This week has been fairly hectic, but today should be a good chance to blow off some steam and have a bit of craic (A sociable activity; a good time - as defined in the dictionary) with friends and family.
The Plan For The Day
I'll be heading back to my hometown at around 12 o'clock, and one of my mates is picking me up as we have a bit of a job to do before the drinking starts this afternoon.
Every year I help out by stewarding the parade in my town, and it's a fairly handy gig to be fair. We meet up in the afternoon, get assigned a position, and receive a hi-vis jacket with that we head to our designated spot to wait until we're told to block the roads leading to the main street.
There we stand until the parade passes by, and we wait for the coordinator to come along and tell us to remove the bollards when that happens we follow along with all of the other stewards to the end of the main street where the parade disbands, and we hand back the jackets.
With that done, we all head to the pub, and drinks tokens are dished out to everyone who helped out.
Usually, the pub is fairly packed, so it's a bit of an endurance contest. Most of the people who help out tend to leave after they have their one or two tokens, but if you don't mind crowds and stick around more and more tokens can get dished out.
The pub in particular would be my regular, so I don't mind hanging out there. For years now I've barely bought any drinks on Paddy's Day.
Today Will Be A Bit Different
There will be a slight deviation to the plan today, however, as I was asked to do a bit of filming before the parade and recruited a mate to help me out for it, as each of us will be blocking the road together anyway, so he may as well stick with me.
An RTE presenter of some kind will be down to do a bit of talking with the crowd beforehand, so essentially we'll film her talk, and interactions in the crowd, then once that's done we'll head to our location and prepare to block the road as usual.
Kaleb's First Paddy's Day
My mum knitted him a tri-colour jumper and hat for the day, and he'll be proudly sporting them as he watches the parade for the first time. It'll be funny to see his reaction.
I'll be leaving early to get in and prepare some camera gear, and do the stuff beforehand, but my partner will be getting a lift into town with her mum and the baby, and they'll set up shop near my location so we can all watch the parade together.
Community Spirit
I love doing the stewarding each year, and I enjoy getting involved in days and occasions like this.
It's important to be involved in community activities, and on days like this when everyone is out, having fun, and celebrating their national heritage it's great to have a bit of build-up to the real celebrations by getting out and involved on a local level.
The day usually goes down well, thanks to all of the organisers, but everyone involved in these events has an important part to play, especially the spectators.
