Spontaneity is great as long as you remember it!

Last Monday morning my excellent friend The Body and I were sitting outside Rob Kenny’s lovely coffee shop Pura Vida on Lower Quay Street, talking gentle bollox as we watched the tourists saunter by.

Peter Connolly of The Claddagh Boatmen leaped out of a van and walked up to our table.

“Do you two want to come out for a while on the bay in a Hooker? It’s good to do something impromptu every once in a while. I have two life jackets for you and can meet you down by the docks in ten minutes.”

I looked at The Body. He looked at me. We both smiled and raised our eyebrows.

Yes, it’s always good to do something on the spur of the moment. Even better, as regular colyoomistas might recall, last week’s blather ended with a wish for exactly this opportunity.

“Come on then. We’ll do it! See you down the docks in ten minutes Peter, and thanks! This is great!”

A short while later, coffees drained, peepers squeezed, the Body and I were wisping our way across the waves, staring up at a billowing rust red sail, as Galway City disappeared behind us.

Life can sometimes be equally exciting and wonderful: there I’d been, drinking coffee with my mate one minute and the next ... was I dreaming?

Strangely enough, the previous night The Body had dreamed that he went out on a boat.

For me it was simply a dream come true.

Galway lifestyle allows the time and freedom to act impulsively. It has to. Galwegians are not fond of arrangements, preferring to behave spontaneously.

I’d use the expression ‘go with the flow’ but that’s a bit too arty-farty for the scatological process that tends to unfold in Galway, where away from the river, the only things flowing are the beer and the urinals.

Asking a Galwegian a seemingly innocent question such as “What are you doing next Tuesday?’ brings about heavy sweating, random phone checking and furious finger rubbing. It’s not that people in Galway can’t make a date and keep it: they’d just rather not.

As a self-employed scribbler raised in a Protestant country by Jewish parents, I have a sturdy work ethic which blends naturally with my strong sense of punctuality.  Unfortunately it mixes with Galway’s culture of timekeeping like oil and vinegar. Never the twain shall meet, unless you give it a good shake up by being as bladdered as the crowd.

Somebody asks me to do a favour, suggesting we meet in the pub at midday. I arrive at 11:50. That way I can buy a coffee and be seated and ready at the appointed hour.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.