Sunday, 29 Sep 2024

John Daly: 'Are California girls ready for Coppers?'

We got the news that the Yank visitors are definitely coming over in July. Two 18-year-olds, daughters of old expat friends, are over for a week on the final leg of their gap-year tour of Europe.

A pair of sunny, athletic Californian gals who’ve never previously set foot outside the US, we’re already in a state of anxiety about what to do with them.

As it stands, we’ve boiled it down to a long weekend in Leitrim or doing a Dublin trawl covering everything from the ‘Book of Kells’ after breakfast to Coppers after midnight.

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Can you imagine the linguistic possibilities confronting two blonde, blue-eyed babes named Brenna and Scarlett when a true-blue Hill 16 Dub, fresh from a heavy evening in the Stag’s Head, showers them with his best chat-up lines? Even better if he can lure them to the 3am queue in Burdock’s chipper for an artery-clogging ‘one and one’ – oh to be a fly above the fat fryer for that priceless encounter.

We’ll also impart the essentials of Irish etiquette they won’t find on TripAdvisor – always thanking the bus driver, making tea at any dramatic life juncture, and the mastering of a few bars of ‘Morning Has Broken’ on the tin whistle as their fallback party piece.

Add to that vital lessons around never, ever forgetting to switch off the immersion, the beauty of a crisp sandwich, and the delicate art of pulling the perfect pint – cultural riches worth more than the treasures of the Louvre and the Prado combined.

And when it’s time to drop them to the airport, we’ll stock their bag with the copy of ‘Ulysses’ nobody in the house would dare open, plus kilos of Barry’s Tea and SuperValu honey and mustard sausages – mouthing a silent prayer that the Homeland Security luggage guy at LAX is second-generation Kerry.

As the final part of the girls’ education, I’m determined Brenna and Scarlett will take home the perfect pronunciation of one of Ireland’s longest place names – Muckanaghederdauhaulia, the small townland in the barony of Moycullen, which translates as “a ridge shaped like a pig’s back between two expanses of briny water”.

Vocalise that without a slip at the Montecito Country Club after the third glass of Napa Valley sauvignon, and we might even put them on a shortlist for an Irish passport.

Oscars red carpet beckons for screen star Buckley

Has drinking a sup from the Lakes of Killarney become the latest highway to Hollywood fame? It seems so, given the success of Michael Fassbender and, more recently, Jessie Buckley.

I caught her latest film ‘Wild Rose’ the other night, and came away assured this is one lady who is going to be composing an Oscar speech before too long. Playing a feisty Glaswegian country singer determined to make her name in Nashville, she knocks a performance clean out of the park.

Later in the pub, we wrangled over the most miserable country lyric ever. Vince Gill’s ‘When I Call Your Name’ was a contender: “Your love has ended, but mine still remains, and nobody answers when I call your name.” Garth Brooks was a given with ‘The Dance’: “I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance.”

But the biggest heartbreaker of them all still has to be the Patsy Cline classic ‘Crazy’: “I knew you’d love me as long as you wanted, and then some day you’d leave me for somebody new.”

Wicked sad altogether…

Tiger’s victory a good omen for Mayomen

Was Tiger Woods allowing a subtle message of All-Ireland football support after his Masters win? Images of the Augusta green jacket over his red shirt went viral with the banner: ‘Mayo for Sam in 2019’. Brilliant.

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