New Year’s Eve In Dublin

The Irish know how to have a good time. Last night was proof in the pudding and I no longer need to be persuaded that the Irish are better party-goers than the English. I was at Dublin’s oldest pub ‘The Brazen Head’ last night to see in the New Year and it was a brilliant experience that I will not forget in a hurry.

We kicked off with a bit of grub at 9ish and by the time I had polished off my sizeable burger, we were ready to gravitate towards the live music that had just kicked off in one of the ground floor bars. There is nothing like an authentic Irish band cracking out some golden classics and drawing the punters on to the dance floor to enjoy a bloody good knees-up. The band did just that by playing some Van Morrison classics like ‘crazy love’ and ‘brown eyed girl’, which got all the folks singing along while they clumsily clapped drinks together in jovial celebration and gradually eased themselves into a drunken stupor in keeping with the spirit of the occasion. At 11ish the lead singer of the band quipped in charismatically Irish fashion “we are now going to take a 10 minute break for about 20 minutes”, which had me in stitches. The Irish really do have a quirky, self-deprecating and witty sense of humour that never gets old and characterises a nation of survivors who are always up for a good time.

By the time the countdown began the atmosphere in the pub had reached peak level and complete strangers were embracing one another as if
greeting a relative or long lost friend. There is no place for formality or hostility here. The first song after the bell tolled midnight saw a welcomed
piece of English influence as the band broke into a rendition of The Beatles classic ‘Hey Jude’. The tune was met by raucous applause from the crowd who couldn’t wait to start chanting the classic ‘naaaaa na na na ne na na ……… etc. The song must have lasted at least 10 minutes and everyone would have been delighted for it to carry on and on into the early hours.

New Year’s Eve is nothing special to me and I don’t think of it as being wildly different to any other day of the year. People will often ask me what I did for New Year’s Eve last year and invariably I can’t remember. Throughout 2012 however, I will be able to offer a speedy recollection of my NYE experience at Ireland’s oldest boozer.