Culture

In a Word . . . Acquaintance

Back in the pub at last, a woman I don’t know well greeted me. I couldn’t think of her name

Patsy McGarry's face
Patsy McGarry
Sat Oct 30 2021 - 00:30

One of the more unexpected discoveries on emerging from our long pandemic-induced hibernation has been the unhappy realisation that auld acquaintance can be forgot. It is mortifying.

There I was back in my local for the very first time since March last year, expecting the usual red carpet, fanfare of trumpets and welcoming committee, but it’s still probably too early for that.

Producing my vaccine cert and contact details, I was soon inside that holy of holies where the happy regulars were already assembled in their usual positions, each one beaming with a sort of grim satisfaction that may also have been common on the faces of Titanic survivors as they finally made it to shore.

Some had had Covid, some had not. All were vaccinated and free at last. Soon I was perched in my usual spot with my drink before me without asking, proving that familiarity also breeds efficiency, courtesy and impressive bar skills in an attentive staff.

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Very soon it was as if nothing had happened these past 19 months. The cataclysm had passed and that old, familiar, occasionally forgotten normality had reasserted itself. I was reminded of Churchill’s acerbic comment about Ireland after the first World War, with its colossal casualties and four shattered empires.

“But as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that have been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world,” he said.

Well, there is nothing dreary about our local but, truly, it has to be one of the few institutions that have been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world. Or so it felt to this beholder.

And then it happened. A woman I don’t really know greeted me. I couldn’t remember her name. So, like the duck that remains calm on the surface while furiously paddling beneath, I chatted away while racking my brain. Her name just would not come, as I quietly died.

It was merely the first such encounter of the night.

I did recall her name later on and then deliberately walked past her, so I could say it. But who was I fooling, for auld lang syne!

Acquaintance, from Old French acointance for "acquaintance, friendship, familiarity."

inaword@irishtimes.com