The knuckle-chewer…

We stumbled into a late night bar there in Galway last night.

As we were horsing the pints into us, we started to become aware of an ol’ fella walking around the bar; observing him was better than watching any TV programme.  He was interesting because he was in his own world – a world where it seemed no one else existed… and he was up to something.

He had a kind of a 70’s bouffant hairstyle and wore a battered black tracksuit jacket over an old fashioned pair of trousers.

We watched him go up to the counter and order a pint of Smithwicks but then cancelled the order upon counting his coins – He was obviously a few coins short of the price of a pint; literally and metaphorically.

He proceeded to circle the bar for the next ten minutes, looking at the ground.  He must have been looking for coins, we thought…

We planted two euro coins under the hat stand and sat back in our seats waiting for him to come around again.  It was all very exciting.

He came around the corner a couple of minutes later and shuffled past the coat stand and then stopped.  His beady eyes spotted the euros and we watched him bend down to pick them up.

With his pockets jangling, he took the quickest route to the bar and got himself a pint of Smithwicks.  He seemed satisfied…  for a while.

When he got halfway down his pint, he started acting a little strange; talking to himself at first and then graduating to some knuckle chewing.  He then put his hand around his mouth as if to silence himself, but it was as if his hand belonged to someone else.  I think he had some foes in his head who were giving him a serious talking to.

The more he drank, the more he seemed to wrestle with himself and I came away realising that life is exactly as it should be and I felt somewhat guilty for interfering with his fate…