I’m leaning into the wind as it flings fistfuls of rain against my umbrella, wildly billowing the umbrella’s black nylon fabric, warping its spindly ribs, threatening to snap its handle in two.  All this angry energy from Mother Nature lowers my already low resolve to do the right thing.  It’s a Thursday evening in January around seven o’clock, the sun abdicated hours ago as a storm lurched in off Galway Bay, emptying the dark streets, desolating the puddly pathways of Eyre Square.

Only hard cases and students hit the pubs with weather this brutal.

Unfortunately, not only can I not brainufacture even the skimpiest fig leaf of a self-lie to fool my conscience into letting me duck into a pub for a night’s drinking, instead I have a gnawingly persistent backlog of college homework to be submitted, albeit a couple of months late.  Sitting on a desk, with my name a tad ostentatiously showing (on the impossibly-low-odds chance that one of my lecturer’s happened to pass by) in the seldom-entered-but-often-lied-about UCG library is a stack of books, that I’ve finally purchased, filled with mindboggling formulas, theories, nay … even theorems!

I battle on bravely-ishly through the brutal weather, another valiant scholar on the essentially non-existent list of UCG’s Valiant Scholars.  I do find myself distinguished on that diminutive list in that, surely, it’s only I that burn such gargantuan quantities of willpower to balance a near nonexistent desire to learn civil engineering against a fully formed unquenchable thirst for beer! 

I lean into the wind and rain, cursing the weather, my leaky sneakers and George Boole, with his particularly inscrutable algebra, a few confused morsels of which populate my emaciated notes back in the library.  When would anyone, especially a total gobeshite civil engineer like meself, who’s destined for warehousing in some moldy County Council office dreaming of five o’clock pints, ever need to know that 1+1=0? 

Boole for sure shoulda spent more time in the pub or the bog or anywhere other than his desk.  But because of the combined viciousness of Boole’s persistence in using his brain down at University College Cork and University College Galway’s rigid rules on passing exams, I somehow have to understand this mathematical incoherence.  Or at least engage in my version of learning, which is to memorize whole pages of unknowable formulas such that I can mentally vomit up said formula onto the pages of an exam booklet and scrape together enough academic-mercy points to avoid failing.

Thus, on I travail through Eyre Square’s umbrella obfuscated darkness, gritting my teeth with bitterness and fake resolve.  To heap even more bitter upon my bitterness at not drinking my Thursday night away with my not-quite-so-far-behind flatmates, the pay-as-you-go electric meter in our flat ran out just as I was finishing deep frying my dinner.  Without a fifty-pence-piece to slot into the meter, I muddled on in the dark. 

It was a weird experience: Retrieving a plate from the sink, pretending to pretend clean it; fishing the sausages and chips out the saucepan of boiling oil with a perforated serving spoon – last washed back in the Old Testament; splashing my daily sustenance oily-ily onto the fake-clean plate.  The ceremony of cooking and serving over; I sat in the unrelieved darkness of the filthy kitchen eating my perfect meal of processed food cooked for so long and at such heat as to extract from it any semblance of taste.

Undeterred by the weather, the darkness, the world railing against me, I carefully step up the stone stairs in Eyre Square and cross the paved plaza, paying no heed, as one does, to the lanky black cannons, Crimean War surplus now aimed at cars splashing along the street.  Ten years ago on this plaza, as a nine-year-old visiting Galway with my parents, my brother, father and I watched a Traveller as he wrapped his round, bleached-blond wife in a green canvas sheet, then looped a chain around woman and canvas.  

“Laddies, gintlemens, revrent fadders,” the Traveller yells.  “See fer yersells, ‘n beehoult t’greatest ‘scape since Ronnah Biggs cum up oveh t’wall a Wandswerth.”

He continues yelling, but we can’t make out his words, as kneeling down, he  padlocks the ends of the chain together.  His wife lies perfectly still inside the green rollup, a few strands of her yellowish white hair laying on the grey-black paving stones. 

The Traveller up off his knees, looks over crowd, then stoops to pick something up from his heap of stuff.

A bullwhip! 

My eyes bulge in disbelief – I’ve never seen a bull whip before, except on the telly in John Wayne’s hand.

My stomach tightens: Is he going to whip his wife and her lying on the ground?

He doesn’t, instead he cracks the bullwhip a few times as he walks in a circle around wife, canvas, chain and padlock.  

In his right hand he holds up the padlock key.

