Look! It’s around about 6 o’clock and we’re getting ready for a night of fun times.
Let’s listen to some music to get us started. In fact let’s listen to some remixes of M.I.A. That’s the reason that music was invented, right? Especially the Holy Fuck remix. We all agree that it’s delightful. We don’t all agree on Battles though. Bren only likes the Fourtet remix of that one song that he knows. That’s ok. We weren’t going to listen to Battles anyway.

Gareth, the technological genius that he is, discovers a timer on his camera. What larks! We cluster, we jump, we pose- akin to skinnier, more beautiful people that we see on television shows. We amuse ourselves wonderfully.

Gosh, it’s 7.15 already. Let’s put on our walking shoes and head to Harcourt St. It’s quite sunny out. We put on our sunglasses. We keep our sunglasses on for probably too long.
We see a big line outside Tripod. We don’t want to wait. We loiter on the street corner instead. We imagine that we are in the Velvet Underground. We are not actually in the Velvet Underground. Eventually we join the queue. We are still wearing our sunglasses. If we weren’t us, we’d hate us. Dan notes that ‘we are us, and I hate us’. He doesn’t mean it really though.

Into the venue we go! Except we are split up. It’s very upsetting. Then we are reunited. It’s bliss. We squash around a table and share chairs. It’s mildly uncomfortable but very companionable. The MC is the worst comedian known to the Milky Way. He operates on the Pythagorean Principle of a squared= b squared + c squared. (B standing in the case for Volume, and C for Coarseness- A naturally representing Humour). Clever chap, eh?

They begin to present the awards. We don’t really care about the ones that we’re not nominated for. We still clap though. We’re very polite like that.

The recipient of Short Story of the Year wants to free Tibet. He said so in his speech. It wasn’t so much a speech as him shouting ‘Free Tibet’. He is very politically involved, but ill-advised. Tibet doesn’t want to be an independent state. It just wants autonomy. That’s what I said in my presentation on Tibet in my French class last Thursday. I would have gladly discussed Tibetan issues with the young man, but he left the stage very quickly. Presumably he was shocked by his own oratory skills.

As the ceremony wears on, we keep not winning things. Every time that we don’t win something, Bren goes for a cigarette. It gets to the stage where he even goes for a cigarette after we lose awards that we weren’t even nominated for. Our table gets very tense.

Thank goodness we won the People’s Choice Award. We get very very excited. Ailbhe and Conor jump a lot. Everyone jumps a lot. It’s like a scene from The Mighty Ducks. Had we thought of it, we may have started quacking.

We stop paying attention then. We wander around for a bit. There is music playing, and Ailbhe and Sarah-Jane have a dance. No-one else has a dance though. We are not impressed. We leave to find other places to dance. Ailbhe loses her shoes. She’s devastated. Then she finds her shoes. She’s very happy. We drink whiskey together. We are very glad that we are all friends. We tell each other this. It’s been a fine evening.

Ailbhe Malone is 21 years old. Her father told her the other day that she was 'going to change the world'. She remains sceptical.
Email this author | All posts by Ailbhe Malone

Similar Posts