The weekend gone by was a funny ol’ affair. It was St Patricks day on Saturday, without any official goingson and Sunday saw the celebration of a bridge that is 75 years old.
I missed out on the offical St Patricks day so I decided to do a little tour of Irish pubs on the day in question and have a few schooners of Guinness.
It sounds odd to say a schooner of Guinness. All other drinks make the translation easily. “Gimme a schooner of beer.” or “I’ll have a schooner of Carlton” but “Schooner of Guinness” sounds weird. Anyway, after repeating this to the barman a few times, it just seemed to roll off the toungue. “Ahll hash a shooner uf Guines pleashe mate” and before you knew it, another would be there.
Thankfully, the Aussie/Irish had the good foresight NOT to make it green! They were however handing out green wigs and ‘T’ shirts if you purchased 4 Carltons (!?!?!?!).
“Shirly that shud be Guines?” I enquired.
To which he answered “Buiochas le Dia tusa Druncaeir”
Realising I understood Gaelic better than english at this point, I decided to stagger home……before I offered my rendition of riverdance, in front of the Oirish Fiddle Band. That would just be embarrassing if I did that…..wouldn’t it?
The next day, I awoke nice and early and headed off to Circular Quay. Probably one of the best vantage points to see any of the nine planned flyovers in celebration of the 75th year of the Bridge.
Having got out of bed at 7:30 and making my way down here, the very least they could do was to make sure it ran on time. The planned 9:00 flyover of a Gypsy Moth Bi-plane didn’t occur. The “massive tall-ship fleet” that was to pass under the bridge at the same time was actually two chinese junks and a miniature tall ship. A short ship if you will !
Then the battery died on my new Kodak Brownie, so off home I went to re-charge it. I wasn’t too bothered about missing out on the celebrations at this point after a dissappointing start….I got back to the Quay about 4pm. Now there were litterally thousands of people there taking part in all the activities planned for the day. I arrived in time to see the flyover of a “group of seaplanes”. What I actually saw was three microlights with skis on!
I felt kinda deflated by the promised party and made my way to a pub.
“Kin I git a pint of Guins pleashe?”
…….and so it continued.
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