Colm O'Regan: 'Nothing will ever top pushing pigs around the crossroads on beds in Dripsey'
Colm O'Regan can't wait to balance a bag of chips on his thigh while brandishing a can of lager at All Together Now.
Festivals. I missed them. I took them for granted. Me somewhere in a sweltering hotel function room or a tent talking to a melting crowd about my observations on life.
Every joke set-up that used to begin with, “Is it just me or does anyone else…?” felt redundant during the pandemic anyway. Due to social distancing, it was just me.
Over the August bank holiday weekend, I’m gigging at All Together Now, my first ‘Biggish Festival In A Field Miles From Anywhere Since The Thing That Happened,’ and I can’t wait.
I can’t wait for every part of the festival experience at this and other future ones around the country. The relief after getting parking, the tension of balancing chips on my thigh while opening a can, aimless walking, going into a tent by accident without realising it is experimental theatre, and not being able to leave because I am the only one there. Oh and the music as well.
But while there will be a lot of talk about the return of the big festivals, the Electrics Picnics and so on, they were not the only ones cancelled.
Up and down the country, in every village, the smaller festivals are back too. The LOCAL EVENTS. They are not announced on billboards at bus stops in Stoneybatter; they are advertised in parish newsletters or on a giant silage bale sculpture at the ‘Bad Bend’ on the way into the village.
Telling the locals it’s that time of year again. Whatever it might be, the Carnivals, Pattern day, the Blessing of the Graves, a commemoration of a 100-year-old massacre, a ship sinking, the anniversary of the arrival of pesto. Whatever it takes to get the plastic pint glasses out.
The Irish small village summer festival, All Ireland final equivalent of the tough hardy windswept league match that is the St Patrick’s Day parade. But where the Paddy’s Day parade is sort of manic, stalked by the fear of snowstorms, the floats carrying pageants about a local controversy, the summer festival is far more relaxed. Sponsored by broadband rather than a burglar alarm company.
It may be held in a field that has just had the second cut of silage. There will be a long raffle with the prizes starting with a winter’s supply of heating oil and all the way down to Quality Street and the re-gifted lamp that was left over from last year and no-one will bother to collect this year either.
You’ll see 12-year-olds uncertainly directing traffic.
A local stalwart, probably called Donie, will be the man with keys for everything. Carmel, his colleague, has in the boot of her car 15 raffle ticket books, an industrial teapot, and a sledgehammer.
A local celeb will judge the welly throwing, there will be compulsory set dancing and a 60-year-old man — a local character — dressed as a woman for some reason, will be the MC. People will use the wait for face painting to get in shape for queuing for security in Dublin airport.
There will be at least one festival moment that years later people will wonder whether they imagined it happened.
For example, I’m almost certain that, 25 years ago in Coachford, the next village over from Dripsey, there was a fundraiser that involved pushing pigs around the crossroads on beds.
I had been drinking and smoking fags in a nearby grove so I might have got it wrong but I’m almost certain when we arrived out, half-cut, there were pigs in the beds.
So this weekend, and you see a painted silage bale at the Bad Bend, obey the instructions of the Child In High Vis. Cancel your other plans for the day. It’s festival-time.
