The Fleadh

Actually it's pronounced "flah"

I took this week’s photo when I was very drunk.

In my defence, I was in Ireland. Not only that, but I was in that famously rainy country during the rainiest July in its history.

All of which is to say that it was rather damp and there wasn’t much to do except drink Guinness and listen to people say, “you don’t come here for t’ weather” and “when the sun comes out it’s t’ most beautiful place in t’ world.”

That’s exactly what we were doing in Belfast when some new friends invited us to a traditional music festival on the other side of the country the next day. Which is how we ended up at the Fleadh in Mullingar, where I took this picture.

As always, it’s available as a limited edition print for $40. There are a couple of other bonus shots in this email too - let me know what you think of them.

The process of getting to the Fleadh (pronounced “flah”) was a little convoluted. We drove from Belfast to Dublin and picked up the campervan we’d booked, only to realise after the 100km drive to Mullingar that, once opened, the back door didn’t close.

The rental company told us to tie it shut with a t-shirt and drive back to Dublin on the motorway. This seemed both unsafe and a huge fuckaround, so we went to the Irish equivalent of Bunnings and bought a chain and a padlock. With the van somewhat secure, we drove triumphantly to the official campsite, which was full.

Our next stop was a housing estate parking area strewn with broken beer bottles, overturned shopping trolleys and abandoned unicorn dolls, which we soon decided was not the best place to leave an unlockable van overnight.

Instead, we began cruising the suburbs for a place to stay. At some point we pulled over in a posh, bungalow-lined cul de sac to consult the map.

I was pinching and zooming on another carpark when I was startled by a knock at the window. A respectable looking old gent in a grey sweater stood outside. “Here we go,” I thought, as I rolled down the window.

“There’s a lovely spot down the end under the tree,” he said. “You can leave the van there and we’ll keep an eye on it, it’s a quiet street.”

That’s the Irish for you.

Much like the main photo, things get a bit blurry after that. The Fleadh is an annual knees up that moves from town to town around Ireland. There are official music competitions and events, but most attendees seem to be drawn by the buskers and beer.

In Mullingar, there were hundreds of thousands of people on the streets and tin whistles everywhere. I saw an old man play a shovel with a pebble. I watched lots of little redheads sawing at the fiddle. And I heard a woman scream at the sight of a toilet cubicle.

Mostly, I remember wondering how a town of 20,000 people can support so many pubs.

My question was answered when I saw two local guys perched at the bar in Caffreys, two 30cm high stacks of empty, foam-webbed plastic cups before them. They were so paralytic they could not form the words “another Guinness” and had resorted to sign language. “I just can’t with you fellas right now,” said the harried barmaid.

To be fair, I also did my best to keep the local night time economy sustainable (while taking the odd photo). I snapped the first picture, my favourite, through a bus window as I stumbled back to the cul-de-sac. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t remember it in the morning.

In fact, I only found it last week when I sat down to edit the photos from my soggy three weeks in the Emerald Isle. It’s a little surreal, with the woman’s face distorted by the misty, wet glass. It’s not even clear whether the hand belongs to her, and I certainly couldn’t tell you.

If you want to see a different (and probably better) take on similar subject matter, check out Nick Turpin’s series On the Night Bus.

But if you like my one reply to this email and I’ll get it printed for you.