Half A Giraffe

Paddy's day

Someone had decided it would be a good idea for us all to drink Sambuca from 7up bottles at the parade. I’m not pointing fingers but Ben, you know who you are.

Things started off normal enough on Wednesday evening, as average as any Half a Giraffe “meeting”; we chatted briefly about what we plan on doing for the next month and then quickly head out for pints. The two “quick ones”, turned into a booze-fueled blur around Dublin City centre, and then back for Rory’s for a night cap – or 7.

By the time the sun rose, and Rory was sobbing like a little girl to a Kelly Rowland song. Ben was in the corner puking into Maurice, a pot plant belonging to Rory’s housemate, Kevin, who had locked himself in the bathroom for safety reasons and now sleeping the shower. Meanwhile, I was busy putting out a small fire that occurred when I tried to make oven chips.

“It’s Paddies Day!” Ciaran slured, as he tipped the peak of his adventure’s hat – the only item of clothing he was currently wearing. “Time to celebrate the invention of drinking and murdering of snakes by St. Patrick.”
“It doesn’t even matter! Her hands were the same size as Maralyn Monroe and now she’s… she’s… DEAD” Rory began to wail loudly until Ben puts a vomit-covered arm around him.
“Shhhhhh, ” Ben put a finger to Rory’s lips as he stared intensely into Rory’s teary eyes. “Some flames jussht burn brighter than others”
“You’re a poet, you know that?” For a moment it looked like the two men are about to kiss but instead they turn it into a bear-like man-hug and they both fall over. This was quite a change from their earlier brawl which, along with my molestation of the barman and Ciaran rewiring their speaker system to play a collection whale songs, was what got us collectively barred from “Copper Faced Jack’s” for life.

I don’t know who suggested we go to the parade, but just remember being there. It was funny, There were such crowds there yet we all constantly had plenty of personal space at any one time. I reckon it was how cool we looked. We decided to dress for the occasion; Rory, Ciaran and I were all in the only green we could find, I was wearing Rory’s flatmate’s green pajamas, Rory was in an Irish Rugby T-shirt and tiny white shorts and Ciaran was wearing a velvet green suit. We were all looking pretty dapper, except for Ben, who insisted on wearing an old costume* and was dressed as a very tall man-baby.

We were made leave from the St. Patrick’s day Parade before it finished, which was fine because it was pretty uneventful and just looked like a brick wall. However this may not have been the case for everybody, as Rory informed me afterwards that I had actually just been facing the wrong way for the whole event.

For the next few hours, we did our job as comedians by giving some street performers friendly heckling and advice, while drinking some pungent concoction from plastic bottles that Ciaran had confiscated from a bunch of teenagers by pretending to be a plain-clothed guard.

At this stage we were all feeling quite tired and decided to take a nap with a bunch of friendly gentleman on their boxes in a doorway on Grafton Street. When we woke up a kind lady gave us all a sandwich. Ben pointed out that she probably though we were homeless, but we didn’t mind too much as we were amazed by the concept of putting food in the between two pieces of bread and began debating the subject for the next two hours. When things got heated between Rory and Ciaran, about preferential bread types, an angry Guard asked us loudly to leave and stole the end of our plastic-bottle “cocktail”. As revenge on the man-of-the-law, Rory took his hat. The guard did not like this at all but luckily for us, a fist-fight broke out behind him and he got distracted. We ran away quickly and decided the best place to hide would be Copper Faced Jacks; that would be the last place the guards would think we’d hide, as it’s their head office.

We cleverly snuck in through a broken window, however Ciaran somehow re-opened his ceilí-dancing injury from earlier, and was bleeding all over the floor. This didn’t stop Ciaran enjoying himself and he vowed to make up whatever blood he lost, by drinking red aftershock (and this meant he consumed LOT of red aftershock). Happy, safe and warm we spent the next few hours like gods: Ben would distract unsuspecting punters with a sexy dance and we would sneak up behind them and steal their pints. Just like Gods.

As fun as this game was however, it was a four-carriage train to blackout central, and upon regaining consciousness, all our collective brains combined could only come up with a few snatched memories: some kind of take-away; a casino; running; passing out; some angry children; being forcibly removed from a bank; passing out; bingo and people dressed as pirates being very irritated by us.

So this bring us up to date. it’s somehow Sunday evening. Myself Ben and Ciaran are somewhere in what appears to be the Middle East. I’m typing this on Ben’s iphone by stealing someone’s wifi in this small, terrifying, heavily-armed village. Ben suspects that we may have sold Rory for a kebab, but we have no idea. So please, use the donate button on the top of this page to help give us enough cash to bribe the official to let us on the next boat without our passports – They won’t accept blowjobs; Ciaran tried that already.

*What I really hope was a costume. It was actually just a diaper and Bonnet.

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