“Laddies, gintlemens, revrent fadders un’ de lot a ye’se.  See, I haf t’key.  See!  See!  Ken she ever ‘scape?  Pays yer money an’ yese’ll see!  Cum on, pays yer money ta watch her ‘scape!”

A few coins tinkle onto the ground; though none from us, my father being a staunch non-contributor to Traveller street theatre. 

The Traveller, with the key held up in one hand, the bullwhip in the other dragging behind him makes eye contact with us.

“Cum on outta that,” Da snaps, squeezing us on the shoulders.

But curiosity emboldens us to, for once, resist.

We twist our shoulders, escape his grip and stand staring at the Traveller who passes us by, his bloodshot eyes connecting with others in his audience, freeing up a few more coins.

For some reason Da doesn’t get cross and grab us by the ear for not doing what he said.  I don’t know why until I glance over my shoulder and see that he’s staring at the Traveller woman as she lies on the paving stones deathly still.

I turn back to the show. 

The Traveller stands next to his rolled-up wife, looks over the crowd for one last flush of coins, before he fast-cracks the bull whip three times.  Immediately his wife starts rolling and squirming on the ground.  The green canvas and chain twist-roll across the paving stones, clinking and scraping, until we can see enough of her yellowish white hair emerging from the canvas to understand how she’ll make her escape.

“Cum on outta that,” Da snaps again, squeezing our shoulders so hard that we know this time there’s no resisting.

This stormy evening the plaza is deserted other than the tall, dark cannons, the puddles shimmering as they reflect the streetlights.  I cross the plaza and lower my umbrella to watch for cars before I negotiate the street.  I know full well by the route I took that I’m marching my weak resolve through the Valley of the Shadow of Darkness having to pass several of my oft-visited watering holes.  The first of these, the Skeffington Arms Hotel, is just across the street from me, soon to be followed by the Cellar, the Lions Head with the last, duller, barb to be avoided, the Yacht.

The “Skeff” poses a lower Thursday night risk as it’s primarily a weekend evening after-a-rugby-match pub.  It’s unlikely I’d meet anyone in there this evening.  So, like many a victim before me, I lower my guard.  Waiting for the cars to pass, I grit my teeth and wonder, somewhat aimlessly, just how does 1+1 equal 0?

It’s a little-known fact that spy chasers and people who grew up in small towns recognize humans by their gait, our most distinctive characteristic – other than our farts.  Thus, it was that I recognized the man darting jacket-and-umbrella-less up Shop Street towards me.  My weak resolve raises the umbrella, slowly, to cover my face.  But the gods of exam-passing seem to win as he ducks down the alley to the Skeff’s back door. 

I breath out a mixture of relief and disappointment.

But as I lower the umbrella again to safely cross the street, his head, then torso stick out of the alley.

The grin on his bearded face widens as I approach.

“Perfect,” he starts, “I was just headin’ in fer a pint an’ me wond’rin’ who’d t’fuck’d be out on a dog of a night like this.”

“Oohhh noooo,” I struggle to think of a calamity of such enormous proportion that would prevent me from entering a pub at seven o’clock on a Thursday evening.  

“I hafta … eh, I’m in fierce trouble with t’oul studyin’ … I’m … I’m on medicine,” a lie finally comes to me, “I cannit take a drink for a few … hours.”

“Ah woulda go away ta fuck outta that, sure a pint is medicine, what could be better for you ….”

My resolve dissolves.

Standing at the counter in the clean, dry, well-lit bar in the Skeff, waiting for our pints of Guinness to settle, we stare at the owner, a slim, fifty-something woman with uncommoningly black hair and layers of makeup.  Always pleasant and smiling, she’s now staring into the mirror behind the bar, her pale, thin fingers barely preening her hair.

“Is it?” my drinking partner says under his breath.

“Is it what?” I ask too loud, making him flash his eyes, purse his lips.

He puts both hands on the top of his head, jolts his scalp and hair forwards-backwards.

“Ya know,” he says, nodding toward the still preening owner.

The owner’s eyes dart across the mirror to our reflection, catching mine.

“That’s a big question now,” I say nodding slowly to show my pub-wisdom.  

I pick up my pint, take a deep draught until her eyes have on again.  Then wiping the Guinness from my upper lip, I offer:

“But I’ve a bigger question sittin’ on me desk back in t’library; how the fuck could wan plus wan be equal ta zero?”