By 
PULL out your phone, open up your preferred search engine and type in ’Bazaars near me’, and before you know it you’ll be pricing flights to Turkey, Egypt and Morocco; the sandy reaches of North Africa and the Middle East.
But Google is not God. Only He is omniscient. Well, He and Santa Clause, of course. Which is why when I was writing my Christmas letter last month, I made sure to include, in addition to my annual list of material demands, a question fit for a big, red, all-knowing being. ‘And oh, Santa, PS, before you go, you wouldn’t know where I could find a decent Irish-style bazaar about Co Tyrone this Christmas? I’m not looking the Marrakesh markets. Just a raffle where I can win a bottle of vodka or a new toaster or something.’
Well, wasn’t I sitting watching Home Alone on Sunday evening, the fire blazing up the chimney, when a letter shot out from the fireplace, hit me square on the chest, and landed on my lap.
I opened it up.
Inside it read: ‘Parish Bazaar. Sunday, December 14. 8PM start. Aghyaran GAC.’
I almost choked on my imaginary mince pie, before throwing it to the ghost of Rusty The Expired Jack Russell.
‘Coat! Keys! Petrol!’ I shouted, like father Jack, then dashed down the drive and leapt head-first into the Astra.
About an hour later, having traversed, in the driving rain, the treacherous roads that twist from Omagh, through Drumquin, and on through Castlederg, I found myself in a dark wilderness.
But, not unlike the three kings of old, I too had a guiding light, but one that did not flicker in the firmaments.
I followed my terrestrial lonestar to its source: The flood-lit grounds of Aghyaran GAC. I had arrived – and it was chockablock.
Between the front door and the entrance to the hall itself was a small shrine to the players and clubmen of days gone by.
Among the team photos and portraits of men and women – mostly men, in fairness – who dedicated their lives to the green and yellow, small splashes of holly and ivy suggested the season that was it in. Teenagers, infinitely more interested in exploiting the matchmaking possibilities of the bazaar than winning a new washing machine, slinked around the outskirts of the hall, giggling in toilet doorways.
Inside, the place was jammed.
Men at the bar drank lively pints of Coors Light and gulped at heavy stout.
Children poured avalanches of mini-marshmallows into their mouths from cardboard cones.
The markings of an indoor football pitch peeped out from beneath rows of chairs that stretched from the front of the stage – where sat the announcer, the prize-giver, a guy who operated the number generator, and three women whose roles remain a mystery – right to the back of the hall.
When I landed, it was already the fourth of eight raffle rounds, and the early winners – universally sporting smug grins and keeping their prizes tight – stood out like sore thumbs among the hopefuls.
One man, his face ruddy and anatomy vast, sat with a crumpled rainbow between his feet, each colour a dead soldier in another lost battle.
The local priest, dressed in his civies, whizzed supernaturally around selling tickets, like the fate of the entire Catholic Church depended on it.
I bought a few off him and knelt down next to a man whose numbers had already come up, hoping a bit of his good luck might rub off on me.
“What have ye won there?” I asked, to which he replied by sliding his hamper out from under his chair.
“A bottle of Bacardi, a bottle of gin, a tin of Tennents, Pringles, a bottle of red, a packet of McVities,” he said, like the cat who’d gotten the cream.
“Everything you’d need to spoil the Christmas dinner,” I said.
He laughed and said, “I haven’t spoiled one yet.”
After purchasing a couple of tickets, I attempted to ask the preoccupied priest a few questions about the history of the bazaar, but he was so flat out that he had vanished before I got my first sentence finished.
And so, I went back to He Who Harboured The Hamper.
Or as I later found out his name, James McMenamin.
“The parish bazaar has been going on, aww, I dunno, a long time anyway. All the money raised goes to the parish; the church, like. It used to be in the parish hall, but the numbers started to drop, so they moved it up here and started making the prizes better.
“That got people coming again,” explained James.
Just as he was telling me how much this time-honoured tradition means to the people who live in this mountainous community of the Tyrone/Donegal borderland, round five began.
I clutched my two yellow tickets tight. Sweet 0403 and 0382.
The big prize was the first to be announced.
“And the first prize goes number 255,” said the announcer.
A hand shot up.
“Paddy McHugh,” said the man on the microphone. “Good man Paddy. You’ll get your prize at the end of the night – or you might not.”
The next number that appeared on the magical number machine was all the threes – 333.
Another hand went up.
“Gerry McHugh. Well done Gerry.”
A theme was emerging.
“Is this a fix or what?” I said to the man beside me.
“No. This is Aghyaran,” he replied.
I smiled back at him.
‘Probably a McHugh as well’, I thought.
The next prize went to Orla at the front, then the one after that to Kelly at the back.
Down to the last prize, I crossed my fingers and said a prayer that the sparkling water maker, complete with orange, cola and blue flavourings, would be mine.
But it didn’t. It went to teenager Ben, who must have taken ten minutes off chatting up the young local ladies to ensure that I, the outer-towner with the notepad, would be going home empty-handed.
I was just about to crumple up my tickets and scream, ‘Frig this. Next Christmas I’m going to Cairo!’, when I realised something.
Ye wouldn’t get anything nearly as exotic as this in Cairo.
I bought another two tickets, grabbed myself a marshmallow cone and stayed for round five.
Still no luck.
But I’ll be back next year, and I’ll be going home with a set of saucepans or something – even if I have to change my surname to McHugh.
