law reminds me that "cricket is for girls".
Later still - Sarah concludes that even if Ireland had just beaten England in a wheelbarrow race - the place would go mad celebrating. And why not - when's the next Wheelbarrow World Cup?
She is very happy. I am mildly grumpy as we go to bed. I dream of wheelbarrows and men in Kilts (weirdly). So perhaps Scotland are next to beat us?
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