Just a random Christmas night out...

THE Christmas drinking season has been slightly curtailed by work this year, but I’ll be making up for it after Christmas, and in the meantime I’ll try and enjoy the smugness.

In truth, at this age, tipping away too regularly can lead to a bit of a black hole anyway. Two nights in a row can often leave one feeling a bit bleak, and even a non-consecutive cluster of a few nights out in the same week can lead to a bit of brain damage.

But let’s face it, there’s nothing like a good random Christmas night out, is there?

I kicked off the season with the kind of unplanned random ramble of an evening that could only happen in Dublin. The Taste of Christmas Festive Edition was in the RDS, which is a 10-minute walk from the house, so we said we’d pop over for an hour while the kids were at Girl’s Brigade and have a few dumplings from Hang Dai.

As we wandered in, we met one of the organisers, whom we knew, and she told us to go down near the back where there was a drink to be had. So then we somehow wandered into a reception being held by a new private bank that’s coming to Ireland.

There we became embroiled in everyone from TV people to a guy from Gurranabraher in Cork who seemed to be mixed up in the wealth management scene in Luxembourg, to a guy from Waterford who moved to Luxembourg on a whim and was now playing the telecoms game with the scion of a German dynasty.

There was also a very tall Portuguese man with a whiff of Euro-aristocracy about him who was great value. There was food and drink flying around and it would have been rude not to indulge, though I did draw the line at the whiskey tasting.

We eventually prised ourselves away from the private banking scene and went back out into the main event to meet friends. En route to them we got the lowdown on Canon photo printers because I am determined to print off some of the thousands of pictures I have floating in the cloud. I topped up with some spicy pork rice and we hit the bar up near the front.

Now I don’t have what you might call sporting heroes, but I have a bit of a thing for Rob Kearney.

I know it’s due to the nature of the position he plays, but I feel there is a lesson for all of us in Kearney’s attitude to a game of rugby. The guy never lies down and never stops working. His energy and never-say-die attitude is inspirational.

So when I saw him in the bar

I probably tried a bit too hard for the old eye contact and a hello. And I have to say that when he politely came over to say hello, I was slightly star struck. He has a manly handshake and he grabbed me firmly by my skinny, unworkedout arm, which, if it had been someone else, I would have taken as a Trumpian dominant power move, but from the Robster I choose to take as a gesture of sincerity. I did however, make a mental note that I should build some arm muscle.

The last person I remember having a similar encounter with was Robbie Williams, who also grasped my puny upper arm tightly while I patted his, which was made of iron.

It was time to move on then but we decided we’d have one for the road and headed to the InterContinental, where the booze isn’t cheap but the atmosphere is worth the surcharge at this time of year.

There I got diverted from the group as I hooked up with a dashing legend of the Cork medical scene when I was growing up. I know him from around the town and we always have a bit of a chat.

It turned out that sad circumstances had placed him in this place at this time, but we drank to that and talked through it, and generous as always, he offered me a bit of gentle psychoanalysis as well.

Then, to top it all off, the exceedingly tall Portuguese banker appeared again. With beer goggles on, he was even more impressive, with that presence and the manner of a well-bred European. He regaled us with wry humour about the European view on Brexit.

And then, just when you could have had one too many, the bar closed, and we called it a night.

And the lesson in all this? Apparently if you want to learn Portuguese, learn it from a Brazilian, because they speak with more open vowels, vowels that English speakers will find it easier to copy.