Today was the day before Saint Patrick's Day, and the Irish were out in force on the streets of Dublin, practicing for the main event of tomorrow by getting blind drunk today. I've never seen so many police in the city centre. They cleared all the roads for fifty metres around the river Liffey, and thousands of people lined the banks to watch the fireworks, which lasted about twenty minutes. We saw the end of them, sparkling between the buildings, and we decided it would be better to go and get ice cream.
We ate ice cream on Grafton street while thousands of people walked past, sheltering in the awning of an upper-class department store. Hess said that he was afraid that hands were going to reach out from the neon interior to drag us in for involuntary makeovers, and push us out into the crowd again covered in lipstick and blusher, our hair primped and styled. Down the street, a short Romanian man was singing 'Delilah' by Tom Jones in an operatic baritone, accompanying himself on the accordion. He had gathered a small crowd, who were cheering him on. Many of them were wearing big, bright green hats and had their faces painted in the colours of the Irish flag.
I spoke to my ex-girlfriend and told her I was getting married to Lindsay. She was very quiet on the other end of the phone. Her house had been broken into yesterday, she said, and her car and her handbag stolen. She was having a hard time at work. She said congratulations, but she didn't sound like she meant it, and I suppose I don't blame her. But I remember a time when she called me when I was living in England, and told me she was getting married to her new boyfriend, and I was shocked, but overjoyed for her. I was so happy that she was happy. There was nothing fake or forced at all about it when I told her congratulations. It would have been nice if she could have been that way with me, but I guess she was having a bad day.
Eventually, we went home. A man with his face painted to look like a tiger ordered chips with us in the takeaway, and told us he was going to go home and have sex with his wife. "She likes it doggy style," he said, moving his hips to demonstrate. "Actually, I'm killed when I get home, killed dead." He'd been out drinking all day, and could barely hold his food.
It's nearly 5am. I'm going to bed.