Day 1, or is it two? I’m not quite sure. I’ve now been up for 24 hours, 48? 6:30 am Friday, it’s now 12:30 the next day. However there’s a 4 hour time difference. Our day began finishing packing and running to the airport. We ate and had quite a good time as we arrived very early by bus, and drank our faces off before boarding. The flight went well, I cannot complain other than my ears being in immense pain and discomfort. Our flight lasted roughly 5.5 hours. I watched a film about Freddie Mercury and attempted sleep to Classic Irish Melodies performed solo on piano. It almost worked.
This is when things get a bit tense. At this point it was my bed time, or beyond now. When we arrived it was 5 a.m. Dublin time, 1 a.m. Manchester, NH time. I was, am. Hell, very much still am extremely exhausted. The only reason I’m writing is because I can’t even focus to read, let alone drive a damn car, which is exactly what I had to do all over Dublin following our arrival. After appropriated bathroom breaks and gathering our checked baggage, we sat in the dredged Enterprise line just like in the U.S. Just like in Salem, just like in Manchester, just like in Methuen, just like in Boston, and just like West Warwick Rhode Island where I worked for a solid month.
But this go around was not just any rental experience, this was an international one. I’m on the right side of the car! And if you’ve forgotten, absolutely tapped. Oh, the cherry on top is she’s the driver on the rental, but I’m driving. An insurance field day. Driving
But to now, where we arrive at a castle. A damn enormous, majestic honking thing in the middle of absolute nowhere. We were not able to check-in as we arrived much too early. WHich is fine, we’re now sitting in a common area not eating or drinking much but water and ice cubes and I am fine with that, because I’m so exhausted. But now to my griping.
Here we sit, nearly 3 thousand miles from home, in this regal, majestic, magnificent ancient, beautiful castle, and I’m surrounded by yobos in jeans, oversized overcoats, Carona, a wedding party and it’s guests that has pounced on the scene like lunchtime was announced free and “Rumors” playing over the overhead speakers giving me the epiphany that it was actually mixed and produced for the exact, singular purpose of playing here, at this remote complex in the most unlikely location, in the most distasteful way.
We decide to grab our respective books and read in the many common rooms surrounding the entrance to the castle. It’s a small restaurant and bar. When we arrive about noon, it was quiet but one kind and knowledgeable receptionist, and a few couples scattered in alcoves, nooks and crannies scattered throughout. We shacked up near a window with two cozy chairs and a table and got our books out. It was quickly evident I would not be able to read I am now so tired. I can’t focus on the words on the page more so than I already have trouble with. All I wish to do is close my eyes. So I try, and decide to bust this thing out and write, because at least stream of consciousness will work out no matter how crap or good it may be.
But then, they showed up, others. OTHER vacationers. They spoke english with that lazy American accent that’s all too common where I come from. Perhaps it’s not lazy, I don’t know. But the GAL of these people. To travel such a distance to Ireland, THEN, to simply get here, you must take your life into your own hands to drive or be driven here, each of which holds it’s own horrors. All to show up and treat it as a Holiday Inn outside of Randolph Vermont where you’re visiting some Maple tap museum. Jeans, loose-fitting loafers, demanding this or that as if it’s simply lost on them the enormity of the location they’re in. It’s so. damn. ugly. There should be a dress code for these things. Hell, there should be a dress code depending on the city you’re flying into, and most definitely if you’re on an international flight. Look nice, you are privileged. This is not the country club. Act the part, respect this place. Respect this country. Respect yourself. Put on a button up for once in your life you dumb twit.
Next, the wedding. Oh yes. As I sit here writing, not only have the old-hag retirement checkers showed up, but a whole damn wedding party and guest list has shown in the last hour. A large yellow work van sits just outside the window as guys on scaffolding cut and drill and hammer and nail and screw and buzz the shit out of something out there, (I had to walk around a 5 gallon bucket of paint on the way to the bathroom, THE MAIN BATHROOM) and at the same time, the groom and groomsmen took photos out there doing the whole to-do, and now our quiet reading space for the foreseeable next 3 hours, (3pm is earliest check in apparently, but we’ve been upgraded as well so I’ve been told) has turned into a hustle and bustle of wedding guests and groomsmen and bridesmaids and groom and (no bride yet to be seen) photographers and videographers and assistants of the photographers and videographers and second shooters and the DJ and the DJ’s assistant (full disclosure; I have not seen a DJ, nor have I seen their assistant or perhaps none all together and/or a band) and waiters and waitresses and people coming out from “New Jersey” and down the coast and coordinators and more buzzing and sawing and hammering outside and I’m as serious as a heart attack that someone in the wedding party has a Carona in his hand while he has full access to some of the greatest beer known to man on a tap less than 10 feet away that I can actually see right now with my very eyes and their very poor eyesight and dirty lenses.
Now a man sits a window table down from me with a cane, or is it a walker? Staring at me as I look up, clearly peering at me with disdain and filth wondering if I should even be here because I’ve got a laptop out and however respectable one looks reading, or two people reading, no one will ever look respectable on a laptop, anywhere, especially sitting next to someone who happens to be more beautiful than you, much more, and they are reading. Perhaps I am projecting my insecurities of the situation I am in on to this man. BUT I do have reason and context. I have been in the wedding business a long time and I know that although you or your sister or someone else decides to get married in a very public place? Be it a gazebo in a park or beach or waterfront or castle ruin-turned-dog park or whatever, the city or state or town can not shut that location down to the public while you get married. But as I’ve stated, I’ve been around long enough to know that no matter what the location, the wedding party, and ironically, more so the guests of the wedding, act like they deserve to have the venue all to themselves and if anyone were to encroach it’d be as if the heavens and hells both opened up at the same time after eons and eternities begging the powers that be to open the portal just ONCE, just ONCE to let them have at it. Just once let me take a swing and I swear I’ll tear the whole lot down. As if a horde of cats whose bowl hasn’t been filled in over a day finally hear that cat food bag shaking. Like that.
Since the beginning of my writing, the room attendance has tripled in size. I hold my post, rock and roll baby. This is it. Or as rock and roll as I tell my little pee-brained head I can be without actually causing any scenes or troubles. Although I’m debating on telling anyone who may ask (and I pray to the heavens they do) that the couple has hired me to “write about the wedding” as it wouldn’t be out of the question these days. I once attended a wedding where the couple hired someone to pain the reception. Yes, paint. He hasn’t even finished by the time it was done. Although, I know they take time. But what he left that night with, I could’ve done and I don’t paint a lick. What??? A Painter. Not of the couple, but just the room and “atmosphere” of the party. Good grief.
My point is this: I have no point I do believe. But I am tired. I know most of this bitterness and ill-will is attributed to my exhaustion, but all I would like is a shower, to lie down, and for the life of me would like to relax and finally be able to grasp one minute and bask in the glory that I am in Ireland in a massively gorgeous castle with the love of my life. Instead I still seek to escape, and I cannot so very far and remotely away, I beg to escape. Escape New England, Escape New Hampshire, Escape Manchester, Escape work, Escape my troubles and annoyances, Escape my life and world as I know it and immerse myself in a totally different one. Instead, I was greeted with Fleetwood Mac, Americans, and a god, damn, wedding. Go figure.
On the bright side,
we’ve been upgraded.