I thought I would take the time before I'm incapable of typing anything to wish everyone well on this day. St. Patrick's Day, which is a symbol and a time of year, to remember back to the 700s AD when we Irish were converted from dirty Pagans to dirty Catholics.
This day always reminds me of when I was a teenager, those misspent yesteryears, all kind of blurred into one era. Me and my friends would meet up pretty early, the town was buzzing with people preparing for the onslaught like you'd imagine a medieval village would prepare for some kind of bandit army. But, me and the others would have business to deal with in the midst of this smiley-faced pre-pandemonium. "Who's getting the drink?" Was the question on everyone's minds. It would always be one of the lad's older brothers who had been organised the week before. I remember once the plan fell through and in a blind panic we had to race around asking strangers. Not fun. But, we did always get sorted.
I remember back then my drink of choice was linden village or devils bit. There was a deal on, 2x 2ltr bottles of it for 10 euro, It was delicious, and after my first bottle, that was when the silly fun times happened, laughing, joking, staggering, a little bit of slurring. But, I was still functional. Partway through the second bottle was when poor ole Killerwot couldn't walk. I remember hazy hallucinations of being dragged or carried from one spot to the next, like some kind of lifeless party mascot. Oh to be young again. Things aren't like that anymore, I'm older and wiser and haven't been that level of drunk in I don't know how long. Funny how a smell or a certain time of year can transport you back to moments from a past life.
The Plan For Today
So this year I'll be doing what I've done for most years since my early twenties, I'm going to be working as a steward for the parade. Closing off one of the roads until the parade passes and then opening it up again and following the last of the parade to the end, where we'll be going to the pub and be paid in pints for working on it. Which is one of my favourite things about doing it, other than the sense of community spirit I get for helping out. This year will be a bit different though, I'm going to be filming the parade at one of the roads I'm to block off. Which is cool, if they like the video who knows. Maybe I could be the inhouse cameraman, to film different events for the council. I can dream, can't I?
The Main Reason I Was Writing This
I always seem to get sidetracked when writing an unprompted post. The main reason I was writing this was that last year me and a few friends made a documentary on a local heritage site called The Black Castle, but, while making it we decided to open up the documentary talking about the first Viking invasion and St. Patrick.
I wanted to add it up here just in case anyone wanted to check it out, it's only about 10 minutes long and all of us involved were proud of the piece when we finished it.
Backstory
Me and a friend had been taking some long walks and chatting while we were out. We are both big fans of history, especially local history. We would often talk about the Black Castle in particular, which each of us knew and had heard stories about since we were kids. Together we had nearly the full story, so since nothing was going on at the time. We decided to film a documentary about it.
After some research, which might I add, researching Irish history is hard, especially for a subject nearly a thousand years old. A lot of Irish history back in the day was oral, stories and events passed down in stories, songs, poetry, and art and the only people who actually wrote down these tales were the monks, and the monasteries were a favored target of Vikings who usually burnt boring old paper. So, yeah, it's not easy to get a full picture of many of the interesting subjects of Ireland. There's something sad about knowing that we'll never really know these stories, but at the same time I think it gives the Irish as a whole a kind of sweetness. It's hard to put into words the feeling I'm trying to say. Irish art, songs, stories, and poetry just have this sadness that I can't really describe because it's a hopeful sadness almost.
It's like talking to a ghost, who's been here the whole time, but, can't speak.
How The Plan Came Together
As we were out filming the documentary another friend offered their services as a voice actor, my dad recorded his voice-over and added sound effects. My uncle decided to make us some 3D models of what the castle would have looked like back then and another friend did some animations for the piece which all came together so well to make what we ended up with, in the end.
We completed it and entered it into a documentary film festival, but, sadly it didn't get chosen which was fine by us so we just uploaded it to YouTube and it did pretty well. We received a lot of great feedback for it. We want to continue, making documentaries but, next time we are going to have someone on camera to walk us through the documentary.
As the lockdown came to an end, we all went back to work and haven't been out to do one yet. But, we have some ideas of other interesting topics to cover. Which, hopefully, we get back to soon, when we all have the time.
End Notes
I hope you all have a great day and enjoy the documentary we made. I was surprised Ancient Eire was available to use, I think with a catchy name like that it would be a shame not to continue making these kinds of videos.