Most small towns in the west of Ireland have Fair days...not the kind of fairs with carousals and candy-floss...these are fairs where animals are sold and the Travellers come with their tin buckets and boxes of assorted horse shoes...you can buy a fireplace in 'genuine' marble or shiny brass ornaments to decorate the mantel-piece...lengths of cheap and gaudy carpeting and lace curtaining.
But the best...and the worst...are the animals. Everything is sold in the street...horses and donkeys tied to the lamp-posts and boxes of puppies of indeterminate parentage...sometimes there'll be baby pigs...or bonhams... as they are called here. All fat and pink and wriggling about in straw in the back of a trailer or some-ones car boot...chickens and shouty cockerels in wire cages...ducks and geese and turkeys all squawking or hissing or clucking...and gobbling.
Old men with a Sweet Afton hanging out of the corner of their mouth and a bit of twine tied round their saggy trousers eye up likely customers...'What you asking?' I say, while peering into a trailer full of bad-tempered Shetland ponies...and they mumble and sigh and mutter something which sounds awfully like 200 € and I laugh and move away and they grab my sleeve and say they could do a decent deal, so they could...
The young Gipsy lads ride their painted horses bare-back up and down the street...showing off their gait...their flanks gleaming and heads tossing long manes...hooves thundering on the tarmac and the lads shout to each other in the Traveller patois...encouraging each other to go faster and faster...
Sometimes there are rabbits in small cages...we once saw Fox cubs...20 Punt apiece...there are sad small donkeys with sway backs and their equally sad foals standing anxiously by the jennies side...there'll be stinking Billy goats who spray their pee all over unsuspecting passers-by then curl up their lips to show yellowed teeth...
Money changes hands furtively...and a beautiful painted horse is led away to a horse-box to go to its new home...haggling and bargaining is part of the day...never paying the asking price and walking away in disgust has the seller stumbling after you pleading to make a offer on a donkey that'll cost you hundreds in vet and farrier bills...
I watch in-comers buy a bonham for the full asking price and carry it away clutched in their arms and know for certain they've already put a name on it and will never eat it...it'll grow fat and bad-tempered and it'll bite the children and uproot their newly planted vegetable garden.
By about four in the afternoon the street is littered with straw and wisps of hay...steaming heaps of horse muck and the horses left unsold are restless and fidgety...the donkeys are standing quietly...mostly they are asleep...and the puppies in their cardboard boxes are gone...but for one.
Now is the time to buy...a couple of euro for the pup...a donkey and her foal will be almost nothing at all...just a few euro for your man to deliver them to your home. That Shetland mare in-foal that snaps at your hands when you go to rub her,she will be pennies...
I do so love to listen to the mountainy men talk...they wear the remnants of what was once the best suit and shirts with grimy collars and they huddle together in tight groups talking of the price of hay and the qualities of their animals...I know they come from tiny cottages up in the hills and wash in streams and have a sickly calf in the kitchen and a fearsome collie dog on a long chain...some still speak the Irish with the lilting way to the words.
And I like to watch as the young Traveller lads show off their prowess on their barely broken horses...all swagger and muscles in tight tee-shirts while the town girls look on...nudging each other and giggling.
The 'pubs have been open all day and most of the animals are sold...time to head back home then with the half dozen chickens and the shouty rooster...the new puppy or the bad-tempered Shetland pony...the sad donkey with her tiny foal can sleep on a heap of fresh yellow straw in a warm shed tonight and she can be coaxed with small morsels of digestive biscuit or a soft pear until the vet comes out and sucks his teeth...and charges you an arm and a leg for injections then swiftly changes his mind and gives you a load of samples from the boot of his car and waves away any suggestion of a payment...
The old mountainy men go back to their tiny cottages lit by one bulb and the dealers load up their lace curtains and their strips of cheap carpet...the Traveller lads take their horses back to the fields and then go to the 'pub to drink themselves silly and come before the magistrate's the following day for fighting in the street...
top class vashti, top class
