EVERY SATURDAY MORNING, the Irish gather in many of the beautiful towns of mainland Europe to play a game that might be unique to our people, and at which we can be said to be truly world-class, writes John Butler
The location is unimportant, though the smaller the town, the more fiendishly difficult and exciting it can be. Some of the best venues for it are Carcassonne, Dubrovnik and Rimini. The rules are the same for every place; they are unwritten; they are known by each of us; and we have learned them by instinct.
I am of course, referring to "get-out-of-my-face-this-is-my-special-time-and-you're-ruining-it-by-just-being-here", or GOOMFTIMSTAYRIBJBH. GOOMFTIMSTAYRIBJBH is a refined version of hide-and-seek, sponsored by Ryanair, wherein we get points for spotting another Irish person and more points for avoiding them. GOOMFTIMSTAYRIBJBH sounds elementary until you add a crucial detail - we're all looking for the same thing. The airlines have dumped us here before we've figured out why we wanted to come. Our lives are busy so we didn't do research beyond the in-flight magazine, which suggested the three things you just have to see/taste/buy in Carcassonne/Dubrovnik/Rimini. We got in late last night and ate dinner in our hotel, had a few drinks and hit the hay. None of us has much time to spare, so come Saturday morning, we are fed, watered, factored and ready to see/taste/buy.
The best time to play GOOMFTIMSTAYRIBJBH is Saturday morning - the crowd will dissipate by Sunday. I started at 10.30am and immediately heard singing in a small square. I should have heeded the puckered mouth of a passing Sardinian woman, but I didn't and I walked into a yodelling stag party, lobster-armed and rugby-shirted (bonus points because I recognised one of them from the bookshop at the airport). I swung around as if lassoed by an invisible tour guide, and ducked into a wine shop for cover.
The bell rang out as I entered the cellar. The shop was hewn from the rock; ancient and truly Sardinian. Produce was stacked on shelves that had been carved to fit the contour of the cool marble walls, and was pleasingly ethnic - local wine, tins of sardines, pig snouts and the ubiquitous Orangina. I wandered through aisles, inspecting local delicacies and holding trinkets aloft - this is what a foreign holiday is all about, losing oneself among the smells and flavours of another place. The bell tinkled.
"Where's a good place to get a cup of coffee around here, somewhere not too expensive?" I had a peek around the aisle - Irish-mother-and-daughter (bonus points for mother-daughter combo, and also bonus points because I recognised these two from the Aircoach). The Sardinian man behind the counter was scrutinising them as if they had demanded to see his underpants, right now. In mitigation, coffee in Italy is a euro, everywhere, and even though I had only been there for a morning, I already knew that the average number of cafes on any given Sardinian street was around the 30 mark. Actually, there was so much information for the poor gent to impart that he simply didn't know where to begin, and just looked at them blankly. He may not even have spoken English, yet before he managed to formulate an answer in a foreign tongue, they turned and left, and I heard daughter say: "Thanks a lot. God they're so rude, aren't they?"
I should have known not to go to the church, but I did, because I always do when I'm away. Don't we all? (Do tourists of all creeds and nationalities step into churches on their holidays, or is it just we, or is it just me?) Arriving moments after a wedding party had left gave it the sense of a vacated crime scene. Confetti was blowing around the marble steps. I could see Sardinian bride and groom being congratulated by friends a few yards away.
The bride was wearing a deep purple crushed velvet dress and dark wine lipstick. The groom did not look unlike Tim Roth and wore a tonic suit and spiky wet-look hair. Neither was in the first flush of youth, and if I had to judge, I would say it was a ceremony borne of an ultimatum. The people passing them had clearly been at the wedding, or else were locals who knew them. They kissed both parties on each cheek, said a few funny words and went on. The women congratulated the bride and the men gave the groom a cigarette, and one by one the women tottered down the hill on the cobbles and the men slipped into a dingy bar across the way.
This was not the bar in which the wedding reception was being held; yet the groom kept glancing over longingly. Clearly, it was that place that you go for the few before the few before the many. It's an utterly Irish tradition, or so I had thought until that very moment. Finally, he leaned over and whispered something in his bride's ear, and her face turned to thunder. Before she could respond, he pecked his wife on the cheek and trotted across the road into the bar.
From within, a big cheer went up. The bride tottered on with her bridesmaids and, watching the scene, I felt like a tourist again, even though I could have been in Birr, Aughrim, Loughrea. Everywhere has been discovered by others and will be re-discovered again, and there's a limit to the number of temples, trinkets and devastating sunsets you can gawk at. But you never get tired of people - specially your own kin. That and GOOMFTIMSTAYRIBJBH.