In A Curragh Boat In Venice

 In A Curragh Boat In Venice 

by Paul McCann

These days in Ireland I’ve seen the huge variety of international restauraunts in towns and cities and some like to try something different like Shamus O’Loan who decided to take a dander down Chichester Street to see what other kinds of food was available .

He stopped at this Italian restaurant there and looked in through the window  .

He was in a kind of a daze almost like being somewhere in the twilight zone .

.

So in he goes to this Italian restaurant in the centre of Belfast and sat himself down .

Within five minutes he had ordered a bottle of red wine and started sipping on that until his meal was ready .

Half  drunk watching people walking past outside in Chichester Street you could say just for a moment he felt aloofly  unaware of where he was however as he sat there with a knife and fork beside his plate of spaghetti bolognaise at his table for one by the window near the door he was like a goldfish out of its bowl, or like a bowler hat in need of a Irish head, or indeed even more like he was a stranger on the shore.

Anyway your man Shamus smiled as the  waiter approached and said in a strong Belfast

accent 

"Would you like to have some Lanza with that ?"
"Sure" 

said Shamus not  having a clue what the waiter had meant .
So the next thing , Mario  Lanza was singing through the speakers in the restaurant .

Shamus was now feeling more Italian and this lingering aroma of romance swept through his wee head   as he started daydreaming of being someone , somewhere else instead of being there in  this wee Italian restaurant in Belfast .

Like a rose of summer on  a cold winters day he plucked up the courage to sing along with Lanza and as he did he imagined in his mind that he was sitting inside a curragh  boat in Venice somewhere with people all around singing old ballad songs in boats afloat on a river where they had found a place called  home .

Shamus was still floating away in the middle of the day and was brought back to reality by your man the waiter who whispered,

"Would you like to pay the bill?"
"Sure" 

said Shamus half  drunk on love and red wine in the twilight zone somewhere on Chichester Street . So as he took the last few  sips of his red wine he decided maybe it was time to get up on his own two feet to either pay the bill up or make a run for it . 

Half of him wanted to run but  the better half of him decided to pay the bill and so he slowly took out his wallet and paid what was owed them walked back out to where the night life of Belfast had only just begun and in the evening he found some shop front signs advertising a Full Irish Breakfast which of course can be eaten at any time of the day .

After eating the spaghetti bolognaise he had a craving for something more hearty and delicious and decided  to have an Ulster  fry up and a pint of Guinness , so in went  Shamus for his full Irish breakfast and 

immediately he found himself  back In Northern Ireland again with the people he knew . 

The End