In Jan of 2020, I went to Granada, Spain, travelling on my birthday as I have done for the past 5 years. At the time, sitting at roadside cafes in the winter sun, we had no idea what was about to unfurl and not even in our maddest of hypothetical rabblings could we have predicted  what was right around the corner , from the mundanity of a whole new lockdown lexicon to the grim reality of living with this new pathogen . As late as March , I began to try and flog merchandise for the  first time in my life , an unfortunately timed venture that appeared both insensitive and grossly insignificant so I stopped after I sold one t-shirt. Thanks Mam !! 

Then they shut all the pubs for St.Paddys day and we knew it was serious. In light of the absence of pubs , we took solace in a number of industrious brewers who sent wandering  can delivery men door to door bringing with them good cheer and citrus APAs . But no amount of cans could replace the lure of the public house. Like many desperate young men of my age , I too sank  to the lowest common denominator : creating a series of web episodes to fill the lockdown void.  As luck would have it , my newfound dependence on Zoom actually helped in their creation, and two full episodes were birthed from the monotony. ( See below for one such episode).

Sometime around August after a balmy Summer spent hunched over a hastily improvised domestic work station hub , a window of opportunity allowed me to travel to Rhodes, Greece  and with it my second Irish pub of the year. I am eternally grateful to all the pantheon of the gods for that, and will sacrifice some sort of magic ram to show my appreciation.

When the pubs reopened, there was much rejoicing, but the innate spontaneity of the pint experience was tempered by the clinical application of the new guidelines which became ever more draconian with each visit till finally they were forced to shut again. There was talk of Substantial meals and hacking the system with scotch eggs , or surreptitious table bookings, lying about postcodes and housemates.
Then, right at the end of 2020 , when I had planned to go back home for Christmas, the Irish government cancelled all flights to and from pariah-covid -ridden -Brexit Island, a perfect coda to the year.  It is customary at this point to make a prediction for 2021 , and to give it a positive , Colonel / Captain/ Major Tom-esque- feel- good slant. What 2020 has shown is that we have no idea what will happen. But thoughts invariably lead to the time when all this has passed , and how sweet the return to revelry will be , where we’ll all be licking each others faces with abandon in Irish pubs the world over . One can hope.