By 
I did a strange thing on Sunday – so odd, uncharacteristic and completely unlike me, in fact, that to say I ‘did’ it doesn’t feel quite right.
It gives me too much agency; too much credit. It feels more natural, more accurate, to say that a strange thing happened to me on Sunday.
It’s hard to explain, but it was as though the natural order of things was suspended and some external force interceded to save me from myself.
Excuse me if I’m not doing a very good job of describing it – but, as William James rightly wrote in ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’, these moments of conversion are by their very nature ineffable.
They take you to the limits of language and into the incommunicable beyond.
So perhaps I’m better putting it plainly and letting you infer from there: On Sunday, for the first time in my 28 years of living and ten years of legal drinking, I drank three pints… and went home.
Until then, such a thing had never occurred before.
But on Sunday (I mean, what other day?) it did – and I don’t know if things will ever be the same again.
It was the middle of last week -the hump day, I think it was – when my phone buzzed and an aul pal’s name appeared on my screen.
‘Yes mo chara,’ he greeted me, as he always greets everyone – be they Irish, British, Burmese or otherwise.
‘Long time no chat,’ he wrote. ‘Fancy going in to watch the Liverpool v United game on Sunday?’
Now, though technically a Liverpool fan – because once a red, always a red, etc – I haven’t watched a game in about five years.
However, my almost total disinterest in the outcome of the match notwithstanding, I’d no work on Monday, so agreed to join him in the pub.
‘We’ll give Arthur’s a go,’ he said, and the stage was set.
The next day though, I received another text.
‘HI Emmet. Can you work Monday, 9-5?’
Not really in a position to be shying away from shifts, I agreed, meaning I’d have to be up and at it by 7.30am on Monday morning.
This put a whole different complexion on the Sunday session.
I was about to text my friend and tell him that we might be best postponing the catch-up until such times as we can revel without restraint, when I suddenly decided against it.
‘What sort of a weak, useless, ungovernable rogue can’t meet up with an old friend because they’re too scared they’ll lose the run of themselves and end up missing work on Monday?’ I asked myself, trying to silence the voice in my head that screamed – in increasingly shrill tones – ‘ME. ME. ME!’
But I gathered together my resolve and decided I’d go in on Sunday as planned, simply tell my buddy the bad news, then drink a handful of pints and head home early.
Then the day of reckoning arrived and I’d my script rehearsed:
In, greetings, pint, chat, another pint, subtly drop the bad news, apologise – but not enough to betray that I feel bad and am thus vulnerable to guilt-tripping -one final pint, goodbyes, walk home, tea and toast, pint of water, bed.
But as I entered the pub and saw him sitting by the bar, I felt my false smile falter under the stress of the secret I harboured.
I approached him as Judas probably approached Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
‘Yes lad, what’s the craic?’ he asked, grinning happily.
I nervously summed up my life since we last saw each other, then settled into things.
One pint – no point mentioning the bad news just yet, I thought.
Two pints – which was when, according to the plan, I supposed to drop the bombshell, but still I was just jabbering about how few players I knew nowadays.
Then, just before calling for the third, I bit the bullet and blurted it out.
‘Here lad, I’ve work in the morning so I’m gonna have to head after this one. Well, not head on, I can sit about for a while, but this’ll be the last pint for me.’
He replied, ‘That’s grand
lad. Get yourself another
one surely – I’m alright though.’
‘What?’ I said, in total confusion.
Then he pulled his keys from his pocket, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
‘Driving,’ he said, smiling.
I looked at him in utter disgust.
Squinting, I said, ‘Looks like we’re both Judas then… Which means maybe we’re both Jesus.’
‘What?’ he said.
‘Nevermind.’
Then I went home, more or less stuck to the plan – tea, toast, two more cans – and was snoring by half nine.
If that isn’t proof that there’s a God, then I dunno.
